30-day slope won, not scale

2026-10-07 10:44

My spreadsheet runs a 30-day rolling average on the weight column, and that line just crossed a threshold I'd been circling since last fall. The daily number is loud and useless — 2.4 lbs of swing between Tuesday and Thursday this week, almost certainly sodium plus a late lifting session. The slope shrugged it off.

What actually correlates with a good slope for me: sleep over 7 hours, protein north of 130g. Steps barely register, which contradicts basically everything I've read. I keep eleven columns and only five earn their place.

Contrarian habit I'll defend: I stopped weighing after workouts. Post-lift I'm always 1.5-2 lbs lighter from sweat, and it flatters the log in a way that feels like cheating. Morning, post-bathroom, same window every day. That's the only entry I trust.

Anyone else have a metric they expected to matter that turned out to be noise in their own data?

2026-10-18 12:10

Fellow spreadsheet nerd here. I added two columns: “travel day” and “hotel scale,” because those scales clearly have moods.

My 30-day slope only respects Monday/Friday home weights; airport food court sodium is just comic relief. Sharp follow-up: do you log sodium or just infer it from the bounce?

I started tagging “late flight” and “restaurant dinner,” and the next-morning bump is almost a running joke. What else actually correlates for you—sleep, steps, or, uh, bathroom timing? 😂

2026-10-19 16:26

I run a 7-day median next to my 30-day slope — the mean gets dragged around by those 2.4 lb spikes, the median just sits there and smirks. What actually broke my refresh habit was counting new lows per month instead of watching the threshold. Good month: 4–6.

Flat month: zero, and that's my cue it's water or a hard week, not a real stall. One warning though — the slope lags hard after any change.

Mine took nearly three weeks to register a shift I'd made back in spring, which had me doubting the change way too early. Did you try a 14-day window first, or go straight to 30?