Scale Stress Syndrome

ninerbuff

bump

WailingDusk

To this point, 3 days ago I was on my last dose of prednisone. The scale said I weighed 200lbs. Two days later I was back down to 189. That was 11 pounds of water weight. Usually I fluctuate 4-6 pounds.

nay0m3

BUMP Happy 2023~~

VegjoyP

Yup. I started monitoring Weight every day. Today I am up 4.5 pounds from Monday. I was more on Friday, less Wed, etc. It makes me kinda crazy but also keeps in check depending on how I ate, exercised or slept.

mtaratoot

@VegjoyP

Stick to it. Soon it won't drive you crazy; you'll get used to the up and down.

I built a spreadsheet that takes some of the craziness out. It's really similar to TrendWeight or WeightGrapher because it uses a "weighted moving average," but it's just a spreadsheet. It's in the form of a Google document, and I can share the link. It does have a graph, and all the dates except the first one are based on "yesterday plus one." It is weird because it runs right to left.

I added another set of sheets for people who want to only weigh once a week. If you only weigh weekly, the trend takes MUCH LONGER to appear.

It's all based on The Hacker's Diet and the section on Signal and Noise.

To add data, you'll have to make a copy of the sheet. For now it's just filled with dummy data so it shows what a graph might look like.

PAV8888

And I'm still using it!

But I've replaced your formula with an exponential moving average formula I unearthed somewhere via the interwebz

=if(ISBLANK(PY4),"",if(PZ5="",PY4,round((PY4*(2/($A$1+1)))+(PZ5*(1-(2/($A$1+1)))),1))) where $A$1 is currently 10

mtaratoot

PAV8888 wrote: »

And I'm still using it!

But I've replaced your formula with an exponential moving average formula I unearthed somewhere via the interwebz

=if(ISBLANK(PY4),"",if(PZ5="",PY4,round((PY4*(2/($A$1+1)))+(PZ5*(1-(2/($A$1+1)))),1))) where $A$1 is currently 10

It might have been more fun to ADD the new formula as a new row instead of replacing; then you could compare how the two differ. I did that for a flat ten-day average and the formula I put into the sheet I've got on the Google.

The main thing is to ignore the crazy daily swings of as much as six pounds and instead see the "crazy" daily swings of as much as 0.3 pounds.

PAV8888

I initially did just that (multiple formulas including the plain average)

But then I looked at my four or five number and decided to rip them all out like band-aid stuck on a crusted wound!!!

exponential is influenced by the previous 10; but more influenced by today.

For me, given that I don't have to smooth out hormonal variations I think it will strike the right balance!

And of course substituting for your formula meant I didn't have to re-do the graphs!!!!

We shall see, of course how long this one will last!

mtaratoot

The formula I used sort of approximates the exponential moving average; it just happens that today's number is based on yesterday's calculation; yesterdays is based on the day before, etc.

I see days when the difference between the simple ten-day average and the formula in the spreadsheet I have is almost three pounds, so there are days when looking at a weighted moving average make SO much more sense and can really reduce that "Scale Stress" as long as you have faith in the math and what it's telling you.

It reminds me of diving one time in Waldo Lake. From the surface in a canoe or kayak, you can see your shadow over 100 feet down. The lake is 420 feet at its deepest. There's a dive site on the western shore. I was down and looked at my gauges. It said I was deeper than the published depth of the dive. I looked up, and thought, "No way am I that deep." I could see the surface as if it was 20 feet above me. I slowly kicked up about ten feet looking at my gauge the whole time, looked up again - same view. That water was SO clear. My gauge was right the whole time. Now I know why I trust my instruments.

Except I think the Bio-electrical Impedance Analysis function of my old scale may be failing. It's started to give weird/wild numbers. Maybe I'll do a battery swap. If it fails, I will just start using the other scale I have. As a bonus, I will magically lose about a pound if I switch.

ninerbuff

bump