I'm posting this here because this thread refers to using the scale as a tool.
One of the best ways of using the scale as a tool is to ignore the daily up and down differences and look at the overall trend. An excellent program for this is the "Hacker's Diet" tracker. The tracker is a web based program that tracks the overall trend of weight measurements.
An example:
I restarted my weight tracking on...lol, last friday, a week ago.
I discovered the No S Diet on Saturday evening. Sunday was a non-idiot S day, and Monday was a red day because I hadn't had anything prepped for morning meals (so we had cereal), the rest of the day was a NoS day.
I'll list my daily weight measurements followed by the tracker's calculated trend.
Date:___Morning___Trend
Fri 22:___198.8____198.8
Sat 23:__199.4____198.9
Sun 24:__198.8____198.9
Mon 25:__198.8____198.8
Tue 26:__196.6____198.6
Wed 27:__196.2____198.4
Thu 28:__197.0____198.2
Fri 29:___195.4____198.0
If one just looked at the morning weights, it shows an up and down movement. If someone's emotions are tied to the morning weights, then sat (+.6) and thu (+.8 ) would have been downers for them. But if the attention moves over to the trend weight, the only increase was sat (a mere +.1) all the other weights, including thursday's, helped to bring the trend weight down. So even though thursday's daily increased, it was still a weight decrease.
The trend weight is basically the average of the past 10 or so weights. Any daily weight that is under the trend weight is still pulling the trend weight down, regardless of how it compares to it's consecutive days.
If I were to communicate my weight reduction to someone else, I would base it on the trend weight and NOT the daily weight. In this case I would say something like "since I started the NoS Diet almost a week ago, my weight has reduced .8 lbs." (referencing the trend weight) But after this weekend's S days, it might just be a -.6 lbs trend. That'll be ok, cuz it'll still be a reduction from when I started.
HOWEVER.....
weight measuring is only a tool. There are other tools.
Body size measurements. I'll be measuring my waist, belly, and hips each month. I measure each spot three times during the same time frame and keep the average of those. For example, waist is measured three times, belly measured three times, hips measured three times. Then I mark down the average waist measurement, average belly measurement, and average hip measurement. This way I hope to reduce the accidental pulling the tape too firmly/loosely and get a hopefully more accurate measurement.
Measuring weight's not that informative when one is building muscles. But measuring body parts over time can help track fat reductions.
Another measuring tool is tracking body fat percentage using calipers or an electronic device. The trick is to use the same device each time. The focus here is not on accuracy, but on showing a trend based on that device's idiosyncracies.
And yet another way is to just note the feel and fit of certain clothes over time.
Or blood work measurements.
Or resting heart rate, and/or recovery time.
Or mood tracking.
Or any other physiologically or emotionally based focus/awareness.
Or, just as simple as tracking green, yellow, and red days.
For myself, my
primary focus is on my little pocket monthly calendar and coloring in green, yellow, and red days.
A
secondary focus is the weight trend. Mainly because it's an easy way of communicating the changes without having to go into an explanation of the red/yellow/green days.
Weight trend may or may not be replaced with body measurements when I begin incorporating strength building methods such as shovelglove.
Each person may or may not choose to track anything.
Some people don't like playing with numbers, some people do.
What method (if any) that works for one will likely NOT work for all.
But yeah, if one IS going to use the scale as a tracking method, then there are things to keep in mind (ie salt, water, waste weight), and less emotionally influencing foci (ie over-all trend).
(edited to add the tracker's link:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/hdo.html )