The FastDay Forum

Firstly I have to say that the only time anyone has ever asked me my weight has been when hiring skis, and then I give a rough answer usually rounded down as the ajustment is in 5 kilo increments anyway.
I guess if someone asked me I wouldn't be very precise, I wouldn't say 63.5, 63.8 or 63.2 which are the high/low/average readings this week, I would probably just say around 63kg.

i like the method of saying only the first 2 digits, even if you hover in the 500 to 900g above that and if you were doing a proper rounding it would be 2 digits _ + 1

smaller is better in this case. it's a pride thing

I usually say how much I have lost- my actual weight is between me and the scales, nobody else's business!

Me too

This is something I've been thinking about recently. I have some new digital scales which weigh lower than my old ones and I can't help feeling pleased that I've lost the 'extra' weight even though I haven't at all. It's just a number, why should it matter?

What really matters is my well being, my new found energy and confidence in myself. Why do I wait until the morning after a fast, after I've been to the bathroom and before I even drink a sip of water before jumping on the scales? Who am I trying to impress? I'm just cheating on myself!

But I still do it!

The 'trendline' used in the Libra/Fatwatch/Hacker's Diet charts is an exponentially smoothed moving average ..... a weighted moving average in which the weight factors are powers of S, the smoothing constant. An exponentially smoothed moving average is computed over all the data accumulated so far instead of being chopped off after some number of days. For day d the exponentially smoothed moving average is:

EMA formula.jpg

Which looks absurdly complicated, excessively geeky nonsense ... however it's easy and very quick to calculate with simple addition/subtraction using pencil and paper ... don't even need an electronic calculator ...and even simpler just to use one of the apps. Also very easy to set up the formula in an excel spreadsheet

So it doesn't just add up, say, the last 10 days weigh-in values and divide by 10 to get an average weight (i.e. a simple 10 day moving average) ... it uses all the weigh-in values since you started but obviously puts far, far greater emphasis in the calculation on recent weight-ins and only a very very small allowance for weigh-ins several months previously.

Again, I emphasize it's very easy to use and is probably the best sort of 'trendline' to use for weight loss stuff because it's very forgiving if you go off track with a diet for a while i.e. if you're reasonably sensible it's not too difficult to keep daily weigh-ins below the trendline most of the time and even if you go off track for a couple of weeks it usually results in only a small blip in the trendline ... see one of my charts .......

excel week 20.1.jpg

If you're looking for a 'true weight' then I suggest you need to consider that, during a diet, the lower food and salt intake will result in the body retaining less fluid which results in a lower body weight than if eating normally on maintenance. It's probable that most people will put on a couple of pounds when they stop a diet and revert to their normal amount of fluid retention. I've found that when a diet stops then the weight usually increases up to about the trendline ... therefore I use the trendline value as my 'true weight'

Kencc

thanks for the explanation.

Is there a online Progress tracker anywhere that calculates the exponentially smoothed average? our in this forum doesnt. that would be useful. till then the simple 10 day moving average is best i can do in 2 minutes.

Can you do it retrospectively?

Also is that how the trend line on the tracker is calculated ?

Thanks Kencc given that our weight are fairly movable (hopefully down not up), could i say with reasonable accuracy that the simple moving 10 day average (sum of last 10 days weight divided by 10) would NOT be significantly different to the "more correct" method as mentioned by you and that works with https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/HackDiet/


I guess what i am saying is that seeing that the majority of this forum contributors would be(and i say this with respect) mathematically challenged by your formulae or also time challenged such that the "drudgery" of using more than one progress charts, that it's probably not worth theor effort and that we just use the simple moving average.

thank you for clarifying that!

I was thinking definitely I would use that online tool and/or calculate EMA's .. i was just wondering if it was significant, the difference and it appears it is.

thanks

What really matters is my well being, my new found energy and confidence in myself. Why do I wait until the morning after a fast, after I've been to the bathroom and before I even drink a sip of water before jumping on the scales? Who am I trying to impress? I'm just cheating on myself!

But I still do it!

Oh me too!

