How often do you do a weigh in?

I think your weigh in value, whether daily or weekly, is too noisy to be looked at on its own. On a chart with a moving average you can really see what's going on. Look at my last 4 weeks, and imagine I weighed in only on Sunday:



Boy I'd be depressed! My weights would be: 211.3, 211.2, 207.1 207.9 (!! gain) ... it'd look to me like in the last 4 weeks, I'd barely managed to lose three pounds, and it sure wouldn't feel like steady progress. Now look at the chart above - the same 4 weeks - the trend line looks pretty straight, you can see how the weekends cause me difficulty but don't derail me, and I get positive feedback that I'm making progress pulling my trend down every single day.

And that is what motivates me not to grab the free chips, chocolates, dried sugared fruit, or cheesecake that's at the office every day...

Osric

[edit: the chart above is from trendweight.com, totally free not even any ads. I also like Libra on Android.]

I think your weigh in value, whether daily or weekly, is too noisy to be looked at on its own.

On the flip side, using too long an average can hide problems for longer than they should be hidden. In that graph, if the MA is over a 2 week period, that trend line is about to flatten significantly, because there hasn't been any lose over the past two weeks.

Not saying that there's necessarily a problem, just noting that every form of sampling and analysis has its blind spot.

For myself, I use a 7-day average for body measurements and 14-day sliding window to back-calculate TDEE components.

I think your weigh in value, whether daily or weekly, is too noisy to be looked at on its own.

On the flip side, using too long an average can hide problems for longer than they should be hidden. In that graph, if the MA is over a 2 week period, that trend line is about to flatten significantly, because there hasn't been any lose over the past two weeks.

trendweight.com does have the issue that you can't control how it calculates. It uses 10 day moving averages. I think this is probably a good value for most people, enables you to see progress in spite of stumbles, and any day with the diamond near the line is a warning day.

Libra is fully configurable but I am not sure how many people can really choose the values well.

Overall I like 10 days as a number that'll work for most people, and enable them to focus on the reality of how they're doing rather than water weight. Given water weight fluctuations are so extreme as to render total weight measures almost worthless, some sort of smoothing is needed to see the signal.

In my specific case, if we imagine that I'm doing something that has made 205 or so my new 'maintenance level', I will see it in just under 3 weeks as the trend line starts to snake between my diamonds. I think that's plenty fast feedback on when to cut more calories or get more exercise, especially since setting it much tighter would probably cause me needless panic.

[I do, however, have Libra set to 7 days at the moment, so I have a more alarmist graph as well as this one.]

Osric

P.S. If anyone cares, the full story can only be seen with the fat mass measures as well:



but this (fat mass) chart won't update so it'll get increasingly out of sync with the updating weight chart above.

Every morning as soon as I get up, have a pee and jump on the scales. I like to know the weight even if it goes up a little then I can take control. Especially good after my fast day because I can see if I'm maintaining ok - the fast tends to smooth out the daily fluctuations.

My weigh in day for myself is Sunday mornings.

monday mornings for me.

also remember to always use the same scale.

if you change scales remember there could be a difference between the 2 which can skew the results.

P.S. If anyone cares, the full story can only be seen with the fat mass measures as well:

Nice! I also track fat vs lean mass. Everything goes into a spreadsheet, so I can back-calculate and/or project on any variable.

I weigh once a week, every Saturday morning.

I know a lot of people say "don't weigh daily" but I do. It helps me feel in control and on track. I have been weighing myself every day for almost 7 months now. I DO weigh at the same time each day, right after rising and using the restroom, and wearing the tee and underwear I've slept in, never more clothes. I very rarely weigh myself at any other time or with more clothes on, but when I do it always freaks me out haha because it's a pound or three higher than the same morning.

before you eat anything or perform any exercise and after a bowel movement for more accuracy.
food intake and especially sodium can make your weight variate wildly throughout the day.