Trends

News Flash:  I've officially arrested my upward trend on weight!

This is not unexpected, since I've slashed the carbs mightily for several days. Typically, I'll see a quick drop of several pounds when I do that, and I know it's water.  It's still big news, however, as this trend has been underway for a while. And, it's water, but it's water throughout my body, and already there is a difference in how the clothes feel.  Because it's water, it can go back on just as quickly, but it's still very reinforcing to see.

Trendweight is an awesome free website for those of us who have automatic wi-fi connected scales and weigh ourselves daily (and who don't mind having a random individual who set up the website to amuse himself and benefit others have access to your data).  It uses an engineering formula for damping oscillations in readings to establish the underlying trend.  So presto, with my doing no work beyond stepping on the scale each morning, I get awesome graphs and a reading on the trend available to me.

The individual diamonds are the actual scale readings each day, and the line shows the computed underlying "true" weight. The formula weights the most recent measurements heavier than the older ones, but the older ones matter, so even though my scale and computed weight has been going down for a few days, the formula predicted each day that my weight would continue to increase in the future - until today.

Here is a screen shot of the past four weeks, that includes the trend line I see on the screen.  The dotted line showing the projection is absolutely flat, not going down, but until today it was going up.

The website also gives helpful stats automatically, good reminders.  It calculates how many calories I must be burning versus eating - the effective calorie imbalance - using the established formula of 3500 calories deficit equals one pound lost.  It doesn't measure calories in or calories out - but instead says "you must be in this imbalance or your weight change wouldn't be what it is".  This overcomes many objections to the "calorie is a calorie" debate - it just reports what is the outcome.

Then oh-so-helpfully it predicts when you'll achieve your goal weight at the current rate of progress.  You are all invited to my goal weight celebration on July 10, 2095.  Be there or be square. Ice cream will be served.