Amelia Greenhall: Weigh Everyday = Understanding

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Alexandra Carmichael

Amelia Greenhall lost forty pounds with the simple feedback of checking her weight every day. In a bulimic college environment, she set herself some rules starting out: no dieting, and only long-term changes. She read The Hacker’s Diet, and was inspired to track the 10-day moving average of her weight for two years. Watch the video below to hear Amelia’s story, including the cascade of amazing lifestyle and attitude changes she made along the way. (Filmed by the Seattle QS Show&Tell meetup group.)

This entry was posted in Videos and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to Amelia Greenhall: Weigh Everyday = Understanding

  1. Ian Eslick says:
    January 2, 2012 at 6:00 pm

    Wonderful story! Can we get a scan of the personal narrative chart you showed? I’d love to see a short, compact list of behavior changes you introduced over time.

    Reply
  2. Daniel Reeves says:
    January 2, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    Inspiring story! I think this is absolutely true — if you do it slowly enough it’s easy.
    Corollary: Keep tracking even after you reach your goal, to make sure you stay flat!

    The web-based tools I know of that do moving averages as recommended in The Hacker’s Diet are http://physicsdiet.com and http://beeminder.com (I’m a co-founder!), and The Hacker’s Diet Online: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/

    PS: I love the commitment device you mention at 13:15! (Beeminder is all about commitment devices :) )

    Reply

  3. Pingback: Weekend Reading: Start of Term Edition - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education

  4. Henk Poley says:
    January 15, 2012 at 6:02 am

    Nice presentation and method. I’m sorry for her future health though. But she’ll probably figure it out if she keeps tracking herself.

    Reply
  5. Chris L says:
    January 29, 2012 at 8:37 pm

    I think the ten day average technique could have a lot of value for things that change slowly (I know I have gotten in the habit of looking for clear, dramatic changes) and for this that have a lot of noise in the measurement.

    This video inspired me to use the average for my blood pressure. The results were good

    http://evenbetterchris.blogspot.com/2012/01/blood-pressure-improving-slowly-but.html

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

CAPTCHA Image

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.