Weight Loss Goal with the new Yellow Brick Half-Plane

Newbee
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Hello all,

I am pretty new to Beeminder so excuse the basic/obvious questions. So, I wish to use beeminder to set up a weight loss goal. From what I read of doing this from the previous forum posts and other articles written about beeminding weight loss, the general advice was to have a gentle slope to begin with and later let the yellow brick road dive in with your weight loss as you start entering the data (assuming you are losing weight). This way you would be getting good feedback on your progress and would get time in case you are going off track to fix things before you derail. I hope I am right so far.

Now for my doubts - How does this change with the new Yellow Brick Half-Plane with its fixed width?
As far as I understand it, the Yellow Brick road had one flaw which is that a person, because of the road width, could ultimately not reach his target to a 100% and still get away with it. Which defeated a lot of purpose, if not all. Now, the road is just a line and beeminders need to stay on the good side of this line. The yellow plane is there just as a… I don’t know. I don’t understand the use of the yellow part anymore. Am I right with my understanding? Please correct me if I am wrong.

Does the old method of using a gentle slope and letting the data be the guide to your goal still stay relevant?
Since there is only the critical edge now which is of consequence, how is the old advice going to still work the way it did?

I am sorry if I am all over the place with my questions and half knowledge. I am a total geek but even for a new geek, reading the forums and blog posts can feel like reading an unknown language. :smile: I am sure I will get the hang of it in a few days and enjoy the process.

Thank you.

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Hello @ashwin_prasad,

I think the general advice concerning “a weight loss goal” was instead to set an “eat well” or “exercise more” goal. Those are the activities.

I do have a Beeminder “goal” tracking my weight - I like to see the graph - but really only the trend is interesting. There are no doubt other people in the caverns of these forums with more experience with weight loss goals.

Cheers and good luck with the fitness program.

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Thank you, @krugerk.
I see your input based goal advice rather than output based. I’ll consider it.

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That’s good general advice but I’m personally a huge fan of beeminding weight and we definitely want that to work well.

Yellow Brick Half-Plane in particular hasn’t made beeminding weight worse. The way we deal with it without road width is that we ask you when you create the goal what your max daily weight fluctuation is. Then we simply start your yellow brick road that much above your initial weight.

Does that make sense?

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Yes @dreev! Puts many things in perspective. Thanks a lot.

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