Same weekly deficit, different results?

I stopped trying to understand what my body does day to day. There’s no pattern I can count on. I’ll drop weight after a week when the numbers say I shouldn’t, then stay flat after a week of perfect adherence. It’s exhausting to keep searching for logic in something that doesn’t follow any.

I aimed for 1200 but usually landed around 1400, and the actual loss seemed closer to what 1500 would produce. Keeping precise records is tough, so I just aimed low and let any extra movement or small errors balance things out. That approach gave me an average of two pounds a week for 31 weeks until I reached my goal. Weekly averages felt like the right way to look at it, and I did log everything every day while losing.

I’ve had the same experience. Some weeks everything looks steady on paper and the scale still moves however it wants. The weekly average probably gives a clearer picture.

The weekly average matters more because day-to-day changes from water and digestion can hide real progress.

Weighing food and checking weight every day feels like too much effort for little payoff. My weight can rise a pound or two daily just from water. Salt, a full bladder, and other factors are hard to control. Weighing once a week works better for most people. I keep my intake honest by measuring everything on prep days, then divide the totals by seven to get an average for the week.

Weighing weekly is already frequent enough; even that can be noisy and misleading. Just as GLP-1 doses are usually adjusted monthly because of the half-life, weight trends are clearer month to month. Don’t worry about a stall until it lasts about two months. Sometimes the body holds weight while it recomposes, and checking weekly makes people panic and increase dose too soon.

Avoid dropping calories too low. Once the body shifts into survival mode, weight loss slows sharply. Throw in an occasional refeed to ease diet fatigue, keeping it clean. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

I’ve seen the same thing. A couple of higher-calorie days, not binges, often produce more loss than the math predicts. Straight deficit weeks give the expected drop, but adding two maintenance days can yield an extra half to full pound. Years ago people talked about refeeds helping leptin and thyroid function. I don’t care about the mechanism, just that it works for me.

I also weigh weekly. Daily ups and downs aren’t useful to watch; I just want to see the overall trend.

I’ll guess at your question without reading everything first. The pattern you describe sounds like you’re adding refeed periods that keep your metabolism from slowing down as much as it otherwise would.

I weigh six days out of seven.

If what you’re doing works, keep doing it. I prefer steady intake every day rather than big swings. Most people won’t gain much from cycling calories unless they’re advanced. Big swings can also lead to making up for low days or over-correcting, which edges toward disordered eating. Daily weighing works best for me because more data points make the real trend clearer and reduce the chance of reacting to a single noisy week.

I don’t count calories. I’ve used intermittent fasting, at least 16/8 and sometimes longer, for years. Without medication I dropped from 167 kg to 152 kg at 199 cm, then stalled. After other health issues and antibiotics I returned to that weight. Starting Mounjaro while keeping the fasting window brought me to 131 kg. Even though calculators suggest I could eat more, the fasting and low-carb approach keeps intake naturally lower, and loss continues steadily.