Perhaps the Open Thread would be a better place for this comment, but I’m interested in suggestions for a scale.
Based on the large number of proponents of a “Paleolithic” diet here on Less Wrong, I’ve decided to take it seriously enough to try it for a while. So far (slightly less than a week) I’m not enjoying it at all, but I’d like more quantitative feedback. Over the past five months (the way I was previously eating), I’ve maintained a pretty steady dw/dt = −0.8 kg / week, but my current scale is broken, and so I can’t compare that to what I’m trying now.
Based on your user name I guess you might like the scale I use, the Withings WiFi Body Scale. It measures weight, body fat percentage and calculates BMI and uploads the data to their website via WiFi so you can track your progress without having to manually enter any data. You can also export the data easily from the site if you want to do further analysis and there is an API for linking the data to other web services.
As for a reasonable expectation of weight loss, 1.5-2.0 lbs a week is commonly given as a sustainable target and that matches my experience. On my first serious attempt to follow the diet I lost 45 lbs in around 6 months and then as I became increasingly lax over the following 2 years I regained around 15 lbs. In the last 4 weeks since I’ve been following it more strictly again I’ve lost around 6 lbs.
I haven’t previously had a scale that measured body fat percentage. Are you happy with the accuracy and precision of that aspect of the Withings scale? It is something that I would like, because weight, while easy to measure, is for me mostly a heuristic for measuring body fat.
Like I said, over the last five months I’ve lost 18 kg, which I’m happy with, and matches the middle of the range you gave. My current scale didn’t break dramatically; it still reads, but I’ve noticed that now stepping off, grabbing a 3kg object, and stepping back on sometimes results in the exact same reading, while stepping off and stepping back on without grabbing anything sometimes results in a 2kg gain. I calibrated it when I first got it and was satisfied that it was accurate to within 0.1 kg, so I don’t actually know when it broke, but sometime recently.
In the meantime, sticking to this diet will be difficult if I don’t have any positive reinforcement, like continuing to see my weight decline.
For weight, the accuracy and consistency of the scale seems in line with other scales I have used in the past. I have not attempted to calibrate it against a known accurate scale however. I find with this scale and previous scales I have used that my weight commonly fluctuates by up to 3lbs from day to day so I tend to focus mostly on a moving average as a measure of my progress (the Withings tracking web app displays a trend line which serves for this purpose). The accuracy suffices for my purposes but I don’t know how good it is in absolute terms.
For body fat, I treat the reported figure mostly as a rough long term indicator of a positive or negative trend but I don’t put much faith in the absolute figure reported or the day to day fluctuations which can be quite large. You can see the kind of information you get from the scale here (note—I’ve not tried this public sharing feature before so I’m not sure it will work for you). The period without data in August was my summer vacation where I also back-slid some.
A friend recommended a local body-scanning service which appears to provide accurate body fat percentages. I intend to use it to get an idea of how accurate the figures are. My understanding is that body fat measuring scales of this type (work by passing an electric current through your body) are a useful indicator but not very accurate compared to scans or water tank measurements.
Having a continually updated graph online is quite effective for me as a positive (and occasionally negative) reinforcement mechanism.
Reinforcement seems to be vital. With my current scale, I eventually broke down and wrote a script to display graphs of the moving averages of the high and low, since the numbers themselves didn’t really mean anything to me. Clunky, but similar to the graph you displayed (it did work).
Thanks for all the information. I’m debating whether all the features are worth the price, but it is the kind of thing I want.
Clunky, but similar to the graph you displayed (it did work).
I did something similar with Excel the first time I seriously tried paleo. After manually updating it religiously for a while I thought ‘someone should make a WiFi enabled scale that automates this process’. Fortunately someone did :)
Perhaps the Open Thread would be a better place for this comment, but I’m interested in suggestions for a scale.
Based on the large number of proponents of a “Paleolithic” diet here on Less Wrong, I’ve decided to take it seriously enough to try it for a while. So far (slightly less than a week) I’m not enjoying it at all, but I’d like more quantitative feedback. Over the past five months (the way I was previously eating), I’ve maintained a pretty steady dw/dt = −0.8 kg / week, but my current scale is broken, and so I can’t compare that to what I’m trying now.
Based on your user name I guess you might like the scale I use, the Withings WiFi Body Scale. It measures weight, body fat percentage and calculates BMI and uploads the data to their website via WiFi so you can track your progress without having to manually enter any data. You can also export the data easily from the site if you want to do further analysis and there is an API for linking the data to other web services.
As for a reasonable expectation of weight loss, 1.5-2.0 lbs a week is commonly given as a sustainable target and that matches my experience. On my first serious attempt to follow the diet I lost 45 lbs in around 6 months and then as I became increasingly lax over the following 2 years I regained around 15 lbs. In the last 4 weeks since I’ve been following it more strictly again I’ve lost around 6 lbs.
I haven’t previously had a scale that measured body fat percentage. Are you happy with the accuracy and precision of that aspect of the Withings scale? It is something that I would like, because weight, while easy to measure, is for me mostly a heuristic for measuring body fat.
Like I said, over the last five months I’ve lost 18 kg, which I’m happy with, and matches the middle of the range you gave. My current scale didn’t break dramatically; it still reads, but I’ve noticed that now stepping off, grabbing a 3kg object, and stepping back on sometimes results in the exact same reading, while stepping off and stepping back on without grabbing anything sometimes results in a 2kg gain. I calibrated it when I first got it and was satisfied that it was accurate to within 0.1 kg, so I don’t actually know when it broke, but sometime recently.
In the meantime, sticking to this diet will be difficult if I don’t have any positive reinforcement, like continuing to see my weight decline.
For weight, the accuracy and consistency of the scale seems in line with other scales I have used in the past. I have not attempted to calibrate it against a known accurate scale however. I find with this scale and previous scales I have used that my weight commonly fluctuates by up to 3lbs from day to day so I tend to focus mostly on a moving average as a measure of my progress (the Withings tracking web app displays a trend line which serves for this purpose). The accuracy suffices for my purposes but I don’t know how good it is in absolute terms.
For body fat, I treat the reported figure mostly as a rough long term indicator of a positive or negative trend but I don’t put much faith in the absolute figure reported or the day to day fluctuations which can be quite large. You can see the kind of information you get from the scale here (note—I’ve not tried this public sharing feature before so I’m not sure it will work for you). The period without data in August was my summer vacation where I also back-slid some.
A friend recommended a local body-scanning service which appears to provide accurate body fat percentages. I intend to use it to get an idea of how accurate the figures are. My understanding is that body fat measuring scales of this type (work by passing an electric current through your body) are a useful indicator but not very accurate compared to scans or water tank measurements.
Having a continually updated graph online is quite effective for me as a positive (and occasionally negative) reinforcement mechanism.
Reinforcement seems to be vital. With my current scale, I eventually broke down and wrote a script to display graphs of the moving averages of the high and low, since the numbers themselves didn’t really mean anything to me. Clunky, but similar to the graph you displayed (it did work).
Thanks for all the information. I’m debating whether all the features are worth the price, but it is the kind of thing I want.
I did something similar with Excel the first time I seriously tried paleo. After manually updating it religiously for a while I thought ‘someone should make a WiFi enabled scale that automates this process’. Fortunately someone did :)