switched from 2.5mg to 15mg and muscle cramps got better, not worse
Posting this as a discussion rather than a claim: switched from 2.5mg to 15mg and muscle cramps got better, not worse.
Pulling the figures out of the title: 2.5mg and 15mg. All of it is written down as it happened rather than reconstructed.
Attribution requires that one thing change at a time. A log with dose, training and intake all moving in the same fortnight cannot assign anything to any of them.
Missing entries recorded as blanks preserve the shape of the series. Dropping them silently makes the remaining points look more regular than they were.
Would rather be corrected in public than confident in private.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Reminder: no dose recommendations for other members, however the post is framed.
That template is elaborate enough that you will stop using it by week ten. Mine was.
Contemporaneous records do not drift; reconstructed ones do, and the drift is systematic rather than random because memory smooths.
Contemporaneous records do not drift; reconstructed ones do, and the drift is systematic rather than random because memory smooths.
Disagreeing with this bit: daily weighing gives you noise and costs you something.
consistent conditions or you are logging noise
Choose a format you will still be able to open in two years. Plain text or a spreadsheet you export beats an application that may not exist.
the boring logs are the useful ones
the boring logs are the useful ones
dario_bakken is right about blanks. Silent gaps make the series lie.
Why contemporaneous beats reconstructed, with the failure mode.
Memory smooths. Reconstructing a fortnight from recollection produces a series that is more regular, more consistent with your current beliefs, and quietly wrong in a direction that flatters the story you are already telling.
I found this out by reconstructing six weeks and later finding order receipts that contradicted my own entries. The log was not a little wrong; it was wrong in exactly the direction that made my narrative work. Write it down on the day, even the boring days, especially the boring days.
The four columns that survive, after several people here have tried and abandoned much more elaborate systems.
Date. Dose. One number measured under consistent conditions. A short note when anything unusual happened. That is it. Anything more and you will stop, and a log you stop keeping is worth less than a crude one you maintain.
Add a waist measurement monthly if you can be bothered, and a sleep column if you want the one variable that explains the most confusing weeks. Everything else can be reconstructed from those, and nothing can be reconstructed from a log you abandoned in week nine.
Is the concentration recorded anywhere in the log?
Did anything else change in the window you are asking about?
Annotation is what makes a log survive contact with your future self. A single note beside an unusual week saves an hour of puzzled reconstruction later.
Push back: a log with four variables changing at once cannot attribute anything to any of them.
Yes — write the concentration in the log as well as on the vial. Belt and braces and it costs nothing.
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Small fix — that is a reconstructed entry rather than a contemporaneous one, and the post presents it as the latter.
- 1Contemporaneous records do not drift; reconstructed ones do, and the drift…6 comments in this branch · started by u/ilias_cabrera