Read the trend, not the number.
A 28-day body-mass log with one rule: the number is written daily, judged weekly and read as a trend.
Every reading under the same five conditions
Missed a morning? Leave the box empty. An estimate is worse than a gap.
Empty your bladder before you step on. Same order every morning.
No food, water, tea or coffee before the reading.
Hard, level floor. Never carpet, never a borrowed scale.
Underwear only, or the same light set. No phone, no watch.
Weight even on both feet, eyes ahead. Write it down at once.
28 days. Write the number, tick any flag, judge nothing until day 7.
7-day mean = total of readings taken ÷ number taken (needs at least 4). Days without a reading stay blank.
Signal chart
A dot outside the band is weather. A mean outside it is climate.
Noise zone: the normal day-to-day swing of roughly 1–2 % of body mass — water, glycogen (each gram holds about 3 g of water), sodium and gut contents. None of it is fat.
The weekly decision
change per week, % of body mass — your coach may set your own target
- Decide on means only. A single reading decides nothing.
- A flagged day explains a spike. It is information, not failure.
- Two weeks against the plan? Change one variable with your coach — food, steps, sleep or load — never all four.
Daily weighing suits people who can treat the number as information. If it starts to steer your mood or your eating, stop this card and tell your coach — weekly weighing gives the same trend.
Evidence base: Helms, Aragon & Fitschen (2014), J Int Soc Sports Nutr, 11, 20 · Steinberg, Bennett, Askew & Tate (2015), J Acad Nutr Diet, 115(4), 511–518 · Zheng et al. (2015), Obesity, 23(2), 256–265 · Fernández-Elías, Ortega, Nelson & Mora-Rodriguez (2015), Eur J Appl Physiol, 115(9), 1919–1926 · Orsama et al. (2014), Obes Facts, 7(1), 36–47.