What will you weigh six months from now?

One two-way table crosses four loss rates against four horizons and fills in sixteen answers at once, then converts each rate into the daily calorie deficit it actually demands.

Health Starter Data Table free

After you install, this is the model to open.

How Much Weight Will I Lose?

  1. 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.
  2. Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
  3. 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

Reading the grid:

1.5 lb/wk for 26 weeks
176 lb down 39
1 lb/wk for 26 weeks
189 lb down 26
Deficit for 1.5 lb/wk
750 calories a day

The column people pick shrinks once they see the deficit it implies: 1.5 lb a week is 750 calories a day, every day, for six months. Two honest limits: this is a straight line and real loss decelerates as you get lighter, so the 26-week column is optimistic rather than promised; and weight swings several pounds a day on water alone, so judge progress on a weekly average.

The model

Starting at 215 lb. Rates of 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 lb a week against 4, 8, 12 and 26 weeks.

Starting weight215 lb
Rates tested0.5 to 2 lb / week
Horizons4 to 26 weeks
Projected weightcalculated, 16 cells

Once it is in your sheet

  1. The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.