Happy Dance
 

I got off to (what I consider) a bad start. My head wasn't in the game, it was that simple.

I got an unpleasant diagnosis along the way.

And I've had my woes over scale readings. (Arthritic knee swelling = lying, useless scale)

Right this minute, I feel like crap. (Nasty ear infection sprang up in hours last night -- probably viral, but bad enough it hurts to turn my head or chew. I also have a minor incision on my hip that is just plain in a bad place, and hurts out-of-proportion to the size of the wound -- no signs of infection, it just ACHES a lot when I move.)

And yet?

Inside, I'm doing the happy dance.

I'm down almost 10 lbs, and what I finally noticed (The "noticing" was delayed, because it's on my phone, so the screen-size is small) that each of my scale "bounces" was, in fact, to a lower number than the previous one. And yes, my trend is down. And I am currently in one of the "steep fall" phases. Should be under 230 by tomorrow, if this keeps up. (If it doesn't I'm going to be convinced I have 1 pt of fluid collected in my EAR CANAL... dang this thing hurts.)

So I've hit one of my milestones: The one where I can see the trend on my weight-graph, and see that yes -- it's heading in the right direction. (The power this has on my psyche is one of the reasons I try to weigh daily. I'll admit there are drawbacks, but the way my mathematical mind works, I need that graph, and that graph has to have lots of data-points or it's useless.)

Congrats. It is awesome to be able to see the trends. Keep it up.

So the above post marked the beginning of me losing 0.5-1.2 lbs/day.

Did my normal "eat when hungry, don't when not." I was also in a lot of pain, had difficulty swallowing, and for a couple days had trouble getting enough fluids in.

Coming out the other end, I've had a small "bounce" -- I'm currently up almost half a pound from my lowest weight. (This is down since yesterday. I think yesterday, my body was getting back on "normal" footing again, after being so out of balance.) Still.... I'm happy.

I got frustrated with literally every app I could find that did weight tracking. One had inaccurate graphs (no actual scale on the vertical axis... you could have a big "dip" for a small loss, and no visible "dip" for a much bigger loss. And if you hit the exact same weight twice, at separated times, one point would be higher than the other.) Some would be zoomed too far our or in... or want to pull on data from too long ago. Or not let you enter data from anything other than today.

Had a good simple tracker on my phone, but the X-axis was not scale-able, so I had to scroll too far... but it let me export my data. So I exported it to Google Sheets, and used the data to create a chart. I love it: I can enter whatever data I want, whenever I want, and I have 100% control of my graph.

It's silly, how much pleasure this gives me.... but the graph is one of those things that keeps me going!

I used a piece of graph paper and pencil. Also 100% control :lol:

Already trying to keep track of too many pieces of paper! lol

I used to be exactly the same way. Weighing compulsively. I'm also a numbers person and it was exactly what I needed at the time. These days I'm committed to weighing in just once a month. Although I'm still technically overweight, I'm no longer embarrassed by my appearance (whether I should be or not is a separate question) and I'm really doing low carb simply to keep the aches and pains and hot flashes of middle age away. Eating wise, I went way off plan over Christmas, but I had to come back to low carb for my health. I guess that means I've entered the lifestyle phase.

I do the same thing with my google sheets, but I add a little more neuroses in there...

I have three columns that I plot on the same graph: weight, PMS weight, TOM weight (so they show dots in three colors) that way when I see the graph rise during the PMS/TOM colors I know not to worry ;)

Also on google sheets I keep track of my macros daily then can see weekly averages, weekly average weights, etc...

I like data too!

I can't figure out how to add an image or I'd show you my graph