Blog Archives
Weigh-In Wednesday June 12th: Filter Your OTU’S!
Here at 2 Fat Nerds, each Wednesday is a Weigh-In day, where all of the data from the previous week is collected, displayed, and analyzed. Let’s see what data was submitted this week!
Weight Loss
Each week, members who have opted to have their weights publicly displayed for the world to see have them graphed on the main blog. It is a great way to keep track over time, and it gives a bit more accountability to your workouts. If you are interested, leave a comment!
Weigh-In Wednesday December 12th: Congrats to Jade and David!
First and foremost, a major major shout out to Jade and David who are getting married today! Ellie and I are both very excited for you guys, and wish you the best of luck. Congratulations!
Here at 2 Fat Nerds, each Wednesday is a Weigh-In day, where all of the data from the previous week is collected, displayed, and analyzed. Now, let’s dig in to the results!
Weight
Each week, members who have opted to have their weights publicly displayed for the world to see have them graphed on the main blog. It is a great way to keep track over time, and it gives a bit more accountability to your workouts. If you are interested, leave a comment!
Keep up that trend Adrienne!
AFP
Anti-fat points (AFP) is a system designed to give some sort of value to each and every workout, regardless of type. It is based on metabolic-equivalent values out of the compendium of physical activities. Submit a workout, get AFP. Each week we post the totals for each person for the week. In addition, you may see the monthly AFP leaderboard on the right-hand sidebar. This is meant to be a fun way to encourage competition to see who can earn the most points!
Huge week for Jeff, Lauren, Raice and Susie S . . . I am starting to see a trend of the people in the top 5!
Chain-Game
The Chain Game is a fun little system we came up with to see how many consecutive weeks a person can complete a minimum of three days of workouts. Every week in a row that a person completes the three-day goal, he or she adds one link to his or her active chain. For more information see this post!
Another one bites the dust. Good streak Dave!
The November Challenge
The November Challenge is still going! Please read up on the post for the explanation of the challenge.
Short again this week. I have a feeling this challenge is going to turn into a New Years Resolution Challenge……. =)
Map
Each week we chart our cardio-based workout distances (no cycling included). We add another 150 km to our trip!
2 Fat Nerds: A Year in Review
Wow . . . Exactly one year ago to this day, 2 Fat Nerds went live with our first post. The concept of the blog was simple: Brian and I would randomly post our thoughts on random things like music, technology, food, and most importantly exercise. Would anyone read it? Did it matter if they didn’t?
We wanted a system in place to hold us accountable on our weight-loss quest. We figured that publishing our results to a blog, and more importantly to social media, would add a little bit of pressure to help keep us going when we wanted to give up. A daily blog seemed liked an excellent way to do that.
What this blog has turned into, compared to its original intent, is simply astounding. I never thought it would become such a prominent hobby in my life. I never thought it would teach me how to develop web content serving many simultaneous users, or how to encrypt passwords to prevent hacking, or even how to set up a server on which to do all this. Utilizing mysql with php, jquery, and ajax wasn’t even close to being on my to-do list. I never thought it would unite people from Buffalo to Boston and everywhere in between, or that I would keep track of someone’s marathon training who lives halfway across the country in New Mexico.
Aside from my personal growth, as a group, several of us over the past year have run in our first officially sanctioned road races. A few of us have even competed in multiple events. Four of us are also pushing toward a half marathon a week from now, and for three of us it will be a first at that distance. To see people getting excited about exercise, about running and bicycling is simply awesome. A growing number of people in the 2FNS community have worked out routinely for ten or more weeks. The vast majority of those in this category were virtually sedentary previous to that, and I take pride knowing that this blog, at least in small part, is a motivator for some people.
Today, I thought it would be neat to look at some overall statistics, a year in review.
Total Weight Loss by All 2FNS Members
To date, we have lost an astounding 205.3 pounds, with an average weight loss of 8.92 lbs (over 22 people keeping track of their weight). The top-three users who have lost weight have totals of 48 pounds, 34.8 pounds, and 21.9 pounds.
Total Workout Statistics
We have 1,970 workouts logged into the system (mind you the system only accounts for data from January). In these workouts, we have traveled a total of 8,891 kilometers, or 5,524.61 miles. All of these workouts have contributed to 77,284 minutes, or 1,288 hours.
Usage Statistics
Here is a graph depicting account creation in the tracking system. We are up to 42 registered users, 30 of whom are actively logging.
Not bad for a system I thought no one would use!
To see this system being utilized has really encouraged me to push harder to make it better. I am super excited about what we have in the works, and we hope to have it released in the coming weeks!
My Personal Story
On the left is me at my brother’s wedding. On the right was a picture from nearly two months ago, about eight pounds heavier than I am currently.
I also wanted to share some of my personal data. Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve lost a total of 48 pounds. Here is a before-and-after picture for ya!
On the left is a picture of me at my brother’s wedding. I guess I never realized how . . . large I had gotten. As I approached my heaviest weight (which was actually a couple of months after that photo was taken), I was getting more and more upset about how I felt and how I looked. I guess it got to a point where a change was needed.
