Richard’s Weight Chart

In February 2002 I decided that (a) I had put on far too many pounds, having peaked at about 229 pounds buck naked, and (b) that I would do something about it. Doing something about it meant going on a diet. My version of dieting mostly meant not eating anything “bad” and eating as much of the “good” things that I wanted to eat. Mostly it meant that the only prepared meals I ate were low-cal TV dinners. Beyond that it was fruit and vegetables and the occasional protein bar.

I was pretty strict about it, and the pounds kept melting off. I went from a 43 inch waist to a 36 inch waist, and dropped about 45 pounds from February to November. Since then I have been more or less in a maintenance mode.

As it happens I am a number gathering geek and have weighed myself twice and day, morning and night, ever since I started the diet thing. I have a file where I conscientiously record my weight. Below I have plotted the whole thing as a range of morning weights for each month.

Weighing yourself every day works. The trick is that when you notice your weight creeping up you take extra care to be good and when it has gone down again you can allow yourself a few liberties.

Other than that, I’m don’t what the chart proves other than that one doesn’t have a fixed weight – it’s always going up and down a little bit. It’s the trends that you have to worry about.

     JFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASOND
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   2002        2003        2004        2005        2006        2007        2008        2009        2010        2011          
230  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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225  -|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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220  --|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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215  ---|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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210  ----|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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205  -----|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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200  ------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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195  -----------|-----------------------|--------------------|||-|||||----||-||---|-||---------------------------------------
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190 ---------||||||---------||---------||||||||||-||||-|||||----||---||||||-||-|||-|--|-------------||||---------------------
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              || ||||  ||| |||| ||   |||            |      ||   |                     |||||||||||||||   ||| |||||
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185  ----------|---|||||||||||||||||-||-------------------------|---------------------||||||||||--|-|----||||||||-||---------
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180  -----------------|---|--------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------|||-----
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175  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     JFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASOND
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   2002        2003        2004        2005        2006        2007        2008        2009        2010        2011