Daily percent change in your weight

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan I was very pleasantly surprised to see that my weight was exactly the same as when I left, particularly since the last 22 days of the trip was on board cruise ships.

That is no small feat. I still remember gaining 10 lbs in 7 days on a trip to St. Thomas with the first wife. And I was 28 then. All those restaurant meals and I enjoyed them all to the max....

[Alan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 That is no small feat. I still remember gaining 10 lbs in 7 days on a trip to St. Thomas with the first wife. And I was 28 then. All those restaurant meals and I enjoyed them all to the max....

When I left High School I got a job as a traveling baker selling bread, cakes, pastries etc. My dream job as an 18 year old. When I left 13 weeks later I was 21lbs heavier, going from 161lbs to 184 (I also had more money than I'd ever seen so consumed lots of beer at the pubs out with my mates as we all knew we'd be going our different ways to college).

It was a great summer

[Lsbcal]

Is there any way to determine one's ideal weight?

I was about right (I think) 10 years ago. Since then I've gained 5%. Does that make me overweight? There is a little bulge at the midriff but I still wear the same size pants comfortably. Maybe a little bulge is quite natural for a 60+ male who exercises regularly.

On a scale of 1 to 10, my guess is I'm a "1" on the concerns of being overweight.

Oops, looking at the thread title I guess this is thread drift. My max variation on a daily basis is maybe 2% at most.

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan I was very pleasantly surprised to see that my weight was exactly the same as when I left, particularly since the last 22 days of the trip was on board cruise ships.

But cruise ships are known for weight loss. It's a by-product of norovirus.

[JakeBrake]

I lost 5 pounds this morning after 2.5 hours behind my walk-behind mower in 90 degree heat. That would be about 2.5% body weight for me.

My mower mows at 4.5 MPH, so that should be about 9 miles walking.

I enjoyed it so much that I saved some for tomorrow.

This is my exercise. I do have a real tractor that's like driving a modern car.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JakeBrake This is my exercise. I do have a real tractor that's like driving a modern car.

... with A/C?

[AnIntentionalRoad]

I think the amount of sodium in my diet causes my weight to vary significantly on a daily basis, 3 lbs is not unusual.

[braumeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lsbcal Is there any way to determine one's ideal weight?

I think dallas27 pretty well nailed it:

Quote:

Word of advice, weight doesn't matter, the mirror is 1000 times more useful in measuring health.

[springnr]

Ever cringe upon hearing; do I look fat, am I getting heavier….
Do you think either the one asking or being ask needs the service of a scale? The fascination to repetitively quantify with mechanical devices the already known is interesting.

[mpeirce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by springnr The fascination to repetitively quantify with mechanical devices the already known is interesting.

One reason we track weight is because it's easy. Similarly, taking your temperature when you are sick is easy, but not especially useful.

It's only going to get "worse" as Apple and Google roll out health/medical monitoring systems for their phones.

Along with wearable monitors and people will be tracking all sorts of things since it will all be easy now.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantified_Self

[imoldernu]

When I become concerned about gaining, I just stand on my tip toes, on the scale, and all is well again. If I've gained too much, I just stand on one foot.
Carrying a gallon of water, puts me over the scale limit of 300lbs.

Hey Walt34!... If I lost half of my weight, I'd feel weak... if you lost the same amount, you wouldn't be here.

Only kidding... am kinda big, but not that big.

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by braumeister I think dallas27 pretty well nailed it: Quote: Word of advice, weight doesn't matter, the mirror is 1000 times more useful in measuring health.

Well, actually I don't totally agree with this. I do agree with it to a point.

That is, I do think that body composition as a whole is more important simply looking at BMI (or at weight). Some people can indeed be overweight according to BMI, but have an ideal body composition (% of fat) while another person might be "normal weight" according to BMI and be very fat by body composition.

Also, weight does not necessarily equal health. That is, someone may be overweight and have few health problems, while someone else might have a lot of health problems. Here is a staging system that I think does a good job of assessing this:

Edmonton Obesity Staging System | Dr. Sharma's Obesity Notes

But -- I do have problems with the just look in the mirror advice:

1. How you subjectively think you look in the mirror is not necessarily reflective of health or of obesity-related complications. The staging system above addresses this. Two people might look the same in the mirror (in terms of being overweight), but one might have obesity-related complications and health problems while the other one might not. You can't tell these just be seeing the person in the mirror.

2. There are tons of people who need a more objective measurement than just subjectively looking in the mirror. I've been working on losing weight (down 41 pounds currently with 19 to go). I write a weight loss blog and visit tons of other blogs and take part in a weight loss forum.

There are lots and lots of people who cannot subjectively determine whether they need to lose weight for health reasons or not. Men are much more likely to think they look fine, when in reality they are obese. (And, I am not talking about guys who are weightlifters with low body fat. I'm talking about guys who have a high body fat percentage).

Some women think they are "fat" when they look in the mirror when they are at a very normal, healthy weight. They compare themselves to models and have no clue as to what is actually normal, healthy weight.

