[PSA] timeframe is not what most of this community thinks it is
The one-line version is the title: timeframe is not what most of this community thinks it is. The rest is why.
Nobody noticed for months. Then several people noticed in the same fortnight, which was strange and quite nice.
Why this board is text only, since new members ask every week.
A photograph invites comparison on things nobody can control — lighting, posture, where you carry weight, what you looked like before any of this. Text invites description of what changed for you: the jacket, the stairs, the measurement, the month it took.
The result is a board where the posts are about people’s actual experience rather than about images, and where nobody is competing on the wrong axis. It was a deliberate choice, it has been challenged periodically, and every time it has been kept.
The boring middle lasted the longest and it is the part I am most proud of.
Screenshot none of this. Read the whole thread, including the parts where I am told I am wrong.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Circumference measurements often continue changing during a scale plateau because composition changes are not visible on a bathroom scale.
Removed an image link. This board is text only by community rule and that has been reaffirmed twice.
Removed an image link.
Agreed — measurements over photographs, every time, for anybody trying to actually track something.
Rate of change is not a virtue. Slower trajectories are as durable as fast ones and are considerably better represented on this board than the front page suggests.
How are you keeping track — spreadsheet, notebook, nothing?
Yes. Clothes fitting differently arrives well before the scale acknowledges anything.
Cosigning on timeframe. "17kg" means something completely different over 13 months than over one.
Small correction, kindly meant: that is a range rather than a regain. Weight moves day to day in everybody.
text only here, by community rule, and it works better than you would think
Agreed — text only was the best rule this board ever adopted. The posts are about what actually changed rather than about lighting.
Agreed — text only was the best rule this board ever adopted.
Slight disagreement: that is a month, not a plateau, and calling it one makes it heavier than it is.
non-scale victories count and they are the ones people remember
My goal weight at week one was a number I made up. I have revised it twice since and I am happier for it.
Agreed that goal weights picked at the start are guesses. Mine was, and I revised it twice.
Weighing under consistent conditions — same time, same state, same scale — removes most of the apparent variability people find distressing.
goal weights chosen at week one are usually guesses
Same. Comparison ruined about three months for me until I stopped reading the fastest posts.
On the goal weight you set in week one.
You chose it with the least information you will ever have about how this feels, what is sustainable, and what your body does at different points. Revising it is not moving the goalposts; it is updating a prediction, which is what you are supposed to do with predictions.
Several of the longest-standing members here have revised theirs more than once, in both directions, and describe the revision as the point at which the whole thing became manageable. What the number should be is a conversation with somebody who knows your history — but that it is allowed to change is something this board can tell you.
Did the clothes change before the number did for you too?
I would not treat a two-kilo range as a regain. Weight varies day to day in everybody.
I would not treat a two-kilo range as a regain.
spreadsheet_gremlin is right that the clothes tell you before the scale does.
the timeframe matters as much as the number
waist is the measurement that keeps moving during a scale stall
- 1Rate of change is not a virtue. Slower trajectories are as durable as fast…9 comments in this branch · started by u/placebo_arm_pam
- 2On the goal weight you set in week one. You chose it with the least…6 comments in this branch · started by u/vial_math_vera