Weight Tracking
In late March, I decided to do something about the abysmal shape I was in. On the exercise front, I started doing push-ups, sit-ups, and walking/running six days a week. Long before I started any of that, I began putting my data collection skills to use by tracking my daily weight. So, in the last few days of March, I set up a simple spreadsheet to log my weight every day just before I get in the shower. I graph my weight versus time off to the side of the spreadsheet. Additionally, I calculate a 7-day sliding window average of my weight to try and smooth out the little fluctuations that occur from day to day. I also graph this and overlay it on the raw weight data.
In the early April time frame, I was very carefully watching what I ate and, as the month moved on, I noticed my weight graph showing a nice, downward trend. Then, as I began seriously working through the push-ups and sit-ups, before I began walking and running, I started to notice the graph sloping back up. At the moment, I am attributing that to the muscle-building workout that I have been doing, since I have not changed my eating habits in the past several weeks. Starting the walking and running seems to have curbed the incline, but I am still not doing a large enough amount of cardio exercise to push the trend back downwards.
I am considering augmenting my spreadsheet with push-up, sit-up, and walking/running data per day to see if I can correlate a decrease in my weight to increases in my workout routine. If everything is going well, I would expect to see that correlation. If not, I suppose that means that my eating habits have changed and I just have not noticed.