weight patterns
I've been logging my weight on and off for the past four years. Not constantly, unfortunately, and I've lost at least one of my logs (from 2009) when my computer crashed. Typically, I only see charts for the time period since I started the diet I'm currently on, which look something like this:
(This is from 2007)
Today I spent about three hours putting all of the information together into one HUGE chart, which tracks (most of) my weight history from mid-2007 to the present.
I'm missing my records from 2009 but I was able to retrieve a few data points from when I talk about my weight on livejournal, which give me some idea of where my weight went between the more detailed logs.
Currently, I've been logging (aka, exerting effort) since July of last year. Or (if you really want to count everything) since the beginning of February when I did my fasting project. I don't log when I'm doing whatever it is that I do to make me gain weight, and that is kind of a shame. Sometimes, (in particular, the winter of 2009) I know I'm overeating and hardly exercising at all. Other times, it doesn't seem like I'm doing so bad, but I still gain a lot of weight. And yet other times, (such as here and here) I *know* I'm doing very badly and should be gaining weight; but not only do I not gain weight, I *lose* it. It's all very mysterious - unless I'm logging. Then I can see a pretty clear correlation: I start indulging or missing the gym too often, and then later the number on the scale begins to rise. It doesn't happen overnight, it seems to take about a week. Which explains why weight is so difficult to control - I never would have made the connection if I wasn't logging because the gap between events is too large for me to have done that without help.
I seem to recall that when I go off a diet, my weight stays more or less stable for a while and then it goes up again. I do not know (both because I don't record it and because the recording I have done has revealed that my self-judgment of what I eat is so subjective as to be completely unreliable) whether my weight gain is due to behavior (erosion of good habits) or biology. It's clear that whenever I stop logging I get into trouble. I assume that it's erosion of good habits. As I've posted here before, modern life is obesogenic. You don't have to be especially indulgent to gain weight. Just doing what is considered "normal" will make most people fat, especially as they get older. It stands to reason that once I stop monitoring my behavior I'll default to the norm that I live in.
I'm not comfortable to be so dependent on logging - it doesn't seem very sustainable, and I'm worried that means I won't be able to control my weight in the long term. But I've been awfully successful considering, and since I've been doing it for so long, it's gotten fairly easy to maintain.
But I might not, in the long run, have to do it all myself. Over the weekend I attended a conference that included a discussion about self-quantifying (that's what other people call projects like mine). As it turns out, there's a scale that will do the date/weight tracking for me. One woman in the discussion wore a device around her neck that also tracks her movement habits (exercise, sleeping, etc) and uploads it somewhere. If I could also get access to data other people are keeping on me (such as 24hour fitness, which records whenever I check into the gym), that would also do a lot of the work. I'm fascinated by the concept of self-quantifying, but haven't really done much to pursue this interest/community (I first discovered it some months ago) because I've been preoccupied with other things.
Oh the irony. If I'd been doing even half of what I'm doing now in my 20's I would have been incredibly fit. But that's life. Most of the friends my age have similar or worse struggles. Of the people that I know from my mid-twenties or earlier (including my siblings, all of whom are much closer to their twenties than I am) I'm the one who is closest to the weight I was back then.
(This is from 2007)
Today I spent about three hours putting all of the information together into one HUGE chart, which tracks (most of) my weight history from mid-2007 to the present.
I'm missing my records from 2009 but I was able to retrieve a few data points from when I talk about my weight on livejournal, which give me some idea of where my weight went between the more detailed logs.
Currently, I've been logging (aka, exerting effort) since July of last year. Or (if you really want to count everything) since the beginning of February when I did my fasting project. I don't log when I'm doing whatever it is that I do to make me gain weight, and that is kind of a shame. Sometimes, (in particular, the winter of 2009) I know I'm overeating and hardly exercising at all. Other times, it doesn't seem like I'm doing so bad, but I still gain a lot of weight. And yet other times, (such as here and here) I *know* I'm doing very badly and should be gaining weight; but not only do I not gain weight, I *lose* it. It's all very mysterious - unless I'm logging. Then I can see a pretty clear correlation: I start indulging or missing the gym too often, and then later the number on the scale begins to rise. It doesn't happen overnight, it seems to take about a week. Which explains why weight is so difficult to control - I never would have made the connection if I wasn't logging because the gap between events is too large for me to have done that without help.
I seem to recall that when I go off a diet, my weight stays more or less stable for a while and then it goes up again. I do not know (both because I don't record it and because the recording I have done has revealed that my self-judgment of what I eat is so subjective as to be completely unreliable) whether my weight gain is due to behavior (erosion of good habits) or biology. It's clear that whenever I stop logging I get into trouble. I assume that it's erosion of good habits. As I've posted here before, modern life is obesogenic. You don't have to be especially indulgent to gain weight. Just doing what is considered "normal" will make most people fat, especially as they get older. It stands to reason that once I stop monitoring my behavior I'll default to the norm that I live in.
I'm not comfortable to be so dependent on logging - it doesn't seem very sustainable, and I'm worried that means I won't be able to control my weight in the long term. But I've been awfully successful considering, and since I've been doing it for so long, it's gotten fairly easy to maintain.
But I might not, in the long run, have to do it all myself. Over the weekend I attended a conference that included a discussion about self-quantifying (that's what other people call projects like mine). As it turns out, there's a scale that will do the date/weight tracking for me. One woman in the discussion wore a device around her neck that also tracks her movement habits (exercise, sleeping, etc) and uploads it somewhere. If I could also get access to data other people are keeping on me (such as 24hour fitness, which records whenever I check into the gym), that would also do a lot of the work. I'm fascinated by the concept of self-quantifying, but haven't really done much to pursue this interest/community (I first discovered it some months ago) because I've been preoccupied with other things.
Oh the irony. If I'd been doing even half of what I'm doing now in my 20's I would have been incredibly fit. But that's life. Most of the friends my age have similar or worse struggles. Of the people that I know from my mid-twenties or earlier (including my siblings, all of whom are much closer to their twenties than I am) I'm the one who is closest to the weight I was back then.