I know of multiple professional triathletes who don't weigh themselves, ever. And then a whole other batch that weigh themselves at a frequency of either once per month or biweekly.

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Nobody is saying you have to weigh yourself regularly to be successful or maintain a healthy weight. I would be surprised if pro endurance athletes were not weighing themselves somewhat regularly. I doubt many talk about it as it's not particularly exciting, and in our body positive world it would probably generate a lot of negativity. However, if they've been doing this many years they have likely reached a point where they know "what works" to some extent.

We are constantly being told how big a problem RED-s, and stress fractures are not uncommon. Both have been linked to underfueling. So I don't believe the "just eat healthy and it will work itself out" is working for all. For pros underfueling is a real problem, and keeping track of weight is an obvious way to keep an eye on that - particularly in a hard training block.

For the average person there is nothing wrong with weighing yourself regularly. The idea that this is somewhat "disordered" in itself is actually kind of ridiculous. As said above used properly it's just another metric.

We live in a world where most are overweight. Yet the suggestion of weighing yourself regularly is considered an unhealthy behaviour. As someone that has a very relaxed approach to food and drank 6l of coca cola in a day earlier this year on top of other sugary snacks (silk road mountain race), I do find it slightly amusing the fact I weigh myself regularly to be enough for the slow twitch psychologists to diagnose me as having disordered eating!

For me, given where Skye is or really most women that are this edge of the elite level. I'd probably want some type of focus on weight...but more the other way. Make sure they're not underweight. But I've always looked at Skye as someone who is well built for this. She looks powerful rather than super skinny like Lucy does.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Yes, and is your are pedalling correctly, you don't need a power meter, or a watch if you are always on time, or a speedometer if you drive at the correct speed...

Daily weigh ins are not an accurate metric of any sort. In fact, they're wildly inaccurate and misleading. No athlete should be weighing daily and basing decisions on that.

The only basis is during heat training for fluid loss/retention before and after outdoor workouts. Otherwise, weighing weekly, biweekly or monthly are sensible measurements.

Amateurs probably need to weigh more frequently being less structured in terms of diet than most pros. It seems Skye's coach was misdirection her toward an irrelevant data point.

I believe your answer to be incorrect. As somebody pointed out, daily measurements can vary significantly for various reasons. This is not going to change of you measure weekly, or monthly. The variation is going to be the same. The only way to have an accurate picture is to have daily measurements but paying attention to the trend, not to the daily measures themselves.

Think of it as paying attention to NP or 3-10 second power instead of instant power which can be all over the place.

We'll have to agree to disagree. The power comparison isn't good because if your NP is down from one day to the next does it matter? You could be sleep quality, training load, nutrition, life stress can affect power from one the to the next. In fact, things like that can affect weight even.

When we do builds it's over weeks. Your daily NP isn't a big deal really, just like daily weight. It's pretty insignificant overall. Stuff like this should be looked at with the big picture in mind, but of course data obsessed triathletes can't process that idea. God forbid you swim without a watch once at the pool.

Uh...the point is to have an average. To get an accurate average it requires weighing daily. or at least 3-4 times per week. I haven't weighed myself every day for a little bit, but I do try to be consistent. So let's say it's M-F, every day, 5AM. Eliminate the variables. Same Time of Day, Same Scale, etc.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Pure runners weigh less because of the nature of the beast in running.

Pure cyclists from a GC perspective mostly weigh less. They don’t do the WCs of tri for 3 weeks with a dozen mountain stages.

Plainly they can be bigger and use the mass for power for single day events largely on less altitude.

No mystery there.

Ok, let's say you do a weekly weigh in and don't weigh on any other days (or substitute with power sampled only every 7 sec for a similar model). As we all know your weight and power fluctuate day to day.

150 (151,151,150,151,150,151), 150, (149,151,149,148,148,148), 150, (149,148,147,149,148,148), 150

It looks like over 3 weeks you're at a completely stable weight, when in reality you've been losing about 1lb week. A random sample of any day of the week will *probably* be close to or at the average, but is liable to capture an outlier,

The fact that weight fluctuates a lot is exactly the reason you want as many data points as possible to get a better idea of long term trends. I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.

Nobody is suggesting basing decisions off a single daily weigh in.

The fact that weight fluctuates a lot is exactly the reason you want as many data points as possible to get a better idea of long term trends. I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.

