“Projected weight loss”

snapem
snapem Posts: 24 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Does anyone else find the end of the day “projected weight loss” totally rubbish and very disheartening?
I’m set for an aim of 1kg weight loss a week and having stuck within my calorie limit today (net calories 1195) it’s telling me my projected weight in 5 weeks is only 0.2kg lighter than what I logged as my weight today… surely that can’t be right…

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,416 Member
    Just as an aside...( I agree with the above posts) but you don't have to click that button. I found that little "in five weeks" thing to be annoying and that's really all that button does. It will post to your Home feed too, but that was actually another reason for me NOT to click it.

    If you don't click it, all your data is still recorded and saved.
  • Xellercin
    Xellercin Posts: 924 Member
    edited February 2022
    Of course it's rubbish, it's a very, very rough estimate because the app cannot actually know how many calories you burn in a day. It can only know what you've told it you consumed and make an extremely rough guess as to what you've burned, and can't account at all for how much water or waste matter you might be retaining on any given day.

    It's more like a metric that you want to gauge yourself against. If you are losing at the rate that it predicts over time, then everything you are doing is predictable. If you aren't losing at that rate, then something is up and you should consider all of the variables carefully before adjusting any of them.

    For me, the estimates were waaaayyyyyy off because the app couldn't tell that my metabolism was in the toilet due to years of illness, meds, and previous major weight loss. It didn't know that my level of activity involved lying in bed all day many days. I saw my pathetic rate of loss, which was less than 0.5lbs per month on average, compared to the 1lb/week projected. I was diligent with counting and weighing, and that's what helped me understand just how effed up my metabolism was, especially since I had lost weight according in the past in line with the projected estimates by living the same way.

    We've seen many times here that it can be an indicator that the person isn't tracking properly. I remember a friend who was frustrated with their loss rate and said they were tracking and weighing everything, but eventually admitted they weren't weighing or tracking sauces, butter, salad dressing, coffee cream, etc. They thought these things were minor, but it turned out they were missing over 600 calories a day in consumption.

    So it's not really a predictor so much as it is a yardstick to measure against and see if there's anything that you should be looking into to explain why your rate of loss isn't where it is estimated to be.
  • marshall461
    marshall461 Posts: 2 Member
    i have found the opposite to be the case. the projected loss has the weight melting off of me and that surely is not the case, not even close
  • TheHappyTracker
    TheHappyTracker Posts: 7 Member
    I also found the "at this rate you will be..." extremely discouraging. It also was nudging me towards unhealthy eating patterns. Like an above commenter said, I no longer press that button. It still records the diary entry, and I don't need to have the disheartening message.
  • snapem
    snapem Posts: 24 Member
    MrDropchub wrote: »
    I also found the "at this rate you will be..." extremely discouraging. It also was nudging me towards unhealthy eating patterns. Like an above commenter said, I no longer press that button. It still records the diary entry, and I don't need to have the disheartening message.

    Yes that’s exactly it. If it believes I’ll lose so little from being so diligent it makes you want to try harder but as someone above said, I shouldn’t actually be eating much less than the net calories I already am

    Thanks for your reply. It helps to know there are others who have equally disliked it!
  • snapem
    snapem Posts: 24 Member
    cmriverside wrote: »
    Just as an aside...( I agree with the above posts) but you don't have to click that button. I found that little "in five weeks" thing to be annoying and that's really all that button does. It will post to your Home feed too, but that was actually another reason for me NOT to click it.

    If you don't click it, all your data is still recorded and saved.

    Yes I think I won’t click it! I am losing and predictions of only 0.2kg over 5 weeks are not overly good for my motivation and seem to be weirdly calculated
  • snapem
    snapem Posts: 24 Member
    yirara wrote: »
    snapem wrote: »
    Does anyone else find the end of the day “projected weight loss” totally rubbish and very disheartening?
    I’m set for an aim of 1kg weight loss a week and having stuck within my calorie limit today (net calories 1195) it’s telling me my projected weight in 5 weeks is only 0.2kg lighter than what I logged as my weight today… surely that can’t be right…

    First of all, weight fluctuates every day, and so does this projection because every day is not the same.

    Secondly, can I ask you how much weight you have to lose? Because it's quite possible that a 1kg loss per week is not possible for you to start with. In order to lose 1kg per week you'd need to eat 1000 calories less than your maintenance calories. If you only have a smaller amount to lose then your maintenance calories might at the moment be at 1800 calories per day? Take 1000 off and you're at 800. MFP will never give you less than 1200 calories per day, regardless of what rate of loss you've chosen. That means you'll not lose as fast as you hope.

    Yes you’re correct that it’s estimated calories for 0.7kg versus 1kg loss is the same , as it won’t let me go lower, but 0.7kg is calculating as less calories than 0.5kg which means the current allowed calories must be at least more than 0.5kg weight loss a week. So by logic, in my head it should have been at least 2.5kg over 5 weeks if I was within the allocated calories. So it’s 5week calculation didn’t make any sense to me. 0.2kg over 5 weeks is really not a lot.

