Pick a rate you can hold. What date does that give?
Most plans start with a date and back into a rate nobody could hold. This runs it the other way: fix the rate, solve for the time.
Health Starter Goal Seek free
After you install, this is the model to open.
How Long Until I Hit My Goal Weight?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
Goal Seek working backwards:
- 12 weeks would give
- 197.7 lb short of goal
- Weeks actually needed
- 21.1 about 5 months
- At 1 lb a week instead
- 29.5 weeks
If the answer lands further out than you hoped, the useful response is to check the rate, not to move the goal. The arithmetic will not bend, and a plan built on a rate you cannot hold fails in week three rather than week twenty.
The model
214.5 lb today, 185 lb wanted, 1.4 lb a week. The sheet opens with 12 weeks pencilled in, which is not enough.
| Starting weight | 214.5 lb |
| Goal weight | 185 lb |
| Rate | 1.4 lb / week |
| Weeks needed | solved |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
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Every model like this one, and the method behind them: What-if analysis in Google Sheets.