how fat is ken
The world's most needlessly complex Withings weight widget.

This is a display for my Withings smart scale. It doesn't show weight, it doesn't show progress. Instead it focuses on what's happening now. The idea is to discourage slacking off on the diet as soon as soon progress is made.

Originally the dial was just the two outer hands. These show how long has past since I was at the same weight (or fat percentage), with the assumption that younger was fitter. The goal is to get down to the weight I was 20 or more years ago, without even knowing what that number was or where I am now.

Taking inspiration from Penn Jillette's book Presto, particularly the concept of rare and appropriate. I added a dial to show when it was okay to splurge a bit on the diet. It must be both rare - at least ten days apart, and appropriate - a holiday or event that I was planned. That date can be set with the buttons at the top of the display, but must be at least a week into the future. Once the hands all line up, I can splurge, and then reset the dial for the next event.

The quadrant dial with the roman numerals indicates the meal plan. Basically the lower the number, the more strict the diet. For Penn fans, zero means potatoes. The dial automatically changes based on my progress (or lack.)

The lower dial shows progress towards my next goal. Each goal is based on a historical weights that I got 'stuck' at. The dial is in imperial units, from Stones all the way down to fractions of Grains, ( literally about the weight of a grain of wheat ).The weight is derived from an average of previous readings and then estimated out for that day. Since grains don't divide evenly into a dram, ( 1 dr = 27.34375 gr ) the outer division ring slowly rotates such that the hand ticks off exact grains while still keeping one dram per revolution. Take that horologists.

All the data to make this work is transferred daily from the Withings server to mine. I have about 10 years of data from the scale, and some written notes going back before that. I blacked out the display on my scale so I don't see my weight. Everything is automatic.

  • Yes, it's as complex and tacky as possible.
  • At some point you have to stop and say you're done.

    • I'm done.

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