Washington: If you want to lose weight, it's best to weigh yourself every day, a new study says.
Researchers from Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University found that weight loss was related to how often individuals weighed themselves. The more frequently dieters weighed themselves the more weight they lost, and if participants went more than a week without weighing themselves, they gained weight, researchers found.
They analysed 2,838 weight measurements (up to a years' worth of weigh-ins) from 40 overweight individuals (with a body mass index of 25 and over) who indicated that weight loss was a personal goal or concern.
"The more often you weigh yourself the more weight you lose," said lead author Elina Helander from Tempere Univeristy of Technology in Finland. This observational study cannot prove causation - it may be that less serious dieters weigh themselves less or that dieters who stop losing weight stop weighing themselves, researchers said in the journal PLOS ONE.
The average time that participants could go between weighing without gaining weight was 5.8 days or about a weekly weigh-in. A previous study by the same research team found that your weight naturally fluctuates throughout the week and that most people weigh the least on Wednesday.
To summarise both studies Brian Wansink, Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab advises, "The bottom line is: If you want to lose weight, it's best to weigh yourself every day. But if you weigh yourself only once a week, do it on Wednesday because that will give you the most accurate reading."