Week 388 Update

It was 4:55 AM when I stepped up on Mr. scale. He promptly said "196.0 pounds!"

I am happy to see that number on the scale this morning. Being down 2.5 pounds from last week is a good thing. I am even a pound down from 2 weeks ago, so I really am showing a loss overall, despite the gain last week.

If I had been showing a consistent loss this week, this graph would be more or less accurate. It is actually the graph that was produced when I put my weight in this morning, after not having put my weight in for several days. When you do that, Weight Commander fills in the missing days by dividing the difference up into equal parts and applying them evenly to all the days in between. Unfortunately, life is not always that smooth. And here is the real graph after adding in the actual data from my daily weigh-ins.

The corrected Weight Commander Control Panel Graph, indicates the fluctuations that my weight went through as the week progressed. The effect that had on the solid squares was to level them out, and to hold the average weight up near where it has been for nearly 2 weeks. The last square dips down, in honor of the drop in the scale reading today.

There are some positive things on this graph. The trend, however slow, is still downward. The numbers on the left side show that for the last 4 weeks I have had 10.5 pounds of loss, while only having 1.5 pounds of gain. That comes to a drop of 9 pounds net. I am not going to complain about a 9 pound loss. If I lost 9 pounds in any month when I am in the losing mode, I would consider that a very successful month!

The numbers on the right side show that progress has been made as well. I weighed less today than I did one year ago. You could say that I only lost one half pound over the year, and it would be true, but when you consider the excursion I took way out of bounds, to be down a half pound today from a year ago is a real plus! Also, I am 10.5 pounds down from 60 days ago, and 11.5 pounds down from 90 days ago! It also shows that I am 7.5 pounds down from 30 days ago. (Just in case you notice the discrepancy…twenty-eight days ago I weighed 1.5 pounds more than I did 30 days ago, and that's where the difference comes from between the number of pounds lost for 4 weeks ago and that for 30 days ago.)

The Weight Commander Future Graph is impacted, just like the main Control Panel Graph was, by not having the real data to work with. When just my weight for today was put in, and the rest of the week had to be calculated, this was the prediction for the future. It shows me within my target range (185±2.5 pounds) before Christmas.

Now here's the Weight Commander Future Graph, after getting the real data input. Sadly, this one shows me still in the 190s, clear into the middle of January. Still, it is showing a continuing loss, and in time, as long as I have a continuing loss, I will reach my goal!

My Excel spreadsheet shows a very similar difference as the two Future graphs did. The prediction based upon the change in my weight over the last 14 days, predicts that in 90 days I will weigh 191.57, while the one based upon the change in my running average predicts that I will be down to 184.43 pounds at the end of the same period. What is interesting is that the one that I normally would expect to be more accurate—the one using the average weights—is the one that matches the first Future graph, but that graph was the one using calculated data rather than the daily weigh-in data. (The moral to this story is don't weigh every day if you are going to take it too seriously. )

The 60 days Weight Commander graph still looks good, even though the most recent values are jumping around. If you look at the trend formed by just the peaks, or the one formed by just the minimums, in either case it is falling. And if you draw a line through the starting point on the far left, and the ending point on the right, the slope of the line will be falling fairly sharply. If you draw a line through any of the other points on the graph through the final point, it will form a downward sloped line.

Now last week that was not true. You would have had to go back to the end of September to find a place where all the points before that date would have fallen above the weight last week. My weight is not dropping like a rock in free fall, but it is still dropping.

The 90 days Weight Commander graph has a nice general trend downward as well. The jump up that occurred in August hasn't fallen off the left side of the graph yet, but it is working its way over quickly, and in a couple of weeks it will no longer be visible on this graph, as it is no longer visible on the 60-day graph.

The long view granted by this graph shows that real life is not a straight line, and getting from point A to point B will sometimes trace a route that a river would feel very comfortable following.

The 1 year Weight Commander graph shows that from Halloween last year, up to early August this year, my weight was on the rise, with a real jump in early August. Since early August, my weight has fallen very quickly, and I am finally down at or below the little dips in the graph that occurred around Christmas and in early February. There was nothing sustained about either of those two earlier lows, but this one is the continuation of a solid trend that has continued for a couple of months.

In my 394-day graph, pushing the data back beyond one year, it shows that my weight had climbed up above my "normal" limit of 200 pounds, and that I was fighting last October to bring it back down, before I really lost my grip on the situation for some months in 2008. The 1-year graph makes it look like everything was fine last October and I just went off track in 2008, but I had been having trouble long before that!

The Weight Commander Time Capsule shows that I started using Weight Commander just before Christmas last year. I have lost two pounds, or only 0.1 ounce per day for the entire year. Now, depending upon whether I want to look at the glass as half empty or half full, I could say that over this time I did badly, and I only lost 2 pounds in 10 months. On the other hand, thinking like Pollyanna, I could say that I lost weight, and I didn't gain for that period of time, and that is great! I also could say that I began this time period inside my "Normal Range" for my height, and I ended it inside my "Normal Range." I am not overweight today, and that is a good thing!

Note: Pollyanna was one of the most likable fictional characters ever created. She had been dealt some terrible blows in life, and still she always tried to find the happy or "glad" side of things. She is a great example of finding the good in things, even when all is not good. It was entirely her choice what she would focus upon. She CHOSE to be glad, and then set about finding things to be glad about. Sadly, what the name Pollyanna has come to signify to many is an unwarranted optimism, in the face of challenges, leading to unwise decisions, and disaster. To many it is something to be aggressively avoided, because it symbolizes stupidity, rather than a positive personal view that one takes to create a happy emotional response to the world.

When a disaster hits, you need to take prompt and appropriate action. When you spill a glass of milk across the table, you don't say, "My I am so glad that it wasn't sulfuric acid," instead of moving things out of the way and cleaning up the milk. But after things are cleaned up, looking for the bright side of things certainly can't hurt.