Lag time to match the scale with CICO
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donjtomasco
Posts: 790 Member
This may be unique to me, but I am seeing a consistent and pretty predictable pattern playing out. When I go over my daily calorie goal, my weight tends to go up 7-9 days later, and the same is true when I am below my daily calorie goal my weight starts going down in 7-9 days.
Has anyone else noticed any kind of pattern like this in this way or a different way?
Has anyone else noticed any kind of pattern like this in this way or a different way?
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Replies
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I have no idea if there is any science behind this but I have always heard that what you eat this week shows up on the scale next week.5
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donjtomasco wrote: »This may be unique to me, but I am seeing a consistent and pretty predictable pattern playing out. When I go over my daily calorie goal, my weight tends to go up 7-9 days later, and the same is true when I am below my daily calorie goal my weight starts going down in 7-9 days.
Has anyone else noticed any kind of pattern like this in this way or a different way?
Are you currently trying to maintain your weight or lose weight? If you are trying to lose weight and you go over your calorie goal but not your maintenance calories your fat weight would not increase at all so your uptick is caused by something much more recent.
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I usually see a lag of 3-7 days. Our bodies are not instapots.
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My short term weight gain and loss tends to vary based on a lot of factors, my calorie intake not being nearly at the top of the list. I've stopped trying to worry about it and predict it. Over the long term, your calories are all that matters, and that's what's important.3
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My daily calories are set to lose 1 pound per week. I know there is no science to it but it is a consistency that I continue to see. It might stop tomorrow. It sounds like lorrpb experiences a similar thing. And I would now have to agree with what I do today shows up next week.3
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I've noticed this in the past when I was weighting regularly.1
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My pattern is, a more-or-less flat line of scale readings for 5-7 days, followed by 2-3 days of significant weight loss, then another flat line, rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, the overall down slope of my weight has been incredibly consistent from month to month, so I kinda just ignore the flatlines, but they are interesting. It's like, what exactly is my body doing when it's apparently burned the fat but won't give up the weight for 7 more days?3
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donjtomasco wrote: »My daily calories are set to lose 1 pound per week. I know there is no science to it but it is a consistency that I continue to see. It might stop tomorrow. It sounds like lorrpb experiences a similar thing. And I would now have to agree with what I do today shows up next week.
The thing is though in order for your scale to go up because of fat you have to be in a calorie surplus. Assuming your scale registers .2 pounds you would need to eat at least 1200 calories (500 to hit maintenance and another 700 for .2 pounds) over your goal to move it by that amount. And that would only work if you gained weight at exactly 3500 calories per pound and from using a trending system I designed for me my observation is that gaining weight does not happen by the same equation as losing. It can take significantly more. My April trip yielded about 25 percent gain of the calories eaten.3 -
I have a theory on the scale patterns that I cannot prove but it is my best guess. I believe it is hormone balances shifting. Weight loss does have an impact on our hormone levels. I think there are regular variations that happen to both genders that are more subtle than what happens to a pre-m woman monthly.
The other, and perhaps more plausible, theory is that we notice food because we are logging it. We are less likely to notice the other patterns in our lives that may happy very routinely that could cause fluctuations.1 -
I have a theory on the scale patterns that I cannot prove but it is my best guess. I believe it is hormone balances shifting. Weight loss does have an impact on our hormone levels. I think there are regular variations that happen to both genders that are more subtle than what happens to a pre-m woman monthly.
The other, and perhaps more plausible, theory is that we notice food because we are logging it. We are less likely to notice the other patterns in our lives that may happy very routinely that could cause fluctuations.
My theory is that fat cells attempt to maintain a kind of homeostasis. They give up the fat during a calorie deficit in a linear manner, but take in water to compensate for it so they can keep the cell structure in tact. Then, when they're good and ready, they release the water, in a non linear and occasionally frustrating way.
This theory has the downside of being based on no facts or knowledge, but the upside of providing a possibly reasonable explanation for why many people have step-ladder patterns to their weight loss, and even with consistent sized steps over time, as I do. To me, it makes the concept of the "plateau" a lot easier to understand.2 -
As a serious data geek, I've tracked my weight daily since (gasp) 2007, long before getting focused about weight loss. Before Libra, I put a dot for my daily weight on a piece of graph paper inside my linen closet door (X-axis date, Y-axis weight).
Based on that experience and casual observation, my subjective sense is that it takes approximately 2, maybe 3 days for me to see the gain from an extreme eating incident big enough to create an observable gain. (At 3500 calories over maintenance to gain a pound, most people don't have many of those days . . . for me, I'd have to eat around 5500-6000 calories, maybe more depending on activity). I have no science to support this conclusion; it's just a personal impression from my experience.
It's actually somewhat difficult to even observe anything like this: The amount of overeating required is so big, and the likelihood of confusing water weight fluctuations from the extra food/sodium/carbs is so significant, that it's hard to pick out. I know that usually, for me, the carb/salt water weight (with limited confounding from unusual weight of digestive contents), tends to take 1 to 2 days to settle out, in most instances. So, because there are limited cases where I ate enough calories to gain observable weight largely from fats (which will affect water retention and digestive-contents weight less), it's a fairly provisional observation even then.
