Weight Goals
JXCirrus CalCount is great at tracking food and
exercise. It also tries to calculate:
- What your weight should be (based on your height).
- From that - How much energy you need to get to this target
weight.
The basic way that it does this is:
- If you are the correct weight, match your food intake to the
number of calories you burn.
- If you are over your correct weight, adjust your target food
down by enough to lose 0.5 kg / 1 lb per week.
- If you are under your correct weight, adjust your target food
up by enough to gain 0.5 kg / 1 lb per week.
But you may want to reach a specific weight by a specific date
(lets face it, a goal often helps). The Weight Goal
function lets you do that...
To set a weight goal, use the
button and select Weight Goal.
How it works
The app works with 4 pieces of information:
- Target Weight/Week: This is how fast you ideally want your
weight to change each week. It sets this to a
default of 0.5 kg per week, because that is considered a healthy
rate to lose weight. You can make this higher or
lower of you want.
- Maximum Weight/Week: This tells the app the fastest rate you
want to change your weight. The reason the app needs
to know this is that if you end up behind your weight goals, the
app adjusts your calories to try and speed things up a
bit. But it will still not have you go over this
rate.
- Reaction Time: This is controlled with the slider in the
dialog. This controls how quickly the goal will try and get you
back on track if you fall behind. For example, if the slider is
set to 1, then it will try and correct in just 1 week, while 5
means giving you 5 weeks to catch up.
- The steps: The app automatically sets you a set of steps
each week towards your goal. These steps have a date
and a weight - i.e. the date when you want to be a particular
weight. This table also shows you how you are progressing with
your actual weight (only available with
the Diary+ add on)
Setting up the goal
On the dialog, tick the "Set a weight goal" box.
The app starts off setting you a default goal, which is:
- Lose weight at 0.5 kg / 1 lb per week.
- Try and end up in the middle of your target weight range by
the end.
You can fine tune the weight goal and the steps to whatever you
want.
re-calculates the goal. When you press this, you have 3
options:
- From Selected: Re-generates all steps below the selected one
based on Target Weight/Week.
- All Steps: Removes all the steps and creates a new set based
on Target Weight/Week.
- Everything: Sets the Target Weight/Week back to 0.5 kg, the
Maximum Weight/Week back to 1.0 kg, and regenerates all of the
steps.
adds an extra
step to your goal (after the step you have selected in the list).
lets you edit
a step in the goal. You can change the date of the step
and/or change the target weight. The
button
next to each field recalculates that field:
- For the date field, it works out the date (after the last
step) when you ought to be able to get to that weight.
- For the weight field, it works out the weight you ought to be
by the date.
- For the difference field, it works out the difference between
your last weight step and this one. If you change the difference
field, then the weight field will also change.
- Pressing "Apply Steps" applies this weight difference to all
steps after this one.
deletes
the selected step.
Tracking your goal
Once you enable your weight goal, the
page shows a new graph.
- The green area shows your target weight over time.
- The red line plots your current weight.
- The yellow vertical line shows the current date.
- The darker green area shows which weight goal steps you have
achieved. To be on target, you want the dark green
area ahead of the vertical yellow line.