Here’s one for data geeks - my 1000 days of MFP

mlinci

Today is my 1000th day of concesutive logging on My Fitness Pal. I thought some of you other data geeks might appreciate the mathematical beauty of my loss and maintenance curve

heyitstayrawr

It’s so beautiful! Congrats on your loss and consistency!

hroderick

what caused the day to day fluctuation? i weigh in the buff first thing in the morning and increases are rare.

pinuplove

hroderick wrote: »

what caused the day to day fluctuation? i weigh in the buff first thing in the morning and increases are rare.

OP is female, which generally means more cyclical water weight fluctuations. Also, you never eat a heavy meal or have a high sodium day and see it on the scale the next morning? Consider yourself lucky! Her fluctuations look perfectly normal to me, well within a normal maintenance range. Well done, @mlinci

mlinci

Pinuplove beat me to it - being female definitely has something to do with it, and my penchant for salty food like sushi with soy sauce.
But it’s also that I deliberately don’t try to eat exactly at maintenance every day - I try to be about 200 calories below maintenance on some days, so I can save these calories and be over every now and then.

DoubleUbea

I am not female, I just started with MFP, I have a lot of fluctuations. I thought it was a normal part of the process. The long term trend is down but there are bumps along the way.

If you are a data geek, I made a spreadsheet comparing MFP predicted weight and your actual weight in five weeks. I know the predicted weight is nothing to worry about but I wanted to keep track and compare it to my actual weight.

The bad thing is, it takes five weeks for the data to start generating.
If you have any interest in this (just for fun) here is a spreadsheet template: You can download to excel, open office and other spreadsheet formats or if you use gmail you can copy it over to your google drive. If you download it and use it in excel I don't know how well the graphs will work.

Link to the template: http://bit.ly/MFP-Predict

architect98

DoubleUbea wrote: »

I am not female, I just started with MFP, I have a lot of fluctuations. I thought it was a normal part of the process. The long term trend is down but there are bumps along the way.

If you are a data geek, I made a spreadsheet comparing MFP predicted weight and your actual weight in five weeks. I know the predicted weight is nothing to worry about but I wanted to keep track and compare it to my actual weight.

The bad thing is, it takes five weeks for the data to start generating.
If you have any interest in this (just for fun) here is a spreadsheet template: You can download to excel, open office and other spreadsheet formats or if you use gmail you can copy it over to your google drive. If you download it and use it in excel I don't know how well the graphs will work.

Link to the template: http://bit.ly/MFP-Predict

Same here, I'm not female but if you looked at my daily weight log graph you would see fluctuations in my day to day, both up and down. I don't know how much of that boils down to being female and the rest has to do with how the body naturally retains less or more water depending on if your body needs it.

Plus of course fluctuations from accidentally going over and then high sodium which leads to more water weight gain. From what I know fluctuations are very normal.

viajera99

hroderick wrote: »

what caused the day to day fluctuation? i weigh in the buff first thing in the morning and increases are rare.

You are a unicorn-like exception!

Seriously, almost no-one gets away without some day to day variability. That's why there are posts here every single day from people practically crying, because they don't understand that the scale can go up and down and you can still be losing fat.

mlinci

And that’s why I was keen to post my data - my curve zig zags a lot, but it’s very clear what the trend line is amongst all the zig zagging.

etfan

I’m a male and get fluctuations on a week-to-week basis. I gained 0.4 lbs this week despite having essentially the same caloric intake and exercise that resulted in a 4 lb weigh loss last week and 0.6 loss the week before. The body had ways of its own but mlinci’s besutiful graph shows the real story!

Cheesy567

hroderick wrote: »

what caused the day to day fluctuation? i weigh in the buff first thing in the morning and increases are rare.

What a magnificent world you live in... the rest of us have daily fluctuations here on earth.

DoubleUbea

pismodiver wrote: »

hroderick wrote: »

what caused the day to day fluctuation? i weigh in the buff first thing in the morning and increases are rare.

You are a unicorn-like exception!

I like this phrase, I will use it along side my unicorn (passing gas) phrase.

mebelfanti

DoubleUbea wrote: »

I am not female, I just started with MFP, I have a lot of fluctuations. I thought it was a normal part of the process. The long term trend is down but there are bumps along the way.

If you are a data geek, I made a spreadsheet comparing MFP predicted weight and your actual weight in five weeks. I know the predicted weight is nothing to worry about but I wanted to keep track and compare it to my actual weight.

The bad thing is, it takes five weeks for the data to start generating.
If you have any interest in this (just for fun) here is a spreadsheet template: You can download to excel, open office and other spreadsheet formats or if you use gmail you can copy it over to your google drive. If you download it and use it in excel I don't know how well the graphs will work.

Link to the template: http://bit.ly/MFP-Predict

@DoubleUbea This is amazing, thanks so much for sharing! I've tried to create something similar as I've always been curious how accurate the predictions are and if I'm on track with MFPs idea.

Quick question, I update my weight on MFP weekly so on your spreadsheet should I keep the same weight in column B until I update it in MFP? I'm assuming that MFP uses my latest weight entry to calculate their daily prediction.

DoubleUbea

Yes you can copy the weight from the previous day. If I miss a day I use the previous day's entry,

MFP uses your last recorded weight for the calculations. If you look at a previous date in the calendar (on the website) it will show you "If every day was like today if five weeks you would weight xxxlbs" using the diet for the day your are looking at and your current weight.

Glad you like it.

hipari

@DoubleUbea thank you for the template! I have a couple more weeks to go until I reach the 5-week benchmark, since I decided to start the spreadsheet from when I switched to daily weigh-ins. Looking forward to see how accurate the estimations are.

Roosh513

Fluctuations are normal for everyone. I took a slightly different approach and only tracked my new low weigh-ins. That way it would be easier to see week-over-week plateaus. Your graph is great because it gives people a more realistic view of what weight loss actually looks like.