Trying to lose weight. How do you stop yourself from snacking?

[badaids]

I seriously do not get the mantra some people have of not weighing yourself, or not weighing yourself regularly.

I weigh myself every day and record it in an app. For me it's absolutely essential to do this, to track the trend and get an accurate picture of my long-term progress.

Yes this is what I do.  I even weigh myself the same time every day as much as I can and plot it in a graph.  It really does help you understand what works and doesn't work for you in terms of diet and exercise. It's what really proved to me the bread is awful for the old weight, and that running is the best for me.

[Head Gardener]

Could you tell us how to do that?

Eating porridge is like giving oral sex - it's fine most of the time if you don't think too much about it but there is the occasional urgh fuckin hell on that psychological tightrope.  Five minutes in the pan and I think it's good stuff with Quaker Rolled Oats.  A scattering of chilli flakes (recommended here recently in other porridge chat) and a few chunky salt crystals.

Mrs HG Googled farms offering porridge (this may be easier in Scotland as they are a bit obsessed with it up here) and found a farm offering big sacks, it apparently worked out cheaper than buying it from a wholefood shop. I went along the first time to pick it up and the farmer took me to a big barn where there was a conveyor belt with the oats all rolled (or whatever the fuck they do to them to turn them into porridge oats) and they just fell into a big sack held by a buxom young lass (I was probably just there on a lucky day). With no fuss she threw it across her shoulder dropped it in my boot and I remember asking at that point if I could pay by card she said no and not to worry just drop the cash in next time I was there and I'd never even been there before, they just trusted me! Naturally I went back a day later with £50 for the 20 kilos which easily lasts us 6 months.
The extras like frozen berries/Greek yoghurt are usually from Farm Food (our supermarket of choice) and honey comes from a local farm, again bought in bulk when it's in season.

[Capt.Midnight]

How do you know if you're losing weight?

I look physically thinner? I guess this does depend on your current size/state of health. I had excess fat around the belly and face. But once I get to that stage of looking in-shape and a little lean, I'm pretty much content.

[TrenterPercenter]

Strip down the carbs and sugar (apart from meal times) and up the protein.  Snacking is also habitual so swap it for something else drinking water something low carbs to no spike things.  Then eat properly at meal times its really just about training your body a new set of habits (that I am terribly at doing myself).

[Magnum Valentino]

How do you know if you're losing weight?

You'll see and feel it. Clothes sit better, less breathlessness playing with the kids etc

[popcorn]

You'll see and feel it. Clothes sit better, less breathlessness playing with the kids etc

But why rely on guesswork when you can just actually know?

[jamiefairlie]

Weighing is essential for me, it's great to pinpoint precisely what's affecting me and how. Every body is different and we all react differently to different foods.

Snacking is primarily an emotional thing so to fully get over it you need to address the emotional problem that you're trying to numb. That's hard.

Porridge - I now eat the steel cut oats as they retain the highest percentage of the good stuff. I soak them overnight with a lunch of salt and stevia powder and then microwave in the morning with apple, blueberries and raspberries.

[Zetetic]

But why rely on guesswork when you can just actually know?

It is trickier if you're also trying build muscle mass (or not lose it because you're trapped in Devon) at the same time.

Not that I can be fucked with calipers or even the perma-broken bioelectrical impedance machine in Sidmouth boots, so weighing it is.

[popcorn]

It is trickier if you're also trying build muscle mass (or not lose it because you're trapped in Devon) at the same time.

Sure, but in that case how tight your clothes fit is also going to be a pretty fallible means of estimation

[MojoJojo]

I think measuring everyday is definitely not for some people, as it can be disheartening if you don't see any progress. Your daily weight is going to fluctuate up some days even if you are losing weight, just because of fluids and poos.

What would be ideal is to measure everyday but just see the average of the last 7 days, to smooth out the daily jitter, but I've not found an app to do this and my scales don't seem to share my weight with google fit anyway, so probably stuck on that.

[TrenterPercenter]

I think measuring everyday is definitely not for some people, as it can be disheartening if you don't see any progress.

Also largely pointless as you fluctuate quite a bit due to hydration etc.. I think once a week or two weeks is what is recommended.

[Better Midlands]

How do you know if you're losing weight?

By the way my clothes fit, haven't weighed myself in years.

[popcorn]

Also largely pointless as you fluctuate quite a bit due to hydration etc.. I think once a week or two weeks is what is recommended.

Recommended by who?

I'm going to be annoying and press the issue here. Here is what about this a couple of years ago using a bit of my own data:

I personally reckon this is a bad strategy because it makes you vulnerable to data error.

You could lose weight over the course of a week but, by sheer randomness, end up weighing the same (or more) on two days 7 days apart.

Here's a real slice of my own weight data. Imagine how misinformed you'd be if you could only see days A and B, or C and D, without the days between.

[TrenterPercenter]

Recommended by who?

I suppose I'm thinking about this in both practical and MH terms.  If you are someone that is vulnerable to obsessing about your weight then daily weigh-ins could be problematic for you. 

On a practical level what is the difference between you graph and the aggregate weight over the week? What advantage do you have on a daily basis in knowing your weight, you've just shown that in your selected days that this would be misleading, together you get a "trend" but only at the end of the week.  Now you'd only get your aggregate weight over a week if you had each days weight but in this context it is a bit meaningless because your current weight......would be what you weighed at the end of the week and it would account for the variation in the week on a weekly basis (and extrapolate for 2 weeks) - you can't rewind to Tuesday and say ah but I weighed less then.

