How a Data Dork Loses Weight

Right around this time last year, I quit smoking. I didn’t take any pills (didn’t work), I didn’t chew any gum (made me dizzy), and I didn’t wear any patches (might as well have been band-aids). What I did do was stop caring about what I was eating and how much weight I was gaining. Between March and December of 2009, I was a regular at all the local Mexican food restaurants and fell in love with Taco Bell chicken burritos. Self-regulation is within us in a limited supply, so this was out of practical necessity.  But it worked and as of the end of December, the habit was so ingrained that I considered myself a nonsmoker.

The problem? I have a 10 pound window where all my clothes fit and I feel great. I gained 20 pounds past the high end during those months. I refused to buy new ‘fat’ clothes because I knew this was a temporary weight gain, so instead I wore lots and lots of dresses. When I go through a pregnancy one day I won’t even have to buy maternity wear I have so much clothes with breathing room. So if 2009 is the year I quit smoking, 2010 is the year I  get my weight under control.

I’m happy to say I am about halfway there. Over the past 12 weeks, I have lost 12 pounds. This is perfect progress in my book. Initially I was hoping for two pounds a week, but one pound a week is plenty.

The best tool I have used over the past three months was my excel diet spreadsheet. Any time I have ever needed to lose weight, the only way I am able to do it is if I meticulously count calories. But I find it extremely inefficient to keep a food diary. So instead, I use the excel sheet as more of a dashboard to measure my progress as opposed to a tracking system that tracks my activities.

I have a column for:

• Date [A]
• Expected/Goal Weight [B]
• Actual Weight [C]
• Caloric Expenditure Through Physical Activity [G]
• Caloric Intake Through Food [H]

My assumption is that, living a completely sedentary lifestyle, my metabolism is built to take care of 1650 calories per day. Any physical activity I do each day is then a ‘bonus.’ I find this is much more motivating to me than using an activity calculator.

I use all that data to make the following calculations (using formulas, of course):

• Average Weekly Caloric Intake [K] (=average of ‘caloric intake through food’)
• Total Calories Expended Through Physical Activity [L] (=sum of ‘caloric expenditure through physical activity’)
• Daily Physical Activity Expenditure [M] (=average of ‘caloric expenditure through physical activity’)
• Net Caloric Intake [N] (= ‘average of caloric intake through food’ minus ‘average of ‘caloric expenditure through physical activity’)
• Caloric Deficit [O] [=('Net Caloric Intake' - 1650)x7]
• Cumulative Caloric Deficit [P] (=cumulative sum of ‘caloric deficit’)
• Theoretical Pounds Lost [Q] (=’Cumulative sum of caloric deficit’ / 3500)
• Average Weight [R] (=average of ‘weight’)
• Average Expected Weight [S] (=starting weight + ‘theoretical pounds lost’)

I just bought a Tanita body fat scale, so three new columns were recently added to include:

• Body Fat Percentage [D]
• Pounds of Fat [E] (=’Weight’ x ‘Body Fat Percentage’)
• Lean Body Mass [F] (=’Weight’ minus ‘Fat Body Mass’)

Then, in a separate tab I have dashboards that display the data visually (line graphs, bar graphs, etc.). If you are less nerdy, you can use fitday.com or nutritiondata.com — you just enter your calories and activities and they’ll do the number crunching for you. My issues with those sites is they didn’t feel custom enough and it was too much work to update each meal.

Free Download: Diet Data Template