Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Weight Loss Data

Yesterday I wrote about the process of losing weight, but I only alluded to data sets. Let’s dig in! My data sources were the Fitbit API (for both number of steps and weight) and some weather history which I’ll explain later. This all came into through Power Query.

First of all, here is a chart showing my weight over time and then which days of the week. I usually gained weight on Sundays (our days to get together with family), Tuesdays (taco day in the café at work) and Fridays (the day we sometimes go out to eat.)

Next up are some charts showing the number of steps I took each day. The chart on the left shows how often I took a certain number of steps. The chart on the right shows the total number of steps each month. Note that we’re only halfway through June so that bar is shorter.

I fully expected to see a correlation between the number of steps I took on a given day and the amount of weight that I lost. Nope. Here’s a scatter plot showing no correlation. I think that walking is good for weight loss if you’re very overweight and you don’t move much. But there’s a point where walking is just too efficient to do much additional good.

I then started looking for other possible data correlation. Maybe the number of steps that I took was related to the temperature? Nope.

We’re in a wet part of the country so maybe the amount of rain we get in a day dictates how many steps I take? Not really. My really big days have happened when it doesn’t rain, but just because it’s dry doesn’t mean I’ll walk a lot.

In the end, I took all the various data points and ran them through Excels correlation algorithm. Nothing came out showing any real correlation. The biggest one was one of the charts you see above: the bigger the high temperature, the more steps I take, and even that was only a 0.48 correlation. That’s skewed quite a bit too because I’ve been doing a LOT more yard work lately and it has been warmer.

Even though I didn’t find a scientific way to lose weight, I did learn lots of things that AREN’T related and that’s interesting too!

benmartens June 18, 2014 Geek

Weight Loss

On January 1, I weighed 227.2 pounds. Last Friday, I weighed 201.8. I originally set out to get down to 210 but then decided to get to the point where I was no longer classified as “overweight” according to the government BMI charts. That meant getting under 205. I’m pretty proud of this process because it’s the most weight I’ve ever lost and the longest I’ve stuck with anything like this.

I don’t remember what I weighed when I graduated from college but I think it was right around 210. For most of the years, I fluctuated between 215 and 220. When I hit 227 after the holidays, I knew I needed to make a change and tackle the problem while it was still manageable. Then I kind of got into the groove and just kept going. On the last day of the diet, I woke up and weighed 205.4. Knowing I was so close, I basically starved myself and ended up losing 3 pounds that day. Ha! Obviously I gained some of it back but I declared victory. I’m going to try to keep it under 210 and I think that’s pretty feasible given the improved habits I’ve formed over the last 5.5 months.

Everyone wants to know how I did it. Before I give any answers, I’ll say that this is the diet that worked for me. This is by no means a recommendation for you or a commentary on your choices. That being said, there are two parts to the question: what did I change with my eating and how did I stay motivated?

Eating changes:

  • Avoid carbs. I’ve blogged about it before, but carbs are the biological start of generation of fat cells. I was unwilling to cut out carbs completely (I love beer and rum!) but I did scale way back. Most mornings I scramble eggs and throw in onion, sausage or ham, and cheese. It’s a very low carb meal and because I have everything chopped ahead of time, it’s super simple. I also stopped drinking orange juice in the mornings. If you’re doing a truly low carb diet, you should shoot for around 30 grams of carbs per day. One glass of OJ has about that many carbs! I ate a lot more salads at lunch with lots of meat on them and we cooked a lot more low carb dinner recipes. Genaw.com is a great resource for easy low carb recipes that generally taste good. We also stopped buying chips and desserts as an easy way to halt those temptations. I started going to the butcher regularly too so I could buy lots of delicious meat for the grill. All that being said, I still eat lots of carbs. The difference is that now I know when I’m doing it and I can balance it out. Cutting them out completely would have demoralized me and I wouldn’t have stuck with it. I found a balance that worked for me to lose weight but still enjoy some rum and Cokes or a burger with fries.
  • Eat less. This is pretty obvious but eating less was a big key to success. More specifically, eating less at dinner is important for me. I can have large (but still relatively healthy) breakfasts and lunches, eat a smaller dinner and still lose weight. To help me eat less at dinner, I store the leftovers before we eat so I won’t be tempted by seconds and we use smaller plates. The upside of eating less is that each meal goes farther reducing the grocery bill and decreasing the number of nights when we have to cook.

That’s pretty much it. Simple, right? There are other things like shopping on the edges of your grocery store (produce, dairy, meat) and avoiding the aisles (processed foods, etc) but in general it all goes back to eating fewer carbs and eating less food. But how did I stay motivated? I’m a geek and I my day job is all about big data, so my motivation was data!

  • Fitbit. Our health plan at work gives us some money to buy fitness related items so I picked up a Fitbit at the beginning of the year. It has been a very interesting source of data, but not nearly as helpful in losing weight as I thought it would be. I’ll show a data breakdown in a later post that will explain why.
  • Scale. Every single morning, I stepped on a scale. It’s important to weigh yourself at the same point of your day every day because your weight varies dramatically over 24 hours. I’d always weigh myself as soon as I woke up before using the bathroom or eating anything. I logged that weight every day too. That was the biggest single factor in keeping myself accountable and motivated. I knew I had to write down my weight the next day and that I’d be disappointed in myself for splurging on food the day before.

