If you ask someone how good their diet, sleep, exercise, stress, and movement are, most people will say “pretty good”.
What people base their answer on is what their baseline (aka their norm) is in each one of these areas, however their baseline might not be good.
For example, if your baseline for amount of hours slept is 5 hours a night and you get 6 hours one night you might feel like your sleep was excellent, when in reality it’s likely it is still below where you need to be.
If your baseline for movement is 2000 steps a day and one day you happen to walk 5000 steps you might feel like you were super active that day, but in reality you are still a long way from where you need to be.
Since people don’t pay attention to or track metrics related to the lifestyle factors that improve their health, they can only go off of their subjective feelings about how they think they are doing.
The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”
Nathaniel Branden
Many people want to improve their health but they have no idea how they currently stack up against the goals they want to reach.
In my opinion tracking is one of the best ways to make people aware of their current health status and as the above quote says, is the first step toward making change.
Let’s look at an example of why tracking is useful that has nothing to do with humans or health.
If you own a car then you likely know that the car has a computer that is constantly tracking all kinds of important metrics about how your car is running. If one of those metrics goes outside the optimal range it makes you aware of the issue. Once you are aware you have the option to make some kind of change to address the issue. Of course you can ignore the issue entirely, you don’t need to make any kind of change, but the awareness of the issue at least gives you the option for change.
A good example of this is the air pressure of the tires on your car. If the pressure in one of the tires gets too low a light comes on the dashboard letting you know to check the tire pressure. Sometimes this just involves adding a little bit of air and the issue goes away, but let’s say you add a little bit of air and a few days later the light comes back on. This likely means there is some kind of leak in the tire so you bring the car in and the mechanic finds a nail in the tire. They can quickly patch the tire and the issue goes away.
Let’s say you have an older car, one made without a computer in it. If the air pressure in one of your tires gets low no warning light will come on. You continue to drive the car without adding any air until one day you notice you have a flat tire. You call a tow truck to bring the car to the mechanic and the mechanic says there was a nail in your tire but since you didn’t put air in the tire or fix the leak and continued to drive on the tire you will need a whole new tire.
As you can see, the car with the computer to monitor metrics about the car, is much better off because it allows you to catch the problem early on and avoid a potentially expensive fix down the road.
Just like your car is tracking various metrics to make sure a small problem doesn’t turn into a big problem, you can track metrics related to your lifestyle to make sure you are staying on track and not going too far off course resulting in major health issues in the future.
If you are tracking your weight and you notice a trend in the wrong direction, well now you are aware and can potentially make a change.
If you are tracking your food as well, you might be able to associate the change in weight to some kind of change in your diet.
If you are tracking your movement and exercise you might also be able to associate that change in weight with your consistency in the gym or a change in your sedentary time.
By tracking these things you become aware of the issue early on and you have a chance to make a change before it’s a huge problem.
Let’s contrast that to someone who is not tracking anything. The way this story goes can be very different. Their weight keeps trending in the wrong direction but it is hard to really notice any change acutely. Maybe after several months their clothes are fitting a bit tighter. They brush it off as the post-holiday weight gain and loosen their belt a little figuring it will work itself out..they don’t make a change. Then another 6 months go by and they are buying new clothes…the problem never worked itself out. But now their clothes feel fine, so it’s easy to ignore the problem. This pattern then repeats itself until a few years down the road and what initially may have been a 10lb weight gain is now a 50lb weight gain and the only reason they are aware of the issue is because they went to the doctor and their blood work looked like a train wreck and the doctor told them that their weight is probably the primary reason why.
As you can see when we compare and contrast these two scenarios the outcome is quite different. In one scenario when we track our weight, food, exercise and movement, we notice the problem very early on and are made aware of a potential issue (just like your car would let you know). Since we just gained a small amount of weight, within a matter of weeks we should be able to self correct and get everything back where it needs to be.
In the case where we weren’t tracking we are able to continue on unaware of how bad the issue really is until we can no longer ignore it and our doctor tells us our health is at risk, partially due to our weight. Instead of being aware of the issue when we were only 10 lbs heavier we are now 50 lbs heavier and correcting the problem, while not impossible, is going to require a lot more work, time, and effort.
“What gets measured gets managed.”
Peter Drucker
By tracking we can accurately measure the metrics we care about and manage them appropriately.
It seems to make sense that tracking would yield better outcomes but do we have any research to back this up?
Turns out we do.
In fact there have been a number of studies done on the effectiveness of tracking food intake specifically. In a meta analysis (A Systematic Review of the Use of Dietary Self-Monitoring in Behavioural Weight Loss Interventions: Delivery, Intensity and Effectiveness, n.d.), which looked at 59 other studies done on the topic of tracking food intake for the purpose of weight loss the authors concluded that “The majority of included interventions found significant weight loss in experimental groups (tracking groups) compared with control groups and abbreviated intake monitoring.”
