Reading your weight trend line (the seven-day average)

Your progress page plots two things: the raw daily weights, which are noisy, and the seven-day average, which is the actual signal. Almost every bad decision in a fat-loss program comes from reading the first one as if it were the second.

Here are the shapes the average makes, and what each one is telling you to do.

Why seven days

Because it covers a full week — including the weekend, which for most people eats differently from Tuesday. A three-day average still carries the salt of Saturday night; a seven-day average has one of everything in it.

It also lags, and it's important to know that. When you change something today, the average won't fully reflect it for about a week. That lag is the reason the plateau protocol asks you to give each change four days before judging it.

The steady decline

A line sloping gently down, with the daily dots scattered above and below it, is the program working. It will not be smooth and it should not be. Expect the dots to bounce by a pound or two either side; expect the line not to.

The rate matters more than any single week. A moderate, steady loss is the pattern health agencies consistently favour, and it's the one that survives past day 30.

The staircase

Flat for several days, then a sudden drop, then flat again. This is the most common shape in real data and the most misread — people quit during the flat part, three days before the step.

It's a fluid artefact: fat is leaving steadily underneath while water is being held and then released in lumps. The staircase is a steady decline wearing a disguise. Do nothing.

• Steady decline — the program is working. Change nothing
• Staircase — flat then a drop. Also working. Change nothing
• Flat four or more days on the average — that's a stall. Run the plateau protocol
• Rising for a week with high compliance — audit measurement before anything else

The early cliff

Week one falls off a shelf and then week two looks broken by comparison. That's the glycogen and water flush, and the correct response is to mentally discard week one's rate entirely when setting expectations.

Your real rate is whatever the average does from about day ten onward. Judge the month on that.

Reading it alongside everything else

The chart is one of three instruments. If the average is flat but your waist measurement dropped and your compliance is in the high eighties, the scale is the one that's wrong — you're recomposing and the water is masking it.

When the three disagree, believe the tape and the photos. When all three are flat for a week, then it's time to change something.

“The dots are weather. The line is climate.”