Fifteen months in, down 70-ish. I stopped chasing weekly drama and started tracking inputs I could control: protein at 140g, 8k steps, two lifting sessions, sleep before 11. Not exciting. Neither is compound interest.
Concrete win: jeans went from 42 waist to 34, and my resting heart rate dropped 9 bpm. The weird part is the plateaus got shorter once I stopped “optimizing” every day and just reviewed monthly. I weigh daily, but only care about the 14-day average. It’s boring, which is probably why it works.
Mild frustration: people ask what the trick is, and the honest answer is a spreadsheet and patience. I track 5 metrics, not 50. Anything more becomes a hobby, not a system.
For the long-timers: what’s the one metric you kept when you stripped everything else away?