How daily weights & weight trending apps can be useful

viajera99

There are a million threads about how often one “should” weigh oneself, and the answer is always “It depends.” And probably the thing it depends on the most may be your personality, because people react very differently to the scale fluctuations that 99.9% of us experience.

What works best for me is daily weighing and a weight trending app. The daily weighing (same time, same conditions every day) makes me accustomed to the fluctuations that are normal for me. The trend keeps me from being discouraged by said fluctuations.

Here’s a good visual example of how this works. (The diamonds represent the scale weight each day, and the line is the trend.)

If I only had weighed myself every Saturday, on Aug 7, 14, & 21, I would have seen 127.3, 127.4 and 127.5. OH NO! A gain of 0.2 lbs. However, looking at the trend line, I see 129.8, 128.9 and and 128.0 for a LOSS of 1.8 lbs. Much better! (And yes, obviously I cherry-picked this data, but the point still stands.)

Of course, with enough experience you learn to trust the process no matter what the scale says, which may obviate the need for a trending app. Even so, I like seeing the numbers.

This is from TrendWeight.com, which is web based. It pulls your weight data directly from the FitBit website. I have a FitBit WiFi scale which transmits directly to the FB website, so it’s quite convenient for me. However, you can create a FB account for free and enter your scale data manually if you want to use TrendWeight — you actually don’t need to have a FB.

(As an aside, TrendWeight uses a 10 day weighted moving average. Other apps (Happy Scale, Libra) use different methods for creating the trend line. Note that this leads to the trend lagging your “true weight” (if that thing exists). For my rate of weight loss, I estimate the difference to be about a pound, but really, that’s just a mental trick!)

kshama2001

Great thread topic! Count me as another vote for daily weighing and a weight trending app.

I use Happy Scale. If I feel like I'm having a bad week or month, I just look at my yearly trend and all that green cheers me up.

TX_Bluebonnet

Me too for daily weigh-ins. I just use the built-in MFP graph to monitor my weight trend.

AnnPT77

Endorsed. Good post!

I use Libra (for Android). One thing I appreciate about it, versus some of the other possible apps, is that it lets me change the timespan for both smoothing (how long to look backward to smooth things out, basically, or the timespan for projection (how far to look back to do a time-weighted average in order to project the future, as I understand it). Those settings don't change the entered data, they just change the graphic display, so one can fiddle with it - a longer timespan can make more sense in maintenance or slow loss, maybe shorter timespan if faster loss happening.

There was a time period where I was losing so slowly, though, that even Libra (on default settings) thought I was gaining or maintaining for a period of weeks to a month or so. It's important to realize that these apps are not some kind of magical crystal ball, but just a helpful set of statistics.

(In the scenario mentioned, I had enough experience counting that I was pretty confident I was still on point, and around the 6 week mark or so, it actually panned out. I thought - and it turned out to be true - that resuming weight lifting had added water weight, masking the slow loss for a while. Once that sorted, I saw the expected drop on the scale.)

Amusing to me: One poster here a long time ago was angry that his trending app was not telling him his "true weight". That was what he expected of it!😆

Personally, I don't think I have a true weight. I think I have a current range (I'll vary several pounds in the course of a day, or over a few days), and a longer term trend (over a couple of weeks and beyond, usually). If I'm losing weight, the current range wanders through a lower range of weights than it did a few weeks before; if gaining, the opposite; if maintaining, it's a meander in the same general weight zone.

I weigh daily in the AM (after bathroom, before food/drink, wearing my glasses & watch) and record that in Libra. Sometimes I weigh during a day, too, such as to see whether I'm hydrating enough during hot weather outdoor exercise. For those who don't freak out about scale fluctuations, it can be educational to see how weight changes across a day, depending on things like eating, drinking, sweating, etc.

Fatgonegirl

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Endorsed. Good post!

I use Libra (for Android). One thing I appreciate about it, versus some of the other possible apps, is that it lets me change the timespan for both smoothing (how long to look backward to smooth things out, basically, or the timespan for projection (how far to look back to do a time-weighted average in order to project the future, as I understand it). Those settings don't change the entered data, they just change the graphic display, so one can fiddle with it - a longer timespan can make more sense in maintenance or slow loss, maybe shorter timespan if faster loss happening.

Do you leave it on default or change the number of days?

AnnPT77

Fatgonegirl wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Endorsed. Good post!

I use Libra (for Android). One thing I appreciate about it, versus some of the other possible apps, is that it lets me change the timespan for both smoothing (how long to look backward to smooth things out, basically, or the timespan for projection (how far to look back to do a time-weighted average in order to project the future, as I understand it). Those settings don't change the entered data, they just change the graphic display, so one can fiddle with it - a longer timespan can make more sense in maintenance or slow loss, maybe shorter timespan if faster loss happening.

Do you leave it on default or change the number of days?

Varies.

In a long period when pursuing steady weight, I'm more likely to use longer settings than the defaults, as my routine settings. Because I calorie bank, eat quite unevenly, using the 7-day default makes the trend line unrealistically twitchy when maintaining, so not helpful to me. (That might not be the case for someone who very consistently eats the same number of calories daily.)

I can't recall, but I think I was using 60 day smoothing, 30 day forecast, for quite a while during an earlier phase of maintenance. (Or maybe it was 30/60?)

When actively trying to lose at a fairly steady rate, the default settings were fine and helpful.

At any given time, I sometimes fiddle with the settings, to see what the effect on the trendlines (backward and forward) may be. Since changing the settings has zero impact on the stored data (or on data stored while a particular combo of settings is in effect), I can change the settings, look at the charts and calculated data, then change them back (or to some intermediate value, or whatever) whenever I choose.

It's not at all an irreversible thing. It just affects what's displayed, until I change it again.

If have Libra, experiment with it: You can get some intuition for what it does, I suspect, even if you don't have a strong statistics background. Those things, Smoothing and Forecast Days, are under Settings/Advanced Preferences.