Cool Weight Graphs

shaunshaikh · January 2020

I have been maintaining graphs of my weight since I started in MFP in December 2010. If there was any group that would find this to be interesting, I thought it would be this one.

Below is a graph of all my data from beginning to now:

In 2017, I got even more scientific, corresponding the slope of my trend line to my net calories on MFP. It was awesome how much things lined up:

In 2018, I started a new job in sales and it wrecked me health wise. I still tracked my weight, but I did not have the habits to be successful with the new lifestyle of eating out a lot and travelling:

In 2019, I figured out a way to create statis with my diet with all the travelling and eating out, primarily around balancing big eating out and drinking events with fasting stretches. When I picked up exercising, things went great. I also decided to start adding bars to show my vacation (yellow bars) and business trips (grey bars) to see how they affected me:

In 2020, I know I will be closing in on my target weight. I was able to use the formulas for TDEE to figure out how much weight loss would change if I maintained daily 1,600 and 1,800 NET calories per day. The green band shows the upper and lower limits of that.

Hope you guys find this cool as I did. I hope that some people who maybe only weigh themselves once a week or month see how much I bounce around, but can still manage a negative trend. It should reassure you that a single negative or positive weigh in could signal a lot of things.

liftingbro · January 2020

I'm graph nerd too but don't have enough data yet for weight loss. Cool!

Fujigala · January 2020

Love your graphs. I am a business major as well, working in accounting. I am working on a daily 500 calorie deficit to lose one pound a week. I track my calories-in on myfitnesspal and my calories-out on my fitbit. I have an excel table with columns labeled weight, calculated weight, and projected weight. I'll probably add graphs soon. #nerds

moonangel12 · January 2020

Nice! My nerdy husband (said with much love and affection) would totally geek out on those charts and graphs! He has taught me an appreciation of them as well - fascinating to look at! And I bet a fun project for you as well!

Trishkit · January 2020

I love your graphs! I'm not quite data-savvy enough to create more than a simple one for myself, but I have a neat chart that lets me input start/goal weights, major upcoming events, and gives me a trend line based on recent inputs, so I can better visualize my predicted progress as time goes on. It's definitely been a useful tool.

Lietchi · January 2020

Cool, another data geek

Some of those are beyond my statistical skills, but I do love playing with my data as well. I'd love to know how to insert those vertical bars indicating events/milestones and how to insert a color band like that. I see some fun hours ahead playing in Excel, lol.

I have my "master data" table, with some conditional formatting:
- green, yellow or red calorie deficit: deficit goal achieved, deficit goal not achieved but still below maintenance, above maintenance
- color from red to green indicating my progress on the BMI scale
And also a little table recapping my weight loss and comparing it to how much I should have lost theoretically (kcal burn according to my tracker)

And then three graphs:
- weight and steps
- weight trend
- calories in and out

shaunshaikh · January 2020

Lietchi,

Your table looks very similar to my own. I used to do all these, plus:

Measurements of various parts of my body (belly, thigh, chest, arm, etc).
Body fat - periodically I got premium body fat measurements such as Bod Pod to measure my fat-free mass, then assumed constant fat free mass and daily calculated my body fat with my new weights.

After several years, I've decided to just focus on the few items below which I found most meaningful.

(Before you read into my drastic weight drop in 2020 too much, this is almost entirely just loss of bloat from poor eating habits during the holidays).

That's interesting how you track your calorie inputs daily in the spreadsheet. I start with the assumption that I am making my correct NET calories and then use the slope of my trend line to see if the slope matches my target deficits. Since I am in sales, I have to eat out a lot for meals that are nearly impossible to log, so I use the intuition I've gained from years of calorie counting to try to average a certain net calorie consumption and check my process/progress with the trend line.

IdLikeToLoseItLoseIt · January 2020

Wow! Fun graphs and info, thanks for sharing.

jean133mjg · January 2020

I love all the graphs and info ascertained from them. Too bad there’s not an app within MFP to be able to be used by those of us that are a bit computer illiterate. I love all the data, nevertheless.

shaunshaikh · August 2020

Today marks one year since I recommitted myself to working out and losing weight. I have lost 42 pounds and counting along with several inches off my waist. I've gone from XL shirts to medium shirts and I had to buy all new pants, belts, etc. I am the lightest I have ever been since my children have been alive, and my oldest is turning 8 soon.

I have been reflecting a lot of my weight loss journey. Over the course of the year I have had so much adversity and forced changes to my routine, whether it be injury or pandemic. I have run into multiple plateaus and stretches where I felt like I was making no progress, even now. I just continued to focus on the process over results and results eventually came, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that there wasn't mental anguish along the way. I think the biggest reason I overcame it was an absolute belief in the science of what I was doing.

Probably my best moment was when I had a month stretch where I only lost 2-ish pounds (constant fluctuation means that number is muddy). I had started weight lifting that month and I knew that starting a new weight lifting regiment could be causing me to hold water as my body adjusts to the new routine. It turned out that upon my next body fat measurement appointment that I had lost 5 pounds of fat and gained 3 pounds of muscle. I almost cried I was so happy to know that I was still on the right track. Even though I knew the scientific explanation, it can still be hard when you feel like you do all the right things and get no results.

My next short term goal is to be under 190 and then to be under 25% body fat. Per DEXA scanning technology, that would put me in the "normal" range.

charmmeth · September 2020

It's really interesting to see your graphs, and also to see how your weight went up during your MBA and when your kids were small. Also it's been helpful to me to hear (or read) your experience of experiencing a 2lb loss/plateau with significant change in fat/muscle. I am on that kind of weight plateau now an am also doing a lot more exercise, and my waist measurement is decreasing (judging by my belt). I think maybe I really am now starting to be able to claim that my weight is muscle! (I am hovering around the top of normal bmi.)

Cool Weight Graphs

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