Coincidentally, long after reaching this (2 day, maybe 3 day) conclusion, I learned that full digestive transit can take 50+ hours.
I agree with NovusDies that it seems like weight gain and weight loss, for me, follow slightly different trajectories . . . but I don't know that I've ever had a 3500 calorie deficit in one day . . . I'd have to do a full fast (or colonoscopy prep? ) plus get lots of exercise, which is very, very unlikely. Even 3500 calories' deficit over a 2-3 day period is pretty improbable for me. Stomach flu, maybe? Chemotherapy? (Yes, I really did that, I'm not being cutesy.) So, I'm mostly comparing a gradual deficit to a more-sudden excess, which isn't really fair.
It also seems to me (subjectively, again), that the gain process particularly is behaving in a slightly different way now that I've been maintaining a healthy weight for a somewhat long time (going into 4th year). To be specific, I notice that after well-over-maintenance days, my resting heart rate seems to increase a little (maybe 5bpm or so?) and I have more frequent hot flashes (I'm postmenopausal) for maybe 24 hours-ish following, among other more subtle/subjective effects. I didn't have a 24/7 resting heart rate monitor when I was obese, but I didn't notice the hot flash effect. I don't seem to gain as much from a sudden major over-eating incident as I might have expected.
FWIW.6 -
AnnPT77 - I love it! I bought the largest pad of graph paper that I could find from Office Depot thumbtacked it to the wall. I have my mechanical .5 pencil and a ruler and each morning add my dot and connect the line. I am a data geek too (liked those two words you used) and track quite a few different things for fun.2
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I have a theory on the scale patterns that I cannot prove but it is my best guess. I believe it is hormone balances shifting. Weight loss does have an impact on our hormone levels. I think there are regular variations that happen to both genders that are more subtle than what happens to a pre-m woman monthly.
The other, and perhaps more plausible, theory is that we notice food because we are logging it. We are less likely to notice the other patterns in our lives that may happy very routinely that could cause fluctuations.
My theory is that fat cells attempt to maintain a kind of homeostasis. They give up the fat during a calorie deficit in a linear manner, but take in water to compensate for it so they can keep the cell structure in tact. Then, when they're good and ready, they release the water, in a non linear and occasionally frustrating way.
This theory has the downside of being based on no facts or knowledge, but the upside of providing a possibly reasonable explanation for why many people have step-ladder patterns to their weight loss, and even with consistent sized steps over time, as I do. To me, it makes the concept of the "plateau" a lot easier to understand.
https://bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html/
I am less convinced in the "squishy fat" theory but I have no real basis for my own either. Something causes me to "whoosh" in a somewhat predictable pattern. I have on occasion observed what appeared to be linear losses but it could have been fluctuations pretending to be linear losses. Those SOBs are always engaged is some high jinks.3 -
Add me to the list of "wooshers."
I will see an overall trend downward, but daily and weekly losses are harder to see.
My weight varies a lot day to day - 2+ pound fluctuations for no particular reason are not uncommon, and 3-5 pounds when there's a good reason for it are not uncommon either. I will trend around a certain weight (at, above, below), and then once every couple weeks or so, "woosh" down where that median weight is lower.
If I do weekly averages (record all 7 days and average them each week) I find I get the most accurate idea on my losses. High days will slowly drop, low days will suddenly plunge, and the median slowly creeps downward.1 -
Wow I am so glad to have some fellow data geeks here. When I get home I am going to attach a photo of my chart. Maybe everyone else could take a pic of yours if you have one. I know AnnPT does.0
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donjtomasco wrote: »Wow I am so glad to have some fellow data geeks here. When I get home I am going to attach a photo of my chart. Maybe everyone else could take a pic of yours if you have one. I know AnnPT does.
I don't, anymore. (Well, I have the old ones.) I use the Libra app now. While I was losing weight, it looked like this:
The connected down-hill-ish line is the trend; the little upright bars connect each daily weight to the trend. You can see that the daily weights bounce all over: That's fluctuation!
P.S. I accidentally lost weight too fast for a while during the time period shown in the graph above. Don't do that: It's a Really Bad Plan.
The paper ones looked like this (this was obviously also during weight loss - apologies for the wrinkle!):
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I don't use a graph. I have tracks that represent the usual places along my weight curve that I visit. My lowest track is my unmasked track all of the others have some degree of fluctuation masking. I devised my system with the idea that perhaps linear weight loss can be seen even when there is a fluctuation.
So let's say today's actual weight is 260.2 and my lowest track is 260. That is close enough to be a match. Let's also say that track 9 is 261.7 which is a track I visit often when I have an uptick.
Today my loss by deficit rounds to .4 pounds.
Tomorrow my actual weight is 261.5. My lowest track is now 259.6 so it is no longer a match. Track 9 is 261.3 and once again it is close enough to match. Because track 9 was updated with today's loss by deficit it appears to show the linear loss.
So the results are that I do visit the same tracks over and over and I always return to the lowest track a few times a month confirming it is good predictor of my unmasked weight until the MoE catches up. I am not sure I proved anything else but it has been interesting to try. I believe when I start the 5th incarnation of my spreadsheet in October I will dump everything but the lowest and highest track.
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LOVE THIS ANN!!!!! I got derailed yesterday. Will get mine posted this afternoon! So awesome!0
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