10748 points plotted toward 201 goals...
  • Why the name "kibotzer"?
  • Kibitzer, noun: Someone who chimes in with not necessarily wanted advice.
    + Bot, noun: A machine or program that interacts with you in a vaguely human-like way.
    = Kibotzer: A bot that bugs you about how fat you are (or whatever goal you're working on).
  • What are people kibotzing on?
  • Find a list of sample goals on the Sign up page.
  • Can I have my graph featured in the gallery?
  • Absolutely! Public shame (or the threat thereof) is highly motivating. Send "public = True" to bot@kibotzer.com and next time you add data, you should show up in the gallery.
  • How do I enter data?
  • Answer the emails from bot@kibotzer.com. You can also enter your data below your graph at kibotzer.com/yourgraphname. You can enter multiple data points at once and you can reply to any email from the bot with data for any day, or multiple days.
  • Any shortcuts for entering data?
  • You can leave out the year and the month when adding new datapoints if they're the same as in the previous datapoint. For example...
    •  
2008 11 14  200  "my first data point!"
     11 16  199  "(comments are optional)"
     11 17  199
        18  198
        28  198  "fell off the wagon for a while there"
     12  1  197  "back on track"
     12 15  196
2009  1  1  196  "new year's resolution: pick up the pace"
  • (Also, spacing doesn't matter. But the quotation marks do.)
  • Finally, you can use a caret to mean "today" and a double-caret for "yesterday":
    •  
^^  195  "had lost 5 pounds as of yesterday"
 ^  194  "and another pound today"
  • What if I can't report my data daily?
  • That's fine. The width of your "yellow brick road" is determined by your day-to-day fluctuations but as long as you have some consecutive days, it will be accurate enough.
  • What does consecutive days of data have to do with the width of the road?
  • Your largest change from one day to the next determines the distance from the centerline, both up and down. So your road remains as wide as twice your largest daily fluctuation. This way, the road accounts for random fluctuations while still showing you the area in which you are remaining close enough to your actual goal, the centerline.
  • What if I want to kibotz on something like running a total of 100 miles during the summer?
  • Many people are kibotzing on goals like that. Just enter "kyoom = True" below your graph (friendlier interface to these settings coming soon!) and each new number will be added to the previous total, ie, cumulatively.
  • What about non-fitness-related goals?
  • If you can quantify it, you can kibotz on it!
  • How fast can I lose weight?
  • A maximum healthy rate -- and this is far from easy -- is one percent of your bodyweight per week. We recommend a more modest 0.33% per week. That corresponds, for example, to half a pound per week if you weigh 150 pounds, or a deficit of 250 calories per day. Since you want to target a percentage of your current weight, that means as you lose weight the steepness of your yellow brick road decreases. Kibotzer makes that adjustment automatically.