a new weight tracker

I read on some other blog the other day (maybe Lifehacker) about this Google widget that some might find useful. It's a weight tracker for your Google Homepage (iGoogle), but it's not one that you're familiar with. Yes, you input your daily weight, but rather than seeing only the hills and valleys of your irregular weight, the widget calculates your running average, so you can see whether you are tending to lose weight, gain, or hold steady. I am not actually using it, as I have seven months of material stored in an excel file that's already showing me the 5-day average. But, I thought maybe the community would like to hear about this.

I think one thing it does require is a daily entry of data (weight) in order to give an accurate average. I just think of it as a piece of scientific information. It is not a definition of who I am, or my worth as a person, or anything more than a datum for finding a current trend. That keeps me sane, and it sure helps to see the average line pointing downward.

tracking

There's a simple website called Joe's Goals that I use to keep track of various daily tasks. It's quite customizable, tracking good habits and bad. I don't think the "Reports" are very well implemented, and you can only view it by the week, but for my purposes that is sufficient.

So, for example, in the 7 days before our Week 3 Weigh-In, I can tell you that I:

• kept track of my food intake: seven times


• exercised: twice


• took vitamins: five times


• drank this volume of water: 9 glasses and 2.5L

I think I'd like to start making this a regular part of my weigh-in, as it really pulls into focus what I have accomplished, more than a (not-so) little number on a scale.

ooh pretty