bri_stats said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

Saving this. It is the first explanation that did not require me to already understand it.

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Update: two thirds of the target before midday. Same total, same appetite, and I am hitting it most days now.

pete_nash said:

Update: two thirds of the target before midday.

This is my experience too, for whatever a second data point is worth. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.

pete_nash said:

Update: two thirds of the target before midday.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The mechanism and the magnitude are separate questions. Agreeing that something happens says nothing about whether it happens enough to act on.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason. In three months the reason is what you will have forgotten, and the reason is what makes the record worth having.