Daily weight variation on the diet - part II

I've been trying to weigh myself first thing on a Saturday morning. As soon as I get up and have my first pee of the day, it's time to get on the scales. That's the routine, and I keep that consistent from week to week.

I always weigh myself first thing on a Saturday and that is the gold standard weight.

If you look at the graph though, you may notice a few more points on there recently. Well, those were just motivational; something to help me stay focussed and get back on track after the various dieting holiday binges.

However, the fact remains, it's Saturday first thing that counts.

Okay, so, you get the picture, the Saturday first thing weight is the one I care about, but why? Simply because I need to have a fixed point of reference that tells me how much weight I've lost in a week. This diet is all about the long-term, but without short-term goals and progress updates, how will I know how I'm doing? There needs to be some short-term monitoring to make the long-term bit happen.

A week seemed like a good compromise. It's a long enough period of time to have a binge eating/drinking day (or two), but leave sufficient days to make up for that, but not so long that things can really get away from me and leave me with little chance of recovery (diet holidays excluded of course!).

Daily, or even every couple of days seemed just too frequent for me, the weight could end up just popping up after a binge, then down, and I'd end up obsessing over the little details.

So, that covers the whole weekly thing, but why is the time of day so important?

How much does your weight change during the day?

Yours? I don't know, but I can find out how much my weight changes during the day. And I did. Every day for seven days, I weighed myself four times a day: waking, just before leaving for work, when I got home from work, and just before bed. On Saturday and Sunday, the just before leaving for work and getting home from work times were substituted for after breakfast and after dinner.

I recorded the results, and plotted this graph:

Wow, looks like there's quite a lot of variation there, doesn't it? On Saturday, certainly, that's a rise of a good few pounds. No doubt the result of drinking many, many cups of coffee, possibly after being dehydrated following wine the night before?

A good diet day on Friday though, if somewhat unsatisfying.

With the exception of those two days, while there are some changes let's put them in perspective. For starters, look at the y axis. It doesn't start at 0. Whenever you see a graph, always check the axes first, having a y axis that doesn't start at 0 is one of the easiest ways to mislead your audience and make changes look more striking than they may actually be.

Let's look again after starting that axis at 0:

Not quite as striking now, is it? That Saturday was a 3900 calorie day, so you might expect my weight to increase throughout the day. Thursday was a 4050 calorie day, so that covers that big rise.

The Friday was a 300 calorie day: 50 calories of milk with my morning coffee, and 250 calories of wine in the evening, so you'd expect my weight to come down during the day.

Generally, then, if I eat a 'normal' amount, I weigh one or two pounds more at the end of the day than I do when I first get up. When you consider the amount of food and liquid that goes into me over the course of a day, that's not really much of a change in percentage terms. However, when you're talking about trying to lose a pound or two a week, that variation becomes a significant source of noise.

Hence the common point of reference: the Saturday morning weigh-in.

Day 84 - 750 calories

Breakfast
Cereal bar (150)

Lunch
Chorizo slices (250)

Dinner
Ham sandwich (150)
Beer (200)

Exercise
90m walking
2x 2.25m planks

Day 85 - 4950 calories

Breakfast
3x ham sandwich (400)

Lunch
Mixed grill (1400)
3 pints beer (750)
Brownie and ice cream (1000)
Almond croissant (350)

Dinner
Chicken and bacon pasta (350)
Sticky toffee pudding and cream (700)

Exercise
90m walking
2.25m plank

Day 86 - 2300 calories

Breakfast
Leftover toast (100)

Lunch
Triple chicken sandwich (650)

Dinner
Wine (850)
Venison burger (150)
Mushrooms (50)
Pasta (500)

Exercise
2x 2.25m planks
90m walking

Day 87 - 3000 calories

Breakfast
Toast (200)
Leftover Weetabix (50)

Lunch
Curry (1250)
3x pints beer (750)

Dinner
Toast (100)
Leftover pizza (100)
Ice cream (250)
Beer (300)

Exercise
2.25m plank
60m walking

Day 88 - 2650 calories

Breakfast
Leftover toast and Weetabix (100)
Ham sandwich (150)
Slice of Rocky Road (500)

Lunch
Venison burger and mushrooms (200)
Cheese sandwich (150)
2x Jaffa Cake bars (200)

Dinner
Beer (300)
Venison burger and mushrooms (200) 
2x Jaffa Cake bars (200)
Wine (650)

Exercise
60m walking

Day 89 - 3900 calories

Breakfast
3x slices toast (300)
Milk (50)
2x slices toast and jam (400)
2x hot cross buns (500)

Lunch
Chicken and vegetable stir fry (250)
Slice of cake (200)
9x Jaffa Cake bars (900)

Dinner
2x beers (600)
Chicken curry, rice and naan (500)
Toast and jam (200)

Exercise
2x 2.25m plank
45m walking