This post is getting very long already so I’ll save the charts and graphs for another day.

A lot of friends and family have told me their losing weight right now. If you add up the weight loss from Don, Tim, Tyla and me over the last 6 months, you’d have over 100 pounds! Each of us is doing it slightly differently, but the results are all good. The “trick” is to define a sustainable plan that provides enough measureable improvement to keep you motivated. Don’t worry about following my plan or someone else’s plan exactly. Chances are, as you go through phases of weight loss, you’ll need to adjust your approach anyway. As long as you’re staying healthy and losing weight then you’re probably doing it right! (Or bonus points if you are already at your goal weight!)

benmartens June 17, 2014 Commentary

Back Home Again In Indiana

The longer I live away from Indiana, the more surprised I am when I step off the plane. On this last trip, I kept notes about things that caught my eye:

  • Billboards are everywhere! Uncle Dean calls them “litter on a stick.” Washington does a great job keeping signage to a minimum height.
  • It’s FLAT. Hills that I remember being huge are really just little bumps. I attribute some of this to my childhood memory and some to the scope of the hills that I see around me now.
  • People drive fast. In Washington, all lanes of traffic flow within 5mph on both sides of the speed limit. In the Midwest you might be flowing in traffic right next to a cop and you’re all going 20 over.
  • There are lots of potholes! Midwest weather really does a number on the roads. The Pacific Ocean keeps our temps mild out here in Seattle so potholes are pretty rare.
  • All of the trees around our house are so much bigger than I remember. It sounds silly because of course they have grown since I lived there, but it catches my eye every single day.
  • The clothing choices are different. In the Pacific Northwest, everyone dressed like they are ready for a hike.

Hopefully none of this sounds like I’m making fun of the area. Indiana will always have a special place in my memory!

benmartens June 16, 2014 Travel

Happy Birthday Elijah!

Today marks Elijah’s first year since his birth. In that time he’s grown from a tiny little baby to a little man running across the floor. It has been a wild ride for all three of us but I’m so thankful that he’s in our lives. This video captures a few moments from the last year. I love you, Little Man!

benmartens June 15, 2014 Family, Video

Power BI World Cup

I’ve been posting lots of quick, little examples showing off pieces of our Power BI offering, but now I’ve got a huge one for you. Our team recently acquired access to a HUGE data set of statistics. With the World Cup starting up, we decided to use World Cup statistics for a great demo.

It’s running now at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerBI/solutions/demo/qna/qna-demo-worldcup.aspx and I encourage you to check it out. Ask it any question about World Cup statistics and watch the magic unfold! The stats we used to build up the data model behind the scenes is super detailed so I think you’ll be surprised about what you can ask. Hopefully a bigger example like this makes it pretty obvious how useful Power BI could be operating over your own company’s data sets.

benmartens June 13, 2014 Geek, Links, Sports

Throwback Thursday – 1981 Toy Box

For the Christmas of 1981 when I was 15 months old, Grandpa Martens made a toy box for me. That toy box survived our family and then sat in the basement at Mom and Dad’s house. A few trips ago, Mom said that the toy box was mine if I wanted it. At first it seemed silly, but then I started thinking about what we were going to do with Elijah’s toys. Should I build something similar? Wouldn’t it be cooler to have the actual toy box that Grandpa Martens made?

On this last trip to Indiana, Dad and I hauled the toy box to FedEx and got it all packaged up for shipment. It wasn’t cheap but it probably cost less than buying all the wood and the stain and it means a lot more than if I made it! The box made it out here without any damage (other than what we did to it as kids.) When Elijah is done I’ll probably refinish it but he’ll just add his own knicks and scuffs to it anyway.

The left photo is me sitting on it in 1981 when it was brand new and on the right you see Elijah sitting on it. I love seeing this in our house!

benmartens June 12, 2014 Throwback Thursday

Crimes By Year

As Tyla and I were discussing yet another public shooting, I made the comment that we shouldn’t get discouraged because this kind of thing has always happened throughout history. The difference is that now we hear about every single instance because of the Internet. When I said that, I was referring to the content of a book called The Better Angels Of Our Nature. The author goes back in history and shows that we’re living in the most peaceful time ever.

But then Tyla said, “What about compared to 10 years ago?” Umm… I don’t know? To the internet we go!

