Aria Scale Users

[wgmsarkis]

Is it normal to get fluctuations each day with weight/ body fat % ? I've been staying on track with calorie goals, and it jumps up a little bit every few days. I'm following everything the manual says when weighing myself. I also do it everyday in the morning right after I roll out of bed.

[divedragon]

I wouldn't do it everyday.  I try to weigh once per week on Friday.  You will get daily fluctuations in weight due to water rentention and timing of bowel movements among other things.

[whitesox]

Yes it is normal. I weigh myself every day because I feel the best way to monitor weight is to take a weekly average. My weight has fluctuated by as much as 4 lbs in a week. It can be discouraging if you weigh yourself once a week and you just so happen to weigh yourself on a day you are retaining more water.

I don't think the body fat feature is very accurate. I just use it as a tool to measure progress over time. It gives me a reading of 29-30%. When I first got it, I was registering 42%.  I also have a hand held device that gives a reading of 19-20%. So the difference between the two is around 10% and that's the reason I say to use it as a tool to monitor progress over time.

[JohnRi]

I see a lot of ups and downs on mine.  If you take three readings in a row, I've seen the numbers be different by 3%.  So the Aria isn't accurate with the fat %,  but like a lot of things Fitbit, it's in the ball park.

I would say there are two ways to use it.  One if you are losing weight, you would like to see fat % go down.  However if you actually see a consistent rise, you might be losing muscle mass instead of fat.  If you body is burning the protein in your muscles, you are probably eatting too little, and need to increase your calorie intake.  You body could be thinking you are in a starvation, and burning muscle, and hording fat because of a famine. 

The body is an amazing machine, that can handle all kinds of hardship.  The trick is eat enough so that your body knows food is always coming, and that it's ok to burn fat reserves.

Eat too few calories, and you lose muscle and not fat.  Eat too much and you get fat.  It's tricky, and everyone is different. 

But for most adult men, 1800 calories is the minimum to eat. 

I would look at weekly averages and see what trend you see over a month.  And adjust your diet as neccesary.

[Dominique]

Yes, small fluctuations are normal. What I do right now is take the weekly average (for both weight and body fat). This tends to even out the daily fluctuations and make longer-term trends more visible.

[fraserkr]

weight fluctuations are normal.

you may want to check out trendweight.com which can link to your fitbit weight data (both aria transmitted and manually entered).

[Dominique]

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@fraserkr wrote:

weight fluctuations are normal.

you may want to check out trendweight.com which can link to your fitbit weight data (both aria transmitted and manually entered).

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Thanks for mentioning trendweight.com. It’s indeed very easy to link it to your Fitbit account and it displays the weight and body fat data in a more readable way than Fitbit.