Scale Stress Syndrome

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Replies

  • mmissad3
    mmissad3 Posts: 8 Member
    Exactly what I needed today!
  • Floatingpencil
    Floatingpencil Posts: 25 Member
    I've always struggled with the whole 'only weigh yourself once a week' thing that I've always been told. If I weigh myself once a week it builds up in my mind to a big 'reward' thing that I'm working towards, so a gain is devastating. In the past, I've tried to lose weight and it's been fine while the scale went down, but 2-3 weeks of gains or staying the same and I've lost motivation every single time.

    I've changed to weighing every day, and logging via Happy Scale so that I've got different trend lines and charts - hoping this will help. There have been a few days with small gains, but those have always gone by the next day or two, and so far I'm finding that the small gains don't bother me, because I haven't waited a week for the 'reward' of stepping on the scale. I've only been doing this for four weeks and have lost 13lbs so far, but I expect a slowdown in the next week or so and fingers crossed using the new method will help cope with that and those times when things aren't happening so quickly!
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    Just bumping useful posts. Nothing to see here.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    tumblr_m8h8gzGdI81qkmu8l.gif

    Bump.
  • Good_Morning_Glory
    Good_Morning_Glory Posts: 226 Member
    Bumping.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    Happy New Year!

    pusheen-party.gif
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,024 Member
    Bump
  • MissyCHF
    MissyCHF Posts: 337 Member
    I weigh every morning, I need to, to keep up my momentum. Thank you for keeping this thread alive.

    https://screenshots.firefox.com/LLv9cwhRtN6lFcHm/www.myfitnesspal.com
  • MissyCHF
    MissyCHF Posts: 337 Member
    I weigh every morning, I need to, to keep up my momentum. Thank you for keeping this thread alive.

    https://screenshots.firefox.com/LLv9cwhRtN6lFcHm/www.myfitnesspal.com
  • MissyCHF
    MissyCHF Posts: 337 Member
    I weigh every morning, I need to, to keep up my momentum. Thank you for keeping this thread alive.

    https://screenshots.firefox.com/LLv9cwhRtN6lFcHm/www.myfitnesspal.com
  • wizzybeth
    wizzybeth Posts: 3,578 Member
    Thanks for bumping. Great thread
  • sportychic87
    sportychic87 Posts: 214 Member
    I’ve been weighing every day and can confirm that it stresses me out! And that’s with the knowledge that it changes off water weight as well. I’m considering putting my scale up and weighing on weekly basis. If we’re all following our plans then the number should go down.
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    My number goes down, then I stop exercising and it goes up. Even when I do everything right, it fluctuates over the course of a week. Then I log the best number for that week.

    Thankfully my range of variation is not very great, and I never had much to lose at the beginning anyway.
  • MissyCHF
    MissyCHF Posts: 337 Member
    MissyCHF wrote: »
    I weigh every morning, I need to, to keep up my momentum. Thank you for keeping this thread alive.

    https://screenshots.firefox.com/LLv9cwhRtN6lFcHm/www.myfitnesspal.com
    Oops! Sorry about that, old age and stupidity.... :(

  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    Don't mind me. Just yet another bump for this useful thread.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    tumblr_onv85eDxOZ1w4o831o1_540.gif

    bump
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,024 Member
    Bump
  • Janatki
    Janatki Posts: 730 Member
    Needed this today. Ridiculously upset about my tiny weight gain on my weekly weigh in. Stupid I know, but tell my emotions that 🤪
  • Janatki
    Janatki Posts: 730 Member
    Bump!
  • vanmep
    vanmep Posts: 410 Member
    I love the NSV (non scale victory) thread in Success Stories. There are so many non- scale reasons to lose weight!
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,024 Member
    bump
  • WailingDusk
    WailingDusk Posts: 58 Member
    To this point, 3 days ago I was on my last dose of prednisone. The scale said I weighed 200lbs. Two days later I was back down to 189. That was 11 pounds of water weight. Usually I fluctuate 4-6 pounds.
  • nay0m3
    nay0m3 Posts: 178 Member
    BUMP Happy 2023~~
  • VegjoyP
    VegjoyP Posts: 2,773 Member
    Yup. I started monitoring Weight every day. Today I am up 4.5 pounds from Monday. I was more on Friday, less Wed, etc. It makes me kinda crazy but also keeps in check depending on how I ate, exercised or slept.
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,375 Member
    @VegjoyP

    Stick to it. Soon it won't drive you crazy; you'll get used to the up and down.