    Ah well. I’m going to stop clicking it and just not worry about it 😂
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I've never really paid attention to it. It's overly simplistic math that assumes everyday will be exactly the same (which is impossible) and assumes losing weight is a linear thing (it's not).
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,204 Member
    snapem wrote: »
    yirara wrote: »
    snapem wrote: »
    Does anyone else find the end of the day “projected weight loss” totally rubbish and very disheartening?
    I’m set for an aim of 1kg weight loss a week and having stuck within my calorie limit today (net calories 1195) it’s telling me my projected weight in 5 weeks is only 0.2kg lighter than what I logged as my weight today… surely that can’t be right…

    First of all, weight fluctuates every day, and so does this projection because every day is not the same.

    Secondly, can I ask you how much weight you have to lose? Because it's quite possible that a 1kg loss per week is not possible for you to start with. In order to lose 1kg per week you'd need to eat 1000 calories less than your maintenance calories. If you only have a smaller amount to lose then your maintenance calories might at the moment be at 1800 calories per day? Take 1000 off and you're at 800. MFP will never give you less than 1200 calories per day, regardless of what rate of loss you've chosen. That means you'll not lose as fast as you hope.

    Yes you’re correct that it’s estimated calories for 0.7kg versus 1kg loss is the same , as it won’t let me go lower, but 0.7kg is calculating as less calories than 0.5kg which means the current allowed calories must be at least more than 0.5kg weight loss a week. So by logic, in my head it should have been at least 2.5kg over 5 weeks if I was within the allocated calories. So it’s 5week calculation didn’t make any sense to me. 0.2kg over 5 weeks is really not a lot.

    Ah well. I’m going to stop clicking it and just not worry about it 😂

    Good choice! 😉

    Not worth stressing over: It's using an estimate, anyway. It's basically a population average. You're not a population, you're an individual. Most people are close to average, a few are farther off (high or low), a rare few can be surprisingly far off. That's the nature of statistical estimates, y'know?

    That's without even getting into vagaries of food and exercise logging, and activity level settings, and so forth. (Lots of estimates in there, too, and things that have a learning curve.)

    What matters, once you have multiple weeks of personal results data to average things out, is what your actual average weekly weight loss is - the long-term trend. No point in stressing over things that are estimates.

    Be careful if you're targeting a weight loss rate that's close to the maximum MFP will permit for you . . . it may be OK, but it can be counterproductive in some situations.

    P.S. I'm one of the people for whom MFP's estimates are quite far off, even with correct profile settings, based on almost 7 years of logging experience. Reasons aren't necessarily obvious in all cases, but it can happen. Fortunately for me, MFP estimates low - I can eat several hundred calories more daily than it thinks, and accomplish my goals . . . and yes, I (carefully) log and eat all my exercise calories.
  • snapem
    snapem Posts: 24 Member
    @AnnPT77
    Yeh I’ve been thinking a bit about this and the tricky zone between trying hard enough and it being counterproductive if I don’t eat enough calories, as you allude to.
    I think it’s made even harder by the fact that everything is just an estimate.
    My first few weeks I used MFP to estimate my activity but then was unhappy that it was too much of a rough estimate, because something like “gardening-general” gives a set amount of calories burnt per hour but can be drastically different activities depending on what I’m doing (light weeding vs heavy manual labour).

    So I started using my Garmin watch with HR monitor to estimate my calories burnt on runs , walks etc. it’s often several hundred calories less than MFP would estimate. But who knows if that’s correct either? (The HR fairly often doesn’t seem right when I check it) So I might now be under fuelling if that’s undercounting calories burnt 🤷🏻‍♀️

    Who knows 🤷🏻‍♀️
  • powrwrap
    powrwrap Posts: 85 Member
    edited February 2022
    I've found it to be eerily accurate when taking the long view. When I did MFP the first go around 9 years ago I found the message at the end of the day when closing your diary, "If every day were like today... You'd weigh XXX.x lbs in 5 weeks" to be spot on. I'd make a note of it, and check it in 5 weeks, and sure enough, as long as I stayed under my calorie goal, I weighed in at about the weight predicted, maybe off by a half a pound either way.

    When I got closer to my goal weight it gave me added motivation. The first time my goal weight came up at the end of the day as the weight I would be in 5 weeks, I was ecstatic. Basically, it said I would be at my goal weight the week of August 20th, when that week rolled around, sure enough I had made it.

    BTW, I don't know what the OP's starting weight is, but the goal of losing 1 kg per week seems ambitious to me.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    oh yeah its garbage. ignore it. or dont close the diary. like others have said, it still logs everything and saves it, it just doesnt give you that ridiculous number or post it to your wall (if you never changed the setting to make it not post)
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,217 Member
    All anyone can be sure of is, if someone is in a deficit, you'll lose weight, that's it. Believing that you've accurately accounted for every gram of food you've consumed or accounted for every calorie you've burnt is a fools errand. You can make adjustments over time to compensate and facilitate a goal but to expect that the body somehow works linearly every day will always disappoint and frustrate. Look a long way ahead and down the road and not right in front of you because that's where all the problems arise and in racing it's called "Target Fixation" and in racing that will kill you. cheers.
  • FaithIsHealthy
    FaithIsHealthy Posts: 5 Member
    I found this thread because it bothered me too. I even connected my fitbit so it could see I walked 13k steps today but got the same estimate when I completed the diary. Then after reading this thread, I decided to change my activity level in the MFP app from sedentary to active, completed the diary again, and it did change it. It went from telling me I'd lose 2 pounds this month to telling me I would lose 6 pounds. I know neither is accurate but I need to carrot at the end of the day to encourage me.

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