Nerdy MFP Graph Evidence

TMLPatrick

So I tend to be a stat nerd and have been graphing my weight loss on a daily basis. I think this might be pretty interesting to people who are just starting out and are skeptical as to whether or not this will work, as I was when I started.

I've been doing MFP for 4 months (as of yesterday) and lost 30 lbs total (from 248 to 217). My goal has consistently been set to 1.5 lbs per week which is a level that is very easy for me to maintain. I updated my goal when I hit 238, 228, and 218 in order to keep the calorie goal correct. I think the evidence really speaks for itself.

On the graph, the yellow line indicates the rate that MFP thinks I should be losing at (1.5 lbs / wk).... I actually adjusted this down to start at 245 instead of starting it at 248, because I felt that 248lbs might have been a heavy day. In retrospect it might make more sense for me to have started it at 240ish because my weight went almost immediately to 240.

The red wavy line indicates my 7 day average weight. As you can see it kind of varies a bit and plateaus and drops off on occasion as you would expect. The dots are my weight on each individual day.

The straight red and blue lines are trend lines created based on the actual data. These should indicate where my weight loss should be in the future based on my weight loss progress. In other words, these are based on real world calculations, not just on the 1.5lbs/wk that MFP says I should be losing.

The takeaway from this should be proof that MFP's goals actually work quite well if you follow them fairly closely. Its pretty amazing to me that the trend of my actual weight loss nearly identically lines up with what MFP says I should be losing.

fridayjustleft04

Nothing makes my nerdy heart happier than a good graph

jlembry

Love this! I'm such a nerd that I plot everything in Excel. Great job on the loss!

melbaby925

That is fabulous! And this nerd loves that you did that! I've been tracking overall nutrients, plus sodium, sugar and fat about the same to trend the right stuff down and the healthy stuff up.

Congrats on the loss, too!

camy_chick

that's actually cool to see. if i was more of a nerd out stat girl, i would do something like that. but it is cool to actually see that someone elses weight goes up and down all week. mine does that and i just look at the scale like WTF just happened? i'm somehow magically 5 pounds heavier then i was yesterday? and the next day i'm 7 pounds lighter then i was yesterday............it gets confusing. but it's nice to see the actual rate that things do happen. and it pretty much goes with your mfp goal. it's cool.

thanks for sharing!

vibrant80

This is totally awesome. And I think it's a great lesson to not let the "bad" scale days distract from your overall progress and goals!

I_give_it_2_u_str8

great job..

what other data are you tracking? it would be interesting to see what leads to more rapid weight loss periods compared to others