Figure one.
Watching my weight seriously started in college. I wrestled - that meant making weight and maintaining muscle mass. The main thing I did was to drop calories while maintaining my protein intake - that was in addition to a balanced diet.
After college, it was several things that made me focus. These included mountaineering and appearance. Our species is built to survive famines. With this, keeping weight down has always been hard for most of us. That has been true for me, too. Along the way I've tried many of the "sensible" diets that were popular at any given time. I ate almost no fat as the nineties started and zoned out as they ended. Most recently, I went low carb. That was a few years ago. At this time, I have reverted to my youth and made weight for wrestling. I'm keeping my calories down and protein up.
The one thing that has given me some leg room is I have always enjoyed aerobic exercise. I've worn through one Nordic Track and am on my second.
Of course, all of this required being able to measure my weight accurately.
One of the most important aspects of dieting is we tend to lie to ourselves. I think that's the big reason people who log what they eat lose weight a lot faster than those who don't. It keeps us honest. I have never logged what I ate. Lord knows how many times I've thought I'll eat less a few days later and failed.
The problem with daily weighing is our weights fluctuate a lot. A weekly weighing is much more consistent.
Fortunately, standard data analysis has an answer. The technique used for data that fluctuates a lot is averaging. For body weight, that has the double benefit of incorporating more information and keeping us honest. The one downside is that averages from dates that are within seven days are mathematically correlated. That is that any weighing that shows up in two averages affects those averages. Moreover, the effect will be qualitatively the same. A light weight will reduce both averages. A heavy weight will increase both averages. Averages that are more than a week apart are also correlated, but that's because weight doesn't change rapidly. That's a physical correlation.
I settled on a seven day running average of daily weights. That is the average of seven days and I make it daily. Each day, I lose one day and add another to the calculation. This algorithm means that consecutive days are extremely correlated. My protocol for weighing myself has varied some, but it has always been about getting consistent weights right after I wake up each morning.
With this, my weight generally made sense. That is with one notable exception. There were way too many times when I over-ate and had a good week weight-wise followed by a bad week. As time passed and I grew older, one week became two. That was annoying. Still, I lived with it. However, I never really made a measurement. That was until now.
There is a standard mathematical analysis technique. It uses a "Green's Function" to determine what a system is doing. Basically, pulse the system and see what happens.
A particularly good opportunity for me to pulse my system came at my niece's wedding. In way of background, all the males in my family have had an easy time eating a lot of food. The great meatball competition had each of us approaching 20 when my parents said stop and put a 15 meatball limit down. All three of us could do that in our sleep. I can still binge painlessly. At the wedding, I lost track of how many pieces of garlic bread I had. That was in addition to a good sized meal. Then, after making sure they wouldn't run out of chocolate cake, I had five pieces. Keep in mind this was a particularly rich chocolate cake. My niece and sister have very good taste. Finally, I visited a friend's house the next day and had an extremely calorie rich dinner. After this, I watched my calories carefully.
Figure one shows what happened. The red pulse is my porking out at Lani's wedding and the meal at Anne's. Nothing happened for a full two weeks. Then my weight jumped. That scared me as it was right before my annual physical exam. The exam was scheduled for Oct. 1. The jump was on Sept. 26. That was four days after the two weeks I guessed would be there. It was a big relief when my weight dropped. That was Monday morning. My physical was Tuesday.
My best guess is that the delay was about a week when I moved to Seeley Lake in the early 2000s and has gotten longer as I've aged. It may have been a day or two when I was in college, but not a lot more. All of which is annoying - welcome to growing old - but extremely useful. The fact that I shouldn't expect any changes for more than two weeks after I start doing something different is critical to determining if whatever it is I am doing actually works.
And, for the record, it's still about data analysis. In my life, I've never found a data set I haven't enjoyed playing with. Sue me, I'm a nerd.
Rob Loveman received his PhD in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Washington in 1984. He moved to Seeley Lake in 2003 to learn how to run sled dogs.
Reader Comments(0)