How "Not Linear" do we mean?

ElizabethKalmbach

I am going to preface ALL OF THE FOLLOWING with a note that I realize that I am a metabolically special snowflake, I am under the care of a doctor, and I understand that my situation is a statistical anomaly.

That being said, we know that weight loss is not linear and calorie consumption recommendations are guidelines that may need to be tweaked for individuals to truly maintain maintenance. I have seen recommendations to look at a month's worth of data to determine whether or not action needs to be taken during a plateau or other weight loss/gain/maintenance situation.

As I sit here waiting (impatiently) to gather a month's worth of data, please tell me what your process looked like. Did you really need a months worth of data to find your maintenance calories? More than a month? Only a month but some really strange things happened and then everything settled down and behaved properly? Tell me your story and your anecdotes. I am interested.

Timshel_

When I was in maintenance I always fluctuated +/- at least 5 lbs. For me, it was easiest to set trigger weights. Like right now when I get close to 200lbs I know I have to moderate more daily, but if I am around 195 or less I do my general moderation over a week. Now, I have years back worth of data and kind of know what kind of comfortable levels I have with weight, as well as know cycle I go through in a year with wanting to eat more or less. For instance, I can gain up to 10 lbs during the winter months without worry knowing I get to January and I am sick of eating like that.

So yeah...linear is what very few people can do over life.

Mind you, I have never hit my goal weight of 180lbs yet, but that is not to say I am uncomfortable around 190-195 really. I am still trying to get down there to see what it is like, but I don't have that self-defeating mental talk of failure if I don't get there. It is all about how I feel.

TimothyFish

If you eat pretty much the same stuff all the time, exercise on the same days every week, and weigh in on the same day every week, weight loss will tend to be fairly linear. Perhaps more so for men than women, but still, it should be fairly expected from one month to the next. It is when you start changing your diet and changing your activities that you begin to see large fluctuations. Those fluctuations could be as much as ten pounds, but less than that is more normal.

cwolfman13

when you seem to be losing and gaining the same 3-5 Lbs throughout the week...that's maintenance. If you're actually losing or gaining you will see that as an overall trend over the weeks...it is helpful I think to use an app that can track your weigh ins and give you a graphic.

T1DCarnivoreRunner

I'm not in maintenance yet. But when I first started seeing long plateaus, it worried me. After 2 months, I figured I needed to make changes. For the next month, I alternated eating very small amounts (500 calories/day) and very large amounts every other day. I should have gained weight doing this, but did not. So I went with a bigger deficit (bigger than months 1 and 2 of the plateau) for the 4th month. No loss. It was literally a plateau... no gain and no loss regardless of how much or little I ate. The 5th month, I went back to eating as I did in months 1 and 2. Finally after 5 months, I got the "whoosh."

Now, I've not lost since Mar. I figured this is another plateau, and will last several months as well. Due to recent stress, I've over-eaten in the past few weeks. Suddenly I gained nearly 5 lbs., which is more than I should have gained even if you consider that I've overeaten (which actually is still at a deficit, just a very small deficit... like a 0.25 lb/wk deficit).

"Not linear" for me means that I stay the same weight (within a range that changes a few lbs. from day to day and hour to hour) for months regardless of what I eat or don't eat. And then if I eat more than my allotted calories, but still at a deficit, I gain 2-3 lbs. per week.

DeguelloTex

I had about 12 weeks of data for which I very closely tracked my intake versus my supposed burn (via activity band). My weekly "TDEE" average varied from 802 to 4238, depending on how my weight loss went, since I was reverse engineering my TDEE from intake and weight lost. Over the 12 weeks, though, the numbers seemed to converge on an average that gave me a starting point. I started with that number, and it hasn't been an outrageous failure so far.

Right now, I'm looking at a ± 2 pounds range, which may be unrealistically narrow, but I have a pretty uniform diet and exercise schedule. (Although I am doing C210K with the goal of replacing my morning 4.5 mile walk with a morning jog.)

macgurlnet

I'm using my Fitbit's data to help determine my average intake and burn based on my activities. I get a nice graph with average intake and burn over the course of the last 30 days.

I run 1-2 days per week, get in 10,000 steps at least 5 days a week (including the days I run), and I'm trying to be consistent about incorporating bodyweight stuff for strength training but haven't gotten too far with that yet.

Based on this, my Fitbit has shown my average burn is ~1900. Theoretically, I could eat that each day and be good to go.

I'm just trying to maintain my current weight for the summer so I switched MFP to maintenance and we'll see how that goes. So far I've stayed within 1-2 lbs of the weight I was at when I switched to maintenance so something must be working

Hope that helps you!

~Lyssa

jgnatca

I weighed myself daily for about forty days to figure out my fluctuation, and I did find my pattern. I also found out I could fluctuate up to five pounds in a single day, between morning and evening.

The big pattern was monthly; where I would stay about the same for twenty-eight days, go up slightly, then drop precipitously. It has to do with my monthly cycle, and I have decided to blame progesterone.

