I was thinking yesterday how much I can learn by looking at my progress graph. I thought it might be interesting to learn from each other's graphs. So if you have one and you feel comfortable sharing it, please do!

Here's mine.



Here's what I notice about it:

1. It's two years long. I've learned a ton about patience from this process. I didn't set out to make a "lifestyle change" as I find such thinking very intimidating. And yet here I am two years later still chugging along - and so many behaviors that are part of my process have become part of my regular life.

2. The overall trend is down, down, down - but there are plenty of daily fluctuations, of fits and starts, of periods of a week or two where I don't really lose at all. There are plenty of times when I didn't manage to stay on plan, too - but if I take a long-term view, they didn't stop my progress. Perfection is not required! But patience is. The progress is clear on the time scale of several months, but if you zoom in on some shorter period, like a week or two, it would not be apparent at all.

3. I have taken a couple of "maintenance breaks" when work got very stressful - first I ran out of time to exercise, and then I got a little less vigilant about food ... the thing I like best about this observation is that in each case, I was able to get right back on it. The other thing I like about it is that those "breaks" get shorter and shorter each time. The first one was very long, I think, because my new habits hadn't really become part of my life yet, so the first excuse to loosen up, I did. My job gets stressful in six-month cycles, and it's very good to see that I don't have an extended break every six months - over time, I learned to deal with that cyclical stress without needing to indulge in quite as much of a major break from my weight loss process.

I admit that part of posting this is just that I'm darned proud of what I've accomplished and enjoy showing it off to an interested audience. But also, I hope it's inspiring and helpful to some who are struggling with your own processes, with learning how to deal with daily fluctuations or learning how to make permanent changes in your habits. For me, it's been a long process and by no means free of slipups and backsliding. Just keep at it.

Now please, post yours. I'd love to see what others can learn from such an overview of their process.

Wow, that's a really inspiring graph. You really have made a lifestyle change.

I love my chart. It shows me progress. I love having something visual to hang on the fridge.

I've made my chart in both directions.

For some of the earlier dates it's just my best estimate of how I gained weight but for the weight loss it's fairly accurate.



ETA: that huge spike is my pregnancy.

ETA2: I changed the chart a bit to account for the fact that I actually maintained my weight for awhile in the early years. I always seemed to gain weight in my senior year (of both HS and college, actually, right before I finished my Ph.D too!).

Wow. It's really great seeing these charts.

Where can I make a chart at?

I love that Ticker Factory does this automatically!


My Weight Chart:

weight chart.pdf
I love my chart! What a great idea!

How do you get it to show up as a graphic in the post?

I used open office, but I'm sure you could use excel too.

Thank you

Underneath the button "Submit Reply" there are more fields with the title "additional options". Go to Attach Files>Manage Attachments and you can attach it here. Then you can click on that link, right click on the picture and choose "Copy Link Location". Go back, edit your post and type in [IM G]http://www.url.jpg[/IM G] without the spaces in there.

Thanks for the information, but it wouldn't let me copy the image location (probably because it's a pdf), but now I know for future reference!

Just use your "print screen" button when you have the .pdf open, paste it into paint (or something similar) and save it as a .jpg

Thanks for sharing your graphs, folks - anyone get any insight or inspiration from looking at your own graph or someone else's? I especially liked PacificBee's - what a display of stick-to-it-iveness and patience.