Nerd out and graph your results

So those who know me know I am a bit of a nerd at heart. I like numbers and patterns and things that fit together. I even learned how to write essays in English by making myself a formula. Needless to say, I love a good graph!

I always knew that gaining or losing weight was a numbers game with a very simple formula. If you want to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you eat, if you want to gain weight you need to eat more than you burn. In a previous post I mentioned the myfitnesspal app, which can work out all the formulas in the background and give you a rough idea of what you might need to eat for your relevant goals. But how do you know if its working?! I can tell you when I was bulking I couldn't really tell visually if I was getting bigger each day and when I wanted to drop weight I would just poke my stomach longingly, hoping it was harder than the day before. This lead me to believe that bulking was not only about exercise and food intake, but also a little bit of voodoo. For a number of weeks I would eat what I was supposed to, work hard in the gym and rowing and feel like nothing was changing as I couldn't see the difference. It left me feeling out of control of my body and that this whole exercise was pointless. But then I started to graph!

Basically, all I did was create a table in Excel. I had Monday to Sunday in a column for each week. I then put the average weight for the week below. From that, I hit the graph wizard button and let it do the rest. The key is to weigh yourself at the same time every day or every couple of days. This will hopefully help iron out the inconsistencies from one day to another. The weekly average number will help with this too.

Did this change my results? Of course not. What it did tell me was, firstly, I was actually putting on weight (without the aid of voodoo)! Secondly, while I was gaining weight, I was only putting on about 100g per week. So from this I tried bumping up my food intake a little. I then started gaining more like 400g a week. From this I felt more empowered. I knew that I was improving and going in the right direction over time. Even if i went down in weight one day, the graph still trended up over time. Now this could just as easily be used for those looking to lose weight, you obviously just want the graph to trend the other way.

There are many reasons that might cause you to not have the loss or gain expected. This is just one tool to try and work it out. As always, check with a doctor before doing anything drastic and the best dietary changes are the ones done slowly overtime.

As they say, knowledge is power. If you have a goal to change weight but you’re not sure how its going, time to nerd out. Also It’s just nice to have something to show you the numbers are going the right way long term.