Now that I know the pattern exists, I have gone back to weighing myself weekly, always the same weekday, always in the morning.

A graph that shows the trend line is very helpful. I used www.weightgrapher.com.

Gska17

I decided to start maintaining when I kept gaining and losing the same 2-3 pounds. My calories are nearly what MFP has assigned me for maintenance but I lowered them a little. Part of me wants to lose a few more pounds but I just don't know if that's healthy and/or feasible for my body (I'm 5'8). I think that's just a mental hurdle I'm dealing with.

This is my 30 day chart:



Here's my 180 day chart:



I too can fluctuate five pounds within 24 hours. Crazy!

I hope that helps!

peterjens

I think a month is good enough to spot trends. I find Trendweight.com (linked to my Fitbit daily weight log) helpful to visualize +/- and averages. Trendweight also summarizes your caloric intake and output.

ElizabethKalmbach

jgnatca wrote: »

I weighed myself daily for about forty days to figure out my fluctuation, and I did find my pattern. I also found out I could fluctuate up to five pounds in a single day, between morning and evening.

The big pattern was monthly; where I would stay about the same for twenty-eight days, go up slightly, then drop precipitously. It has to do with my monthly cycle, and I have decided to blame progesterone.

Now that I know the pattern exists, I have gone back to weighing myself weekly, always the same weekday, always in the morning.

A graph that shows the trend line is very helpful. I used www.weightgrapher.com.

My trend is similar in the monthly "whoosh" but the trend I had concerns about was the longer term trend. The first month of 500cal/day deficit, I lost one pound. Next month, same deficit, 3 lbs. Next month, same deficit, 5 lbs, next month, same deficit, 8 lbs... I thought about charting it out a bit longer, but a while back, I overshot my target weight and ended up at "popsicle stick" figure wise, and I really didn't like that look. Consequently, I increased calories by theoretically 250cal/day (191cal/day if I look at a literal average) to a 250cal/day deficit and added SL 5x5 while removing a bit of cardio. This resulted in an immediate 5 lb scale gain (assumed to be water) and I have been holding that weight remarkably steadily for the last two weeks. I am currently in the part of my monthly "progression" where I would normally see a "whoosh" but I'm not seeing anything. Thus my impatience for more data... I am assuming that I may spend another month with no change on the scale like I did back in February before anything happens again.

In the mean time, I'm feeling reassured by these anecdotes you are all taking the time to share with me. Thank you.

LivingtheLeanDream

Bumping so I can comment tomorrow when I have more time..

TheVirgoddess

The past year for me:

DeterminedFee201426

when i was in maintenance (recently came off to lose 10lbs) I found my range within a month and also i went straight into maintenance i just added 500 calories more to the calorie intake i had before 1320 which =1820_
I did'nt gain weight or lose .. _everthing was pretty normal for me i did'nt need to wait for anything to settle.. i guess because while i was losing before* i ate at maintenance a couple days of the week anyway..

Azurite27

I now tend to only make corrections when I see a new high or low weight or my weekly average is trending up. Here is my last 6 months of maintenance to give you an idea of fluctuations. Note I only record my weekly average in MFP, my daily fluctuations were even greater.

LivingtheLeanDream

see below >>

LivingtheLeanDream

^^ this is my chart from Aug 2014 to now during Maintenance.

I've been maintaining my goal range for just over a year (133-136lbs), I was sort of worried during the winter months as it seem my weight was creeping to slightly over my goal range (I saw 139lbs at one point) but once I got moving more with the better weather/longer days and just keeping a tighter eye on my calories my weight moved downwards and within a month of doing that am just under goal weight now. Its good to be aware of the fluctuations and what causes them.

It took me 4 months to find my actual TDEE, I kept upping by 200 cals a month and didn't start seeing a proper gain until I was eating 2300 cals a day - I gave myself 4 weeks at 2300 and definately know that was too much for me to eat.

I now average 2000-2200 cals to err on the right side and make sure I don't gain. I like being in the lower end of my goal range

Fluctuations are normal though for everyone, I used to weigh daily and know I can bounce around a few pounds +/- each day.

Now I weigh twice weekly just to keep an eye that all is ok, its a habit I intend on always doing as I can adjust my intake as necessary. I love being slim too much to ever let myself gain again.

bwogilvie

I've been maintaining since December, but fluctuating up and down a bit, depending on how active my everyday life has been, sodium levels in the food I eat, how accurately I estimate calories eaten and expended, glycogen levels, and gremlins.

I found that a month's worth of data were plenty good for finding a maintenance target; I've tweaked it a bit depending on changing activity level (I'm a professor, and I spend more time in the summer at a desk or in the library writing than during the academic year, when I'm more active with classes and meetings that get me off my butt).

Here is the graph of my last three months. The dots are individual morning weights, and the red line is the exponentially smoothed moving average. You can see the wide fluctuations, sometimes even day to day.



For comparison, here is my complete weight loss and maintenance graph from Jan. 2013 to the present; the gray line is the day-to-day value and the red line is the average. Again, the gray line shows a number of spikes.