Weight Loss Discussion Thread

[geraldc]

Belt's gone up another notch due to festive eating. Tried pulling it in notch before leaving home, the tightness restricted my breathing, and made my commute into work more hard going.

[DrMekon]

Another half kilo off. Spin class yesterday has left me feeling pretty drained. Struggled in to work in the cold this morning, but can't face 10km run at lunchtime in this weather. Cold to the core when I got in. Nethers defrosting is a very unpleasant sensation.

[Marmitegeoff]

Walking in to work today to try and get off this plateau.  102.8 for 5 days in a row now.

Geoff

[Butterfly]

Walking in to work today to try and get off this plateau.  102.8 for 5 days in a row now.

Geoff

5 days is a mini plateau!-  It'll soon start moving again

[citoyen]

I have the opposite problem - weight has been falling off me in the last few days like dieting is going out of fashion. Today's measurement is 2.2kg down since Saturday! But not in a good way - flu-related and mostly dehydration, I think. 

d.

[clarion]

Weighing in more often than weekly is within error, so it doesn't add much other than worry.

Dehydration/bloating/other temporary issues can all throw your figures out.

[Wowbagger]

During one spell of deliberate weight loss, I used to weigh myself daily on the inaccurate digital bathroom scales, record the results in a spreadsheet and then take a weekly average, which I assumed would iron out the vagaries of the scales, which, for any given weight, seem to have a collection of readings which vary by about 1.5kg.

[L CC]

I like daily readings. It doesn't really matter what it says but I like a daily reminder that I'm not there and need to think about it. The results are plotted in my Feature Rich life tracking spreadsheet and the important thing is where the trend line is on 1st May.
For me, I'm currently still sufficiently well motivated that a "good" reading spurs me on, and a "bad" one is a reminder that there's more work to be done. Although yes, it does make me grumpy, petulant and generally mardy. I'll probably go and grumpily jog round the block, do 10 minutes on the rower or pointlessly demonstrate my lack of upper body strength with someone's kettlebells.

/returns hungrily to lunch of soup & fruit

[clarion]

Yeah, I can see that.  Depends on your outlook.  I think I'd be put off disproportionately by minor 'setbacks'.

Today, I have to deal with the Significant Birthday of a Partner, and being expected (in a nice way) to partake of both cakes.

But I've added it up, and I'm still just on the right side of OK.  Might go for a lighter meal tonight, though

[Wowbagger]

But surely, when it's a partner's birthday, isn't there something energetic you can do together to burn off those excess calories?

Edit: or am I misunderstanding the word "partner"?

[clarion]

Partner, not partner.

[Auntie Helen]

I find knowing when to weigh myself a bit variable. I tend to do it 2-3 times per week and then get cast into a huge gloom when I've gone up a bit. Next day often if I weigh myself I'm loads less.

With regard to choosing when to note down my weight, basically when it's lower than the previous reading on MFP then I put it down. Such as today, when I had dropped 0.8kg, whereas when I weighed myself three days ago I had apparently put on 400g.

[Chris S]

I find knowing when to weigh myself a bit variable. I tend to do it 2-3 times per week and then get cast into a huge gloom when I've gone up a bit. Next day often if I weigh myself I'm loads less.

With regard to choosing when to note down my weight, basically when it's lower than the previous reading on MFP then I put it down. Such as today, when I had dropped 0.8kg, whereas when I weighed myself three days ago I had apparently put on 400g.

That's basically what I do - only record minimums. The rest is sometimes interesting, but usually not. There's no pattern to it - I can pig out (like today) and weigh less the next day. Equally I can thrash away at the gym, on the bike and so on, and weigh more.

Monthly weighing is probably best for seeing a trend, but if you're cocking up your regime, you can do a lot of damage to your waistline in that time.

[mcshroom]

I'll stick to Wednesday mornings, same time as the only recorded values. It equalises as many variables as possible for me.

Taking one reading out of context in any set of numbers is not a good idea, so I'll always assess my progress in a generally up or generally down trend rather than real numbers (despite my silly smileys on the weight reports threads ).

[simonp]

Findings from research into weighing frequency were that for every eleven extra times you weigh yourself, on average 1lb weight is lost.

Obviously it's not true to say that going and weighing yourself eleven times now will mean you lose 1lb tomorrow. I think people who are more motivated might weigh themselves more often; I also think that people who weigh themselves more often get more feedback.