In addition tracking body weight is one of the characteristics of people who maintain weight loss for long periods of time (Wing, n.d.).
Why?
It is exactly the scenario we ran through above, as soon as their weight moves in a direction they don’t want, they can quickly adjust their lifestyle to bring it back in line!
Interested in your athletic performance?
Tracking training and performance will be key to you reaching your goal!
Whether you are trying to put on muscle, hit a specific metric during a race, become stronger, or improve your mobility, tracking your exercise and performance benchmarks are really the only way to make sure what you are doing is moving you towards your goal. You need to know the weight you lifted, the miles you ran, the mobility exercise you are doing and then assess whether that is moving you forward. If you are not seeing the progress you’re looking for, then you can quickly self correct and try a different approach.
At this point you are probably expecting me to tell you to be glued to your phone, weighing everything that goes in your mouth, and tracking every single bit of movement you do throughout the day.
Luckily that level of tracking is NOT necessary. I will also say that I believe that level of tracking can be unhealthy for some people, and I am not advocating that. Not only could it be unhealthy, but I also think that it can take away a lot of the enjoyment that we should be getting from things like food, exercise, and movement.
So is there a happy medium from a tracking perspective?
I think so.
A recent study (How Much Food Tracking During a Digital Weight-Management Program Is Enough to Produce Clinically Significant Weight Loss?, 2023) done on food tracking and weight loss showed that tracking just 67.1% of the time resulted in a 10% weight loss. In a 7 day week this equates to tracking roughly 5 days out of 7 days in a week. Even those that tracked just 2 days a week lost between 3 and 5% of their weight. The other thing to note about this study is that a day of tracking was defined as a day in which they entered ANY food item into their tracker. Again this means they could have tracked one single food item for the day and it was counted as a day of tracking. Not only did participants get results not tracking all the time, they didn’t even have to track perfectly when they did track to get some measurable results in terms of weight loss.
This is a great example of why tracking perfectly is not necessary.
I feel like part of peoples aversion to tracking has to do with the word “tracking”. If this is you I would encourage you to think of tracking slightly differently.
Tracking is just a form of conscious oversight. All this really means is you are paying attention to your lifestyle practices in a way that allows you to know when things might be slipping outside the optimal range. Cars have computers that do this, unfortunately we don’t (yet) so we need to do it ourselves.
Conscious oversight can mean a variety of different things.
It might mean using a food scale and an app to track your food. It might mean stepping on your scale everyday and logging your weight. It might mean wearing a step counter to track your sedentary time. It might mean logging the weight, sets, and reps of each exercise you do during your workout. It might mean strapping on a heart rate monitor when you do your cardio to monitor your intensity.
However it could also mean using hand portions to estimate the amount of food you are eating. Trying on a pair of tight pants every few weeks to see how they fit. It might mean scheduling three 20 minute walks into your calendar each day to make sure you are moving your body more. It might mean taking circumference measurements every few months to track muscle gain. It might mean you use your breathing to guide the intensity of your cardio workouts.
Conscious oversight, or tracking, can take many forms, and there are probably times and situations where one form is better than another.
If you are just getting started on your health and fitness journey then being a bit more precise with your tracking might be better because you are going to learn a whole bunch of things along the way.
You will learn what a cup of berries looks like.
You will learn how little a serving of peanut butter really is 😭.
You will learn that your weight can go up and down for a number of different reasons that have nothing to do with body fat.
You will learn how easy a “zone 2” run really needs to be.
You will learn which exercises work the best for you to put on muscle.
As you learn more and more you can then loosen the reins when it comes to tracking and take a more relaxed approach.
The key is that you are still tracking, you still have conscious oversight over your lifestyle. Remember the biggest advantage to doing this is that you can catch deviations early on before they become huge problems down the road. This allows you to make minor adjustments and be back on track in no time.
If I have convinced you of the value of tracking and your looking to get started here is what I want you to do. For 14 days I want you to log several things.
- Wake up each morning and log how many hours you slept and how well you thought you slept based on a 1-10 scale, with a 1 being terrible sleep and 10 being amazing sleep.
- Each night before bed log how your stress was for that day based on a 1-10 scale, with a 1 being no stress, and 10 being very stressed.
- Each night before bed log how many steps you took. If you don’t have a fitness tracker your phone will track how many steps you took (iOS, Android).
- Log everything you ate and drank for the day. It doesn’t have to be precise, it could just be a description of the meal or drink. For example, you could write down “I had 3 eggs, a bagel with cream cheese, and a coffee with sugar and milk for breakfast”.
Is the most accurate or precise form of tracking? No, but it’s easy, no cost, and it starts to make you aware, so that you can then make change!
What changes should you make?
Well that is where a lot of my content is focused on. I am here to provide you with free content you can put to work right away to help you reach your goals. So if you are looking for actionable steps to take when you find out something is not right enter your email address below to sign up for my newsletter and each week I will provide you with the knowledge you need to get to your goals in a sustainable way.
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