Description of the sample

For this round, we have a total of 256 participants, 64.2% of which are women.  The average participant is almost 27 years old, 172.85 cm (5’7”) and weights 85.6kg (188.32lbs).

Currently, only around half of the participants have calculated their body fat percentage, which is in average 30.93%. Those who have calculated their body fat percentage do not have a higher BMI than the rest of the group so there is no reason to think this percentage is not representative. The four graphs bellow are displaying data by sex for, respectively, age, weight in kilograms, BMI and body fat percentage.

Weight objectives & BMI information

Everyone’s objective is quite different, it ranges from losing 25kg (55lbs) to gaining 18kg (39.6lbs) but in average, participants want to lose 7.86kg (17.29lbs). I will try never to use BMI in individual analysis since it was meant to be used as a population measure. As a sample, we are overweight with an average BMI of 28.48 and if everything goes as planned for everyone (and we hope it does) we will move to the edge of being at a normal weight with an average BMI of 25.85.

Goals, Diets and Exercise

The next table shows the goals we have set for ourselves during the next round. In average, each participant has set 3.4 goals. Most of us want to lose weight, reduce our body fat percentage and improve our strength, endurance and measurements.

As for diet followed by participants, we can see that the more popular diet will be a small calorie deficit. Our friends from r/keto and r/paleo are also well represented in the distribution and there is a good proportion following low-carb/high-protein diets. There is also a large proportion of participants that won’t follow any specific diet.

An average of 2.67 types of physical activity will be undertaken by participants. I also did a similar table to see in which ways we are going to get moving in the next three months.

Most of you guys who track your food intake use MyFitnessPal but there is also a large proportion of people who prefers not to monitor what they eat.

I also tried a few exploratory analysis and the only thing that came out as significant was a weak but negative correlation between the weight loss objective and the number of physical activities that participants want to engage in. As weird as it may seem, it means that the more weight you want to lose, the fewer types of physical activities you undertake. It doesn’t mean that participants who want to lose a lot of weight won’t do a lot of physical activity; it just means that these folks seem to engage in a smaller variety of physical activity.

As the round unfolds, I will be able to tell you which kind of goal, exercise, tracker, diet is the more efficient in order to stay on track or even to attain different goals. I look forward to tell you if any of the groups do better than the others during the round! By the way guys, pleeeease, try to get your units right… I’ve had 62cm folks that weighted 150kg… I honestly hope it was a mistake… If you guys have any question regarding the signup questionnaire, or the data I presented here, feel free to ask!

By the way, there are still a few days left to enter the study if ever you are interested! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/exerciseprofile

Our Goals

Our Diets

Our Food Trackers

Other	33
I prefer not to say.	4
DailyBurn	4
FitBit	4
Noom	3
Calorie Count	3
Blog	2
Calorie Counter App	2
MyNetDiary	2
21weekchallenge.tumblr.com	1
alfitness.com.au	1
beeminder	1
beyondthewhiteboard	1
BodyMedia.com	1
nutritiondata	1
Photograph everything I put in my mouth.	1
TrainingPeaks	1
Libra Application Android	1

Our Exercise

Our Exercise Trackers

Let’s take a look at who we are this round. If there’s any additional group info you’re interested in, send a comment and I’ll try to add it in.

Where do we live?

Here’s the breakdown of where we live this round. 87% of 90ers prefer English units (lbs/in.), whereas 13% prefer metric units (kg/cm).

Removing US for a closer look:

(No guarantees that the map is accurate. Google Spreadsheet was really struggling with the placement of the dots.)

Age, Height, Sex

Weight and Body Fat Percentage Goals

The following plots show the normal distribution of our weights and body fat percentages. Our current distribution is shown in dark red and blue. Our goals are in light red and blue.

Weight as a function of height and age

Here you can compare your weight to other people with a similar height or age. The average value is outlined in black and the maximum and minimum values are shown with solid lines.

Weight vs. Height

English units:

Metric units:

Weight vs. Age

English units:

Metric units:

Overall weight distribution

Total number of people currently signed up for Round 5: 800

Number of people checking in this week:  248

The initial and current weight distribution for everyone who checked in this week:

Normal distribution of initial and current weights for everyone who checked in this week:

Weight distribution by gender

Women

Total number of women currently signed up for Round 5: 435

Number of women checking in this week:  140

The initial and current weight distribution for women who checked in this week:

Men

Total number of men currently signed up for Round 5: 360

Number of men checking in this week:  102

The initial and current weight distribution for men who checked in this week:

Distribution of weight change

Distribution of change from initial to current weight for everyone who checked in:

Distribution broken down by gender:

Are any diets or exercises doing better than others?

On the sign-up form, there was a page of optional questions about which types of diets or exercises we were planning on following. This data isn’t necessarily very accurate, because there is no guarantee that a person actually follows the diet or exercise that they said they would. Still, it’s fun to look at some of the info that we can get from this.

