It’s about removing friction. I did manual tracking in the past sometimes, but it was a hassle, I kept forgetting (or I was just too lazy) and for me that was really not good. The biggest psychological hurdle for me to start losing weight was my fear of weighing myself. That’s what I had to overcome. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I’m afraid of weighing myself, and if I weigh myself every day (or even somewhat less frequently but still with regularity) and keep track of my weight that fear is just not an issue. The changes day to day (or even week to week) are just too harmless to instil fear in me – but if I go a month without weighing I get scared and let it slide. That’s how it was in the past, anyway.

Another factor for me personally was that I really love all these tech toys. That was the catalyst to me starting to weigh myself. I really wanted to try this cool scale and play around with it. That definitely helped overcome my fear. Your mileage may vary if you aren’t really that much into tech toys.

A fitbit sits on my wrist as I write this and I had considered buying that scale too, if I could expect it to be accurate (this is my biggest issue with my scale).

If and auto updating scale means you remember to weight yourself regulary then that is very good investment.

I was mostly writing for those who would hesitate to purchase such an expensive scale especially since I believe owning and using a scale is so fucking important. Not knowing the number means you are too likely to let your mind play games with you and end up having to lose a ton (hopefully not literally) instead of being warned in time.

You're correct that you don't need an automatic scale, but it's worth pointing out that the parent specifically got his because it removed all of the barriers to creating/maintaining his source of motivation. Doing it on his own wouldn't have been difficult per se, but doing it consistently in a way that he knew was useful was not the problem he was trying to solve so he eliminated it altogether.