It’s not working..

cwolfman13

elpopsw wrote: »

I’ve tried every diet under the sun and I’ve always given up after a week or two. Well for 3 weeks now I’ve been calorie restricting to 1250 a day. At first I lost 3lb but I put a pound on this week! Not sure where I’m going wrong. Does it matter what I eat as long as it’s within 1250?

You need to adjust your expectations. Body weight fluctuates and you're not going to lose weight every week. You're going to have weeks with smaller losses, larger losses, no losses, and gains. You have to look at weight loss over the long term as a trend...weight loss looks like this.



The red line is the trend...it's the important one to look at.

ericadcruz32

Very well demonstrated, wolf man!

csplatt

My weight loss is over 17 lb now and it’s a zig zag. Two down, half a pound up. One down, one up. Two down, one up. That’s because fat isn’t the only thing in my body that weighs something. I have food leftover in my intestines. I naturally have bloating or water retention with certain times of the month - or because I had carbs with dinner. I lost weight pretty fast at 1300 calories per day. But did it go up and down as it went down? Of course!

AnnPT77

corrarjo wrote: »

I have a background in data analysis. The conditions at the time of measurement mean everything. Weigh yourself as often as you like, just keep in mind the conditions at the time. Jump out of bed and onto the scale. You'll weigh the least of the day. Did you hit the can before or after the scale? Weigh before a meal? After and you may have a pound or two of "stuff" in your gut. An 8oz glass of water weighs a 1/2 pound. Keep this in mind and it may help to alleviate your concerns.

MFP has a feature called "Reports". You can enter your weight once a day if you like and it will produce a trend line, so you have a visual representation of weight over time. Day to day won't tell you much because it's not enough data or time. Check it out after a week or month and you'll have a better idea of what's going on. Tweak your diet to get the results you're looking for.

Some good advice in there about fluctuations!

I have to say, I don't consistently weigh the least of the day in the morning, necessarily. Some people may. Sometimes I do, sometimes I weigh less in the late afternoon. Meh. First thing after wake-up and bathroom is the most consistent conditions, though, so that's still a good plan for most people.

As a minor quibble, MFP's weight graph doesn't provide a trend line - at least not in free MFP. It just provides a graph of the weight data points. That's why so many of us use trending apps alongside MFP (like Libra for Android, Happy Scale for iOS, Trendweight with a Fitbit account, others).

These apps have a trend line distinct from the graph of weight data points, but based on those data.

Looking backwards, typically they apply a smoothing algorithm to show a simplified historical trend line (less bumpy); looking forward, they apply statistical methods to derive an estimated future trend line, based on your recent past. There may be user-tweakable settings that can affect how the past data are used to do the smoothing and projections (Libra has some for sure; not sure about the others, since I use only Libra.)

Since you have background in data analysis (as do I), I'm sure you understand the distinction I'm making between the graphed data points, and the smoothed/statistically-projected trend lines.