Libra app calculations

I use 28 days for the smoothing setting (and 42 for the forecast, but I think the forecast is less important).

The longer the period you choose, the smoother your trend will look. The downside is that choosing a high number of days will also cause you to notice an upward trend with more of a delay.
But with a shorter number of days, you're more likely to get 'false' upticks in your trend.

I chose a setting with 28 days because, from my experience, it corresponds quite well with actual loss, I only get occasional 'false' upticks with extra salty meals or other exceptional circumstances.

PPS (sorry, I'm distracted 😛) it will also depend on your weight loss rate. I was aiming for slow weight loss (0.5lbs per week) which means weight fluctuations would more easily meal my weight loss, hence the longer smoothing period.

I used 14/14 when losing and now 30/30 in maintenance. I don't have large weight fluctuations, though, even with salt or higher eating days (less than 2 lbs except for a few occasions due to meds or injury).

HylesGallii wrote: »

Well the primary reason I was asking @AnnPT77 was that I was recommended this app to see how my calorie goal for the weight at which I wanted to lose (-0.5lbs a week) differs from the suggested calorie goal MFP has given me.

I'd do this using my rate of loss from the app, which does change depending on my smoothing days. Not a huge amount, but as I'm going for such a slow rate of loss that can make a difference. Which is why I figured I would ask, because not only this but with less days for smoothing there are large fluctuations in this rate which would affect how I go about implementing it.

Does that make sense?

Yes, the goals do. I'm not as convinced on the methodology. If you're going off the slope of the graph, or the trend data points, or something, maybe.

@Lietchi's right, about the bottom of the screen. I think that part is dumb. The 7 day/month/etc. numbers there seem to be just a comparison of those periods' start/end scale weights, which isn't reasonable. (It's not the only thing about Libra that I think is dumb, but nothing's perfect.)

The people who really care about adjusting intake semi-frequently (once a month or more, quicker is silly IMO, especially at a slow loss rate) - they run a spreadsheet customized to the purpose. If I wanted to do that, I'd take that approach. (I don't want to. I'm lazier than that.)

So, I never did that. I didn't have Libra when I was first losing, but got it about halfway to goal. At that point, I was losing as fast as I wanted to, didn't need to adjust. Maintenance tracking is a different game. More recently, shooting for a very slow (re-)loss in what was mostly maintenance, I didn't care how slow the loss was as long as it mostly happened, had a good handle on my calorie requirements with/without exercise, so I didn't rely on Libra for calculating adjustments. I just followed what long history/experience told me was going to work, no matter what the scale or Libra did.

There was at least a month during that (re-)loss of a few vanity pounds where Libra thought I was maintaining, sometimes even gaining, when I was pretty sure my calorie intake was as needed (but I'd recently resumed strength training, which always adds a couple of pounds of water weight for me). Sure enough, the expected super-slow loss showed up eventually, once that slooooooow fat loss emerged from the eclipse of weight-training water weight gain.

I'm sure that at some point, if I kept not losing, and Libra kept saying I wasn't losing, I would've questioned my calorie goal, but a month or month and a half wasn't enough to trigger that, with 5 years or so of logging experience under my belt (heh). My (over)confidence sustained me, and the confirmation I was right came soon enough to make things work out.

YMMV - and I think you're in a somewhat different situation than I've ever been in. Betting you can make things work though!

Like AnnPT77, I only started using Libra well into my weight loss journey. I use a spreadsheet to calculate my (rolling) TDEE, but you can just do a quick check without a spreadsheet too.

Add up your calorie intake for a given period (preferably a month or more). Add to that 3500 calories for every lb you've lost: you can use your Libra trend weight for that (in the database next to your weigh-ins). And then divide that by the number of days of the period you chose.
For a weight loss rate of 0.5lbs per week, you'd subtract 250 calories from that number.