Comments on: Using PhysicsDiet to Track Your Weight

By: Ricky Buchanan

Ricky Buchanan — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:51:59 +0000

I’ve been tracking my weight at the Hacker’s Diet Online website for 2+ years now and I find it really helps. I’m a numbers-and-data type geek too, so I like having a datapoint of my weight for (nearly) every day. It’s also helped with realising the lack of relationship between one point on the graph and the overall trend line … I mean, obviously they are related but one “heavy weight” day doesn’t make me freak out, give up, throw up my hands in horror, or various other things it used to do. I deal much more realistically with it, which I am really pleased about.

Because I’m bedridden, my weight loss has been very slow (and dietician-monitored) but I’ve lost 25kg (55lbs) in 2 years. That’s certainly slow by most people’s standards but I’m so unbelievably proud of myself! It’s almost exactly 25kg right now so I still have “round number glee” in my system from getting there. My BMI has gone from 41 to 30.8 so that’s a HUGE difference in health-related risk factors and such. I’d be happy to share the Hacker’s Diet graphs with you but I think it’ll only show them to people with a login of their own? If anybody knows how to share it to somebody else, please tell me!

My goal weight is about another almost-10kg away, so I probably have another nearly-year of loosing before I move into the maintenance phase. I love reading here – knowing that everybody has good spots and bad spots is reassuring and helps remind me that my bad spots will end too. And although you talk a lot about exercise and that’s not possible for me, it’s the overall feeling and tone that I like. So thank you!

Ricky

By: Andrew is getting fit

Andrew is getting fit — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:00:37 +0000

I love physicsdiet but like you I only use it to track my weight. The graphs are a fantastic tool.

By: DR

DR — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:47:21 +0000

Thanks for the link – fun stuff for a fitness geek

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:13:13 +0000

I’ve been a Hacker’s Diet Tracker devotee for about 4 months now. The only thing I felt was missing, was fat percentage measurements, so I made a separate Excel spreadsheet to track those (without the moving averages though). But now with PhysicsDiet I can combine the good stuff from both worlds? That’s great news. I’ve already uploaded my data (took a while though for four months ) It’s a public profile, so if anybody is interested, you can check it out (username = Flasheart). Progress has been slow (8.8 lbs in 4 months), but I actually like it that way. Get fit slowly right? My experience is that when I lose weight faster, I tend to lose too much muscle mass and I start to feel really low energy, which causes me to take some rest and usually drop out. Lessons learned. This time, I’m taking things much slower and I feel stronger and more energetic than ever.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:43:24 +0000

Determining body fat is tricky. You can do it with some fancy electrical weight scales, but they’re not very accurate. To do it properly, you need a fancy immersion device (available at some health spas and clinics). But I did hear an interesting technique.

Go to a swimming pool, into the deep end, tread water for a minute. Now put your arms at your side, and “stand up” motionless. If you float, you’ve got more than 15% body fat. If you barely stay afloat (neutral buoyancy), you’re at 10%. If you sink, you’re below 10%. YMMV.