Martin Christiansen logs his progress in a spreadsheet so that he can look back at his weight and blood pressure for any given day.

“When I go see my weight loss doctor, I usually have a PowerPoint with me to highlight things I’ve been doing,” Christiansen tells TODAY.com.

The Weight of Stress

For most of his adult life, Christiansen’s weight stayed steady around 180 pounds. However, during the final year of his Ph.D. program in 2001, to cope with the pressure of writing his dissertation and 18-hour days focused solely on calculations, he ate.

“My problem really was that I stayed hungry no matter what,” he recalls. “Yeah, I would be hungry after eating food. I would be hungry when my stomach could have no more food in it.”

The now-53-year-old’s preferred haunt was a nearby pizza place

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