Guide › Progress

Weight and the 7-day average

Why one weigh-in means little and the average means a lot.

Body weight can move by a kilo or so in a single day because of water, food and salt. One weigh-in tells you very little. Forma works from the average of your last 7 days: a steady line that shows the real direction.

When to use it

• You are cutting, maintaining or gaining, and you want to know whether the pace is right.
• One weigh-in jumped up or down, and you want to know whether to believe it.
• You want your calorie and protein targets to follow your real weight, not one morning's reading.

Step by step

1. Tap Add weigh-in on Today, or the plus on the Weight card on Progress.
2. Enter your weight and save.

Apple Health can also bring weigh-ins in from your smart scale, so you never type anything.

A worked example

Sam weighs 88 kg and is on a cut. Sam weighs in each morning from 26 October to 8 November 2026. The average for a date is the mean of the readings in the last 7 days including that date. The first days therefore use fewer readings.

On 8 November the average is 87.60 kg. A week earlier, on 1 November, it was 88.31 kg. That is a change of -0.71 kg, or -0.81% of bodyweight per week.

Single weigh-ins jump around by half a kilo or more (88.9 one day, 88.1 the next), while the average moves smoothly.

Forma puts your pace against a band, in percent of bodyweight per week:

At -0.81, Sam's week is just past the fast end of the cut band, so the verdict at the top of Progress reads faster than aim.

Good to know

• On the Weight card, dots are single weigh-ins and the line is the 7-day average. Single weigh-ins are for the record. Decisions use the average.
• The verdict depends on your goal. On a cut, it can read on track, faster than aim, too fast, slower than aim, stalled, or moving the wrong way. A loss faster than 1% of bodyweight per week crosses the "too fast" line, where muscle starts to go. Changes smaller than about 0.1% per week count as flat.
• The average moves your calorie and protein targets. It also feeds the verdict at the top of Progress, which compares your pace per week with the pace you aim for.
• If you go a week without a weigh-in, there is no current average until you add one. One new weigh-in restarts it.
• Forma stores one weigh-in per day. If a scale reading and a hand-entered value both come in for the same day, the newer one takes its place.
• The average is worked out again from your full history each time you look at it, so it can never drift.
• Every two weeks, Forma checks what actually changed against what it predicted, and can raise or lower your daily calories. If the trend is inside half a kilo of what was predicted, it leaves your targets alone.

Related

• Your day target, and why it moves
• Body fat and lean mass
• Ways to judge progress
• Apple Health

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