About Me

I used to build dashboards for stock prices. Now I build dashboards for my own body. The transition wasn't planned — it was a slow slide from "I wonder what my resting heart rate is" to "I have 47 spreadsheets and a dog who thinks I'm insane."

I'm 38 years old, divorced, no kids, living in a small bungalow in East Austin near Cesar Chavez with my dog Pixel. She's a rescue mutt who sleeps under my desk while I stare at numbers. She's not impressed by my BMI.

Education & Background

I have a BS in Statistics from the University of Texas at Austin (class of 2010). After graduation, I spent eight years as a data analyst at a fintech startup in downtown Austin — building risk models, fraud detection algorithms, and the occasional dashboard that made executives feel smart. I left in 2022 when the startup got acquired and the culture shifted from "move fast and break things" to "move slow and have six meetings about breaking things."

Since then, I've been self-employed. I consult on data visualization for small businesses (mostly local Austin companies — Gevity, a metabolic health startup, was my first client). But BMITool.org is my main project. I built it because I was frustrated with health calculators that demanded my email address, sold my data, or buried the actual math behind paywalls.

Why Health Data?

In 2023, I gained about 20 pounds during a particularly stressful consulting project. I wasn't eating dramatically more — I was just eating worse, sleeping less, and moving barely at all. When I finally stepped on a scale, I was 198 pounds at 5'10". My BMI was 28.4. Not obese, but trending in a direction I didn't like.

Instead of joining a gym or downloading a diet app, I did what any data analyst would do: I built a spreadsheet. I tracked weight, steps, sleep, meals, mood, and (eventually) glucose. I ran correlations. I made pivot tables. I discovered that my weight gain correlated more strongly with sleep quality (r = -0.62) than with calorie intake (r = 0.31). That changed how I approached the problem.

I lost 35 pounds over 18 months. Not by following a diet. By following the data. I fixed my sleep first. Then I started walking more (East Austin is great for walking — flat, weird, full of taco trucks). Then I adjusted my protein intake. The weight came off slowly, boringly, and sustainably. I'm now around 172 pounds and my BMI sits in the 24-25 range depending on the week.

What I Actually Know (And Don't)

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a registered dietitian. I'm not a personal trainer. I'm a guy who knows how to read a study, spot a flawed methodology, and explain statistical concepts to people who don't care about p-values.

What I know: data visualization, basic biostatistics, how to design a self-experiment, how to read a PubMed abstract (not the full paper — I admit this), and how to build a web tool that doesn't steal your data.

What I don't know: endocrinology, pharmacology, sports medicine, nutrition science at a clinical level. When I write about those topics, I cite sources and admit uncertainty. If the data is ambiguous, I say so. If I'm guessing, I say so. I have no interest in pretending to be an expert I'm not.

About This Site

BMITool.org launched in early 2024 as a single-page BMI calculator. It has since grown to seven tools, sixteen blog posts, and about 5,000 monthly visitors. The site is built with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no frameworks, no trackers, no server-side processing. All calculations happen in your browser. Your data stays in your browser. I literally cannot see it even if I wanted to.

The site is hosted on GitHub Pages and costs me about $12 a year (domain registration). I make a small amount from advertising (clearly labeled banner ads) and occasional affiliate links to products I actually use (like my Garmin watch or the H-E-B brand protein powder). I don't do sponsored posts, brand partnerships, or "guest contributions" from SEO farms. If you see an article on this site, I wrote it.

Life Outside Spreadsheets

When I'm not tracking my own metrics, I play pickup basketball at the Austin Rec Center (poorly, once a week), hike the Barton Creek Greenbelt with Pixel, and eat an embarrassing amount of breakfast tacos. I listen to podcasts about data science, urban planning, and true crime — often while walking the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake. I drink too much coffee at Mozart's Coffee Roasters on Lake Austin Boulevard, where the baristas know my order and don't ask why I'm typing numbers into a spreadsheet at 8 AM on a Sunday.

I also have a complicated relationship with my ex-wife's cooking. She was a genuinely great cook — healthy, flavorful, organized. I was a disaster in the kitchen. Now that I live alone, I oscillate between batch-cooking ground turkey like a responsible adult and eating H-E-B rotisserie chicken straight from the container while standing in front of the fridge. The data says I should cook more. The data is probably right.

If you want to get in touch, email me at contact@bmitool.org. I read every email but I'm slow to respond — sometimes a week or two. I'm one person with a dog and a spreadsheet habit.