The total number of people who signed up are shown in red. The number of people who checked in this week are shown in blue. The second plot in each category shows the average weight loss for the group of people who checked in this week. The plots are ordered by total number of people who signed up.

Goals

Diet types

Calorie trackers

Exercise types

Activity trackers

Overall weight distribution

Total number of people currently signed up for Round 5: 792

Number of people checking in this week:  361

The initial and current weight distribution for everyone who checked in this week:

Normal distribution of initial and current weights for everyone who checked in this week:

Weight distribution by gender

Women

Total number of women currently signed up for Round 5: 421

Number of women checking in this week:  209

The initial and current weight distribution for women who checked in this week:

Men

Total number of men currently signed up for Round 5: 348

Number of men checking in this week:  152

The initial and current weight distribution for men who checked in this week:

Distribution of weight change

Distribution of change from initial to current weight for everyone who checked in:

Distribution broken down by gender:

Are any diets or exercises doing better than others?

On the sign-up form, there was a page of optional questions about which types of diets or exercises we were planning on following. This data isn’t necessarily very accurate, because there is no guarantee that a person actually follows the diet or exercise that they said they would. Still, it’s fun to look at some of the info that we can get from this.

The total number of people who signed up are shown in red. The number of people who checked in this week are shown in blue. The second plot shows the average weight loss for the group of people who checked in this week. The plots are ordered by total number of people who signed up.

Goals

Diet types

Calorie trackers

Exercise types

Activity trackers

This is the first blog of many for the support group over at http://www.reddit.com/r/90daysgoal. My name is Gingryu and I am one of the Moderators over at 90daysgoal. I have personally been with the group since the beginning and was asked to be a mod later on in the early rounds. I have been on my fitness journey for about two years now. I started at 215lbs and 30% body fat. Currently I am sitting at 180lbs and 11.5% body fat. Along the way I have changed and tried a lot of different diets along with exercise routines. Everything from HIIT to Starting Strength to Convict Conditioning has kept me active and strong. I have tried diets from Paleo to low carb to Ketogenic to just simple calorie counting. Over these two years I have taken a special interest in really understanding the whats, hows, and whys that are involved in achieving my goals. I say these things not to sit and brag but to let you know I have been around the block and failed and achieved on many levels.

Next let me give you a heads up for what this blog is about. The blog will be my chance to do some research for anyone who has any questions they would like answered. I will get a chance to explore and detail things for you about the basics of dieting and exercise and changing your life for the better. So always feel free to contact the Mods or me personally about topics you would like to see covered. With enough ideas I would even be available to do this more than once per week. Currently I am going to aim for a Friday blog each week so people have some motivation to go through the weekend and keep a level head about their goals. If you have any questions about the information I post or the science behind something I am more than happy to look into it for you. Just shoot me a PM.

Alright I’m done with the intro.

So check it. Its day 26 of Round 5 for 90daysgoal. You are going along your daily routine and everything is going well. Except work sucked today. Your boss decided that keeping his voice at a yell was plausible and that you were his target. So much work. So much stress. Why in the world would anyone go and workout after that. I just want to get home and curl up with my bf/gf/blanket/beer. (I personally see each of these things as equals after a day like that)

ARE YOU READING MY MIND?

No. I just know about the stress of life and trying to stick to your goals. Your motivation to keep going during times like these is non-existent. This right here is the situation everyone is going to meet time and time again during their journey for a skinny ass, huge biceps, abs of steel. So let’s take a look at motivation and how to find some. (Not found in Wal-Mart for once)

Your journey like most people started with some kind of epiphany, act of god, or requirement for a movie role. HA. Please let’s get real. We are all fat individuals who want to get tiny or skinny who want to get swole. There is no shame in this and that first day when you knew you needed to fix this there was a wave of motivation in our lives. We went and we did and we cried about how difficult it was. But we knew it was for the best and after those 15 minutes of work we realized this stuff is hard!

WASN’T THAT ENOUGH?!

Nope. Whatever you have to achieve is not going to come simply and you are going to need to work hard for it. Now you may be able to keep going for the entire time and reach your goals. Some people are blessed with this kind of motivation and discipline. Most aren’t.

WELL THEN FIX ME.

We will. My personal belief is that motivation is your desire to achieve something you want or desire. Screw webster I have no clue what the real definition of motivation is but I will let you in on a secret. I think motivation only needs to be gotten once. That first day when you needed to change your life was everything you needed to reach your goals. The goal isn’t to FIND more motivation but to use the motivation you have and keep it going. Motivation feels like something that comes and goes in waves and is in limited supply. But honestly we just need to stop for a second and look at it from the right perspective.