The point is that looking in the mirror is very subjective and doesn't necessarily reflect someone's real health situation.

3. When losing weight, the feedback from the mirror is nice, but is too slow to really help with telling you if there is progress going on. I had lost 20 pounds before I could really see a difference in the mirror. Even now, having lost 41 pounds, I can still tell in the mirror I need to lose more and I can't tell all that much difference. So, the mirror isn't very useful feedback for me. If I have a week and I lose 1 pound that is incredibly motivating to me. However, I can't see that difference in the mirror at all.


Now -- if I was at my normal weight and was working on body composition -- then looking at the mirror would be very useful for me. But, as one of the majority of people who need to lose weight (not just improve body fat), I get a benefit from actually weighing myself. Although, that is not the only information I look at.

[Chuckanut]

I read somewhere that we burn about 70% of our calories just existing - breathing, pumping blood, warming the body, etc. That would seem to tilt us towards a lower weight in the morning since we are still burning a lot of calories, but probably haven't eaten for 8-12 hours.

[NW-Bound]

It is true that we lose weight overnight, even in the pre-geezer days when we did not have to wake up to go to the bathroom. We are constantly breathing out CO2 and H2O. The carbon in that CO2 and some of that hydrogen come from metabolizing food. We also lose moisture by breathing it out. I remember reading somewhere we lose more than 1 lb of carbon overnight.

[Telly]

Just some technical bits about electronic scales - In my consultant days, I designed an electronic office scale for a well-known scale company.

Had to teach myself quick about Load Cells. A Load Cell is a rectangular block of material, usually aluminum, that has two large holes machined through its wide face. The holes overlap, or have a channel cut between them. On the wide face are mounted four small strain gauges, connected in a bridge configuration to maximize the electrical output. The load is applied to one end of the cell, the other end attaches to the support. The deformation of the block through the holes is detected by the strain gauges. The electrical output is in the millivolt range, and is amplified then digitized. Software converts the digital output to the displayed output via a look-up table as the basic method.

Load Cells have a memory effect, a creep, I can't remember the proper term for it. When the scale is not in use, the weight of the pan is on it. Turning it on, one can zero it, or an auto-zero may be done by software. All this does is move a pointer in the table entry.
The "zeroing" can also be used to Tare. The user then puts the object on to be weighed, and reads the scale output. The longer the load is on the scale, and the heavier the load is as a percentage of maximum, the more "set" the load cell will retain when the load is removed. When the load is removed, the load cell will not immediately go back to its TRUE zero-load point. If it has not been overloaded, it will drift back in time. This is a mechanical effect of load cells, not electronic.

A load cell with minimal set memory is a more expensive load cell. A cheap one can set quite a bit. Software algorithms can cover-up a cheaper load cell, many users may not notice for their use.

I think the only scale type that would not exhibit any kind of set memory would be a true balance scale.

Oh, about the care and feeding of digital load cell scales - Don't leave loads on them, don't store stuff on top of them, and keep them upright, don't stand them on their side for storage. And don't overload or shock-overload them. They will "appear" to be all right, but a permanent tiny deformation created in the load cell will always be there, and it will introduce a non-linearity that was never intended by the developers. A resulting fixed-offset can be "zeroed" away, but not the created non-linearity.

[Chuckanut]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telly it will introduce a non-linearity that was never intended by the developers.

Thanks for an enlightening lesson. True Geek stuff! It's always amazing to find out how things really work.

But, I am fearful of the non-linearity effect.
I think Dr. Who once saved the earth from a non-linearity that was threatening to disrupt time and send us all into non-exisistence. So, please treat your bathroom scales very well.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckanut I think Dr. Who once saved the earth from a non-linearity that was threatening to disrupt time and send us all into non-exisistence. So, please treat your bathroom scales very well.

Yes, those non-linearityies are nasty stuff, only to be used by professionals and not amateurs. And certainly not at home.

[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dallas27 Since we've derailed.... The majority of your body is parasitic and symbiotic organisms that you cannot live without. Furthermore, at the atomic level, each atom is 99.999% empty space. "You" are much less than you believe. Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

I would sure like to see some citations on that one!

Ha

[Lsbcal]

I've wondered about that picture of an atom being mostly empty space. Modern models view electrons, for instance, as charge clouds. They are point particles but cannot be located (Heisenberg uncertainty) exactly in that cloud. Maybe a bit like a rapidly spinning propeller ... the propeller's spacial volume is hardly "empty".

[scrinch]

Here and
here and
here and
here.

When we talk about "empty space", we are in our minds contrasting that with "filled space" that has matter in it. But our conception of the matter that fills the space isn't really very robust. Matter has properties of mass and charge and weak and strong forces within it, but what properties of matter actually reflects volume in the subatomic space-filling sense? Our minds are asking a macroscopic question about microscopic stuff. Kind of like, "what color is a neutron?" The robot in Lost in Space said it well....does not compute.