Dunston wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:
Dunston wrote:

What I'm curious about is
what sort of weight should I be losing per week?

The time scale for fat loss is month to month, not week to
week. Everyone hates this but hating it doesn't stop it
from being true.

Averaged from beginning to the start of maintenance, it
appears that 4 per month is the best rate for keeping it
off ...

You're doing fine. Early loss includes water ...

Ok thanks, I'm only a couple of weeks in so I'll check and see my
weight loss over the month.

What happens is two curves added together. One is a
gradual decline reflecting fat lost across the months.
The other is a wild daily up and down bounce of the body
storing and releasing carbs and the water the carbs are
stored in.

There are several approaches that use the scale in a
rational way. Getting on the scale daily and thinking
the number it gives reflects your current weight isn't
in the list. Only getting on the scale monthly is
probably an overreaction to the monthly time scale of
fat loss.

The problem with only weighing monthly is what if you
get the bottom of the water swing one month and then the
top if the water swing the next two months in a row.
You'll think you haven't lost anything in 3 months. It's
an overreaction. Simple compromise is to weigh weekly
with the mindset that progress is supposed to be monthly.
As time goes on that mindset gets easier to acheive but
some find it hard early on.

Arguably the best way to handle it is to use an arithmatic
smoothing formula. The simplist is to weigh 2 days in
a row and average them. From there on add today's weight
plus yesterday's average. Average those 2 numbers by
dividing by 2. Write that one down for tomorrow. This
makes the daily bounce of water have much less effect.
Even better is to use 3 or 4 in place of the 2's above to
get more gradual smoothing. There are very fancy formulas
that are a trivial improvement on this simple method.

One reason folks like to weigh weekly is to find out if
they are doing something wrong. By the time you're on
Maintenance that becomes important - It's easy to
gradually drift off you system and start gaining and
you don't want to be a month in before you catch it.
For folks on a published plan, though, if you actually
need a scale to tell whether you had a problem means you
didn't understand the written plan or you haven't
tracked what you've eaten. Who in their loss phase ever
cheats without knowing it? Problem is you don't mention
a published plan and folks who roll their own don't have
that sort of certainly to build upon.