The only point is if you wanted to know you weight on each day which is for what purpose? As you've shown with the variation each day alone can be misleading.....

[FeederFan500]

In general as long as you weigh yourself at the same time once a week is fine, but you should always be looking at the trend anyway even if you do it less regularly.

[popcorn]

Sorry Trenter, I've read your second paragraph second times and I can't really understand what you're getting at! It seems like there are quite a few questions or ideas happening there, could you break them down or expand on them a bit more?

The only point is if you wanted to know you weight on each day which is for what purpose? As you've shown with the variation each day alone can be misleading.....

The goal is not to know what I weigh each day for its own sake — it's so I can see whether I'm gaining or losing weight in the long term.

If I only recorded my weight once a week, or once a month, I would have a much less accurate understanding of this. In fact, it could very easily tell me I am gaining weight when I'm not. In my view this outcome would also be bad for mental health.

[Zetetic]

Yeah, unless you're reliably controlling the 2-3kg fluctuations at infrequent weigh-ins (and without liberal use of diuretics and laxatives for a start, this is going to be somewhat tricky), you're much more able to seperate signal-from-noise with daily data - particularly if you're losing weight at a rate of a couple of kilos per fortnight.

[popcorn]

On rereading I think the supposed of goal of only measuring your weight once a week or once a month or whatever is because you're trying to get a long-term sense of the change rather than fretting about daily fluctuations... right?

If that's the case, what I'm trying to show (and I think this is a matter of fact and not a preference) is that weighing yourself more regularly is actually a better way of doing this. This is due to signal/noise as Zetetic says.

[TrenterPercenter]

could you break them down or expand on them a bit more?

Sure sorry it was a bit wordy.

So you measure yourself everyday morning for a week and then look back on it on Sunday night. At this point you have the following data:

your Past individual weights for each day.
your Current weight on Sunday night.

Your individual weights have variation which shows you going up or down, individually they are misleading but you can average them to account for this variation and give yourself an avg weekly weight.  You now have a more reliable measure of your weight over the week than any individual weight (ok hope you are still with me up to here).

Your current weight on Sunday is actually your true weight and by dint of linear time it is a combination of all the weights that went before (this is a quirk of the relationship between variable individual weight and the true current weight they are related but your true weight isn't your average weight, it is better, it is your true weight at the end of the week).

Really it just comes down to how urgent it is they you need know your weight each day, which is actually unreliable individually, as each week is actually encapsulating that data pretty well as weekly trend (in short you are giving more time for a trend to occur and using that figure). 

You could test this out, average all your individual days in a month, and see how it compares to your current weight, then average your individual weight on every Sunday of that month and see how close it is to your current weight.  These two numbers will likely be very similar, which shows that it is more efficeint at assessing the trend than looking at individual weights.

[TrenterPercenter]

On rereading I think the supposed of goal of only measuring your weight once a week or once a month or whatever is because you're trying to get a long-term sense of the change rather than fretting about daily fluctuations... right?

If that's the case, what I'm trying to show (and I think this is a matter of fact and not a preference) is that weighing yourself more regularly is actually a better way of doing this. This is due to signal/noise as Zetetic says.

Yes Zetetic is not wrong here in that more data gives you a more accurate sense of the "signal against the noise" (fancy) but you are not really predicting your weight are you? We generally predict things when we can't do them (or doing so would be impossible).  You don't appear to me doing this and it seems unnecessary if you are looking at a general trend.  Your "noise" is being accounted for because your weight is cumulative over the week, if you wanted to predict the probability of your weight on any given day then that is where this stuff becomes more important.

[Dex Sawash]

Does anyone else weigh their shits?

Spoiler alert

i don't but surely one of you does and may cop to it without reading this

[close]

[Magnum Valentino]

When I was obsessed a few years ago, I would weigh before and after using the toilet yeah.

[The F Bomb]

Never weigh myself without doing a shit first.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Ignore, I am a divot.

[madhair60]

Does anyone else weigh their shits?

no, however i collect other peoples' shits using an undetectable net apparatus in paddington station ladies toilets, and amongst other things, i do weigh them

[thenoise]

Weigh every morning, then average the week's weights and plot on a graph once a week.

[jamiefairlie]

Weigh every morning, then average the week's weights and plot on a graph once a week.

That look like it was going in a Top Tips direction before ending disappointingly sensible

[jamiefairlie]

no, however i collect other peoples' shits using an undetectable net apparatus in paddington station ladies toilets, and amongst other things, i do weigh them

In Victorian times young lads could make a living doing that during low tide in the Thames, Shit Hawks they were known as

[Milo]

Weigh every morning, then average the week's weights and plot on a graph once a week.

You need to weigh all the body's inputs and outputs to get a proper idea of progress although there's a lot of hand-waving involved when it comes to sweating and breathing.

[Jack Shaftoe]

The downside of weighing every morning is you can get quite disheartened when nothing appears to be changing, or decide to treat yourself to three packets of crisps because you've unexpectedly lost a bit. Or I can, anyway.  If I'm just weighing in at the weekend, I find it easier to resist the temptation to snack in the middle of the week because I want to keep the Sunday weigh-in going in the right direction. But, you know, horses for courses (mmm, courses).

I just got a new belt, a medium, to replace my replace my old 'large' belt. I'm on the first hole of the medium one, instead of the last hole of the large one, so I guess I've gone from being a thin fat person to a fat thin person.