Visualizing My Weight Loss Habits:

Maintaining a calorie deficit is arguably the most essential part of weight loss. For any given day, experiencing a calorie deficit means eating less calories than the body uses to perform all actions. This includes involuntary actions such as heartbeat, as well as voluntary actions like exercise. When this happens, your body must utilize fat and other resources to perform tasks in order to make up for the lack of energy intake. Thus, you lose weight!

Most individuals' bodies burn around 2000 calories per day. This can vary depending on gender, height, weight, and muscle mass, for example, but it serves as a good benchmark for how much we are eating. Below shows how my average daily calorie intake varied for both periods.

I was quite below the 2000 calorie benchmark for both periods. In fact, since I was overweight in both of these periods, my body's "break-even" calorie amount was probably greater than 2000, which would make my deficits even larger.

This also means that I maintained a negative calorie deficit for each period, which resulted in negative daily weight changes. These deficits resulted in me losing around 1/10th of a pound per day. It might not seem like much, but over weeks and months these small changes add up to very noticeable changes in weight and appearance.

Exercising to lose weight might seem like a no-brainer, but it's worth quantifying the effect this had on my weight loss nonetheless.

Exercise is important to weight loss because it helps you achieve larger calorie deficits. When you burn a lot of calories via exercise, you increase your body's total energy needs for the day. Assuming you have your diet in order, this means your body is going to utilize much more fat to meet its energy demand.

It sometimes carries an additional benefit. For those inexperienced with weight loss in general, it is easy to underestimate how much you are eating. Exercise often provides a safety net that will make up the difference between what you think you are eating and what you are actually eating. In other words, exercise lets you eat a bit more while still maintaining a calorie deficit.

The effect of exercise on my daily weight loss is quite clear. I always weighed myself in the morning, where my change in weight would be reflective of my caloric intake and exercise the previous day. When I exercised the previous day, my losses were 0.05 lbs higher on average.

My exercise sessions, which consisted exclusively of running, were also high intensity, averaging 2.9 miles ran and nearly 400 calories burned. I refer to them as "high intensity", but this is a relative term. Depending on how in shape you already are, exercise that is easy for you might feel intense to someone else. If you are just starting out, perform some exercise that you feel pushes you for at least 30 minutes, and gradually increase that intensity as you improve. The higher your intensity, the larger your calorie deficits will be. I recommend some form of cardio such as running because it doesn't require any equipment and is excellent for heart health.

When losing weight, it may be tempting to do it "old-school" or trust your own judgements about how much you are eating. Using a tracking app to track your weight and calorie intake can feel time consuming and fatiguing. I felt the same way, which is why in the 2019 period of my weight loss I decided not to use one, instead simply estimating my calorie intake based on my own knowledge of the foods I ate. When viewing my actual weight loss trends versus my predicted ones for each period, an interesting phenomenon emerges.

In the 2016 period, when a tracking app was used, it becomes clear that my weight loss more closely follows what was predicted. The average deviation between actual and predicted was almost three times as large when no tracker was used.

This is important for proper weight loss because it keeps you honest about what you are eating. It's easy to become biased about your calorie intake. You want to lose weight, so it's easy to underreport how many calories you are consuming, which might result in a lower predicted weight than your actual weight. This will cause you to become frustrated, which will probably lower your morale and lower your chances of adhering to your plan in the long-term. Since tracking apps often have built in calorie amounts for foods, the chances of underreporting are decreased.

At first glance, the concept of a cheat day might seem counterintuitive. A cheat day is a day in which you intentionally eat more than what your weight loss routine typically calls for. This means eating an amount of calories around your break even point, or perhaps even more depending on your goals. Powerlifters, for instance, often eat very large amounts of calories on their cheat days to aid muscle growth.

What purpose does a cheat day serve? Wouldn't it be better to simply maintain a deficit and lose more weight? Perhaps, in theory. But this isn't often how reality plays out. The key is maintaining motivation. Diet and weight loss aren't easy. It's easy to get frustrated or give up altogether. We can see how cheat days impacted my mood, which I rated daily during the 2019 period on scale from 1 to 5. I believe mood is an acceptable substitute for motivation in my case, since feeling unmotivated tends to ruin my mood. This certainly might not be the case for all individuals, however.

My mood was higher on cheat days by almost a full point. During my weight loss routine, mood was a key motivator. When I was in a better mood, I was more motivated to maintain my diet until the next cheat day. Increased motivation increased the likely of adhering to my diet long term.

Since cheat days had this important effect (for me), we can view some of their other characteristics.

As expected, my calorie consumption in 2019 was greater on cheat days, while still being close to the typical 2000 calorie max. This highlights an important quality of my cheat days. I certainly ate more, but not an excessive amount. Rather than have a calorie surplus on my cheat days, I was more likely to be calorie neutral, or perhaps have a very small deficit. For the average person, this is a good target to aim for in order to maintain good eating habits while still getting to enjoy the cheat day itself.

The final quality of my cheat days is that they were consistently planned for the same days. Mine, for example, were concentrated on the weekends, where I would often plan to eat out with friends or my SO. This is crucial because cheat days can be tempting. By consistently planning for them on the same days, you avoid the temptation to have cheat days whenever you want and break your diet as a result. It also aids in building a routine. Routine is important in a diet because, like all other routines in your life, they become second nature. The more routine a diet feels, the easier it is to adhere to.

In short, four features of my weight loss routine helped me to lose weight:

• I maintained calorie deficits via lowered calorie consumption
• I had an exercise routine to increase my body's calorie demand
• I used a tracking app to make weight loss predictable, and to keep me honest about what I ate
• I used cheat days to improve my mood and maintain long term motivation.

The data I collected is only reflective of myself, so your results may vary. Nonetheless, incorporating these tips into your weight loss routine will prove an excellent starting point for any beginner or someone who has had trouble losing weight.

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adult Obesity Facts. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html Accessed 10/9/2019.

All stock images are courtesy of pexels.com

My data used to create the data visualizations can be downloaded here: https://jhumes.github.io/Humes-Portfolio/Final_Project/Weight_Loss.xlsx