A graphical approach to weight loss tracking to minimize the effect of a setback

The following two things are true for me and (i assume) the majority of weight loss veterans:

1. Messing up one day turns into messing up the whole week turns into messing up several weeks because "now I won't show a week-to-week loss on sunday, so what does it matter what I'm doing the rest of the week?" Basically fatlogic but somehow it's easy to fall into this pattern of thinking
2. graphical illustration of my progress are useful in motivating me out of those setbacks. Being able to zoom out several months, not looking at week-to-week numbers going sideways but instead seeing a downward trend on the macro scale tends to bring me back on track wanting to continue this good trend.

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To anyone who has never considered a graphical illustration of their progress, I highly recommend it. Moreover I'm looking to try out a different method to try to minimize the effect of the setbacks as I have described them

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4-week SMA

Additionally to graphing my progress on a weekly basis, I will be adding a 4 week moving average graph to the chart. The idea behind this is to serve as a correction for those local extremes that we all see sometimes. gaining a pound from last week can discourage and cause a setback. Losing 4 pounds in a week can cause you assume that next weeks number will be a gain and cause a setback. A rolling average should smooth those extremes out and more clearly reflect the long-term downward trend, so by reducing the variance I'm seeing every week I'm reducing the intensity of the effect it has on my mood and consistency. Alternatively it would be an idea to weigh in every day and log the the average of all 7 values every week, then create a graph from those numbers over time.

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I'm hoping those methods can help me cheat my mind in a way and avoid the down phases where I tell myself that it doesn't matter anyway. I'd like to know if anyone has experiences with firstly the problem I laid out as well as trying to use those graphical tools and how it helped you. Please let me know

submitted by /u/JYossarian_22
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