Weight + daily calories charts. How to?

Gociek
Gociek Posts: 5 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've got a pretty extensive database of my weight, daily calorie intake, macronutrients and so on. The thing is, MFP doesn't show these elements in relation to each other over time. I'd like to be able to see what my calorie intake over, say, a month looked like in terms of weight loss. I'm looking for information from a few years ago because I have everything written down. I even tried combining data and exporting it to CSV and graphs in Excel, but it was too much for me.
Is there an external app I can connect to MFP that will sync all this data and make it easier to create such charts? Or does anyone have a great Excel sheet where I could easily do this?
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Answers

  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    It sounds like your better option is taking your existing data, keeping it in Sheets, and then adding new days data to it. Track your calories here, and add the final days number to your sheet. It's easy in Sheets to create whatever charts you want for whatever ranges.
  • Gociek
    Gociek Posts: 5 Member
    I can assure you that it's not easy. The data in the CSV file shows every single food entry, rather than daily intake. I know it's still possible to do this with some Excel wizardry, but unfortunately I wasn't able to do it.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    edited October 21
    I maintain my own spreadsheet, to estimate my own TDEE with. I add two entries to my sheet for each day, total calories in and exercise calories. So long as you have at least about one month of that data in your sheet, you don't need any more history to start with. Then keep it going from there. You could start a sheet like that by clicking through your diary for the last month, wouldn't take long.

    I also update my weight once weekly there.

    My sheet then informs me of my estimated TDEE based on average daily calories and weight change over that time.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,885 Member
    edited October 21
    I have a very extensive spreadsheet, but the data it contains mainly comes from data I input manually (based on the data in MFP and in my Garmin Connect app), I've never used the MFP data exports so I don't know how easy it would be to exploit those.
    I have one tab with all my master data - one line per day, with columns for food intake, step count, weigh-in, trend weight, TDEE according to Garmin, actual TDEE based on trend weight and food intake measurements, ... With separate tabs for each graph based on the master data (weight evolution, calorie intake over time...

    It's a horrible thing (probably very inefficiently set-up and many graphs that don't serve a real purpose, on top of those that are useful) so I'm not sure it's a good model for others 🙂

    But if you give a screenshot/ example of the csv, perhaps we can give tips?
  • Gociek
    Gociek Posts: 5 Member
    The idea is to use data from the past couple of years. There's no way I'll put it all in manually. And to be honest, I don't see why we can't see this data on the graph.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    OK, but do you really need two years of data? How does that help going forwards, versus starting with one month of data?
  • Gociek
    Gociek Posts: 5 Member
    I do really need a couple of years' worth of data. It'd be great if there was a way to show it on the graph. I'm not sure why this option isn't a default one. It'd be really helpful to know how much someone eats and how it affects their weight.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    How does seeing calorie data from 18 months ago on a graph help you for next week?

    The most recent month of data for calories and weight change is all you need to help you going forwards. That's enough to calculate your TDEE and calorie deficit if any.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,885 Member
    I am in the camp of also finding longer term data useful, or at the very least, if not entirely useful in a practical sense, interesting at least.

    But unfortunately MFP has very limited graphs and statistical options. You can always make suggestions in the board/subforum specifically created for giving that kind of input to MFP.
    But in this subforum, its just fellow MFP users.
  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 3,838 Member
    I used to agree that long term data was important.
    After copying a lot of old data by hand and figuring it, I found out, FOR ME, that the last 3 months told me as much as the last 3 years. Which in turn told me I didn't need figures at all. I'm exactly average. I can just use a generic tdee calculator. Gives me the same info the whole 3 years worth did.
    But I still say you do you. Because people are different.
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,788 Member
    Gociek wrote: »
    I do really need a couple of years' worth of data. It'd be great if there was a way to show it on the graph. I'm not sure why this option isn't a default one. It'd be really helpful to know how much someone eats and how it affects their weight.

    If you really need a 2 year graph, then you're going to have to input the data into a graphing app yourself. If it's important, you'll do it. But, MFP is not a graphing app, it's a calirie counting app.
  • Gociek
    Gociek Posts: 5 Member
    @Retroguy2000 - I am a climber and have been doing sports where weight is key for about 15 years. Every year I have 2 seasons, fall and spring, under which I structure my diet throughout the year so that I can be at my strongest and lightest just in specific weeks. And I'm not talking about losing "a few pounds," but optimizing body composition from 12-15% body fat, to about 8-10%. Assuming that during such a process one trains several times a week and wants to maintain optimal form, what one eats and in what quantities is ABSOLUTELY KEY. And being able to observe my results + the weight at which I achieved them + the calories that got me there I can plan the next season even better than the previous one. And we're not talking about some mega-complicated graphs here, but a simple correlation: eating so much and so much, I weighted so much and so much and achieved such and such results. The only functionality missing in MFP is to show 2 graphs at the same time to compare them on the fly. @sollyn23I2 - entering a dozen products a day from the last 5 years manually is somehow absurd when all the data is already stored in MFP. They simply need to be displayed. So again - does anyone know what application that has this functionality I can migrate this data to????:)

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