Weighing Yourself This is often linked to weight loss

Weighing yourself with the help of hitting weight loss targets, according to the authors of the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing and University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

To arrive at their conclusion, the researchers analyzed 1,042 adults with an average age of 47 years old. Of the total participants, 78 percent were male and 90 percent were white. For a year, the volunteers weighed themselves as normal using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled scales. The team did not offer the participants advice or directions.

By the end of the study, one-third of the participants sustained a habit of daily weighing.

On average, the number of participants in the study is greater than or equal to 2 kg. In contrast, those who never weighed themselves, or did so once a week, did not lose weight that year.

Weighing oneself daily to help. Getty Images

Read more: Why can you lose weight? Type 2 diabetes? Scientists offer new answer

The data was presented as a poster at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2018, and has therefore not yet been peer-reviewed.

The authors believe the study suggests that one's body weight may be more sensitive to their lifestyle, and make appropriate tweaks.

Dr. Yaguang Zheng, co-author of the study and Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing Acknowledgment Newsweek: "The causal relationship between self-weighing behavior and weight changes can not be established with this self-weighing behavior could be a cause of change in weight."

Dr. Katarina Kos Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, U.K., who was not involved in the study, told Newsweek: "This study does not include people with morbid obesity" and "we do not know about their levels of depression, anxiety and suffering with severe obesity."

Some research suggests checking one's weight daily with negative effects among young adolescents and those with disordered eating.

Dr. Fiona Gillison, Head of the University of Bath's Department for Health, U.K., told Newsweek previous studies indicate that self-weighing can help a person lose weight.

"The big question in weight loss research is not that we can help people to lose weight, but that we do not help them to maintain their weight loss. great insight into these long term effects, "she argued.

"What it is that is weighing is not enough – but it is more important than this, but this self-weighing is more important at the beginning of a weight-loss attempt than over time. It does not seem to matter if you stop weighing yourself so much – if you stop it relatively quickly or slowly – as long as you start with regular daily weighing. So this idea that you do not have to keep weighing yourself indefinitely in order to benefit may be encouraging to some. "

But it is not randomized, it is not clear that it is the result of weighing or some other unknown factor, she said.