It was kismet, really.
I started my weight loss program in April of 2018, long before they announced the topic of the feeder contest. From the first day in the NutriMost office when they gave me my first data sheet with all my body composition scale data I knew I wanted to build a Viz. Add on to that the fact I had to weigh myself every morning for daily text updates to the office and I had to record what I was eating during phase 3 (quantity and calories), it was a no brainer.
Self observation data is about one of two things; discipline or a really good app.
In this case, it was discipline… every morning I would follow the same routine, and roughly the same time. I’d wake up and go use the restroom. Then I would go and weigh myself wearing the same thing each morning… a pair of boxer short. This consistency is important so that the data would be as accurate as possible.
For the caloric intake, I used a food scale to record the weight of the food I was eating, the converted that in to the calorie count and recorded it in a journal after each meal.
As I started to build the viz out in my mind, I needed to know a strong end game which brought me to the point where I included the lab results from the Cleveland Clinic. From the entire journey, the weight loss was amazing, but the most impactful data point was my A1C Glucose reading.
As I added more and more data points I realize this was going to be “long form”, something I haven’t done much of, so it was a good learning experience getting the layout to make sense.
Overall I’m really happy with the results… both the weight loss and the viz.
