Video | 6-Day Weigh-ins | Routines | Expectations | Habits | Other Measures of Success

The bathroom scale is the tool most people use to measure the progress of their weight loss diet. But is a daily weigh-in working for you or against you? 

If the number is not what you wanted to see, do you give yourself a pep talk and get back to work? Or do you say to yourself, “This isn’t working, so having a treat won’t matter.” 

If the number is what you’d hoped for, do you pat yourself on the back and gain motivation? Or do you look at it as a window of opportunity? Maybe say to yourself, “I’m doing great, so having a treat won’t matter.” 

If your goal is weight loss and your daily weigh-ins are inspiring you, fantastic! Keep doing what you’re doing. But if not, or you find that you keep losing the same few pounds over and over again without any real progress, I have a new approach for you that takes very little effort but is just enough to shake up your routine and get you to the finish line. 

Stop Weighing Yourself Daily – Do This Instead [Little Effort – Big Result] (Video)

In this video, you’ll learn…

• 3 hidden problems with daily weigh-ins.
• How changing your weigh-in routine helps you look at weight loss in a new light.
• How the 6-day weigh-in protocol puts the focus on your plan, supporting your efforts

The 6-Day Weigh-In Protocol

It is easy to argue that the bathroom scale is flawed. It’s one thing to know that you are losing weight. It’s another to know what that weight consists of – Is it fat, muscle, or water? You don’t want to lose muscle, and neither does your body. Muscle tends to be lost when extremes are taken, which is a discussion for another day. This blog post will focus on how weighing in weighs on your mind. 

For most of us, tracking progress using a bathroom scale is an acceptable practice. What we rarely consider is how the results we see affect our thoughts and actions. At the start of this post, I pointed out how daily weigh-ins can sabotage progress. 

This happens because of subconscious habit patterns, expectations, and too narrow of a focus. If you weigh in daily and find that your progress has stopped or you keep losing the same few pounds over and over again, you can disrupt each of those potential pitfalls by changing your weigh-in frequency from daily to every 6 days.

That unusual timeframe shakes you out of your routine, disrupts your expectations, and opens you up to better progress milestones that make you feel good.

Let’s go over four ways this helps you progress toward your goal. And I am making the assumption that you have a reliable diet plan in place already. If you do not, and you don’t want to invest in one, download my free 0,1,2,3 strategy. It will work for you in combination with this weigh-in strategy.

Why 6-Day Weigh-ins Work:

1. Breaks You Out of Your Routine

We always default to routines. Yours might look like this. You wake up, get a shower, towel off, and step on the scale. There’s nothing wrong with that other than it is routine.

Routines take us down familiar paths. If your past experience is that you stop a diet before reaching your goal or you continually lose the same pounds over and over again, you want to disrupt that routine. 

To breathe new life into a goal, break out of that automation by only weighing in every 6th day. 

By consciously not stepping on the scale each morning, you will energize your goal and think differently about how you eat and move throughout the day. Give it a try. 

2. Messes Up Your Expectations

Another way that weighing in every 6th day improves your chances of weight loss is because it messes up your expectations. We live by a calendar of days, weeks, and months. Every day is every day. A week is seven days, and a month is generally 30 days. Because we are so in tune with that structure, we can easily attach expectations.

For instance, “I have been dieting for one week. I expect to weigh two pounds less than last week.” 

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, holding a picture in your mind of your end goal and how good it will feel to be at your ideal weight is a vital part of reaching that goal. However, weight loss does not happen in a linear fashion. If our expectations are not met, we get discouraged. 

When you weigh in every 6th day, it takes you out of that 7-day-week mindset, making it harder and harder to predict what the scale will say. Because of that, you turn down the emotional attachment to the scale and find it easier to simply go with the flow and put your trust in your plan, which is what leads to results. 

3. Messes Up Your Habit Pattern

Another benefit of shaking up your weigh-in routine is that it messes up your habit pattern. For example, do you weigh in every Friday so you can splurge a bit more on the weekend? If you do, then you’re human. But that habit pattern may also explain why you continually lose the same two pounds over and over. 

By weighing every 6th day, your weigh-in day of the week changes. You step on the scale this week on Friday, but next week, you’ll weigh in on Thursday. The week after that, on Wednesday. Again, this simple shift in schedule shakes you out of your routine, which is what you want. 

4. Tunes You Into Other Measures of Success

Another benefit is that less frequent weigh-ins let you tune into other measures of success. Sole reliance on the scale narrows your focus.

Yes, it feels good when you discover that you lost weight. But is that really what you’re after, or do you want to live in a body that feels good in your clothing, that feels strong and firm to the touch, that you like to look at in the mirror? 

When you tune down the importance of that number on the scale, you tune into the measures of success that really mean something and feel so good that they become their own motivation. 

Takeaway

There’s nothing magical about 6 days other than that it is unusual, breaking you out of that 7-day-week / 30-day-month mindset. You could just as easily choose to weigh in every 8th day or 9th day. 

However you decide to change it up, it will give you the change you want because it makes you more aware. It takes your reliance away from that number and puts it on your plan, making you want to work that plan. 

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day!

About the Author

Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook and Zero Sugar / One Month. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.