Rest Day Reflections

The other day I mentioned that I don't generally get too worked up about day to day weight changes. I do track them, but I don't worry too much about them...unless and until they start to go up continuously.

What I do look at is weekly trends. I actually will average out my weight for a calendar week and that is the figure that I use to get an idea of how much I've actually lost so far. CyclingPeaks WKO does a similar thing I believe when you graph out average weight on a weekly training graph.

Today is a good example of why I do this. Yesterday I weighed in at 236.4lbs, I rode for 50 minutes (which was according to design) burning 552C (according to my PowerTap). I did my usual Tuesday stuff, and in fact was a bit more active as I did some cleaning and laundry as well. According to BeNutrifit, I consumed ~2152C while burning a total of 3317C, for a balance of -1165 or about .3 lbs worth (assuming a pound is 3500C).

When I checked the scale this morning (and I weigh myself at roughly the same time each day), it read 237lbs. So rather than losing the .3 lbs you would expect given the calorie balance, I actually gained .6 lbs.

So, did I cheat and not enter stuff into BeNutriFit? Nope, everything I ate went into it.
Did I goof on portions and what not? Its possible, but not likely enough so that I'd be 3200C off.

It gets even more confusing when you look at last week for comparison. Last Tuesday I rode the same amount, consumed nearly the same amount of calories (2062C), burned nearly the same amount of calories (3296C) and had a calorie balance of ~1234C. However, I showed a weight loss on Wednesday morning of 1.2 lbs (240.8 to 239.6).

So two days, nearly the same numbers but one showed a big weight loss and another showed a substantial weight gain. So obviously there is something affecting day to day weight that isn't the food you eat. It could be how much fluid you drank, which I don't (but probably should) track, or it could be something else that I can't even think of.

The weekly averages though take care of these seemingly random ups and downs and give a better measure of my weight control efforts, and so far this is looking positive.

Week 1: 242.9
Week 2: 239.7 (loss of 3.2lbs, which is a bit higher than I'm shooting for)
Week 3: 236.7 (loss of 3 lbs so far, though there are still 4 days left in the week so this might change up or down, and again is a bit higher than my 2lbs per week goal, but this early on I'll take it)

Regards.