Dieters who weigh in daily seem to be the biggest losers   
By ROSIE MESTEL
LOS ANGELES TIMES

Losing weight is hard - and you might say hardly studied. Only recently have scientists clinically shown that the widely used Atkins diet actually works, and they’ve yet to definitively weigh in on another diet-related question: Does regularly stepping on the scales help a dieter lose weight?
Sure it does, say many weight-loss experts. Weighing yourself is a clear way to monitor progress or catch (and nip in the bud) a slow, steady uptick in lardage. Not so fast, say others. The glacially slow nature of weight loss, plus those spiky daily fluctuations in body weight, might actually make dieters more apt to throw in the towel.

Now, just in time for the waist-expanding holiday season, a new study has come down on the side of daily weigh-ins. Published in this month’s issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, it reports that dieters who weighed themselves regularly shed more pounds over a 24-month period than people who didn’t regularly weigh themselves. Those who weighed themselves daily lost the most.

To the authors, the implications are clear: Dieters should be encouraged to weigh themselves - and often.

“We talk to people about monitoring calories daily, about monitoring their exercise daily. … If we’re asking them to do those … on a daily basis, then why not add this other recommendation?” says Jennifer A. Linde, lead author of that study and an assistant professor at the school of public health at the University of Minnesota.

Yet there’s a chicken-egg caveat here that some critics point to and that even those who believe in the findings acknowledge. Sure, successful dieters may weigh themselves more. But the studies don’t tell you what caused what - just that the two things correlate. It’s fun to step on the scales when you’re succeeding. When the numbers are nudging upward or stubbornly refusing to change … less so.

“They’re assuming that weighing yourself frequently leads you to lose weight. I think losing weight makes you weigh yourself more frequently, because - ‘I’m losing weight, yes, yes, I’m down another pound,’Ÿ” says Janet Polivy, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Toronto, who is not a fan of the bathroom scales.

That confusion is why, to this day, you’ll sometimes get roomfuls of Ph.D.s and M.D.s discussing an issue you’d think 21st-century science might have put to bed by now.

The new study by Linde and colleagues tapped statistics from two populations. One was a group of 1,800 obese or overweight adults enrolled in a weight-loss trial. Participants were asked at the study’s start and at intervals thereafter how often they weighed themselves.

After one year, monthly, weekly and daily weighers all lost weight on average, but those who weighed themselves daily lost the most - about 8 pounds. (Those who never weighed themselves gained weight.)

The other data came from 1,226 adults in a weight gain prevention trial. At 12 months, those who weighed themselves daily had lost about 2 to 3 pounds. Those who weighed themselves less often, or not at all, actually gained weight. In both studies, significant differences also were seen at two years.

People who weighed themselves also did other healthy things such as exercised more, but the self-weighing effect was statistically significant on its own, Linde says.

James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado, says the findings fit with a registry of adults who have lost at least 30 pounds and (even more impressive) maintained that weight loss for a year or longer.

A key thing those successful dieters report, Hill says, is regular self-weighing - at least weekly, and often daily. (They also have an emergency plan of action for when the reading creeps above a crucial number of pounds.)

Psychologist Patrick M. O’Neil, director of the weight management center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, says he’s a strong proponent of daily weigh-ins, based on Hill’s data and his own clinical experience - but that the practice should be paired with a weight chart that focuses on trends, not short-term, zigzag fluctuations.

“It’s sort of like tracking stock prices,” he says. “You know they’re going to vary day to day.”

Meanwhile, there are some specialists who think either daily or weekly scale-hopping may have downsides. Psychologists and psychiatrists who treat patients with eating disorders note that encouraging people to weigh themselves might exacerbate such pathologies.

But even proponents of weighing advocate restraint. “I don’t think anyone in a responsible professional position has argued for weighing oneself more than once a day,” says O’Neil. “We do not want to encourage people to turn this into a fetish.”