Do You Recommend Weighing Yourself Every Day When Trying To Lose Fat?
15 Dec 2025 · 5 min
JJ Virgin recommends daily weigh-ins when losing fat, but pairs them with a body-fat scale, weekly waist and hip measurements, and specific targets: 10-20% body fat for men, 18-28% for women.
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Do you recommend weighing yourself every day when you're trying to lose fat? This is JJ Virgin four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Alex Ask the health expert s5j4w4 from Instagram asks Do you recommend weighing yourself every day when trying to lose fat? Oh my gosh, have I reversed my opinion on this one? I will be right back to explain why. Stay with me.
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All right, S5J 4W4. Here's the story. Used to be years and years ago I used to take the scales out of clients houses when I was working one on one. I used to use skinfold calipers and a tape measure and I'd weigh in once a week. And if they were one of those people that obsessively weighed as what I called it, I would take the scale away. I've really changed my opinion since then and I think a lot of it has to do with what we're using the scale to help us understand. Now the first thing that you said was when you're trying to lose fat, and I love that you said fat instead of weight. The very first thing that I would advocate for is instead of getting a regular scale, get a body fat scale. The brand I like to use is Teneda. Now the body fat scale works by, by testing your total body water because lean muscle has more of your body water than fat. And so basically what your body is looking at, what the scale is looking at is how much total body water you have. From that I can extrapolate how much is lean mass and how much is fat. Basically you either have fat or everything else. So that's what's indicating. Now if you're using an at home scale, it might not be as accurate as say one of the big embody scales or tanita scales at a doctor's office. But you're just looking for the shift over time. And total body water is a really important thing to track. So if you see a big shift from one day to the next, most likely like all of a sudden if you're watching body fat and your body fat goes down a lot, one day you might be super hydrated, which is going to make your body fat look lower and your weight look higher. Or the next day you might see your body fat go up a lot, but your weight goes down. Well, if you've dehydrated yourself, your total body water goes down and your body fat looks like it goes up. Really this isn't your body fat really changing. This is really your total body water being impacted by what you are or aren't eating. So that is why I like to use a scale for information and I like to use a scale Every single day for a couple different reasons. Number one, if you're using a scale on a daily basis, you're never going to get too far out of hand. So if you're. If your weight goes up a couple of pounds from one day to the next, the first thing you're going to do is connect the dots and go, gosh, what happened yesterday that made my weight jump? What caused that kind of fluid retention, inflammation, et cetera. I remember once I was training really hard for some cycling and bam, My weight went up significantly from one day to the next because I had this crazy hard ride and I was just inflamed and not recovering. So you want to connect the dots between what activities you're doing, what foods or drinks you're eating or drinking. Are you eating high food intolerance foods like I talked about in the virgin diet that are making you inflamed and holding on to weight? Are you eating a higher sugar impact diet? Or maybe you ate more carbs the day before and your body stored those carbs as glycogen with water in your muscles. So the scale is really good, giving you this idea of connecting the dots between what you eat and drink and how it's impacting you, right? And we go, what we gotta get away from is that scale being some mean, judgmental, emotional person thing, right? Telling you you're bad. It's not telling you that. It's giving you information that you can then act on. The reason I like to weigh in every single day is both connecting those dots, but also making sure that if you are gaining weight, if you've slipped a little bit, and maybe some things that you should be doing, maybe you really good at keeping the snacking out, at stopping eating three to four hours before bed, at eating by the plate with protein, fat and fiber. And then you just kind of like blew it off for a couple of days and you started eating late at night, got into some, some behaviors that will make you gain weight over time. And all of a sudden your weight's going up. Well, you want to know that now you don't want to step on the scale a week or two weeks later and go, shoot, I just gained five pounds. What the heck, right? This is your daily accountability. I remember once I owned a gym and I was wearing gym wear athleisure every single day. Read that it was spandex, lycra, stretchy. And I remember, like this was in the winter in Palm Springs. And all of a sudden I decided, I'm going to put on some jeans and go somewhere, and I hadn't put on jeans for months, and I go to put them on and wow, I guess they just gotten out of the dryer. So I grabbed another pair and I grabbed a pair of regular pants, and that didn't fit. And all of a sudden I go, oh, boy, this wasn't the dryer. What else is going on? But if I'd been stepping on a scale every day, and especially a body fat scale so I could see really what's going on, that wouldn't have happened. Now, like, I like to use the scale every day, same time of day, get up in the morning, walk around a bit, use the restroom, get on the scale. Then once a week, do your hip and waist measurements, because you really, really want to know these numbers. They are so important in terms of your risk for heart disease. The size of your waist is hugely important. And the hip to waist ratio is super important, too. For women, you need to be 0.8 or less. For men, 1 or less in order to minimize your risk of heart disease. So you want to be looking at that as well. So I recommend not just weighing yourself every day when you're trying to lose fat. I recommend weighing yourself every day when you're maintaining your weight, which, you know you're in one of two, well, three places. You're either trying to lose fat, you're either. Or put on muscle. By the way, I had a client once, I'm thinking about it, she came in, her weight was fine, but she was fluffy. And what was interesting, and this is why it's so important to do body fat testing, is I think she lost maybe two pounds because she came and she goes, oh, I want to change the way I look, and I want to lose. I think it was like £10. Well, I was, like, going, but you don't have £10 to lose. Like, your weight's not that high. What you really need to do is add muscle. And so she didn't lose 10 pounds. We put on, I think, like, five pounds of muscle and lost two pounds. She dropped two sizes, but she was still looking at the scale going, oh, I want to weigh this. I go, did you want to weigh that or did you want to be a size 4? Like, which one did you want to be? So that's where you really want to get clear on what your weight is made up of, right? How much is body fat? How much is. Is everything else? Women, Your ideal is 18 to 22%. If you're athletic, it's going to be more in the 15% range. Men, it's going to be somewhere in the 10 to 15%. If you're athletic, it might be 5 to 10%. So what's that weight made up of? And then what's your waist measurement? What's your waist hip? Those are all the things you want to do. Weigh in daily, check that body fat. Do those measurements once a week. That's gonna help you with not just on the body composition shift, but the body composition maintenance, which is everything. All right, if you've got questions, I've got answers. Just DM me on Instagram jjvirgin JJ Virgin and if you hadn't taken a moment yet to subscribe, make sure that you do so you never miss a daily dose. All right, See you next time. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.
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