Newbie loss, plateaus and weight loss math... With graphs:)

tallmansix · September 2013

Double bump, brilliant, MFP could learn a thing or two from your analysis and provide some of those feature on it's website.

sanndandi · September 2013

bump

sufferlandrian · September 2013

OK, I'm somewhat new to this site. I keep seeing people post bump. What is bump?

diddles19 · September 2013

Bump put the post to the top of the message board, but if you bump it yourself, it will show in 'My Topics' so you can find the post easier and read it later

alfiepork22 · September 2013

to bump is a strategy to keep a post active. I am so glad everyone did otherwise I would not have read it. Really interesting and will help with my motivation

nelinelineli · September 2013

OP, will you keep us updated? :flowerforyou:

Oh thank you for this, feels so good to see people interested!
I'm about to finish month 1 of Insanity - I will make a small update after that (in about a week)!:)

fuji1010 · September 2013

Really good stuff!!!

Thank you,

Joe

commit1440 · September 2013

yes, this is great stuff. I've been trying to do daily weigh-ins to get a sense of the daily variance vs the the trends. I really hated weekly weigh-ins that showed no loss (or a gain), when it could have been a "bad day outlier". This is a great way to understand what's really going on.

I have a question about the black line (EXPECTED weight) . You wrote:

"Now here's a closer look at the same graph, with some added perks: Light red line shows the daily weigh-ins, dark red line shows their linear trend and the black line is the EXPECTED weight (calculated as "previous weight - (TDEE - NET calories)/7700", 7700 corresponding to calories for 1 kg fat loss). "

How do you measure the "previous weight"? Do you do this on a daily basis? If so, is it the actual weight (i.e. previous day's weight on light red line) or something else? I think I'd like to try doing this myself, but I want to make sure I understand your methods. Thanks!

nelinelineli · September 2013

yes, this is great stuff. I've been trying to do daily weigh-ins to get a sense of the daily variance vs the the trends. I really hated weekly weigh-ins that showed no loss (or a gain), when it could have been a "bad day outlier". This is a great way to understand what's really going on.

I have a question about the black line (EXPECTED weight) . You wrote:

"Now here's a closer look at the same graph, with some added perks: Light red line shows the daily weigh-ins, dark red line shows their linear trend and the black line is the EXPECTED weight (calculated as "previous weight - (TDEE - NET calories)/7700", 7700 corresponding to calories for 1 kg fat loss). "

How do you measure the "previous weight"? Do you do this on a daily basis? If so, is it the actual weight (i.e. previous day's weight on light red line) or something else? I think I'd like to try doing this myself, but I want to make sure I understand your methods. Thanks!

Thanks!

Previous weight is the previous "expected" weight. I don't take my actual weigh-ins into account for this calculation. Basically, I chose a "Start weight" which was roughly 1kg below my actual start weight (which was likely glycogen stores, full stomach and whatnot) and substracted, for each day, the weight loss my achieved caloric deficit would bring about. It's the previous weight on the black line, not the red line.

nelinelineli · September 2013

I think it's important to note too, that you seemed to take a reasonable deficit for your amount to lose and amount of activity.

Many people selecting their own settings in MFP cause that NOT to happen, and then they make it worse by not following the program either.

Great job, great numbers, great graph, great results to continue I'm sure.

Thanks for showing that when you do it smart, just keep doing it and your body will respond.

Thank you, and I definitely agree that choosing sensible goals is very important.

DesireeNL · September 2013

Wow this is very interesting! Did you create the chart in excel? I'm trying to wrap my head around your formula, do you enter daily how many calories you ate? And do you recalculate your tdee as you lose weight?

OsricTheKnight · September 2013

I think graphing is the absolute best way to get real info out of the scale. I don't do it the way the OP has - too much work for me! - but instead, I use trendweight.com on the web or Libra on android. Trendweight looks like this:

The beauty of this is that the moving average lets you find out what your calorie deficit is and use that to plan your weight loss.

Osric

alichristiana · September 2013

This is an interesting graph, I like to get out a calculator and work out calories in vs calories out when I'm having doubts, I miss out "bad weeks" ( normally with days missed out)from my calculation and I normally find I have lost as the numbers say I should.
For those wondering 1pound = 3500 calories
I'm also a sushi lover (vegetarian varieties) too! Not very available round here, though.

lavender_fairie · September 2013

This is my favorite MFP post Ever.

Very rarely do I find inspiration in graph form but here it is! And I needed it so thank you!

nelinelineli · September 2013

Wow this is very interesting! Did you create the chart in excel? I'm trying to wrap my head around your formula, do you enter daily how many calories you ate? And do you recalculate your tdee as you lose weight?

Yes it's excel. Yes I have a table with weight and net calories for the day from which i derive the net deficit for the day. For this example I used a fixed TDEE since I hadn't lost that much weight. Now I do have a "TDEE" column as well that calculates TDEE from the projected weight. But to be honest.. we're talking about a difference of 30 calories :)D