As I mentioned the other day, I’m using a Withings wireless scale so that every morning I weigh in and that weight gets published to a number of areas where I can keep track of how I’m doing.
One thing you notice quickly when weighing yourself daily is that your weight can fluctuate quite a bit from day to day, oftentimes in ways that seems almost random. Some people report getting discouraged when they see their weight go up a few pounds even though they are following their diet and exercise plan.
As Monica Reinagel points out at NutritionDiva.com, the key is to not focus on a single number from a given weigh-in, but rather on a moving average which will give you a much better idea of what your actual weight is.
A moving average, on the other hand, is an average that slides through time. It’s a great way to see trends or changes in whatever you’re tracking…especially when things are changing relatively slowly or there’s a lot of variation in the numbers from day to day.
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. . . a moving average helps smooth out the daily fluctuations to more accurately reveal the trend. In practice, you’ll probably want to use a larger window to help you focus on the longer-term trends.
I ultimately enter my daily weight into a Google Spreadsheet that then calculates a 7-day moving average — i.e. the average of that day’s weight plus the previous 6 days’ weigh-ins. As Reinagel notes, this smoothes out the sometimes wild variations that can occur on a daily basis and gives me a much better idea of how I’m doing with my weight.