Contact: Facebook.

Chart your weight

Other than counting calories, exercising and watching my nutrition, I attribute my so far phenomenally successful weight loss to charting my weight. Here's what I did. I made an Excel spreadsheet that projected a weight loss of 30 pounds at a rate of 3/4 of a pound per week. This turned out to be just under 9 months. Imagine that: the birth of the new me is going to take 9 months! Then, I weighed myself using my digital scales morning and night, and plotted this information of a graph that I printed out.

Before you throw up your hands in horror at the prospect of using such a technically complex approach, just take a look at the graph below, which records the actual data on my weight loss from Jan. 1, 2004 to today, Apr. 17, 2004. The graph speaks for itself. It is working for me.

Here are a few additional details of this approach:

1. I weigh myself very first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. All of my clothes are off and I have emptied my bladder. The reason for this "precision" is that I want to eliminate as many variables as possible that could effect my weight, thus giving me an better idea of exactly how much I weigh.
2. I have noticed that generally speaking, I weigh about two pounds more at night than in the morning. This is fascinating to me. I do urinate once or twice during the night, so that, plus any exhaled moisture in my breathing, accounts for the weight loss.
3. If I go above either projected line, a red flag goes off. If I am above the line more than one day in a row, I get extremely serious about my diet the next day.
4. You will notice that around the middle of March, there was a weigh jump of about four pounds. I went to visit friends celebrating anniversaries and such, and try as I might, I couldn't avoid piling on the weight. But even though seriously tempted, when I came back in town, I went back on calorie counting with a vengeance. you can see that it took about a week to iron out my weight gain.
5. I have noticed that I can gain or lose up to a pound upon taking a hot bath. I have no explanation for this.
6. After two months of this rigor, it got to the point that I could predict my exact weight about one time out of two or three.