Seven months in and my trendline disagrees with the scale

Saturday at 11:33 AM 1595 views 5 posts

Honestly, I've been tracking this since day one in a Google Sheet: daily weight, 7-day rolling average, waist, protein, steps. First 8 weeks at 2.5, then moved to 5 and stayed there. Total down 41.6 lbs, from 232.8 to 191.2, and my 7-day trendline is -0.55 lb/week over the last 12 weeks, versus -1.3 in months 2-3. Mildly annoying: I lost almost nothing week 14-17, then dropped 3.2 lbs in 9 days. My waist is down 4.75 inches and I'm solidly in size L tops now, so the trendline matters more than any single morning. I know people love a dramatic weekly whoosh, but my data says stalls are mostly water and constipation noise. Anyone else's spreadsheet show a long flat stretch followed by a sudden step down?

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Your 0.55 lb/wk over 12 weeks is still ~29 lbs/year — not nothing. But I’m curious: did your waist trendline also flatten, or is it still dropping? Mine did the opposite. Scale stalled for almost 5 weeks around month 6, but waist kept losing ~0.2 in/week, then the scale whooshed down 3 lbs in 4 days. I stopped trusting the 7-day and switched to a 14-day rolling average for weight, plus a monthly waist check. Also, how many steps/day now vs months 2–3? My NEAT dropped when my appetite got quieter, and that alone killed my weekly trendline.

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At 191 and lifting 4x, I’d stop expecting the old -1.3 pace. That early drop was partly water/glycogen and a bigger deficit. Now a 0.5–0.6 lb/wk trend with waist ticking down is classic recomp territory. What’s your waist doing over the same 12 weeks, and are your main lifts holding or climbing? When my trendline stalled around 190, my waist dropped ~1.5 in over six weeks while the scale barely moved; I only caught it because I logged the tape same day/time. Also check whether weekly calories or steps have drifted — at a lighter bodyweight, the same intake is a smaller deficit.

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your data nerdery is my love language. One thing that helped me when my trendline flattened: I started tracking 4-week change instead of 12, plus a “chaos day” column. With my two kids, my protein tanks on practice nights and that’s exactly when the snack drawer gets raided. Pre-portioned jerky and string cheese at the front kept it steadier. What does your waist trend look like over those same 12 weeks—flat too, or still creeping down? If waist is still moving, I’d trust that over the daily scale noise.

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What’s your waist doing across those same 12 weeks? My scale did the same slowdown around month 6, but my waist kept creeping down while the 7-day average looked flat. For me, my steps had quietly dropped ~1,500/day because of school schedule chaos, and my snack drawer was all grab-and-go carbs. I started pre-portioning cheese sticks, turkey slices, and grapes on Sunday, and the trendline finally moved again. Might be worth comparing your step/protein trends to the scale.

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