The Hacker’s Diet with OpenOffice.org
I designed these weight loss spreadsheets so that I could follow John Walker’s Hacker’s Diet using the free OpenOffice.org.
Weight Tracker ODS
My own spreadsheet to monitor daily weight change.
Features:
- Records daily weigh-ins
- Performs exponential smoothing to filter out daily variation
- Calculates weight loss per day/week/month/year
- Calculates how many Calories you’ve over/undereaten
- Calculates your Body Mass Index or “BMI”
- Forecasts when you’ll achieve your target weight
- Graphs your progress
Update 01/18/10: Version 2.2.1 of WTODS is out! Read the change log, or visit the Weight Tracker ODS site at Launchpad for more information.
Download Weight Tracker ODS v2.2.1 [100k ZIP]
OpenOffice.org Computer Tools
My conversion of John Walker’s Excel Computer Tools into the OpenDocument standard. Includes everything except for the weight tracker and meal planner.
Download OpenOffice.org Computer Tools [310k ZIP]
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Trackbacks
- Resuming development on Weight Tracker 2, now Weight Tracker ODS « Jon Thysell
- Weight Tracker ODS progressing well for the New Year « Jon Thysell
- Weight Tracker ODS 2.2.1 Released « Jon Thysell
- The Hacker’s Diet and related tools « Food Near Snellville
- Wendys, Steak ‘n Shake, Alons, lagging indicators and more. « Food Near Snellville
- How I lost 30 lbs. « Computers, and other annoyances
- Interest in an OpenOffice.org P90X spreadsheet? « Jon Thysell
Thank you for this!
I’ve been hoping to find something tht would do this for OpenOffice, and I just found this today. (Using the new 3.1.1)
So far I really like it. The Charts button seems greyed out but I’m hoping as I add more data it will eventually activate.
Thanks again!
The current version appears to start and stop in 2008. Is there a method I’m too dim to see to make this applicable to 2009 -2010, please? I’m new to Open Office (and Excel, for that matter) and don’t want to mess around with cells that are no doubt protected for very good reasons.
Posted my dumb question too soon. I started pushing buttons on the main tab and found where one can add years. Will read the directions first next time.
Awesome. Thank you!
Linked here from the Hacker’s Diet team at Spark People.
Thank you for working this up! However, I cannot get past Feb 2009. There appears to be a formula error on what would be Feb29 and every month thereafter has a #name error where the date would be.
I am currently looking into that. For some reason the hidden “Total” sheet is not refreshing properly. When I delete and re-enter the formula, it works fine.
Hopefully the next version will address this.
Hi,
I’ve been entering data in this spreadsheet for 2 weeks and have been trying to figure out why the delta change per week doesn’t coincide with what I’ve entered. It seems the delta change per week is based over the whole month even if you’ve only entered a few days of data. Wouldn’t it make more sense to base it over the time period entered instead?
This is a bug in the current version that will be fixed in the next release.
Hi, thanks for the update. delta loss per week is good now. There is a tiny bug in the chart in that it specifies the unit as “lbs” even it’s configured for metric.
Cheers
Thanks! I’ve opened a bug targeted at the next version.
Bug #510146: Chart shows lbs. even when set to metric
Not a bug, but the chart weight axis origin is zero. It would look better I think if the weight started at goal weight or current weight – 10% or something.
I adjusted the Y axis by unprotecting the sheet, right-clicking the chart, selecting Edit, and then going to Format / Axis / Y-Axis. On the Scale tab, I unchecked Automatic beside the Minimum box, and entered the value I wanted (e.g. my goal weight – 10).
Having it be a configuration variable (e.g. your goal weight, as mentioned), or calculated to something that doesn’t leave your data a narrow, fuzzy squiggle on the screen would be good, however.
Yes, it’s a good idea and there’s defintely room for improvement for the chart. I released it as-is because I needed a new version out the door while I had the time to work on it.
It’s definitely something I’ll look into for the next release.