    I built a spreadsheet that takes some of the craziness out. It's really similar to TrendWeight or WeightGrapher because it uses a "weighted moving average," but it's just a spreadsheet. It's in the form of a Google document, and I can share the link. It does have a graph, and all the dates except the first one are based on "yesterday plus one." It is weird because it runs right to left.

    I added another set of sheets for people who want to only weigh once a week. If you only weigh weekly, the trend takes MUCH LONGER to appear.

    It's all based on The Hacker's Diet and the section on Signal and Noise.

    To add data, you'll have to make a copy of the sheet. For now it's just filled with dummy data so it shows what a graph might look like.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,303 Member
    And I'm still using it!

    But I've replaced your formula with an exponential moving average formula I unearthed somewhere via the interwebz :wink:

    =if(ISBLANK(PY4),"",if(PZ5="",PY4,round((PY4*(2/($A$1+1)))+(PZ5*(1-(2/($A$1+1)))),1))) where $A$1 is currently 10 :smiley:
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,375 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    And I'm still using it!

    But I've replaced your formula with an exponential moving average formula I unearthed somewhere via the interwebz :wink:

    =if(ISBLANK(PY4),"",if(PZ5="",PY4,round((PY4*(2/($A$1+1)))+(PZ5*(1-(2/($A$1+1)))),1))) where $A$1 is currently 10 :smiley:

    It might have been more fun to ADD the new formula as a new row instead of replacing; then you could compare how the two differ. I did that for a flat ten-day average and the formula I put into the sheet I've got on the Google.

    The main thing is to ignore the crazy daily swings of as much as six pounds and instead see the "crazy" daily swings of as much as 0.3 pounds.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,303 Member
    I initially did just that (multiple formulas including the plain average)

    But then I looked at my four or five number and decided to rip them all out like band-aid stuck on a crusted wound!!! :naughty:

    exponential is influenced by the previous 10; but more influenced by today.

    For me, given that I don't have to smooth out hormonal variations I think it will strike the right balance!

    And of course substituting for your formula meant I didn't have to re-do the graphs!!!! :smirk:

    We shall see, of course how long this one will last!:wink:
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,375 Member
    The formula I used sort of approximates the exponential moving average; it just happens that today's number is based on yesterday's calculation; yesterdays is based on the day before, etc.

    I see days when the difference between the simple ten-day average and the formula in the spreadsheet I have is almost three pounds, so there are days when looking at a weighted moving average make SO much more sense and can really reduce that "Scale Stress" as long as you have faith in the math and what it's telling you.

    It reminds me of diving one time in Waldo Lake. From the surface in a canoe or kayak, you can see your shadow over 100 feet down. The lake is 420 feet at its deepest. There's a dive site on the western shore. I was down and looked at my gauges. It said I was deeper than the published depth of the dive. I looked up, and thought, "No way am I that deep." I could see the surface as if it was 20 feet above me. I slowly kicked up about ten feet looking at my gauge the whole time, looked up again - same view. That water was SO clear. My gauge was right the whole time. Now I know why I trust my instruments.

    Except I think the Bio-electrical Impedance Analysis function of my old scale may be failing. It's started to give weird/wild numbers. Maybe I'll do a battery swap. If it fails, I will just start using the other scale I have. As a bonus, I will magically lose about a pound if I switch.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,024 Member
    bump

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