You already want something out of your fitness journey. By using our guide for getting started and setting goals you know how to do it. The hard part is sticking with it. So let’s break it down and look at different things to help keep ourselves motivated.

Realize that one day you can and will achieve your goal. This is a process about changing your life. You are in no rush and the goal you set will happen. You might have to make some adjustments, you might need to try some different things but any goal you set for yourself is obtainable. You don’t need to get down about how you’ll never do it. With a community like ours and the resources we can provide for you there is nothing you can’t do with a little hard work.

Failure is inevitable. I don’t want you to go around thinking that reaching these goals requires absolute perfection. Understand that a failure just means it is something you need to work on and keep going. A lot of people talk about this stupid horse.

WHCH ONE?

The one that everyone gets on but always falls off of? That one. I imagine he would look like this. A failure isn’t falling off of the horse. Nothing is ruined when you fail. The only time failure is real is when you stop everything you are doing to reach your goals. Even if you are only dieting, only exercising, or simply eating more vegetables you are still working towards the goal and that’s progress. Don’t let a little failure get you down. Its normal and everyone does it.

You have help! Now I could understand if you thought you were alone in this and there is no way you can do it without help but if you are currently reading this you have a ton of help. You have all of the resources available you could ask for. Between the mods, community, and other fitness subreddits you have so much info its stupid.

So let’s look at that real quick:

One day I will achieve my goal. Failure is inevitable but I have help.

If someone told me that they had a chore for me, had help if needed, and any amount of time to reach it would I ever consider there a possibility of complete failure? Not a chance. So think about your goals this way. You don’t need more motivation. Just realize that one day you will achieve your goal. Failure is inevitable but you have help.

Its only day 26. There is plenty of time left in the round. So keep your head up, keep doing what you need to do and if you need help let us know. At this point you can overcome anything because you will achieve your goal. The only thing you don’t know is when. No point in stopping now, is there?

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I do not even remotely pretend to be. Please take all advice at your own risk.

Here’s another look at who we are this round, split up by gender.

Age, Height, Gender, Country

Weight, Body fat percentage, BMI

Goals, Diet, Exercise

Goals, Diet, Exercise

Let’s take a look at who we are this round. I’m still running a bit behind schedule, so please bear with me. Tomorrow I will split these up by gender and add in the Week 2 stats.

Age, Height, Gender, Country

Weight, Body fat percentage, BMI

Goals, Diet, Exercise

Past 90days Participation

The following plots show the number of weekly check-ins in the past rounds. Note: In Round 1, we only had an initial and final check-in (unless I’ve lost some spreadsheets along the way).

Out of 575 people who have signed up for Round 4 of 90days, 70 people checked in for Week 10. Let’s take a look at how things have changed for us since the start of the round.

Overall weight distribution

Here’s the initial weight distribution of everyone who signed up originally and those who have checked in for Weeks 1 through 10:

And if we look at only the people who have checked in for Week 10, we get:

We’ve lost an average of 9.3 lbs (4.2 kg) per person since the start of the round. The 70 people who checked in this week have lost a total of 649 lbs (294 kg)! (For comparison, a rule of thumb for a healthy weight loss rate is 1-2 lbs (0.45-0.91 kg) per week, which would be 10-20 lbs (4.54-9.07 kg) for ten weeks of progress. Uh oh, let’s pick up the pace for the last couple weeks!)

Fitting our weights to a normal distribution, it’s a little easier to see the shift in our group weight:

Weight distribution by gender

Let’s break it down by gender again. Looking at only the people who checked in for Week 10, there were 39 women and 28 men (plus 3 with an unknown gender).

The weight distributions for both genders are shown below.

Women

Women have lost an average of 9.1 lbs (4.1 kg) each since the start of the round, for a total of 355 lbs (161 kg) lost for these 39 women!

Men

Men have lost an average of 9.7 lbs (4.4 kg) each since the start of the round, or a total of 272 lbs (123 kg) lost for these 28 men!

Distribution of weight change

Here’s the distribution of weight change since the start of the round for everyone who checked in.

Broken down by gender:

Are any diets or exercises doing better than others?

On the sign-up form, there was a page of optional questions about which types of diets or exercises we were planning on following. This data isn’t necessarily very accurate, because there is no guarantee that a person actually follows the diet or exercise that they said they would. Plus, the questions were optional, so not everyone answered them. Still, it’s fun to look at some of the info that we can get from this.

Diet types

Calorie trackers

Exercise types

Activity trackers

Who’s still with us?

On the following plots, the number of people who checked in for Week 10 are compared with the number of people who selected a category on the initial signup form. The plots are ordered by percentage of people retained. For example, of the 219 people who listed their goal as “improve body measurements,” 39 people checked in, so 14% are still here.

Goals

Diet types

Calorie trackers

Exercise types

Activity trackers