calorie and weight amortization chart???

Pandawdy

I'm looking for an excel spread sheet that will generate an amortization chart. It needs to take in to account weight lost per day. Most calorie calculators wont' do this.

Example:
If I start my diet with a 1000 calorie per day deficit, my weight loss in the beginning will be dramatic. But near the end of the diet when I'm approaching my goal weight, weight loss will trail off dramatically because the deficit per day will be much smaller.

I need a calculator where I can specify the starting weight and the goal weight, and also length of time to goal weight. I also need to specify the calorie deficit.

Any ideas?

SonyaCele

i made my own spreadsheet years ago. maybe this will help. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/SonyaCele/view/my-weightloss-spreadsheet-477222

Pandawdy

SonyaCele, that looks pretty cool. Is there a way to download it?

nordlead2005

This is pretty easy to make. Just go Google your favorite BMR equation and then get plugging away in excel.

Honestly though, you are probably better off just periodically recalculating TDEE based on real life reaults and setting the deficit as you see fit rather than trying to predict how much you should eat 6 months from now. Your amortization table is likely to be way off due to your changes in physical activity over time.

SonyaCele

nordlead2005 wrote: »

This is pretty easy to make. Just go Google your favorite BMR equation and then get plugging away in excel.

Honestly though, you are probably better off just periodically recalculating TDEE based on real life reaults and setting the deficit as you see fit rather than trying to predict how much you should eat 6 months from now. Your amortization table is likely to be way off due to your changes in physical activity over time.

its not a prediction, its planning and then following that plan.

rankinsect

The problem with calculators is that they can be accurate for the population as a whole, but each individual is different, and when you try to project out months in advance, it's going to be even less accurate. I just look every month or so at my actual weight trends to see how I am doing versus how I would like to do and then I can adjust for the next month.

Keep in mind, though, that you want to slow down as you get closer to goal, because the less body fat you have, the more you tend to lose muscle mass for the same amount of fat loss. Dropping the rate of fat loss can help counteract this. For me, keeping my calories unchanged has actually been pretty darn good at keeping near the 1%/week rate of loss that I'm aiming for.

Sued0nim

Weight loss isn't linear

All numbers are estimates

Fluctuations and stalls and whooshes happen

I don't see the point TBH

I assume you are aware of the trending sites which extrapolate based on the last months data like trendweight.com (I appreciate this isn't the same thing but pointless prediction is pretty pointless IMO)

random5483

Weight loss has factors we cannot account for with a generic calorie in calorie out formula. Tracking our caloric burn in a day 100% accurately is impossible. Moreover, swellings can cause increases in weight (and thus more calorie burn for some activities) when our weight should go down based on calories in and out. The weight of our clothes, the muscles we have, and other non-calculated factors effect how much we burn. While a spreadsheet can be helpful in a very general sense, we do not have the type of tracking or information to create an accurate amortization schedule like we could with a mortgage.

Why? Every penny is not accounted for. We are slightly off in our calorie tracking even if we use the most accurate scales and weigh everything precisely. The calories in one apple and another of the same grams is not necessarily the same. With a mortgage amortization schedule, being off a little early on will mess up the plan. The "pennies" might not make a difference in the first several pounds, but a few "pennies" off at the start make a much bigger difference down the line. Want another parallel with a loan? Compound interest. Paying too little or too much early on can drastically effect how quickly your loan is paid off or how much you have to pay off down the line. It works the same way with food. Sure, you might be off only 10% in your tracking, which is fairly good. But over time that can become big. And when your tracking error is compounded with more faulty tracking and a fixed plan, you can find yourself making no progress.

Any plan we make can only be as accurate as the metrics we can track. We do not have the means to track everything exactly. You can get a rough estimate, but you have to keep reevaluating it. Your weight loss plan is closer to a monthly budget than a loan amortization schedule. Things happen that you don't account for. Most of us track our budgets to the dollar (or to the 10s or 100s of dollars) and not the penny like we do with a loan amortization schedule. Because of this we often have to adjust and reevaluate our budgets while our loans rarely get changed.

With that said, if you want to figure out a schedule to get a rough idea of what you need to do, that is fine. Just don't stick to a schedule that will not work with anything less than perfect data points since you will not have perfect data points given the tracking technology (for both caloric intake and expenditure) we have today.