Libra app questions?

I don't pay much attention to the bottom part of the Libra screen. I do like to see the historical graph showing me where my plateaus and fluctuations have been and can be expected.

Been using it since I started my diet, though I'm not sure why LOL Ultimately it tells you the same thing as MFP shows in its Reports tab - how much weight you lost, plotted on a graph.

All the numbers below the graph in Libre are pretty much irrelevant or useless: you rate of weight loss during the trailing 12 days (or whatever you set the trailing thingy to be in the Advanced tab), your BMI (that's pretty useful actually), your trend weight, which is just an average of your last 12 days (or whatever # you set it to), how much weight you've lost in the last 7 days and month, and when you can be expected to hit your target weight, which is about as useful as MFP's "here's how much you'll weigh in 5 weeks" feature. My expected date for being at goal weight has varied from April 2020 to June 2022 depending on the day.

If you swipe right, you'll get to some data that's a bit more interesting: your average calorie deficit over the past week, 15 days, month, three months, & six months. Now I do find that kinda useful, to ensure that my calorie deficit is remaining where I want it to be, relatively consistently. I've been on a 1,000 cal deficit for 6 months and I like it to stay pinned right around 1000. MFP shows me whether my food and exercise (CICO) is nailing that 1,000 target, but Libre shows me whether the scale results also reflect that 1,000 target, which over time they do (though not necessarily on any particular day or week).

Perhaps the most useful data point of all in Libre is on that second page, under "Database". It tells you how many days you've logged, and your total weight lost. If you simply divide total weight loss by total days, you'll get an average lbs per day lost. Multiple that by 3500 and you'll get your average calorie deficit during the entire period of your diet. Again, not a great epiphany, and there are other ways to figure out it, but Libre does make that data point conveniently accessible.

I did spend a few weeks futzing with the numbers in Libre and analyzing them, but then I got bored with it and realized that the MFP weight chart tells me what I need to know: is my weight going down? And is it going down about as fast as it should? MFP provides a decent bird's eye view. For real number crunching, I find it more informative and fun to go into Excel than Libre.

Nevertheless, I continue to update Libre every day, for what reason I have no idea. Back up data base of my weight data, maybe. I don't know why I continue using it, but I do.

That's extremely helpful. Thanks @AnnPT77 and @lgfrie .

I think the average losses aren't too bad, and I like having an easy way to see my weight trends (been using Libra for nearly 2 years now, so have a good bit of data to look back at). Understanding my weight pattern (regardless of what the app says) is what I find the most beneficial. Since I'm one of those prone to "wooshes" I like that I can see that pattern repeated over time, and helps keep me on track when it seems like I've 'plateaued.'

You can play with the numbers, I think I put mine on 14 days since my weight can fluctuate a fair bit from one day to the next.

I still record my daily weigh ins, and then average every week, in a spreadsheet I have as that still seems to give me a better idea of overall losses (or not) - the app is great for seeing trends, I like my spreadsheet to keep myself honest.

Cavallaro65 wrote: »

Excellent info, thank you. You can change the setting to 2 weeks instead of 1? I didn't know that.

Yup, you can choose any length of time you want I think, I found 14 days to be about right for me.