I was given an excellent recommendation for a replacement scale today, so I went out and bought one immediately. It's a Tanita Ironman BC554, which was their most full featured one they had at the store. Yeah, I figured I might as well collect as much data as possible, even if it's not completely accurate. Not only does it give you an accurate weight (within 100g), but it also gives you body fat percentage, water percentage, bone weight, BMR, and a bunch of other things. Are they really all that accurate? Probably not. But does it really matter all that much? I don't think so. If you average them out over a few days or so it probably would be.

Coincedental couple posts on boing boing today. One showed how he used an Excel spreadsheet to lose weight. Pretty geeky. I love it. First I picked up the scale, then on the way to work I was thinking about how I needed to make a spreadsheet to track my weight. When I got to work I checked my blog list and that's exactly what I found. I've deleted the first part, where he tracks his calories, because I think fitday is good enough for me. I'm using his weight tracker though, because I've added other columns to track my fat percentage and the other numbers. I will set them up to average out too, so I can keep a better idea of what's going on.

He also gave a few good tips. Sounds very similar to what I've discovered. The only issue I have with the way he did it was that he only did it with food. Some of the stuff he ate is relatively unappetizing to me. I'm still able to eat everything I want, more or less. There was another post on boing boing where another geek lost a bunch of weight and gave tips too. Pretty handy stuff.

So for a baseline reference (I'm not going to post this everyday, BTW), this is what my first weigh-in looks like.

weight: 184.6
fat %: 26.5
water %: 52.4
muscle: 128.8 lbs
phy rate: 2
bmr: 1829 calories
metabolic age: 50
bone weight: 6.8 lbs
visceral rating: 9

Some of these numbers need explaining. Weight and body fat are pretty easy. :P Exciting thing though, I've already lost 15 pounds and 4% body fat! WOW! Water percentage is pretty much just to keep track of, I don't think it means much. Muscle weight is just a calculation. Physiological rating is what they call your body type. That says I'm medium obese or something. Worthless stat. BMR is your basal metabolic rate. That's about in line with other estimates. Metabolic age... that's supposed to mean I have the metabolism of a 50 year old man. I dunno. Bone weight is another calculation. Visceral rating is another estimate of how much fat you have in your torso. Interesting.

The only real measurements are body fat and weight. Maybe water percentage too? Hard to tell. I'll be tracking those daily, and we'll see about the others.

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I booked everything for Europe. I have a room in Berlin the night before I come back. I have one the night before I leave Berlin the first time, and I have a rental car for Poland and the Czech Republic. And I decided to to to Barcelona instead of Greece. Because of the stupid World Cup flights back into Berlin are outrageously priced. I also couldn't change my ticket to stay in Europe an extra day and a half. So Greece is out of the question. Four days, with one of them sacrificed to travel is not my idea of a good time.

Instead I'll be flying for four hours and spending the rest of the time staying in a private room in a hostel in the centre of town. Hostel? Yeah, it's the best of everything for me right now. I get to be with people who still know how to have a good time, but at the end of the night I get my own place. I have to share a bathroom, but really... how much time do I expect to spend there? For $40 a night you can't go wrong. If you have Google Earth, you can see where I'm staying here. The old town is close, the beach isn't too far... perfect.

It's the perfect vacation for me. Half of it can be spent siteseeing, and the other half I can just chill out on the beach... and the nights? It doesn't get any better.