A Little Anecdote on Fluctuations or Whooshes
Silentpadna
Posts: 1,306 Member
I hadn't weighed myself in over 2 months. I've been eating at roughly maintenance through the holidays, but started a recent cut last week. I expected to weigh in within a range. I did, within a couple of pounds. That was yesterday.
This morning, I weighed in at 1.4 pounds less. Should I be thrilled about that? (I'm not).
Was it a whoosh? Maybe. Was it fat? Definitely not (I didn't eat -5900 calories yesterday); maybe a portion of it was. Was it the loss of water or a fluctuation? Probably.
I've been controlling caloric intake via a food scale for almost two years now. It always works.
If I took those two scale numbers in a vacuum, I could conclude that my deficit is working. But would I be correct? On the other hand, I know that the last 2 days, my deficit has been 870 and 1070 (approximately) - a little bigger deficit than I plan for.
The answer is that I trust the food scale far more than the bathroom scale. If I carry a 500 calorie deficit (or more) today, it's just as likely I'll have 2-3 pounds more (or less) on the scale tomorrow.
Just a real world example that you can't know in the short term. I preach on data windows being 6-8 weeks or more. If I was wanting to results every day, and didn't know what I know now, I would be thrilled about how my diet was "working" - not realizing that this fluctuation probably happens when I'm trying to gain or trying to maintain. Two data points. Not enough to base a conclusion on. If I would have weighed in at 1.4 pounds more instead of less, knowing that my deficits were what they were, could I conclude anything? (Don't answer; it's rhetorical - I have no basis yet for any type of conclusion).
This morning, I weighed in at 1.4 pounds less. Should I be thrilled about that? (I'm not).
Was it a whoosh? Maybe. Was it fat? Definitely not (I didn't eat -5900 calories yesterday); maybe a portion of it was. Was it the loss of water or a fluctuation? Probably.
I've been controlling caloric intake via a food scale for almost two years now. It always works.
If I took those two scale numbers in a vacuum, I could conclude that my deficit is working. But would I be correct? On the other hand, I know that the last 2 days, my deficit has been 870 and 1070 (approximately) - a little bigger deficit than I plan for.
The answer is that I trust the food scale far more than the bathroom scale. If I carry a 500 calorie deficit (or more) today, it's just as likely I'll have 2-3 pounds more (or less) on the scale tomorrow.
Just a real world example that you can't know in the short term. I preach on data windows being 6-8 weeks or more. If I was wanting to results every day, and didn't know what I know now, I would be thrilled about how my diet was "working" - not realizing that this fluctuation probably happens when I'm trying to gain or trying to maintain. Two data points. Not enough to base a conclusion on. If I would have weighed in at 1.4 pounds more instead of less, knowing that my deficits were what they were, could I conclude anything? (Don't answer; it's rhetorical - I have no basis yet for any type of conclusion).
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Replies
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Good stuff!
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The reason I posted this is because there are always posts coming about how we do everything right and it's "not working". I'm in a deficit. I know it's working.
This follow-up is just meant to show the folly of worry about day-to-day scale readings. Today I gained all of that "whoosh" back. Plus another 0.2. Oh no! I ate a little more yesterday. Over my goal but approximately maintenance. 10 weeks from now I expect to be 8-12 pounds less - if I stay the course. It won't bother me if it's 6. It may bother me if it's 20 - that would be too fast.
BTW I'm not planning to post daily updates to this thread. Just wanted to take a snapshot of a couple of days without knowing in advance what the readings would be. I am unsurprised.
For all of you that are new to this, create your deficit. Work the plan. Adjust after 6-8 weeks if your progress is too fast or too slow. You won't know until then.14 -
It looks like this image thingy worked, I revisited this post because there are more fluctuation posts out there - they happen every day....It's been 10 days since I started weighing myself daily again. After the last post, I gained some more weight while on a deficit. "How can that be?" Then another whoosh. And another. Huh?
I'm not in any position to claim that this has any meaning....yet. I've got 32-46 days or more to go. It's tempting to draw conclusions though isn't it?
But I could be back up to 211 tomorrow. And if I do, then what do I conclude? Answer? That I'll still have 31-55 days to go before concluding anything.
[Edit - got my days numbers wrong, meant 6-8 weeks of data, not 4-6, although 4-6 might tell me a little bit]
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That's a good quotable line... trust the food scale, not the bathroom scale
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Who wants to wait 6-8 weeks to see if they’ve made progress?!10
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fastfoodietofitcutie wrote: »Who wants to wait 6-8 weeks to see if they’ve made progress?!
