Question about Weight parameter

[WallyPepper]

As per my usual, I searched this board and the Gitlab repository to see if this was asked before.

I am very curious why the weight parameter isn't sticky or part of the profile. In my own personal case, and I am sure this is likely the same for many others, unless I am actively trying to lose weight, my weight does not change from day to day. If I am not actively trying to lose weight, the weight still varies depending for example, if I ate breakfast, or had a bowel movement, etc. But each and every day I have data for, I have to remember to type in the weight parameter or else it reads 0.0 lbs or 0.0 kg. I don't even weigh myself every day but do not assume my weight magically went to 0 on the days I do not step on the scale.

I see reasons for putting this in the profile, but if you have some permanent weight lose or are on a weight lose regimen, that means updating the profile often. As a sticky parameter, it would just auto-populate the field in notes from day to day. If you need to, you make your adjustment the next time you weigh yourself and then it becomes the new sticky value moving forward.

With so much data already there, I am sure others would like a time-saving step like this one. In my own personal case I weigh myself on Fridays in addition to any days I have a doctors appointment (I hate that I have to be concious of how much clothing I am wearing to factor it out on each doctors visit). On all the days between I make an assumption that my weight pretty much remained constant.

Just trying to give some perspective about why I am asking for this feature.

[LoudSnorer]

Weight and Height were inherited from SleepyHead and maintained.
Height is basically constant and can be in the profile.
Weight is not constant. It can change, however it does not change rapidly.
Why is weight important, because  excess weight can contribute apnea issues.

I first started using CPAP, when a very high AHI. I lost over 30 pounds, and now my AHI is typically lower than 2.
Making weight a changeable constant value in the profile destroy the relationship between AHI and weight.

The issue becomes, how to enter weight only when it changes and not every day.
Your suggestion of putting weight into the profile destroys that relationship.
The problem becomes how to maintain the AHI to weight relationship.

Your suggestion of prefilling the weight with the last used is a good one.

This is my interpretation of your request. Is This correct?

[WallyPepper]

Yes!

I saw problems with weight in the profile also.

Making it a 'sticky' value would be more valuable. For example, you enter it in the journal on day whatever, and if it doesn't change for 10 days it still reads the same for all ten days. You change it on day 11 and that now becomes the new sticky value until the next time it is changes, etc, and so on.

The backgound you gave about weights relationship to AHI is nice to know, for people new to apnea therapy. I have used a cpap for going on 24 years so this is just second nature to me and the weight having to be entered every day just seems like an unnecessary requirement, for those of us that try to track that datapoint.

So now it's my turn to provide background, I take medication for Type 2, and I told my doctor that I can give him boatloads of information but will not keep a food diary. Why not a food diary, because it is too much work as for me that is a manual process, I eat, then I have to click or write in values. It is just too much. Right now, I can give my doctors, ECG, Blood Glucose and Keytones, Blood pressure, SPO2, heart rate, and more and none of that requires any manual entry besides initial set up. For some reason I feel OSCAR can do almost all of that. What it couldn't do, in my limited use (I am a newb at almost three months of use) was easily track weight. The more datapoints that are easier to collect the better our therapy works, at least that is what I believe.

But I did not know the way the devs lean, so I made two possible suggestions.

[LoudSnorer]

The concept of s sticky weight has only issue. he sticky weight value MUST only be updated when it is newer than the last sticky weight value. This is required since weight can be changed at any time.
So the only purpose for the sticky weight value is to populate the weight when new data is imported after the last value.
( i don't is older cpap can be imported or not).
The prefilll weight value feature could be easily implemented.

Now concern the issue of a food diary. The daily notes can be used to store any type of text. You could use this feature to store your food diary.
The problem would be how to display this information in a report for he Doctor. That would be a new feature.

[WallyPepper]

Not concerned about adding food to Oscar. Adding food intake doesn't really seem to fit, and there are already quite a few apps that will record this information for you. Why reinvent the wheel , so to speak. I was just using it as an example that since it isn't easy to do, I, like most people won't do it.

So right now I leave the weight variable at 0.0 in Oscar because I don't want to enter a value every day, nor is there a need for that for most people. Since I don't weigh myself daily, sometimes by the time I do weigh myself I have already forgotten how much I weighed the last tiime I stepped on a scale. Unless you are actively trying to lose weight I would venture a guess that most people do not weigh themselves everyday.

Looking at the backup of a Journal, I can see the weight (when input) is added to the XML. Since I have never actually tried to restore a journal, I could not tell you if it restores that value, I assume it would or why else back it up. Also included is the lastupdated field, which I assume is a hashed version of the time it was input.


I tried an experiment, I backed up the Journal, then edited it in Notepad++, where I added the weight previously entered on each and every line that had a journal entry. then I imported the journal, but I found an issue. When you import the journal, every day that has weight data input will now have the value there, that is the good part. Now the bad part. BMI is not recalculated on any day nor is it stored in the journal, so historical BMI information is now incorrect. The only way to correct the information is to physically type in the weight. The act of typing in your weight forces a recalculation of the BMI, but I suppose this might already be a know issue. I did not scan GitLab to see if it has been reported.