Trying to shed a few pounds? Here’s a tip: stand on that scale early and often.
A study published in PLOS One has found that people who weigh themselves more often tend to lose more weight than people who don’t. Researchers followed forty obese (BMI of 25 and over) people trying to lose weight and looked at 2,838 weigh-ins over the course of a year. They found a correlation between frequency of weigh-in and amount in actual weight loss, writing “The average time that participants could go between weighting without gaining weight was 5.8 days or about a weekly weigh-in.”
Of course, correlation doesn’t equal causation—after all, the people weighing themselves more were perhaps just more serious about weight loss. That said, having solid information is important to any goal, and we’re reminded of engineer W. Edwards Deming: “In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
Photo courtesy of Flickr.
