My spreadsheet tracks percentage first, pounds second

2026-10-06 01:53

My spreadsheet has two tabs: Raw Pounds and Percent. For three months I mostly stared at Raw Pounds, then I switched the graph to percent and it stopped lying to me. Starting at 263.4 and now 231.8, that's 31.6 lb, or 12.0%.

A 1.8 lb week at 263 is about 0.7%; the same 1.8 at 230 is about 0.8%. Nothing dramatic, but the percent line is smoother and makes my own history comparable instead of me borrowing anxiety from people with different starting points.

I still log pounds every Sunday before coffee, but the number I actually react to is percent of start. I know this can get annoying in threads where everyone posts absolute losses, and I'm okay being that person.

Does anyone else keep a percent column as their main read, or am I just over-engineering a Google Sheet?

2026-10-08 23:39

I’m an empty-nester too, and my spreadsheet got saner when I added a third tab: Habits. I log 30-minute walks and whether I cooked dinner at home. The scale is noisy, but seeing four walks and five home-cooked dinners in a week reminds me the percent line isn’t random.

One tweak that helped: I compare this week’s percent to four weeks ago, not last week, so a salty Friday doesn’t spook me. Do you smooth yours at all, or just plot every weigh-in?

2026-10-17 18:59

I do the percent thing too, but my plateau hack was switching to a 7-day rolling average of percent, not the daily number. Daily weight can swing 2 lb from sodium or my cycle, and at my size that’s almost 1%, so single mornings still messed with my head.

I also added a “percent from 10 weeks ago” column so a slow grind still shows up. Curious: are you weighing daily and averaging, or just logging weekly?

I’m 5 weeks at basically 0.0% and trying not to spiral.

2026-10-29 04:06

Percent tab is smart. The thing that made my spreadsheet actually useful was adding a recomp column: waist at navel, same spot, once a week, plus a strength marker like trap-bar deadlift reps at a fixed weight.

Some weeks my weight percent barely moved but waist was down and reps were up, which kept me from chasing scale noise. Are you logging any recomp markers, or just weight percent?

I also only compare same-day-of-week morning weights because a salty weekend can wreck a raw comparison.