Your Weight History is one of the most important graphs in your Body History. It shows how much you weigh every day, as well as what you should weigh if your diet is on target and how much you will weigh if you continue on your present course. Like any other view of the Body History, the Weight History also shows your Calorie Tally and current metabolic rate. Because it's such a good summary of your progress, you may want to designate your Weight History as your Home Screen. It's also handy for navigating to your Food and Exercise logs for past dates.
To view your Weight History:
If you've already made the Weight History your Home Screen, just close any dialogs you have open and the history will be revealed.
If you haven't chosen the Weight History as your Home Screen, there are two ways to do so:
· Using the View Menu:
1. From your current Home Screen, open the View Menu by clicking the word View.
2. Click "Choose Home Screen." The Choose Home Screen dialog will open, listing the 40 variables that you can graph on your Home Screen.
3. Click "Weight."
4. If you wish, refine your choice by clicking radio buttons under "Scope" and "Data Smoothing." (The dialog's Help button will explain the choices.)
5. Click OK. The Choose Home Screen dialog will disappear, taking you back to the Home Screen.
· Using the right mouse button: Right-click anywhere on your Home Screen and choose "Weight" from the menu that appears. (This method does not let you specify the scope or data smoothing.)
(Whichever version you select, it will continue to serve as your Home Screen until you replace it.)
Interpreting the Weight History
When the working date is today, the screen's background will be light blue. Otherwise, the background will be yellow and the graph will have a bright-green vertical line marking the current working date.
On the graph, the weight scale moves up the side of the screen and the calendar dates are spread across the bottom.Your actual weights are plotted as a red line.
Your current diet is a sloping blue line that you need to stay under (or over, if you're on a weight-gain diet) in order to reach your goal weight on your target date. (If you're on a maintenance diet, the blue line will be horizontal.) Your goal weight is a blue dot on the right margin, which represents your target date.
You will also see a dark-green line stretching from your recent weights to a green dot on your target date. This is your projected weight¾the weight that Diet Power forecasts you will attain if you continue eating and exercising as you have for the past 30 days. (If you haven't been using Diet Power that long, the program assumes "phantom data" for each missing day, based on your weight, sex, age, and other factors.) This long baseline explains why, even if your actual weight changes rapidly at the beginning of a diet, your projected weight may change only slowly.
The beginning of each diet you adopt will be marked with a vertical yellow line. When you abandon one diet and adopt another, the yellow line for the old diet will remain on the graph¾but the old diet's sloping blue and green lines will be replaced with those for the new diet.
The Mini-Tally
If you slide the mouse pointer onto the graph, the pointer changes from an arrow to a vertical white line¾the "date picker."* As you run the date picker across the graph, your calorie intake and expenditures for each day flash into view in a "Mini-Tally" underneath the graph. Meanwhile, your daily weights and Key Ratios flash at the bottom, on the status bar.
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* |
On a few computers, the date picker will be invisible because of memory or hard-drive limitations. Nevertheless, the dates and their associated weights will appear in the status bar as you move your mouse across the graph. |
To jump to your records for past dates:
Using the mouse, move the "date picker" (the vertical white line) to the date you want. (The status bar and Mini-Tally will tell you which date you're on.) Then click to change the working date to that date. From here you can enter any of your logs or histories by clicking the menus or buttons in your usual manner.
To return to the present date:
Go back to the Weight History screen and click anywhere outside the weight graph.
To change your enrollment weight:
Your enrollment weight is the weight you recorded at the beginning of your first session as a Diet Power user. If your enrollment weight was incorrect (maybe you discovered this when you bought a new scale), you can change it by as much as 10 percent if you do so within 30 days of enrollment. Click Options > Miscellaneous. If you see an "Enrollment Weight" section at the bottom of the dialog that appears, make the change there.
If you don't see an "Enrollment Weight" section, then you are beyond the 30-day limit. In that case, you have two options:
Start
over as a completely new user. (See "Starting
Over.") This has one serious drawback: Although the foods and
exercises that you've added to the dictionaries will still be visible,
you will no longer see your old food and exercise logs;
nor will you see any favorites you've set up in either log.
Live with the error. Just log your new, correct weight from now on. The program will think you suddenly gained or lost a lot of weight, and modify your budget accordingly. But as the days pass, the error will shrink to a smaller and smaller portion of the total. Within a week it will hardly matter; within a month, not at all.
To print your Weight History:
(This can be done only when your Weight History is visible on your Home Screen. If the screen is showing the Diet Power logo instead, change it by either using the View Menu or right-clicking the screen.)
1. From the Home Screen, open the User Menu by clicking the word User.
2. Click "Print History." (Note: This choice will be grayed out if your Home Screen is the Diet Power logo instead of the Weight History or some other view of the Body History.) The Windows Print dialog will open.
3. Change your printer settings, if necessary.
4. Click OK, and Diet Power will print the history.
To interpret the Calorie Tally¼
¼see Calorie Tally.
Last Modified: 8/2/05