My name is Chris. I am 40 years old. I am 5’9 1/2″ and weigh 174 pounds. I walked 9,048 steps and have consumed 1,406 calories today (so far).
Why am I telling you all this? This is my first entry in what (I hope) will be a year long experiment with self-measurement. I’m calling it My Year of Data. The plan is to record and publish as much of my “daily data” as I can. This includes things I do, foods I eat, how I feel, and almost anything else I can think of. I’ve created the blog to document my experience and progress.
I came up with the idea recently when I realized that right now I am heavier than I have ever been in my life. Not by alot, mind you. Roughly, I have gained about 1 pound per year for about the last 15 years. For those of you who know me, I dont think you would call me overweight. But if you go to your favorite BMI calculator, and enter in my stats above I have a BMI of 25.3, which officially classifies as overweight.
What I also realized is that in previous attempts to lose weight, I have been most successful when I keep a log of my weight daily. By knowing that I was going to have a weigh-in every day, it made me conscious – every day – of what I ate, since I did not want a bad measurement the next morning. Similarly, if I tracked my exercise patterns, it made me want to exercise more.
In other words, for me there is kind of a Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle of health. The fact that I was measuring my behavior would change the behavior itself.
Additionally, the more public I am with my efforts, the more successful they are. If I declare to my wife on Sunday “I plan to eat really healthy this week!”, then I am more likely to follow through. The public declaration of an intent makes it harder to blow it off.
So, putting it all together, and I figured I would go to the next logical extreme via a grand experiment. I plan to collect, analyze, and share as much data about myself as possible, for a one year period. I will open source the data, making it public in case anyone else wants to analyze it. I’ll try to set goals and document my progress towards them. You dont get more public with your goals than putting them on a blog!
Part of the fun for me will be the data (I am a statistician after all). I’m hoping there will be interesting trends to find and things to learn about myself – and maybe more generally about health. There are lots of gadgets out there that will help me collect and track data, and I look forward to trying some of them out. I hope those of you reading this will contribute with ideas and feedback.
There will be more to come in the days and weeks ahead. I plan to take the next few weeks to sort out how this is all going to work, choose my devices, my websites, my data formats, and do a little research. I’ll share that info on this blog. The official start will be on 12/14/11, my 41st birthday, and last for a year.
Welcome to my experiment!!
My Year of Data 
Nov 16, 2011 @ 22:10:03
Use Lose It! app. It is free and it is great for counting calories, whether it is supermarket items or major restaurants. My patients love it.
Nov 16, 2011 @ 22:40:01
Thanks, Dyan. I’ve been using the livestrong app. I’ll check out LoseIt! and do a comparison in a future post!
Nov 16, 2011 @ 22:53:15
Also take a look at myfitnesspal.com – iOS app/website that does the same thing. It’s also free, and works well.
Nov 16, 2011 @ 23:08:34
Let’s go CTV! I’m a fitbit guy, but I am only 3 lbs over what I weighed when we lived together. G and I have we’ve toned up a bit–and done some nice hikes in Paris (61 miles in 7 days-25,000 steps in one day), but another friend got one and dropped 20 lbs in 3 months.
Nov 16, 2011 @ 23:52:33
One of my colleagues always said the most understandable example of “missing not at random” for students was the daily weigh in, when you skipped a day because you knew it would be bad!
Recently I have been looking at comparing food frequency questionnaires and weighed food records with my colleagues in nutrition. However they are generally interested in things like omega 3s where your intake might vary quite a bit from day to day rather than calories that are fairly constant.
Best of luck with the project.
Nov 17, 2011 @ 00:36:28
Chris – this is an exciting kick off. As someone who works in the statistical genetics biz, it would be especially interesting (and unfortunately “more serious”) to add something like longitudinal gene expression measurements as well.
Either way, good luck. Given the social pressure you have put on yourself for success, I can only commend you and add to it – we are all watching you. We will all be wondering if you ate the Snickers Bar or the kale…..
Nov 17, 2011 @ 08:37:38
According to author Brian Wansink in his book Mindless Eating, if you eat just 100 calories less per day for a year, (one less slice of bread, for example) will loose 10 pounds. And this small amount of reduction will go un-noticed. Of course, the reverse happens too. Which explains slow weight gain.
By the way, this book is filled with studies and research about human behavior around eating habits, and lots of stats. It’s also an audiobook.
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