Weekly Tips by Zonya, America’s Nutrition Leader

Is your goal to lose weight in the coming year? Let’s get one thing straight right now. I’d like to suggest that you DO NOT weigh yourself every day.

A healthy rate of weight loss is 1 pound per week (don’t fret, that’s 52 pounds in a year). And since your scale is probably NOT ABLE to measure changes of 1/7th of a pound, weighing yourself every day can be futile and depressing (especially for women when you consider fluid shifts, and of course gains in muscle which we all hope will occur with our added exercise!). And don’t we all know that the last thing we need is depressing news when we’re trying to lose weight! A tape measure right around your thickest part of you will tell you MUCH, MUCH more about your progress. As long as you are attempting to lose weight, weighing once a week, or better yet once a month, is truly the smartest choice. (Helping prevent the unwanted "mind games" that we all know the scale can play on us!)

On the other hand, if you are now attempting to maintain your weight and this is a constant challenge for you, many successful maintainers say their secret is: WEIGHING THEMSELVES EVERY DAY. (Say what?) This allows them to see a "backslide" coming on, before it turns into a 10-pound gain that they just "didn’t notice." So, consider this advice while maintaining: weight daily. If the scale is up one or two pounds, let it gently tell you to "cut back on portions and put in a longer walk."