Ideal Weight Chart

I've added a new spreadsheet that includes a table, chart, and calculator for estimating your ideal weight. The Ideal Weight Chart uses the BMI, Devine, Robinson, and Miller formulas - all on the same graph - so it is fairly easy to compare them.

The chart uses a special trick for creating the shading that highlights the overweight, normal, and underweight regions based on the BMI (body mass index). The shaded regions are created using a stacked area chart, but because I wanted the gridlines on TOP of the areas, I made two different charts, superimposed over each other, with the area chart on the bottom. The top graph has the backgrounds turned off so that the colors from the area chart show through. (This technique was also described in a comment on this site). I don't really like having to use this approach, but other than creating a bunch of dummy series to use as the gridlines, I don't know of another approach.

Update (2/12/09): Excel Charts expert and MVP Jon Peltier gave me a great suggestion - to make the gridlines using error bars with a dummy series. Now why didn't I think of that?

Update (2/13/09): Created a BMI Chart using the same chart techniques as for the ideal weight charts.