Curious about Happy Scale or Libra forecast

jelleigh

For those that track(ed)their weight daily on am all like this, did you find the forecast timeline to be accurate? Or is it way oversimplified and so untrustworthy? Like it's estimating that based on the last few weeks, I should lose the 50 lbs to goal weight by Oct 5. Which is 15 weeks away. Sounds like I would be lucky to lose 30 by then. I've lost 4.8 lbs since beginning of June 1st.
Sw 215
Cw 195
Gw 145

MikePTY

They are not meant to be predicitive. They are meant to highlight current trends to give you an idea of your current rate of loss based on the limited data you've given it. But you would not be able to lose 50 pounds healthily in 15 weeks and even 30 is a stretch as you get close to your goal.

AnnPT77

It's estimating based on the recent past, using statistical techniques. Mike is right that they're not in any way a crystal-ball peek into the future, they're just looking back some period of time and estimating that if you keep behaving in that general way in the future, you'll probably get the results they project, more or less.

I know more about Libra (which I use), but not everything; and I know almost nothing about Happy Scale.

If you have Libra, you can change the amount of time it looks backward. Under "Settings"/"Advanced Preferences" there's a "Smoothing Days" entry that affects how many days it will take into consideration when creating the line that creates your weight trend line leading up to the current day, and a "Forecast Days" entry that tells it how many days back to look when it's estimating your rate of loss going forward. If I recall correctly, both are set to 7 days when you install it.

You can change those days and see the effects of different assumptions, which can be informative. (Changing those settings has no effect on the stored data; it just changes how the graph on the main page looks. Change the settings back to the default, and the graph will go back to how it looked before.) Now that I'm in maintenance, eating pretty unevenly, I set both of those values to longer time periods, which serves me better. (That would not be true for everyone, BTW: I mention it as an example.)

PAV8888

Thank you Mike!!!

The forward trend is meaningless other than as a graphical illustration of what will happen if you continue doing exactly what you did during the past few days that were taken into consideration when drawing the forward projection!

There is no consideration as to whether this is desired, appropriate, possible, or what will happen as you make changes

bjkoziara

I use Libra, and will simply echo all the other sentiments here. During my period my water retention was crazy and I "gained" 6 pounds. Libra was estimating based on my current trend that I would hit my first goal (50 pounds down from starting) in a year. I'm already halfway to my first goal.

Now I have a stomach bug and have "lost" 4 pounds in the last 3 days or so due to lack of food and dehydration, and it's estimating based on my current trend that I will hit my first goal by the end of next month.

Don't worry about the forecast too much. I use it more to see the overall trend since I started. There's a few spikes here and there, but in general it's going down

whmscll

I downloaded the Libra app and I can’t figure out how it is any better than just looking at your trend on MFP under “progress.” I don’t understand what is so great about Libra. I connected it to MFP, but Ikm not getting the types of trend data I see other people post on here. Libra just seems to duplicate the data that’s Lready on MFP.

Cahgetsfit

I use Happy Scale and it hasn't told me how much I will weigh in x time. Maybe it has that function but I just haven't looked for it or turned it on. It just shows the graph and the green trend or red trend depending on my adherence to diet!!!

sefajane1

whmscll wrote: »

I downloaded the Libra app and I can’t figure out how it is any better than just looking at your trend on MFP under “progress.” I don’t understand what is so great about Libra. I connected it to MFP, but Ikm not getting the types of trend data I see other people post on here. Libra just seems to duplicate the data that’s Lready on MFP.

How do you connect Libra to MFP?

manderson27

Libra is not a predictive tool it is trending tool. For example my weight has wobbled up and down for the last few months and now my goal weight is predicted for 2025

But my weight is still trending down by around 1lb a month. This may not be a lot but it is still going in the right direction. This helps me to keep going even during a bit of a wobble.

jelleigh

Ok I figured it might be skewed and not great at that. Not sure why they bother putting it in! I will try to ignore that bit then.
I am loving weekday I'm learning of the trending though. I looked at my data and although I'm on track for about 1.5lbs per week (a little less), if I had weighed once a week on a consistent day, I wouldn't have seen the losses. Which would have def discouraged me. So here's to data!!