If your weight fluctuates by up to 2kg through "noise" for want of a better term:

 - weigh yourself monthly, month 1, weight up 2kg. Just noise?
 - weigh yourself up again a month later, weight up 10kg from start. Only now you realise that in month 1 you'd gained 4kg but weighed on a "good" day, you've now put on 8kg (10kg - 2kg noise) before you realised there was a problem

The more frequently you weigh yourself the clearer the trend is, assuming the noise is truly random. In practice it's not, which means that daily weighing might be overkill.

[Marmitegeoff]

The more frequently you weigh yourself the clearer the trend is, assuming the noise is truly random. In practice it's not, which means that daily weighing might be overkill.

But I find that it helps with the motivation when the biscuit tin comes out at work.

Geoff

[Feline]

I weigh myself more when I am nekkid (but not wet). It varies how frequent this is!

[Butterfly]

I weigh myself on Wednesday morning before my cup of tea, nekkid. It gives me a pretty clear idea. If it is up a bit, it's probably traceable to a hormone shift, big meal the night before or constipation. I know if I'm fooling myself about those. However, if I weigh myself at other times, it fluctuates dramatically and I can end up thinking 'oh stuff it' and necking every bar of chocolate in the next shop I meet . It can vary by a kilo between morning and night. Keeping the time and conditions as predictable as possible gives the most reliable reading. Doing it weekly irons out the normal jumps that would depress me and shows the general trends.

(click to show/hide)

I went down 200g this morning because my poo was late and the first weight was before it.

TMI, I know

[clarion]

blah blah blah blah nekkid. blah blah blah blah

[SlowCoach]

I weigh myself every morning when I first get up. It's part of the routine so that I can maintain near identical conditions. Yes, I go up and down between weighings but at least i can see the trend and the Wednesday morning weight doesn't come as a total shock. I see a definite weekly pattern - I control my diet better at work because I've no opportunity to snack. I'm at my lowest on a Saturday morning and my highest on a Monday or Tuesday. I can spot the effects of a big meal some 24 to 48 hours later.

Weighing daily gives me the motivation to continue.  If the trend is on the downward slope I give myself a mental pat on the back and tell myself how well I'm doing and think what I'll manage if I can just continue. If it's level I can think about what I should be doing to get it sloping downwards again, and if it's up I give myself a boot up the arse and log a "must try harder". If I had to wait a week to find out if my efforts over the previous time period had been effective or not, I'd just give up at the first negative move.

The key thing which has helped me though, is not weighing myself, but weighing my food to control my portion size. It was a sobering thought to realise that my "50g" portion of muesli that I put out every morning was in fact, 200g+. Once I stop kidding myself, things tend to improve. I quite deliberately now eat off a smaller plate and use a smaller spoon and fork so a "plateful" isn't as much as it used to be, but it is still the same number of spoon/fork-fuls.

[citoyen]

+1 to pretty much all of that. I weigh myself daily but don't read anything into daily fluctuations, up or down - it's only longer-term trends that matter. And I've had a similarly eye-opening experience with weighing my food - I don't religiously weigh every meal but I've done it often enough that I now have a far more accurate idea of the size of my portions.

d.

[Notsototalnewbie]

Do you ever really fancy something, and give in, only to find it’s actually not as nice as you remembered, and then you’re left feeling vaguely guilty/cross with yourself in a way that you wouldn’t have been if you’d felt like the transgression was actually worth it?!

I must remember that sometimes the idea of something is nicer than the something itself.

[Butterfly]

Do you ever really fancy something, and give in, only to find it’s actually not as nice as you remembered, and then you’re left feeling vaguely guilty/cross with yourself in a way that you wouldn’t have been if you’d felt like the transgression was actually worth it?!

I must remember that sometimes the idea of something is nicer than the something itself.

Doughnuts. Mainly.

[Notsototalnewbie]

Not far off mine…yumyums that weren’t that yumyum… 

[citoyen]

Do you ever really fancy something, and give in, only to find it’s actually not as nice as you remembered, and then you’re left feeling vaguely guilty/cross with yourself in a way that you wouldn’t have been if you’d felt like the transgression was actually worth it?!

I had a slice of pecan pie from Leon this lunchtime. It was horrible. I suspect it was just a bad example of a pecan pie though, not that I've gone off pecan pies in general.

d.