People who understand how fluctuations work. That's kinda the point.
When you are shooting for 1-2 pounds per week, and your fluctuations can be 2-4 times that per day, the short term window can fool you into making bad decisions. You see folks come into the forums almost every day wondering why they aren't losing weight, when they may actually be losing fat - just having it masked by fluctuations in fluid retention.
If I take my original post and then the first day or two after, I may have been progressing just fine, but that's not what the bathroom scale was saying. My food scale was telling me I was in a deficit. So which one was giving me the most pertinent data? The food scale of course.
Nobody wants to wait, but if you really want to see the trend above the noise, you have to wait to know for sure.15 -
I only weigh once a week and really cannot be bothered with analysing day to day fluctuations...all I know is I am in a deficit......... I am losing weight at the rate of 1lb every week [past 9 weeks]......I know there will be weeks ahead when I don't lose 1lb either way because weight loss isn't linear.
Seems to me the more complicated you make the process of losing weight the more angst you feel.
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Barring unforeseen circumstances I'll be hanging around for the next 6-8 weeks anyway...why not put it to good use towards my goal?fastfoodietofitcutie wrote: »Who wants to wait 6-8 weeks to see if they’ve made progress?!
edit: OP thanks for the post. Good stuff!
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When you get down to the territory of the last 5-10 pounds or are just losing vanity weight, weekly weigh ins are not going to paint any kind of accurate picture and if you're lacking in patience in any way, you're never going to reach goal.
Understanding that you're going to have fluctuations that mask your losses is REALLY crucial when you get to the end game. Grasping this knowledge early on will see you through to the end.15 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »When you get down to the territory of the last 5-10 pounds or are just losing vanity weight, weekly weigh ins are not going to paint any kind of accurate picture and if you're lacking in patience in any way, you're never going to reach goal.
Understanding that you're going to have fluctuations that mask your losses is REALLY crucial when you get to the end game. Grasping this knowledge early on will see you through to the end.
I have the patience of Job lol ..... I've reached goal before [lost 55lbs weighing once a week] maintained well then stopped smoking and piled it back on...now losing it again.
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »When you get down to the territory of the last 5-10 pounds or are just losing vanity weight, weekly weigh ins are not going to paint any kind of accurate picture and if you're lacking in patience in any way, you're never going to reach goal.
Understanding that you're going to have fluctuations that mask your losses is REALLY crucial when you get to the end game. Grasping this knowledge early on will see you through to the end.
Amen! I'm messing with the last 5-8 pounds, and weighing daily is the only thing that keeps me out of the pit of despair lately
I put on a sticky 2 pounds a couple of days before TOM last week, and it has hung around seemingly forever. Finally whooshed 1.5 of it yesterday. Libra still has me headed in the right direction (though roughly at the speed of a stampeding turtle
)
Don't get me wrong, food scales are wonderful, too. I've recommended them multiple times here. I've sort of adopted the opposite method of @Silentpadna in that I haven't logged more than a day or two of food since Thanksgiving, but still agree with the spirit of the original post. Understanding and accepting fluctuations is key to bring successful in the long game.5 -
I've sort of adopted the opposite method of @Silentpadna in that I haven't logged more than a day or two of food since Thanksgiving, but still agree with the spirit of the original post. Understanding and accepting fluctuations is key to bring successful in the long game.
I'm actually not normally a daily weigh-in type of person. I had been relying on my food scale pretty much exclusively, and I purposely put on about 15 pounds since my low point because I wanted to bulk some. Now I'm cutting again. With the preponderance of "it's not working" posts, I just thought I'd do a quick analysis, for data sake. Normally I would weigh every couple of weeks or when I felt like it.
BTW, yesterday I ate at +200 above maintenance. I gained 2.8 pounds! Just more data. Obviously I didn't add 9800 calories worth of fat with a 200 calorie surplus right?
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Silentpadna wrote: »I've sort of adopted the opposite method of @Silentpadna in that I haven't logged more than a day or two of food since Thanksgiving, but still agree with the spirit of the original post. Understanding and accepting fluctuations is key to bring successful in the long game.
I'm actually not normally a daily weigh-in type of person. I had been relying on my food scale pretty much exclusively, and I purposely put on about 15 pounds since my low point because I wanted to bulk some. Now I'm cutting again. With the preponderance of "it's not working" posts, I just thought I'd do a quick analysis, for data sake. Normally I would weigh every couple of weeks or when I felt like it.
