Okay, I'm going to share some details with you...
As some of you know, I’ve been on a mission over the last two years to bring some common sense, tools and open-mindedness to the health discussions around the world. I’m choosing do so through a business I co-founded called Nibble Nutrition. This is not a shameless plug (though I’m not opposed to those), but rather a reference point for the rest of this post.
The thing is, I’ve been so focused on building my business that I haven’t taken the best care of myself. Much like the contractor’s house that has needed a roof for 8 years, my own body has not been a priority while I’m preaching to others that they should take care of theirs.
This year, I decided that I need to practice what I preach. I’m taking a very quantitative approach to my health, partially because I’m a nerd, but mostly because I believe wholeheartedly that we manage what we measure. As part of my accountability, I’m going to share both my progress and my lessons learned. Fear not, I will not be posting any shirtless selfies or mirror flexes. It’ll just be numbers, graphs and words.
Friday is my check-in day, so I’ll reserve Friday’s for these posts. I hope you find them helpful. And, if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Here we go…
In January, I set out to do a few things:
Weigh myself and record it every morning. I have a Fitbit Aria scale so it makes it SUPER easy. I just step on and my weight gets logged. The scale isn’t the easiest thing to setup, but once it’s working, it’s fantastic. I would highly recommend this scale, not because it’s fantastic, but because they do a great job of making it easy (again, after initial setup) and… quite honestly… it integrates with our Nibble app so it makes it simple for Nibble users to get their weight (now THAT is a shameless plug).
Track EVERYTHING that I eat every day. This is the only way you can truly tell what you’re putting into your body. Again, I use Nibble to do this because I think it’s the best. If you’re on Android, use MyFitnessPal or something similar. You want something that will allow you to quickly track calories and macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat). There are free options so don’t pay for an app that lets you do it.
Set a three-month weight loss goal. In my case I am working on losing 20 pounds. Is three months a long way off? It seems like it. But time goes fast and in the past I would set goals that just weren’t reasonable. Three months is about 12 weeks. 20 pounds in 12 weeks is about 1-2/3 pounds per week. If you’re setting a weight loss goal, losing 1 to 2 pounds a week is a good place to start. I’m not a doctor, so take that for what it’s worth… but that’s a very general starting place.
Track my progress against my goal. I do this using a spreadsheet. It’s just what is easiest for me. There are plenty of ways to do this, but I like spreadsheets so I use them. I’ll include a snapshot of my spreadsheet graph below. Ultimately, I have my goal line that I need to stay close to and I track my actual weight against that daily goal weight. If I get too far off track, I need to change something. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.
Track my sleep every day. I don’t sleep a ton, but I’ve been sleeping more lately. With all of this “science” telling me how much I should sleep, I figured I’d measure it myself and see what my body needs. I don’t know if this data will be useful, but I’m going to track it until I can figure out if I need it or not.
Review the data weekly and make changes accordingly. Everyone out there has a solution for you. When we started Nibble, we took a different approach. We don’t pretend to know what the answer is. We just know (a) we can figure out a pretty good starting place for most people and (b) we can use the data you enter to adjust goals over time. Those two things will get you where you need to be. THAT is science. Not all this mumbo jumbo you see on TV and read on the internet. Your body is unique. What works for me will not work for you in terms of diet. But the high-level approach I’m taking will work for anyone.
Track my heart rate variation (HRV) every day. Stress is a crazy thing and does very unexpected things to our bodies. Although there is for sure a qualitative aspect of stress, the best quantitative approach to measuring stress today is HRV (as far as I can tell, anyway). Our heart rate changes all day long. The weird thing is that the LESS our heart rate varies, the MORE stressed we are. It’s very counterintuitive. I use a paid app called HRV4Training. I honestly don’t like the app that much, but I haven’t found anything better so I’ll use it until I find or create a new one. I’m tracking stress for the same reason I’m tracking sleep. I want to see if there is some correlation between my sleep, stress and overall health (later in the year, I’ll be tracking more health factors - weight is just my starting point).
Okay… so that’s my plan. Now on to the data.
The chart below has a ton of info on it, but really there are just a few things to notice:
The solid red line is the number of calories that I ate per day (the scale is on the right).
The blue line is my weight (the scale is on the left)
The green shaded slope is my goal weight region - as long as I stay in there I’m good.
The yellow shaded slope is my “danger” weight region - if I enter that area, I need to change something.
Simply put, I want to keep the blue line in the green shaded area. If the blue line goes into the yellow shaded area, I need to change something because I’m getting off track. Take a second to look at the chart and you’ll see my calories (red) went up last week and so did my weight (blue). I actually got into the yellow region and I’ve been there for a few days.
Once I entered the yellow/danger area, I needed to change something. My initial calorie goal was 2000 calories per day. I went over that goal for several days in a row and my weight reflected it. To get my weight back on track (i.e., out of the yellow and back into the green) I had to drop my calorie goal to 1800 calories per day. I’m going to keep it there until my weight loss is trending back into the green.
I didn’t need to make dramatic changes. I just needed to have the data to tell me that a change needed to be made at all. If you’re not weighing yourself and you’re not tracking your food, you really have NO idea where to begin.
So here’s the takeaway. If your goal is to lose weight (and that IS not and SHOULD not be everyone’s goal), then weighing yourself every day and tracking everything you eat is a great place to start!
I know this isn’t my usual post, but it’s something I’m passionate about and I know there are so many people out there that don’t know where to start. I’m here to help, I promise.
If you have a question about all of this, please leave a comment on the blog post or find me on social media.
And with that… Happy Friday!