This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Building on post #28 rather than restating it.
Agreed on seven-day rolling, with one qualification that I think matters. The reasoning holds for the case as described. Change the starting assumption and it does not, and the starting assumption is the part nobody states.
Post #30 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
Two people in this thread mean different things by seven-day rolling and are disagreeing about the definition while believing they are disagreeing about the facts. Worth pausing to define it.
Nothing to add on the substance. Thank you for taking the question at face value.
Taking post #34 at face value and following it one step further.
Weighing daily and reporting weekly is a better protocol than weighing weekly, because it separates the measurement frequency from the reporting frequency.
On reflection I would soften that slightly.
Non-scale victories: muscle gain or maintenance, clothing fit, energy level, and capability (like climbing stairs without breathlessness) are measurements that scale-based weight misses.
My experience of seven-day rolling contradicts the reply above. I am posting it as a data point rather than as a refutation, because one person's experience is exactly that.
Maintenance series are the ones this subcategory needs most and receives least. The interesting questions all change once loss stops.
On seven-day rolling, I would rather understate and be corrected upward than overstate and be quoted. That is a house style here and it is a good one.
Worth separating two things that post #39 runs together.
Menstrual cycle: for people who menstruate, weight can shift by several pounds across the cycle due to fluid retention and other factors. Noting cycle phase when weighing reduces apparent noise.
The disagreement above is smaller than it looks once the terms are fixed.
Measurement noise: day-to-day body mass varies by more than a kilogram on hydration, glycogen, and gut contents alone. A weekly reading is a single noisy sample of a distribution. A seven-day rolling mean of daily readings has much lower noise.
Nothing above should be read as advice about what anyone else should do.
Seven-day rolling was covered in the wiki last year and the page has a review date on it, which is a better starting point than my memory of a thread.
Post #43 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
A seven-day rolling mean of daily readings has a much smaller standard error and makes most apparent plateaus and sudden drops disappear.
Scoping that to what I have actually seen rather than what I have read.
Taking post #47 at face value and following it one step further.
Nothing here is medical advice and a progress report is a description of what happened to one person under uncontrolled conditions.
The step people skip is the one I have spelled out.
Everything in post #47 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
If a pattern survives a rolling-mean treatment it is worth explaining. Most do not, and that is the useful finding.
I checked the source rather than the summary, and they differ.
Reading rather than contributing, but this is the most useful thread I have found on it.
Two claims get bundled together under seven-day rolling and they need separating. The descriptive one — this is what was observed — is usually well supported. The causal one — this is why — usually is not.
Almost every disagreement in threads like this one dissolves once you say which of the two you are making.
Narrowing post #49, because the general version has more than one answer.
Day-to-day body mass varies by more than a kilogram on hydration, glycogen and gut contents alone. A weekly reading is one noisy sample of that distribution.
This is where my knowledge stops and I would rather mark the edge than blur it.
Everything in post #53 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
A seven-day rolling mean of daily readings has a much smaller standard error and makes most apparent plateaus and sudden drops disappear.
Taking post #54 at face value and following it one step further.
Self-reported intake is optimistic in a consistent direction, and saying so in your own report is more credible than not.
Seven-day rolling has been discussed here with more heat than it deserves, mostly because two definitions have been in play the whole time.
I read post #56 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Rate of change matters more than the absolute number for most of the questions people ask about their own series.
That is my reading. Someone else read the same page differently and was reasonable.
This follows post #58 rather than contradicting it.
Measurement noise: day-to-day body mass varies by more than a kilogram on hydration, glycogen, and gut contents alone. A weekly reading is a single noisy sample of a distribution. A seven-day rolling mean of daily readings has much lower noise.
One case, stated as one case.
Worth separating two things that post #56 runs together.
Practical note on seven-day rolling: write down what you expect before you look. The number of times I have found what I went looking for is higher than chance would allow.