Suddenly got problems with the 5wk weight prediction

vickyalison61
vickyalison61 Posts: 20 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm maintaining my weight, Ive eaten the exact same meals daily for yrs. They're healthy and I enjoy them and never get bored of them. I check 5wk weight prediction every day and it's always around the same weight prediction. Today the same meal has gone up to an 11pound gain in 5wks. I've clicked back over the weeks and they've all now changed to 11lb gain 😳 how can this have changed overnight? Surely the app must be playing up, I'm now hesitant to use it and I've been on here many years 😩 has it happened to anyone else? I hope it's just a glitch 🤞 I hope someone can shed some light on this 😊

Replies

  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,210 Member
    Probably a glitch. I wouldn’t worry about it
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,155 Member
    If it's that sudden it probably is a glitch or there was a data entry problem somewhere, but to be honest I would not rely on the five week prediction as an indicator of anything beyond a vague trend, even if you have very consistent meals. The best predictor will be the relationship between your weight trend and total calories.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,412 Member
    Stuff like this "breaks" all the time for me on this site. It usually automagically fixes itself in a day or two. They are constantly tweaking things on the coding side and sometimes they accidentally do something that doesn't work. That's the problem with live-testing.

    That "in five weeks" thing is just a gimmick anyway. I suppose for someone like you who eats exactly the same every day it might be a little more accurate...but for me eating the same thing every day would be agony. I eat 25-30 different fruits and vegetables a week, about 12 different animal proteins, nuts, various oils, and multiple grains and legumes.

    How do you get all your various nutrients??
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,228 Member
    There is currently a glitch that showed up about four or five days ago. Maybe three. On the landing page I get to when I log onto the website, it has a crazy crazy number for my exercise calories. I've submitted a support ticket, and staff are trying to fix it. This very glitch happened a while ago, and eventually they fixed it.

    For the most part, you can just ignore that little thing that pops up when you close your diary.
  • vickyalison61
    vickyalison61 Posts: 20 Member
    mtaratoot wrote: »
    There is currently a glitch that showed up about four or five days ago. Maybe three. On the landing page I get to when I log onto the website, it has a crazy crazy number for my exercise calories. I've submitted a support ticket, and staff are trying to fix it. This very glitch happened a while ago, and eventually they fixed it.

    For the most part, you can just ignore that little thing that pops up when you close your diary.

    Thanks so much for that, hopefully this is just a glitch too 🤞 it's very disheartening when it seems you're actually putting weight on, after maintaining so long. 11 pounds is a big difference 😳
  • vickyalison61
    vickyalison61 Posts: 20 Member
    cmriverside wrote: »
    Stuff like this "breaks" all the time for me on this site. It usually automagically fixes itself in a day or two. They are constantly tweaking things on the coding side and sometimes they accidentally do something that doesn't work. That's the problem with live-testing.

    That "in five weeks" thing is just a gimmick anyway. I suppose for someone like you who eats exactly the same every day it might be a little more accurate...but for me eating the same thing every day would be agony. I eat 25-30 different fruits and vegetables a week, about 12 different animal proteins, nuts, various oils, and multiple grains and legumes.

    How do you get all your various nutrients??

    Hi, thanks for letting me know that it usually rectifies itself 🤞 I get all my nutrients through, fresh chicken breasts, fresh prawns, eggs etc, also many different fruits, veggies, potatoes and salads, as well as nuts and wholewheat tortillas or pasta 😊
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,228 Member
    vickyalison61 wrote: »
    mtaratoot wrote: »
    There is currently a glitch that showed up about four or five days ago. Maybe three. On the landing page I get to when I log onto the website, it has a crazy crazy number for my exercise calories. I've submitted a support ticket, and staff are trying to fix it. This very glitch happened a while ago, and eventually they fixed it.

    For the most part, you can just ignore that little thing that pops up when you close your diary.

    Thanks so much for that, hopefully this is just a glitch too 🤞 it's very disheartening when it seems you're actually putting weight on, after maintaining so long. 11 pounds is a big difference 😳

    Do you use a weight-trend tool? Day-to-day variation is nuts. You can't let that get into your head. Weight loss (or even maintenance) is not linear. There's lots of things that affect the number on the scale aside from fat. If you haven't yet, check out The Hacker's Diet, and especially the section on Signal and Noise.

    There are some good online tools that will let you input daily weights and they will show your trend. One I like that, unfortunately doesn't let you input your weight directly is TrendWeight. You have to either have a FitBit that syncs with the FitBit site or, like me, get a free FitBit account and put daily weights in there manually. I also use WeightGrapher. One thing that it also has is the trend line from 28 days ago. This can be helpful for women who menstruate; if you see an uptick you can see if you had a similar shaped one a month ago and KNOW that it's just water retention.

    Finally, I created a spreadsheet that I'm letting people copy. It will calculate a weighted moving average weight, and you can tinker around with the "scaling factor" to change how far back it looks. It also has some graphs that show scale weight, trending weight, and a simple ten-day moving average so you can see how they can be different. I added a new couple pages for people who only weigh weekly. I really encourage daily weighing, but some people like weekly. I am happy to share a link to that Google document if it would be useful to you. It might help you be comfortable with the daily swings.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,168 Member
    vickyalison61 wrote: »
    I'm maintaining my weight, Ive eaten the exact same meals daily for yrs. They're healthy and I enjoy them and never get bored of them. I check 5wk weight prediction every day and it's always around the same weight prediction. Today the same meal has gone up to an 11pound gain in 5wks. I've clicked back over the weeks and they've all now changed to 11lb gain 😳 how can this have changed overnight? Surely the app must be playing up, I'm now hesitant to use it and I've been on here many years 😩 has it happened to anyone else? I hope it's just a glitch 🤞 I hope someone can shed some light on this 😊

    Don't let some widget on the internet have power over your psychological well-being. Never, ever.

    You have enough data to know what the outcome of your habits will be, and you're saying those habits haven't changed. (I believe you in your circumstances, though I admit sometimes I don't believe inexperienced people who say similar things. ;) )

    With your experience and the data you have, rational science and common sense are much, much better guide than some silly internet algorithm. You have ample real-life empirical data. Your weight has been stable on this routine a long time.

    Repeat: Don't let internet doo-dads mess with your mind (or your happiness!) when you know better.

    P.S. The "in 5 weeks" has never worked for me, from day 1. (This is now day 2746 on MFP.)

    Why? Because I'm a bit of a statistical outlier in terms of calorie needs for my demographic. Once I realized that (a month or so in) and adjusted my calorie goal based on solid personal data, I ignored the "in 5 weeks". I've maintained my weight in a healthy range for around 7 years anyway.

    Personal data rules. Internet doo-dads estimate, and can have bugs besides (and I say that as someone who spent 30 years as an IT professional).

    Don't attribute deep insight to computer code that some probably fresh-out-of-tech-school programmer wrote. It just looks magical sometimes. It isn't.

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