I’ve opened a bug so that I don’t forget to address this in the next release:
Bug #526500: Chart y-axis range too large to be useful
Have you seen the withings wifi weighing scale? I got one last week and can now update a spreadsheet automatically with weight and BIA readings. Though I don’t know what the formula is to turn those into body fat readings.
I’ve been using an older version that didn’t graph, and didn’t total until the end of the month. V 2.2.1 RULES. Many thanks. I’ve hit my goal, and this program (along with, of course, exercise & changing my eating habits) was a major part of it; when people ask how I lost 30 lbs., I say the first thing to do is weigh yourself every day, and I point to the Hacker’s Diet and this program. Many thanks.
I’ve been using it for about a year, and it’s great – but I recently noticed that the totals (delta weight, delta weight/week, delta weight/day, delta calories/day) for May aren’t showing (might it be related to my recent upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid 10.04?). They were working earlier this month, and they appear to work in all the previous months. Any ideas?
Which version of the spreadsheet are you running? I’m using the latest (2.2.1) on Ubuntu 10.04 and my May values are showing fine. Do you mean on the May sheet or the May line on the Main sheet?
Both the May sheet, and the May values on the main sheet. The version I was using was 2.2.1; I tried downloading a new 2.2.1 and importing the data, but I got the same glitch. I’ve been having no end of trouble with this new Lucid install, so I’d be happy to blame Canonical… except that before I upgraded to Karmic, the months would never show the data until the last day of the month had passed (that is, I could never get the deltas for April until May 1, for example).
That’s strange. That bug was specifically fixed in 2.2.1. Can you tell me what your settings are in the Options panel?
Feh. It’s working again. I’m thinkin’ it was an Ubuntu weirdness.
In any case, Options:
Trend line, star __ lbs. is blank, Smoothing 10%, Round to tenths is checked.
Units: Standard
Body Mass Index: height 70.7″, Show numerically
Forecasting: Last month only, Goal 185 lbs, Slack 1.0 lbs (what’s that? I’ll see if I can find out)
Theme: Default
Hi,
I just stumbled upon your weight tracker osd and I really liked the idea of it, but I seem to be to stupid to use it.
So I entered a bunch of numbers, but in the “real” weight column it just puts down the same number over and over again.
The first weight I entered to be precise.
Since most of the functions use the “real” weight data there is not much going on.
If it’s a bug I just thought I’d report it, if not maybe you could give me hint what I’m doing wrong.
It would be much apreciated, because it seems to be a great sheed.
What OS are you running? What localization settings? (I’m currently trying to track down issues with Mac users, or non-US number formats like 123,45 instead of 123.45.
What version of the sheet are you using? What version of OpenOffice?
Did you enable macros?
Did you try putting in some extreme weights, and/or increasing the smoothing %?
You’re free to file a bug at the http://launchpad.net/wtods site, preferably with a copy of the non-working sheet, or a screenshot of what you’re seeing.
I’m running openoffice 3.2.0 Build 9483 on a Windows machine and I’m using the Weight tracker osd 2.2.1.
macros are enabled, but even with extreme weights (I for example tried 10 and 150) it just lists 10.
Not to shure about what localization settings are though.
So I guess I’m to stupid after all.
I tried out a few more things and it seems as if this only happens, when I use the configure options button. even if I just change the theme.
Regarding the localization settings.
When i have the localization settings set to Swedish i cannot change the “Smooting %” value in the options. After I make a change and then open the options dialog again the value is 0.
Thus i get the same behaviour as paul. the delta weight is always my starting weighth.
When i set the localization to English (USA) i can change the value and everything works as expected.
For those who find spreadsheets too tedious to work with, may I suggest they tried an online tool to do the same. Yet-another-diet-tool is something I made for my own use after I got tired of spreadsheets for weight tracking. It’s free, easy to use, and doesn’t ask for personal info. You can import data from spreadsheet and export back too. I hope you find it as useful as I do.