BTW, yesterday I ate at +200 above maintenance. I gained 2.8 pounds! Just more data. Obviously I didn't add 9800 calories worth of fat with a 200 calorie surplus right?
I ate +200 over maintenance yesterday too. I was down .2 of a pound this morning. I was already in a mini-whooshing trend though, which is something that happens to me.
I also am coming out of a period where my overall trend had Happy Scale thinking I was gaining. That's how weird my fluctuations are. Mine are greatly impacted by pain levels along with the usual reasons, so there's that. Anyway, I keep a spreadsheet with notes that helps me spot overarching trends past the noise that sometimes even confounds the trending app.6 -
suziecue25 wrote: »I only weigh once a week and really cannot be bothered with analysing day to day fluctuations...all I know is I am in a deficit......... I am losing weight at the rate of 1lb every week [past 9 weeks]......I know there will be weeks ahead when I don't lose 1lb either way because weight loss isn't linear.
Seems to me the more complicated you make the process of losing weight the more angst you feel.
AMEN!0 -
Great post. It takes a while to trust that food scale, but once that experience is in place, it absolutely is a more reliable guide.fastfoodietofitcutie wrote: »Who wants to wait 6-8 weeks to see if they’ve made progress?!
Anyone who has a material amount of weight to lose, and a sensible attitude about it, if you ask me.
People who freak out over every water weight change, and can't get over it, are on an unstable and unreliable path.
Many/most people may see results way before 6-8 weeks. Those who don't see results in 2 weeks (probably because they've hit a hormonal cycle just wrong, or have already cut so far - or added so much exercise - that water weight is going all crazy) . . . would be better served by logging meticulously for another 2-4 weeks and seeing where things end up instead of (1) cutting further/exercising more and seeing even more water weight weirdness, or (2) giving up.
Changing things up, getting more extreme, based on limited data? Likely to lead to burnout and failure. Patience and persistence? Better allies. At the worst, if after around 6 weeks of patient and meticulous logging, there's no weight loss, one has the data to know what adjustments need to be made.
For most people, if they set up their MFP profile properly, and learn how to log in the best ways possible, they'll have lost observable weight in the first month.
For someone with very little to lose (say, 25 pounds or less), who's sensibly trying to lose at 0.5lb/week, it could take a little longer, because accurate logging is super important, and fluctuations are bigger as compared to that loss rate.
For anyone with a material amount of weight to lose, that weight loss is going to be a long-term project. Focusing on seeing big results right away is the wrong focus IMO. Focus on an accurate, sustainable process, and settle in for a long ride. It took me close to a year to lose around 50 pounds. Patience and insight into the process were really good allies.6 -
I feel a bit of relief now that I trust the food scale and now that I understand and trust the weight loss process.
I haven't had any real body weight losses in about 4 weeks. As a matter of fact, Libra even showed an uptrend in my weight. Now in these past four weeks I've had 2 different illnesses, worked out much less than usual, spent some of that time eating maintenance calories, and the rest eating at a deficit. It isn't delightful to not lose, but I still trusted the process and trusted that I was weighing and logging my foods properly
Now the good part: I've had weight losses for the last 3 days straight. I'm exactly on track for where I should be weight-wise. So glad I've learned to trust and not given up when the scale wasn't moving.6 -
lalalacroix wrote: »I feel a bit of relief now that I trust the food scale and now that I understand and trust the weight loss process.
I haven't had any real body weight losses in about 4 weeks. As a matter of fact, Libra even showed an uptrend in my weight. Now in these past four weeks I've had 2 different illnesses, worked out much less than usual, spent some of that time eating maintenance calories, and the rest eating at a deficit. It isn't delightful to not lose, but I still trusted the process and trusted that I was weighing and logging my foods properly
Now the good part: I've had weight losses for the last 3 days straight. I'm exactly on track for where I should be weight-wise. So glad I've learned to trust and not given up when the scale wasn't moving.
Oh I'm not alone with the silly "gaining according to the trending app when I'm really losing" thing!
This was a stumbling block for me back the first time that it happened and I got into a bad place because of it. It took some time, reading, and reflection to work my way out of it. Collecting data in a spreadsheet, logging tightly, and remembering what it was like back when I first started and had faith in the process made all the difference this time.2 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lalalacroix wrote: »I feel a bit of relief now that I trust the food scale and now that I understand and trust the weight loss process.
