I'm on the opposite end of this subject. Even before I reached goal, the scale was and remains my friend. I weigh myself only once a day when I get up in the morning. This makes me accountable and keeps me on track. It tells me I'm doing all the right things. The scale never lies, and because of this I realize that some days I may be retaining water and so I give myself a two lb leeway. I hear stories of how 20 lbs can creep back on and I'm not about to let that happen. So I say "Hail to the scale!"
Shelley

I am a little over 10 months post op and I weigh every morning before i get into the shower. In the early days stalls would freak me out, but now I just go with the flow. Some days I weigh the same as the day before and the day before that and the day before that, other days I see a very slight increase (maybe a pound) other days I may go down a pound. This morning I weighed in at 208.6 which is a whopping 138.4 pounds lost since the end of May 2012 so I am a happy happy happy girl. Hoping my new exercise addiction gets the pounds dropping a little fast. My personal goal is to be under 200 pounds by my one year surgery anniversary on September 25th.

I have to say, I'm with Shelley and Kelly on this one. I am a bit neurotic about the scale and I've set boundaries in place to make it work for me. The times in my life when my weight got away from me were when I was ignoring the scale. When I was losing weight the scale kept me motivated. Now that I'm maintaining, I need the daily reality check to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I weigh once a day, first thing in the morning after going to the bathroom.

I keep track of it on an Excel spreadsheet (yes, I can tell you what I weighed on any given day over the past 3 1/2 years unless I was on vacation.)

I only pay attention to the first numbers... Nothing after the decimal counts.

When I was losing, I ignored a 1 day increase in weight. If it stayed up for 2 days, I recorded it.

Now that I'm maintaining, I only allow certain foods when I am at the bottom/middle of my target weight range.

I know the scale becomes increasingly inaccurate the less sleep I get. Generally, I don't lose weight if I've gotten less than 8 hours.

I do not allow the scale to dictate my mood or my sense of self-worth. It does, however tell me how my body is reacting to my eating/drinking/moving/sleeping choices.

I know that once I've had anything to eat/drink, no scale reflects my true weight. Same goes for clothes. I don't worry about the doctors' scales. I know what my scale said when I was naked before I ate/drank.

For some people, weighing every day works. Others need to stay away from it. The key is to find out which type you are and to work with that.

:)

JJ

I tried to only weigh once a week when I was in the loosing stage but sometimes would hop on there more often. Now in maintenience and not trying to loose but not gain either, I weigh each morning to keep myself in check. I feel this is best for me.

I step on the scale every day! I'm ok when the numbers are down but when they fluctuate up again, I feel like I've failed again... Maybe i should put it away too!

I guess this is an individual thing. This is the first day I haven't weighed myself. I think I will do once a week for now. I know for me the scale seems to dictate my mood. It should not have that much control over me. So...bye bye for a while scale.

Yes... and very individual thing, I agree! I think it is also dependent upon what part of our journey we are in. While in this losing stage post surgery, for me, less often will work best...

However, I know once I am maintaining, I will need to weigh more often to keep it real :) And like was mentioned, it would be too easy to have pounds creep back on without a regular check...

And of course, we are all different in our personal needs.

For me, and like some of you... when the # on the scale can make or break my day... then it has too much power!

I hope (plan) to have regained my power back by the time I am on the scale more often :) :)

I love this group! :)