The Big Picture

Don't worry! It doesn't matter at all that you can't see the detail of the graph. This week's blog is about the big picture, and all that matters is the shape of the line.

The graph is of the more-than-800 daily weigh-ins I have done since I started my journey, over two years ago. But I have hidden those individual weigh-ins, so all that we can see is the line. Everywhere on that line is the average of the 30 days leading up to that point. That is called the moving average, and it smooths out all the funny blips in our weight that most of us experience.

What the moving average shows is that, despite constantly fretting about my weight bobbing up and down, I lost my weight in an almost uncanny straight line and then, when I got to my target weight and put the brake on, it leveled off. But it also shows that since I got to target weight it hasn't just leveled off, it has even gone down a little bit.

This moving average is the line to watch like a hawk! If it starts to drift up, that means there is a clear upward trend, and it will take a big effort to reverse it and bring that moving average down again. I blogged a few weeks ago that the trend seemed to be up, but since then it has started to fall again. Phew! In fact in the last few weeks we have stayed away in hotels quite a bit, but I seem to be getting the knack of being away but NOT putting on weight - or at least only a small amount, which I can get rid of in a day or two once we return home. If it's true that I've acquired that knack, I'm not quite sure how I managed it, but I'm glad I have. I will blog again on this subject if and when I figure it out.