I haven't had any real body weight losses in about 4 weeks. As a matter of fact, Libra even showed an uptrend in my weight. Now in these past four weeks I've had 2 different illnesses, worked out much less than usual, spent some of that time eating maintenance calories, and the rest eating at a deficit. It isn't delightful to not lose, but I still trusted the process and trusted that I was weighing and logging my foods properly
Now the good part: I've had weight losses for the last 3 days straight. I'm exactly on track for where I should be weight-wise. So glad I've learned to trust and not given up when the scale wasn't moving.
Oh I'm not alone with the silly "gaining according to the trending app when I'm really losing" thing!
This was a stumbling block for me back the first time that it happened and I got into a bad place because of it. It took some time, reading, and reflection to work my way out of it. Collecting data in a spreadsheet, logging tightly, and remembering what it was like back when I first started and had faith in the process made all the difference this time.
For those using Libra**, I'd recommend going into the "Advanced Preferences", and messing around with the Smoothing Days and Forecast Days. You will get noticeably different trend lines and projections depending on those settings. By playing with them, you may get an idea whether different settings might work better for you in your current stage of weight management, even if you don't understand the underlying math; at the very least, you'll begin to understand that this is a statistical tool, not a crystal ball.
Don't be afraid to change it, it doesn't affect your stored data, it just affects how the apps calculates values and draws lines: After playtime, you can put the settings back to the defaults, if that's best for you.
These days, in a form of maintenance where I eat very unevenly, I'm mostly using smoothing = 30, forecast = 60. I used the default 7 & 7 all the way through weight loss.
** I assume you can do similar experiments with other weight trending apps, but I don't know the specific options and settings for others.1 -
With trendweight, my favorite, you can't mess around with the equations and the graphs like you can with libra, and I believe happy scale.
And yes, I too had a reverse to reality trend though this only happened when I was applying a 100 to 150 Cal a day average deficit, and the reasons, on reflection, were known. In my case sodium, then exercise, followed by sodium and food in transit one after the other and extending to a consecutive period of 8 days.
Much more common is the situation where the previous trend continues for a number of days even after you've changed the direction of your deficit/surplus.
All these apps will eventually show the correct point of time when a change to the weight trend takes place; but there will be a delay until they show it.
Which, if you think about it, makes sense since they're designed to smooth out spurious fluctuations by considering the past x amount of days together with your new data. Therefore your new trend will not fully show till it is established for the full x days.
Patience, small changes that accumulate, and consistency in your logging really do pay off!2 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lalalacroix wrote: »I feel a bit of relief now that I trust the food scale and now that I understand and trust the weight loss process.
I haven't had any real body weight losses in about 4 weeks. As a matter of fact, Libra even showed an uptrend in my weight. Now in these past four weeks I've had 2 different illnesses, worked out much less than usual, spent some of that time eating maintenance calories, and the rest eating at a deficit. It isn't delightful to not lose, but I still trusted the process and trusted that I was weighing and logging my foods properly
Now the good part: I've had weight losses for the last 3 days straight. I'm exactly on track for where I should be weight-wise. So glad I've learned to trust and not given up when the scale wasn't moving.
Oh I'm not alone with the silly "gaining according to the trending app when I'm really losing" thing!
This was a stumbling block for me back the first time that it happened and I got into a bad place because of it. It took some time, reading, and reflection to work my way out of it. Collecting data in a spreadsheet, logging tightly, and remembering what it was like back when I first started and had faith in the process made all the difference this time.
For those using Libra**, I'd recommend going into the "Advanced Preferences", and messing around with the Smoothing Days and Forecast Days. You will get noticeably different trend lines and projections depending on those settings. By playing with them, you may get an idea whether different settings might work better for you in your current stage of weight management, even if you don't understand the underlying math; at the very least, you'll begin to understand that this is a statistical tool, not a crystal ball.
Don't be afraid to change it, it doesn't affect your stored data, it just affects how the apps calculates values and draws lines: After playtime, you can put the settings back to the defaults, if that's best for you.
These days, in a form of maintenance where I eat very unevenly, I'm mostly using smoothing = 30, forecast = 60. I used the default 7 & 7 all the way through weight loss.
** I assume you can do similar experiments with other weight trending apps, but I don't know the specific options and settings for others.
Really didn't know this. I will check it out.0 -
I know this is an old thread. But no point starting a new one.
Was on a very short vacation from Thursday far too early to Saturday evening. Twice nearly 7 hours on trains, rather salty (and yummy) food. Returned, found myself 3kg heavier the next morning. Last night coincided with a whoosh
Down 2.4kg literally from one day to another. Ok, it's a way to get rid of traveling waterweight, but not one that provides a good nights sleep. 2
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