PhysicsDiet.com

I added this animation of my first month of weight loss to the home page to give people an idea how the site works.

Since most existing users won't see this I though I'd share it here too.

Improved Registration Process

I streamlined the registration process. Now when people register for a new account they will be asked to answer the Profile questions so their profile is created at the same time their account is created.

New users also now get logged in automatically and taken directly to the Fitness Log.

I also simplified the Fitness Log for new users. Instead of showing all the data available I now select only the most useful Fitness Log Options for new users.

You can now reset your own passwords

If you forget your password you can now reset your own password.

You can now change your own passwords

If you want to change your password you can now do that too. Just click the Change Password link at the bottom of you profile page.

Missing data now gets estimated

In the past if you didn't log data every day the numbers that the site calculates would become useless. Now when you skip dates in your fitness log the data for those dates is interpolated for you based on the two surrounding dates. See this thread for more information on how I estimate the data.

The best part of about fixing this particular problem is now the list of Biggest Losers is much more useful since it isn't skewed by invalid data. I've been planning some new Biggest Loser features but I was holding off until I got this problem fixed.

Let me know if you notice any problems

If you notice any problems please post a message in the Help Forum.

Update: I also added some new columns to the "Biggest Losers" list.

Here are the top 10 fastest losers right now when you sort the list by the 30 Day Weight Change column. This is great. I'd love to hear what you guys are up to on the forums. I'm sure others would love to hear too. No pressure though

The entire public list is amazing. I'm really glad I added this feature. For example, right now the average 1 Week Weight Change is 1.25 pounds. That is about exactly what all the experts say you should reasonably expect to lose per week.

Playing with the list does make want to add a bunch of new features though. I need to include Height, Calorie Deficit, and BMI. I also need to add a summary row so you can see the averages for each column. There is always more work to do

I added the first bit of statistics to the homepage. Now when you are logged in, you can see a summary of your weight loss/gain, rate of weight loss/gain, and your daily calorie deficit/excess for 3 different periods of time. Here's what mine looks like today:

The Total Weight Change column shows the amount of weight you've lost or gained for that period of time. So you can see that I've lost 82 pounds since I started my diet. I've lost 8.4 pounds in the last 30 days. In the last 1 week I've lost 2.5 pounds.

The other two columns are the same calculations that the Weight Chart uses to show the Weekly loss & Daily deficit numbers. They are based on the best fit line on the Weight Chart. Right now the Weight Chart only shows the All Time figure. Soon I will change that so the figures shown on the Weight Chart matches the timeframe of the weight chart. So if you are a looking at last month on the Weight Chart the Weekly loss & Daily deficit will be calculated for last month instead of for All Time like it is today.

I'll be adding more to the home page in the coming days. Right now I'm working on a BMI chart that shows where your current BMI sits in relation to the different BMI categories. Eventually it will show your starting BMI, current BMI, & goal BMI. I will probably also add some of these things to the public profile.

Let me know what you think.

You can now make your PhysicsDiet.com profiles public. This will let you share some of your charts and your Weekly Summary information with anyone, even if they don't have a PhysicsDiet.com account.

By default your account is private. To make your account public you need to go to your profile page and check the "Make Profile Public" and save your profile.

To see a sample check out my public profile here:

http://www.physicsdiet.com/Public.aspx?u=Matt

If you don't track your Body Fat % then the Body Fat chart won't show up on your public profile.

Let me know what think or if you notice any problems.

I added a Daily Energy Balance section to the Weekly Summaries report. Here is what it looks like:

On the left side you see the Daily Average for the Calories Eaten, Calories Burned (from Exercise), and the Calorie Deficit/Excess.

Calories Eaten is the total of the Calories Eaten I entered for 4/16 - 4/22 divided by the number of days (7 in this case).

Calories Burned is the total of the Calories Burned divided by 7.

Calorie Deficit is calculated as (# of pounds I lost X 3500 calories) / # of days.

On the right side are the TEE figures. The Predicted TEE is the calculated TEE based on the weight I entered on the first day of the week. I need to change this so it is based on the Avg. Weight for the first day of the week.

The Effective TEE is calculated this way:

In this case the numbers were:

I chose to calculate the Effective TEE this way because I have the activity level in my profile set to Sedentary. That describes my lifestyle except for the deliberate exercise I choose to do. Since I track the number of calories I burn during exercise, I don't count those calories in my TEE calculation so I don't want to count them in this calculation either.

The value of the Effective TEE is that it shows how my metabolism varies from what my predicted metabolism says it should be.

Over the last couple months I've noticed changes in my weight loss that made me think my body was adapting my metabolism to balance my energy use with the number calories I eat. I can lower my calorie intake substantially without seeing much change to my weight loss. I can increase the number of calories I burn substantially without seeing much change to my weight loss. This is why I started tracking the exact number of calories I eat and burn. I wanted to see if there was a pattern here.

For now I'm going to leave the Effective TEE the way it is. I'm doing some experiments with my diet to see if I can get my Effective TEE as close to my predicted TEE as possible. I want to see what that does to my rate of weight loss. I suspect that I'll be able to maintain or even improve my rate of weight loss by focusing on the Effective TEE for a while.

I'm curious what other PhysicsDiet.com users think. Is Effective TEE a strange way to look at things? Would it be better for me to include my exercise in my Activity Level and then include those calories burned in an Actual TEE calculation? Or is there some other way you'd like to compare your calories consumed with your calories burned with the number of calories you are gaining or losing? Let me know.

Update: The Predicted TEE is now based on the Avg. Weight of the first day of the week rather than the raw Weight entry.

PhysicsDiet.com is down right now. My host upgraded the database server that PhysicsDiet.com runs on. Unfortunately they didn't get things configured correctly on the new server. I'm working on getting the site back up now. Your data is safe, you just can't access it right now. I'll post when I have more information to share.

Update: It appears that it may not be a configuration problem on the database server. The database server is down. I'll keep you updated.

Update: The site is back up. Sorry for the problems this morning.

The Charts on PhysicsDiet.com used to be hard to read because they didn't have grid lines. When I was the only one using the site I just ignored the problem. But now that other people are using the site I knew I had to fix it.

The grid lines are a light grey. If you think black - or some other color - would be better, let me know.

I finally got the PhysicsDiet.com Forums up and running. Check them out here: PhysicsDiet.com Forums.

Welcome to the PhysicsDiet.com Blog. I will use this blog to share news about the PhysicsDiet.com site and any other information that I think users of PhysicsDiet.com might be interested.