Most modern bathroom electronic scales display your weight in increments of 0.1kg (or the equivalent stone/lb), which is 0.1% of your body weight if you weigh 100kg. This should be accurate enough for the purpose of monitoring weight as an indicator of health.

But you have to use it correctly for it to work. The technical, practical, and emotional aspects overlap to some extent.

The scale needs new batteries and is to be used on a hard, flat surface, preferably in the same place every time. You may have to step on it twice to be sure.

You want information, not noise. The best time to use it is in the morning after you go to the bathroom/toilet, and before breakfast. The more you weigh yourself, the more information you get, but weighing yourself several times a day just adds to the noise. Weekly weighing is usually recommended, but daily weighing prevents missing data points and possible confusion from daily fluctuations.

You have to interpret the numbers correctly. It is not fat that fluctuates from day to day, but water and waste. Fat loss or gain is slow, daily increments are small but can become nearly infinite, and they are within your control; water weight fluctuations can be large, but they are finite, they go up and down, and you cannot really control them, nor should you try. This means that even the most accurate scales cannot measure fat loss or gain on a daily basis, only over weeks and months.

In the end, you have to respond rationally to these numbers. If you have a goal to change your weight, remember that real weight change takes a long time, and stay calm. Don't starve yourself, and don't overexercise. Reevaluate your strategy based on trends rather than fluctuations.

Xiangshan Chint Electric Co., Ltd. is a digital scale supplier from China. The company designs, processes and sells digital luggage scale, mechanical bathroom scale, and other electronic scale products.