11 May 2020

Lockdown weight

If I commuted by bike, which I generally did, I would cover 19 miles and some 460 vertical meters on a day. That keeps you fit! So when I could no longer go to work, and was forced to spend almost all day particularly close to my fridge, I realised I could end up a bit of a lockdown blob. No exercise, all food! And I didn't want that to happen. I want to come out of this as I went in, or better. So I turned to running to keep my fitness up. And I found I ended up having dinner earlier, which is great, as I think it's healthier. But I wasn't reassured. And my house had come with scales. The previous owner had left them! And I had pretty much ignored them. But now I decided to dust them off. Let's keep an eye on this.

Soon after the start of lockdown I weighed myself for the first time. And then it became a habit. I had to get it a new battery as it was low; it even switched to imperial units without me requesting that out of sheer lack of power. But with a new battery it agreed to go back to metric.

I don't know how well-calibrated this thing is. But it gives reasonable readings! I'll go with the assumptions it works OK. It shows rather large fluctuations; larger than I expected, but I suppose that with my tea drinking habit my weight fluctuates more than that of most. And I try to weigh myself at the same stage in the day to avoid that effect; I really shouldn't sometimes weigh myself just before a meal and sometimes just after; not so much for the meal, but because most of my meals come with two liters of water. I started out a bit random and can't remember what time I weighed myself then so I should take these measurements out of the analysis really.

So what did it tell me? So far, so good! As I write this, I have been on a trajectory of losing 40g per day in the period since 8 days into the lockdown period. The r2 is 0.2. If I use the two initial measurements the drop is 80g/day with an r2 of 0.57. That looks robust! But one has to be cautious, making robustness with less-than-reliable measurements is a fallacy. But either way, the trend is down, so it seems to be OK. And if the trend turns? An r2 of 0.2 means anything goes. Well, then I'll have to start actively minding what I eat! That's the time-efficient way of dealing with that. More running would be nice but I also have a job to do. I'll keep an eye on this!

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