Weight has been a dominant fact of my life for as long as I can remember. I first began tracking my weight around 1990 but lost the earliest data. This graph uses logs I entered in a spreadsheet for about 20 years and then, after a gap of not keeping track, picks up again with data from Apple Health.
The chart is interactive. Hover over a point—or tap it on a touch device—to see the date, weight, and any note associated with it. You can zoom and pan through the timeline, use the slider at the bottom to focus on a particular period, or use the 1y, 5y, 10y, and All buttons to change the view.
The graph contains a lot of my life. There are diets in there, bike commutes, periods when I walked everywhere, stressful stretches, successes that lasted months or years, and many occasions when I lost a substantial amount of weight only to gain it back.
Some of the notes are full of hope and determination, but many are riddled with defeat and despair. There is much self-loathing. Sometimes it became too much and I didn’t want to step on the scale for a long time, and so there are gaps.
Today I stepped on the scale and it read 299.0 pounds. That is a number I thought I would never see again.