Weight log: your morning weigh-in, kept on your own device

How to weigh in

MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine’s health site, gives these steps for people with heart failure, so that one morning can be compared with the next:

• Weigh yourself every morning, when you get up.
• Use the same scale each time.
• Weigh before you eat and after you use the bathroom.
• Wear similar clothing each time.
• Write the weight down every day, so you can keep track of it.

It explains why: weighing yourself helps you know if there is too much fluid in your body, and with too much fluid your clothes and shoes may also feel tighter than normal. We read this on its page Heart failure - home monitoring (review date 7/14/2024) on October 8, 2026. How often to weigh yourself is for you and your provider to settle; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a federal institute, says to ask your provider how often to check your weight and when to report weight changes (Living with heart failure, read the same day).

The two changes this page watches for

The same MedlinePlus page says: contact your provider if your weight goes up by more than 2 to 3 pounds (1 to 1.5 kilograms) in a day or 5 pounds (2 kilograms) in a week. Here is exactly how the page applies that:

• In a day: the first weight of a day is more than 2 pounds (or more than 1 kilogram) above the first weight of the day before. MedlinePlus says “2 to 3”; starting at the low end is our choice.
• In a week: the first weight of a day is 5 pounds or more (or 2 kilograms or more) above the lowest first-of-the-day weight in the 7 days before it.
• Kilograms: the kilogram figures are the ones MedlinePlus prints, which are rounded, not exact conversions of the pounds.
• Missing days: if no weight was kept for the day before, the page cannot make the one-day comparison and says so.

MedlinePlus also says to contact your provider if you lose a lot of weight. It gives no number for that, so the page does not watch for it; it shows the change and leaves it to you. If your own provider gave you different numbers, theirs come first. These are that site’s numbers; we added no numbers of our own.

How it works

• A weigh-in asks for the weight, pounds or kilograms, the day and the time. The ticks and a note are optional.
• My weights lists them, newest first, each with how it differs from the day before. Change puts one back in the boxes; Remove takes it out.
• Looking back gives the last weigh-in, the lowest and highest of the last 7 and 30 days, and a bar for each recent day.
• Print my sheet makes a table of your last 24 weights with empty rows to fill in by hand.

What this page can’t do

• It measures nothing. It only knows the numbers you type, and a typing slip looks the same to it as a real weight.
• It cannot tell fluid from anything else that moves a scale: a meal, heavier clothes, a different scale, a different time of day.
• It does not diagnose heart failure or anything else, and it is not treatment.
• It is not for losing weight. It sets no goal, counts nothing you eat, and never says what you ought to weigh. If weighing yourself, or thoughts about food or your body, are taking over your days, this is the wrong page; see When eating has become a fight instead.
• It is no reason to change a medicine, or how much you drink, on your own. Call the person who prescribed it.
• The two changes it watches for were written for heart failure. If you weigh in for another reason, such as kidney disease or a pregnancy, the notebook still works, but ask your own care team which changes matter for you.
• It cannot remind you. It has no alarm and sends no message.
• The log does not move to another phone or computer by itself. Print it, download it, or use My data on this device to carry a backup across.

Where the idea comes from

A daily weight chart is ordinary advice for heart failure: MedlinePlus says to write your weight down every day on a chart, and to write down the results of your home checks so you can share them with your provider. It also says some provider’s offices have a telemonitor, a device that sends your numbers in for you; if yours gave you one, use that. This page is the paper chart with the subtraction done. It keeps nothing anywhere but here. It is not any clinic’s official form, and no doctor or nurse has looked at it.