I gained EIGHT pounds on Sunday.

It’s true.

Saturday morning I weighed 222…but on Sunday morning the scale said 230.

As in “Holy Cheese Balls Batman… that’s 8 pounds in one day!”

I turned to Sharon and said “If this keeps up, by Friday I’m going to weigh 300 pounds.

We quickly went through possible causes…

Did you move the scale dial?  No, definitely not.

Was the salad dressing last night inordinately salty?  Nope… went downstairs and checked it.  190 mg per tablespoon, and I only had three at best.

Did I eat more than I thought?

Well, to gain eight pounds I’d have to eat like 27,000 calories more, right?

But no… when I added up the day it was about 3,000 calories, which is pretty tame for a day when I lift weights and walk six miles.

Was there some kind of a solar flare that impacted how much everyone weighs in the area?  No… none of my friends or colleagues reported any similar abnormalities on their scales.

Maybe someone altered the gravitational field in my bathroom, or injected me with a strange serum which drastically altered my molecular density?

I suppose anything’s possible (I love “The Fringe” TV show, don’t you?)…

But the bottom line is, no matter how many times I got on the damn scale it said 230, and that was 8 pounds more than 24 hours previous.

I was freaked out.

And the more Sharon told me not to freak out, the more freaked out I felt.   (If you’ve ever been heavy, you know the feeling)

Did I have some strange new disease?

Well…

Fast forward to Sunday evening I weighed 226…

And Monday morning I was right back at 222 (or… technically 221 if I leaned just the right way).

I didn’t do anything special to get the weight off.  I ate normally, had a reasonably sedentary Sunday,

And I’ve got NO explanation for it… and probably never will.

Which brings me to my marketing point…

There are some numbers you’re really not supposed to watch daily…

There’s just too much noise in the data…

And staying glued compulsively to your computer screen while they go up and down is a great way to make yourself crazy.  Seriously.

Which is why I’m a big proponent of figuring out the “statistically stable cycle” in your market for impressions, clicks, opt ins, and sales.

Every market is different.

There are some where the traffic comes screaming in so fast it makes your head spin…But try and run an A-B test in 24 hours and you’ll find that (even though the statisticians will tell you the results are significant at the 99.999% confidence level) the big winner on Monday is  a big loser on Tuesday.

WAY too much noise in 24 hours.

Or a common rookie mistake is to get extremely excited when a bunch of sales come in one day, and then suicidal the next day when there’s none.

That’s a manic depressive way to live.

Get to know your market better and you’ll come to take it in stride (look at monthly reports, moving averages, etc)

We all got into this internet marketing thing to drive a more SANE lifestyle right?

Something it’s all too easy to forget.

Now who wants to write an ebook about my new “Lose 8 pounds in 24 hours” diet?

Dr. G 🙂

PS – The Club