On the right is a picture of me at a family friend’s wedding a couple of months ago. I was seven or eight pounds heavier in that photo than I am now. Losing that much weight has made a world of difference for me, to be honest. I have a ton more energy and I truly feel better about myself and how I look.
I wanted to thank everyone for making this whole project worth while, and encouraging me every day to keep it going. I really do believe in the power of community, and I know that there is enough love and support to help everyone accomplish their goals. I am looking forward to another awesome year!
Weigh-In Wednesday, July 18th: This Heat Wave Thing Is Getting Old
Hey everyone! I hope everyone is surviving the heat wave alright!
Weights
Huge congrats to both Adrienne and Tino, who both lost a couple lbs this week!
I’ve very excited to see Adrienne and Tino both on a downward trend the last few weeks, very encouraging. Keep it up guys!
AFP
Monster weeks again for Ellie, Adrienne and Amy. Awesome job ladies!
I wanted to take a quick second to ask if people are interested in a “leaderboard” type of thing. I was thinking of making an RSS Leaderboard on the sidebar of the website, so you can see who is ranking high, having it reset each month. I thought it might be a fun thing? Whatcha think?
Distances
Awesome week for Amy and Ellie and Adrienne, and quite a few others who are in knocking on the 20km door. That’s what I like to see!
Considering how hot it has been, I’m pretty excited to see people still putting up good numbers. I want to see everyone hit the 10km mark each week, and those blank spot people need to step it up!!!
Frequency
This challenge is never-ending.
I have moved the x-axis to start at -1, to put more public shame on the people who workout 0 times a week. Now you all get red bars of shame.
Map
We tacked on an additional 230 kilometers, putting us into Albuquerque! Not only that though, we continue our voyage onto the next destination!
Weigh-In Wednesday #5
That’s right, it is Wednesday! Everyone’s new favorite day of the week. This past week was quite busy, and we didn’t quite get the distance we wanted to, but hey, we still got out! Here are the results:
To sum up, Jon managed to drop 0.6 lbs, which is a miracle after being on vacation for four days and drinking and eating all over Boston. Dollard put up a solid loss of 2.6 pounds, which leads me to believe last weeks slight increase was just normal fluctuation. Overall, awesome!
We added a new Submissions section to 2FNs. If you want to submit your weight and workouts and have them charted with us, let us know and submit your information! Feel free to use an alias so your true identity isn’t known. The only people who can see the raw data is myself (Jon) and I abide by strict HIPAA rules.
Thanks for checking in!
Weigh-In Wednesday #3!
The results are in, So lets see what it looks like!
To summarize, we both ran 10k this week! My goal is to steadily increase that to 20k. To cap the weight loss, I went from 232.2 to 229.8, while Brian went from 181 to 177. Progress on all fronts!
I want to ask our readership for some feedback about how you guys have been feeling about the blog as a whole so far through the first few weeks. Are there some things you like / dont like? Let us know, leave a comment!
Weight Flux
I’ve gotten into a bad habit. I find myself jumping on the scale every morning, which isn’t really an issue. The problem is I also jump on the scale every night, too, after a full day of eating. I’ll tell you there is nothing more depressing then getting on the scale at night and feeling like you messed up the whole day because of that extra yogurt you ate at noon.
People can fluctuate around five pounds through the course of the day, just from changes in water weight. Water is surprisingly heavy, as a pint of water (16 ounces) weighs one pound. A gallon of water is eight pounds. Throughout the day, we consume and expel water creating constant fluctuations all day long. Depending on what time you weigh yourself, how much you’ve had to drink, what you’ve eaten . . . your weight is like the stock market! This can be pretty discouraging when you are trying to lose weight, especially if you are being silly like I have been and getting on the scale too frequently.
What I need to do is take a step back and put on my bioinformatical glasses again. It isn’t about the minute to minute, hour to hour, or even day to day change in weight. Its about long term trends. I need to trust the math of calories and exercise and not worry about what my weight is. The important thing is feeling better and getting myself moving.
I try not to make sweeping generalizations, but here I go anyway. I feel like people my age, and really our culture in general, require instant gratification. We want to see that one pound fall off every day, even though that is a completely unrealistic and unhealthy goal. We don’t like long hauls, which is why we have the term “long haul” to describe something that takes too long and is probably going to suck. It is much easier to feel good about yourself if we get instant feedback that we kick ass and are on the right track every step of the way.
Now, I am not going to declare war on my scale, go Office Space on it like my sister did to hers, but I am going to try not to obsess over the numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still probably check it every day, but i’ll take what it says with a grain of salt. I’ll graph the data, look at the trends, and determine that I am, in fact, on the right track. A scale is just a tool, a measuring instrument. You need to use it properly but at the same time be able to properly interpret the results.
I guess the take-home message of the day is this: getting discouraged about numbers on a scale is pointless. Saddle up and hit the pavement (or trails!), and good things will come, but it’s going to take a while.