I found crime data for the last 55 years, pulled it into Excel using Power Query and then made a nice chart. I only showed every 5 years so that it would be a little more readable. The answer is yes, the US is a safer place than it was 10 years ago.

benmartens June 11, 2014 Commentary

Yard Project Update 2

Tim and I worked pretty much every night last week. I got the fence along the west property line close to complete and Tim spent a lot of time getting the bottom layer of the retaining wall perfectly placed. We were hoping to have the wall done by Friday night but at 10pm that night, we called it quits and decided to finish it in the morning. Saturday morning we met at Home Depot at 6am to make sure that we could rent their walk-behind skid steer loader for the day. It was a critical piece of the puzzle. We finished the retaining wall by about 9am and then backfilled the wall with a drain and gravel. Andy and Logan stopped by to help out too. They started by digging a couple postholes and then started the French drain and irrigation trenches. It was really difficult digging. Thank you! We had another 15 yards of dirt delivered. It would have taken forever to drive each load up into the yard so we set up a relay instead. Tim used the machine to fill wheelbarrows. The other three of us took turns with the two wheelbarrows running loads up into the back yard. Moving 15 yards of dirt one wheelbarrow at a time sure takes a while but I was incredibly thankful to have the machine, someone who knew how to operate it, and lots of people to run the wheelbarrows. We called it quits for the day after that and fired up the grill to enjoy some dinner.

Since we had church Sunday morning and then I was busy in the afternoon, we decided to take the day off to catch up on some other chores like mowing, bills, etc. But even with that, Tim and Chelsea came over for a couple hours to cut and glue the caps onto the wall.

This week we are focusing on completely finishing a couple parts of the project like the retaining wall, the fence, and yard cleanup. Then we’ll move on to trenching for the French drains and irrigation. I need to get the next walls of the fence started at some point too.

I’d guess that in terms of effort, we’re more than halfway though the project. That’s not too bad for less than two weeks of work! The remaining bit might take us a little longer in terms of calendar days though since the schedule starts to fill up a bit with Father’s Day, Elijah’s birthday, etc.

I had the GoPros running on Saturday for another timelapse. I’ll also throw in a picture of where we finished on Saturday.

benmartens June 10, 2014 Home Improvement

2014 Indianapolis 500

Tyla, Elijah and I flew back to Indiana for Memorial Day. This trip was planned around the Indy 500. I lived a few hours away from the race for most of my life but I never went to the race. This year, I decided it was time to change that.

In it’s prime in the 90’s, the race drew 400,000 fans making it the biggest single sporting event in the world! There were some issues with the series, but the event still gets about 200-250,000 visitors each year. With so many people going to a single location, Dad, Luke and I decided we would get there early to fight our way through traffic. We planned to arrive at 9, three hours before the race started, and it worked out quite well. We had very little traffic getting in and found our reserved spot in the North 40 parking lot.

We killed some time walking around and a bit of the track and into the infield. The track is HUGE. It’s 2.5 miles per lap so we obviously didn’t explore very much of the overall festivities.

We arrived in our seats about a half hour before the race started with a cooler full of water and beer, and a backpack full of snacks. We also each rented the FanVision devices which combine driver radio scanners, TV broadcast, and headphones/hearing protection. It’s a great way to keep up with what’s happening in the race.

The weather was perfect making for a great race day. It was between 80 and 85 with not a cloud in the sky. Thankfully there was a breeze throughout the race to keep us from getting too hot in that mass of people. We stayed in our seats for the whole race (most people did) since it was a lot of work to work our way to the aisles.

The race was awesome. I can’t do justice to the sights and sounds of cars traveling in excess of 230mph and doing an entire 2.5 mile lap in less than 42 seconds. I actually felt a little queasy for the first quarter of the race and I think it was a combination of the hot sun and the fact that seeing cars move that fast just doesn’t make sense when you see it.

Watching on TV gives you a better view of the strategy involved in the race, but being there in person gives you all the emotion of the race: screaming fans, roaring engines, cars whizzing by, etc. It was an experience I’ll never forget! We sat near the top of the stands in Turn 3 which gave us a great view all the way from Turn 2 through Turn 4. The more expensive seats are on the front stretch, but I think we were all happy with our choice. Remember that if you buy tickets for a race, the higher you sit, the better your seats!

When the race ended, we took our time getting back to the car (not that we had much choice with the sea of humanity trying to leave). Instead of starting our car and moving a couple feet every 10 minutes, we fired up the grill and cooked some brats. That worked out perfectly and by the time we were ready to leave, the traffic was just dying down enough for us to get out without much trouble.

Our ride back took a little longer than planned because we got a flat tire. That’s normally not a problem for a car full of three guys but the safety cable that straps the tire to the bottom of the car was rusted on and we couldn’t get it off. Someone who lived nearby finally stopped to see what was going on and came back with just the tools we needed to get it loose. The rest of the drive was uneventful.

I’m so happy with how the day turned out and thankful that I could experience this. Thanks to Dad and Luke for going too! And thanks to Tyla for watching Elijah all day while I was playing! All that being said, this was more of a single experience than something I want to do every year. It’s great to try but I don’t need to do it regularly.

Photos and video don’t do this justice but it will at least give you a taste of what we saw and heard.

benmartens June 9, 2014 Sports, Travel

Weather

This spring has been WET. It’s so wet that even if we didn’t get another drop of rain until August 1, we would still set the record for the wettest February through July ever in Seattle! That’s saying a lot because spring is incredibly wet around here.

Since we started the yard project one week ago, we’ve had 70-75 degree sunshine every single day. It’s mind-boggling how nice the weather has been and how perfectly it lined up with our project. I’m so thankful! Heavy rains would really have changed this project.

benmartens June 6, 2014 Commentary