Nobody is suggesting basing decisions off a single daily weigh in.//

^^^^THIS... Can we end all this nonsense now. Unless you are tracking your weight over years or decades, having a daily or near daily graph is the most accurate way to track your weight over months or a season...The only problem with that is peoples perception of how weight gains/losses works, and their own personal quirks in not understanding them..

Of course the "most accurate" way to track weight is to gather as many data points as possible (aiming to take those data in similar conditions at whatever frequency). But is that "accuracy" useful? Having gathered those data, as you imply, the issue is what you do with the trends (or lack thereof). Any actions depending on weight (hard training athlete) are going to be medium term (months) so weekly data gathering will be fine. And sidesteps obsession.
How about offering examples of actions you took as a result of your daily monitoring of your weight (not just you Monty)?
Maybe this is a swimmer v runner thing?
My only action when I dropped close to 11 stone (154 lbs) on my weekly weigh in (because my cross country club had a set of "butcher's scales") was to make sure I ate a bit more (a couple of months after upping my training hours, bitd).
Unless weight is an issue for an athlete (either way) then (too) frequent measurement serves no useful purpose.

Speaking of Lucy, she put on some weight she got injured. I thought she's going to lose all that once she recovers from the injury and she did. Right before Kona, I saw her videos and Instagram posts and she looked really skinny. That's when I knew she was going to win. She looked determined and ready and that was it. So that weight was perfect for her. She's the best swimmer so that's out of question. Power to weight rartio on the bike must have been great for her so Anne Haug couldn't catch her.

I enjoy the topic of this thread drift...

About a decade ago, at around age 50, I was getting somewhat overweight. Decided I needed to get that under control sooner rather than later. Got serious about fitness, started working to clean up my diet, and started weighing myself regularly.

As that began to evolve, I started weighing myself daily. First thing in the morning, after my daily prep routine, on the same scale -- all to try to get as many variables consistent as possible. Recorded each day's weight in a spreadsheet (the effort to do this was essentially trivial). What I quickly learned was that, even when you try to be consistent, weight on a given day can jump about randomly. But over a few day period, those variations seemed to wash out -- and I could see more clearly whether I was starting to trend down, trend up, or stay steady.

That led me to reconsider what I actually focus on for my weight. I added a simple formula to created a weighted average of my weights for that last 7 days (7 parts today's weight, 6 parts yesterday's, etc). And that's what I paid attention to. What I found is that it s smoothed out the variations, and helped me understand the underlying trend.

During the first few years, I was focused on slow, but steady, weight loss. Looking at the evolution of those weighted averages, I could see if I was achieving my weight reduction goals. If I was seeing progression to lower weights, I stayed with what I was doing. And if I say the trend going the other way, I could take relatively minor actions pretty quickly to adjust and get back on track. And I learned that at some points my body would reach a resistance point, where weight would stabilize for a while. And that eventually my body would adjust and support me continuing to move toward my target weight.

While my weight loss was slow, I've lost about 35 pounds since I started this. And I've done a few body fat measurements that have shown reduction there to. I'm down to about 5 pounds from my latest goal weight (165), so I'm really more in weight maintenance mode. If I see my weighted average tip up a pound or so, I can make relatively minor adjustments to what I'm eating to keep me on course (rather than suddenly finding that I've put on 5 pounds or more and having to "go on a diet").

I've found that, for me, integrating this into my daily self-care routine, and focusing on the trend (rather than any one day's number), takes the emotion out of the whole process. Having on-going, essentially real-time data, make it go more smoothly and simply for me. Of course, as always, YMMV...

Michael

When I’m training I go periods in which measure my weight daily. The daily measures give me a reliable average, which is useful to see if I’m fully rehydrating or getting enough nutrition on any given day(s). I will even weigh myself pre- and post-big workout, so sometimes once a day isn’t even enough.

Why measure resting HR, or anything else, daily? So that you have a good sense of your baseline. Knowing my resting HR, which of course was determined by averaging many days, helped realize the impact of a night of drinking and how much stress it puts on one’s body, as evidenced by the HR spike.

Power/weight play very little role in a Kona bike performance. Power/CDA is far more important.

From Best Bike Split 1kg heavier only work out a 30s added over the 181km bike course.

It does however play a much larger role in the run.

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