End of term report

Tomorrow is my 47th birthday, which means today is the final day of my year-long weight-loss plan. Qualitatively it was a success! I look and feel better (and I sleep better at night). Most of my pants are now too loose. I can do pull-ups, which I previously could not, and I’m the lightest I’ve been in over seven years.

Quantitatively, though, I get a C-minus. I only made it 72% of the way toward my goal. I’m 9.6% lighter than I was one year ago; I was aiming for 13.4%. (On the other hand, if you measure from my heaviest point, which was less than one year ago, to my lightest point, which was a few days ago, I lost 10.8% of my body weight.)

As you can see from the graph, after an exciting fast start, losing weight was a stop-and-go proposition.

At Google, teams are encouraged to set measurable goals at the beginning of each quarter, and then to measure them at the end of each quarter. Scores of 100% are great, of course, but we’re taught that the ideal average score is actually around 70%. More than that and your goals aren’t ambitious enough. So maybe I should feel satisfied with my 72% (but I don’t).

My bathroom scale also measures body composition. According to that scale, my body-fat percentage went from “very high” to merely “high,” and my visceral fat number went from “high” to “normal.” My muscle-to-fat ratio climbed from 1.02 to 1.38. Gratifyingly, my “body age,” according to the scale, dropped from 56 to my actual age: 47.

My goal for the coming year is to lose another 10.2% of my weight. If I’m successful, my body-fat percentage will drop from “high” to “normal.” I’d also like to see my scale claim that my “body age” is lower than my actual age. Wish me luck…

One thought on “End of term report”

Leave a Reply