Why I weigh myself every day - part 1

The scale is the best ally to stop being obese, period. I have no doubt about it!

It shows us the naked truth, in good times and bad. Regardless of our mood, will, and level of hope, a number is a number and we cannot change it.

The immediate daily feedback it gives us allows us to gauge the progress we are making in "real time".

Morning weight mirrors the previous day, for better or worse. Having this information is critical so we can customize the plan much more quickly than would otherwise happen. The more information we have, the better! The more we can understand and improve the program.

The most important information is not the number of kilos we have but its daily variation.

Have you noticed that weight varies from one day to the next? The variation can be more than 1% of our weight!

If you weigh yourself every morning, before eating or drinking anything, you will see that your weight fluctuates. In my case, the variation between 2 days in a row can be more than 1kg!

When I started recording my weight and saw the variations, I thought it was the scales that might be broken... but it wasn't!

The morning weight fluctuation shows the impact of something that may have happened the day before on a crucial process to stop being obese: inflammation.

Chronic inflammatory state is known to be linked to obesity and there is a direct relationship between the two: when obesity increases, so does inflammation, and when inflammation increases, so does obesity.

Fortunately, the relationship also works the other way around: when one decreases, so does the other.

When there is an inflammatory spike, our body responds by activating several mechanisms that result in weight gain, both increased fluid retention and increased adipose tissue.

Whether by an increase in vascular permeability that "diverts water from the vessels to the extracellular space, whether by the effect that inflammatory markers may have on the reabsorption of salts by the kidney, or whether by the increase in macrophages existing in the fat, the end result is the same: weight increase.

In the same way, if there is a decrease in inflammation, there is a normalization of these mechanisms and weight decreases.

The great advantage of monitoring weight on a daily basis is that we can assess whether we had an inflammatory peak on the previous day or not.

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