How do you weigh yourself when normal household scales don't work?

I would imagine a hospital would have one. Ask your doctor about that.

Do you want one for your home? Search for Bariatric scales.

They have one at the cardiac rehab I go to, They are large enough to hold a wheel chair, and they can hold up to a thousand pounds.

Hospitals have them, and I bet if you asked the doctor’s clinic, they can tell you where one is.

If you get two scales, you can put a foot on each one and then add the readings.

Another way is if you have a pool of known size, you can use the water displacement before and after you go in. That’s also how people get accurate figures for percent body fat, which is more useful for health purposes anyway.

Truck scales are quite accurate.
I used to haul stuff to the dump for people in my neighborhood. You weigh going in, and again empty. That tells them how much you dumped off.
One day, those jokers told me how much I weigh. They watched the difference when I got out of my truck to get my ticket. They thought it was real funny.

Well, but she isn’t going to have truck scales in her house. Or at the doctor’s office.

Welcome to Fluther.

I can give you a way that will work, will give an accurate measurement, and can be repeated – and it won’t cost you anything but time and the value of your weight in fresh water (if that’s a consideration where you live). But you may require some assistance to get an accurate measure.

In line with @Zaku‘s advice, but maybe a bit easier to accomplish, you can do that in a bathtub, as long as it is big enough for you to immerse yourself completely. What you’ll want to do is fill the tub to an exact level – it doesn’t matter what the level is, as long as you can submerge completely beneath it and not overfill the tub. Then immerse yourself (you can breathe through a snorkel for a minute or so while the levels stabilize) have your helper mark the exact spot on the tub wall where the water level is with you completely submerged. When you get out of the tub you can use some kind of known measure – a gallon jug, for example, to fill the tub from your starting point to the line where you were completely immersed.

Since your body displaces its mass in water and water doesn’t compress, the measured difference in gallons between “start” and “finish” x the weight of water for the measure will give you an accurate – and cheaply repeatable – way to measure your weight.

Depending on temperature (because water does have varying density), 250kg of body mass will displace between 60 – 63 gallons of water. (At “bath” temperature of around 100°F or 30-ish °C – you’d be closer to the 60-gallon mark.)

That gives you volume and not weight. You also need density to get weight.

You can make a balance. Take a small length of broom handle and a board like a 1×6. Lay the broom handle on the floor and lay the centerline of the board on it at a 90 degree angle. Add known weight close to what you estimate your weight to be on one side. Stand on the other end like it’s a seesaw add or subtract weights on the other side until it balances. If you are near an actual seesaw you can use it.

You’re right, @ARE_you_kidding_me. I should have thought through that response better. If it’s possible to float in the tub – not touching sides or bottom – then it’s possible (without submerging!) to get close to the weight, though, as the volume of water displaced will weigh about as much as the body floating in it.

But I like your seesaw idea better, anyway. Except that if doing that with “a board” on a broomstick, then it has to be a very sturdy board, on the order of a 2 x 12 or even heavier, so that it won’t bend. A properly built seesaw will probably be made along those lines. (And you didn’t mention that the weights along the board have to be equidistant from the pivot point, or it will be necessary to calculate the weight with the offset difference from the pivot, if there is one.)

^^^^^^^ Wow, promoting vegetarian SPAM!

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