Another week, another loss

78.1kg today, a loss of 400 grams from a week ago.

Week twelve of losing weight. That's good. What is not so good is the lack of exercise. That's bad. I'm planning to start today, and go all-out. My reason at this stage is a 'secret' but I'm bound to tell you in the next couple of months. I may be going overseas sooner than expected (maybe), and I want to reach goal weight before I do. Then again, maybe I won't go overseas early.

I know I have said this before, and nothing has happened. This time I'm a bit more serious than before.

I want to start exercising today, and continue for each day, until I'm at goal. I have a games console (Xbox 360) hooked up to my large LCD television. I have a Microsoft Kinect (which I'd planned to sell, because I never thought I'd use it) which is a 3 dimensional infrared detection system for the Xbox 360. I have an exercise game (Your shape, fitness evolved). What that all means is that I can move and the camera sees where my body and arms and legs are, and tells me how I'm exercising. The only downside is that I have to move the couch each time I have to do it.

Because I have that setup, I can exercise on days that I go to work, and the gym is closed. That means that I have no excuses. Maybe if I have a cold, I can take a day off. Who knows.

Now, it's time for an analysis of the 49 weight loss bloggers who I have been keeping track of, when they posted their weights on their blogs. First, a bit of background. I knew that most weight loss bloggers didn't achieve their weight loss goals, but I wanted to see exactly how they didn't achieve things, and see exactly what was happening to bloggers as an average, and also what maybe the top 25% achieved.

In January this year, I made a list of about 200 bloggers, and in February I took note of posted weights by the first 100 who said how much they weighed. I've been tracking these 100 bloggers since. When they update their weight, I enter it into my spreadsheet. 21 have abandoned or removed their blogs so far. I wanted to see how they were going after 6 months, however only 36 posted their weight in August. That number went up to 49 if I recorded their weight in the 6th, 7th or 8th month.

The good news is that the bloggers are actually losing weight. Maybe. The average weight for the 100 in February was 95.5kg. For November the average is 93.3kg, a loss of 2.2kg over 9 months. That's about 54 grams loss each week. The problem is that I don't know about the bloggers who don't post their weight. 28 posted their weight in October, a lot less than the 100 in February or 54 in March. I guess I should have found 100 bloggers who posted their weights in both February and March, maybe I would get more data. Maybe the people who don't post their weights are gaining. I get the feeling that if they were losing, we'd know about it.

I thought that I'd have a question/answer way to describe the data. First question:

Does having a weight loss blog help you to lose weight?

I don't know. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I know that for me, the answer is yes, but I don't know what proportion of bloggers are like me, who wanted to document their weight loss methods. To prove that it could be done.

What is the average loss for the people who posted their weight in the 6th, 7th or 8th month?

The 49 bloggers lost a total of 76.8kg, over an average of about 7 months. However one person contributed 31.3kg of that, the second best lost 20.0kg and the third best lost 19.6kg. This means that a lot of people gained. The average loss works out to be 1.6kg per person. But because some people were a lot heavier than others in this survey, as a percentage of starting body weight, the average loss is 0.46%. That means a 100kg person would lose 0.46kg after 7 months. In case you were wondering, median losses are 0kg and 0% of body weight. That means that 24 people gained, and 24 lost, with one person being the same as they were in February.

Okay, half lose and half gain. Let's talk about the people who lost. What was their average?

When you start to lose weight, you never know for sure whether you'll be successful. But if you were successful, you'd lose an average of 7.84kg or 7.14 percent of your body weight.

There have to be some people who are pretty good at losing weight, say the best one quarter of the 49 who posted their weight. How did they go?

The top twelve people lost an average of 11.5 percent of their initial body weight. The lightest of these people weighed 75kg at the start, which means that you didn't have to be heavy to be pretty good at losing weight.

It's almost December. How many lost for each of the nine months?

Just one. I'd post a link to her blog, but I don't want to unintentionally derail her progress by putting pressure on her.

So there you have it. Roughly half of all bloggers lose weight. I'll update the stats after 12 months, and see what's changed, and how many have reached goal weight.

PS apologies if there are any typos in this post, I've got allergies today and I'm having difficulty with my vision.