But I don't think of it as cheating myself, I think of it as harnessing the power of the irrational mind to my benefit . Low number makes me happy, low number helps me stick to WOL, so weigh-in shall be timed and scales shuffled round the floor and stepped on and off to get the lowest number possible. And since I always do that, the trend is unaffected (though the total loss is maybe just a tad over-stated )

I seem to be continuing to lose a bit on maintenance, and I am going to let that go on for a bit to build up a buffer. Then one day, I will step on the scales after a big meal, fully clothed and shod, and see I am still at goal and I'll know I have really truly done it. So I guess that's my definition of "true weight": what the world feels if I tread on its toe or sit on its lap!

kl

What really matters is my well being, my new found energy and confidence in myself. Why do I wait until the morning after a fast, after I've been to the bathroom and before I even drink a sip of water before jumping on the scales? Who am I trying to impress? I'm just cheating on myself!

But I still do it!

Oh me too!

But I don't think of it as cheating myself, I think of it as harnessing the power of the irrational mind to my benefit . Low number makes me happy, low number helps me stick to WOL, so weigh-in shall be timed and scales shuffled round the floor and stepped on and off to get the lowest number possible. And since I always do that, the trend is unaffected (though the total loss is maybe just a tad over-stated )

I seem to be continuing to lose a bit on maintenance, and I am going to let that go on for a bit to build up a buffer. Then one day, I will step on the scales after a big meal, fully clothed and shod, and see I am still at goal and I'll know I have really truly done it. So I guess that's my definition of "true weight": what the world feels if I tread on its toe or sit on its lap!

kl

What a wonderful way of putting it kl. I feeling like putting this in "posts to keep" somewhere. what you say is so so true

Then one day, I will step on the scales after a big meal, fully clothed and shod, and see I am still at goal and I'll know I have really truly done it. So I guess that's my definition of "true weight": kl

It may seem a bit off to be quoting myself! But funnily enough, the very day after writing that, I had a routine check-up where the nurse decided to weigh me - shoes and winter clothes and big breakfast and all! It did feel good to step on the scales in total confidence that the result would be nice number, and it was. It was about 3kg more than at my post-fast day/pre-breakfast/starkers/scale-shuffling home weigh-in the day before. So my true weight is still quite a bit over the magic 9 stone line, but comfortably under the magic 60 kg line.

(Isn't it nice that UK is semi-metric, so we Brits can have a choice of magic numbers!)

Its probably been written in this thread but having trouble finding it. My today problem is that im fixated on my getting to 69.9999 by Dec 25, being starter of the Christmas club. at the moment i only have time to use this boards progress tracker and the purple line seems too "high" . I do plan to in the summer holidays, to explore some other progress tracker though but for the moment its the purple line.

eg im nearly always below 70.6 in last 10 days yet progress tracker trend weight says 70.8 .. are my older weight recordings skewing it. - how exactly is the purple line calculated, and if the purple line only had 30 days to go by would it give a different figure for me.. as its using results since april now

a 10 day moving average would give me a lower trend weight which would make me slightly happier as i know then i only have say 400g to get to my goal not 800g and we all know how long an extra 400g can take.

help me to understand as i want to be brave and use trend weight not low weight as my rule for whether ive met my target

[carorees]

I assumed the progress tracker uses the line of best fit rather than a moving average?

it looks like good ol' y = mx + b to me. So it's fitting to a straight line.

The weight the "true weight" app gives me always looks high. The trend line seems to skim the top of my highest weights (well, maybe it cuts off the peaks, but there is definitely more area below the line than above.) I don't like it at all. I suppose if it's a weighted average, and you're losing weight, that is bound to happen. Maybe it makes more sense when you are maintaining...

@Moogie I think i read somewhere on the forum that you were reviewing the progress tracker. Is this correct cause i might supplement what i do with some external monitoring system but will refrain if you are changing anything.

line of best fit i guess may provide a higher trend weight than is "comfortable"

kencc's posts about smoothed moving averages 5-2-diet-chat-f6/what-actually-is-our-true-weight-low-median-high-avg-t9253-15.html#p112560 is what im referring to. i think he uses libra app https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ibra&hl=en

sound really good. how many here use it?