I am obsessed with data. Immediately after completely a workout, whether its a bike ride, a weight training session, or a run, I open all of my fitness apps like I’m about hack into the National Archives Museum in DC and steal the Declaration of Independence. Sometimes I feel like RoboCop with the amount of technology I take with me whenever I do any kind of exercise; even to the point where I almost turn back and go home if I’ve forgotten some key tool in my tech arsenal. It’s probably borderline psychotic to have this level of dependency on my technology, but what can I say? I love the data.

I would attribute most of this obsession to my background in IT. I’m not data scientist, but much of my job involves collecting, manipulating, and reporting on data. I take those same principals and apply them to nearly every aspect of my life. I want to see trends on how well I’ve slept over the last seven nights, or the change in temperature on my smart home thermostat. I spend the first 5-10 minutes following any workout recapping my effort; how was my heart rate? Did I nearly pass out on that climb? What was my relative effort? All things I meticulously examine to try to explain how I think I did.

Data is an important part of any health and fitness regimen. Often times the only piece of data we tend to measure is our weight. We step on the scale first thing in the morning and take a mental picture of that number we see and somehow let that number determine the outcome of our day. I touched on this a little in the Net Zero post. Weight is a quick and easy measurement to take. It literally takes no effort to measure, and most of the time its determined by a dozen other factors. As a simple example, you could step on the scale the moment you wake up, write down that number, chug 16oz of water, then see that number change. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. You can essentially gain a pound of weight by drinking 2 glasses of water. Does that mean you are 1 pound fatter? Absolutely not!

I hated stepping on the scale when I first started my journey into losing weight back in 2017. I thought if I didn’t see the number I wouldn’t be disappointed. I didn’t really get back into measuring my weight until last year. I wanted to gauge how well the Dumb Fitness Challenge was actually working despite the fact that it felt like a lot less effort than I was doing when I was riding hundreds of miles on the bike each month. I invested in one of those smart scales; which is supposed to give you a lot more data than just your weight. It measures your BMI (insert eye roll here), body fat percentage, water weight, bone density, basil metabolic rate, etc. All additional data points to obsess over.

All of these metrics can create a lot of noise. It can be difficult to filter through the percentages, graphs, and charts, to find the meaningful data to track on your journey to a healthier life. For sake of keeping with the trend building habits as slow as we can, I would suggest 3 metrics to log throughout the challenge.

The first metric is weight. I know. I just got done telling you that number is just a number, and you shouldn’t let it create a negative mindset, but hear me out on this one. Simply write down the number on a log sheet, and only take out that log sheet when you weigh in. I would suggest taking your weight consistently every single day, knowing that what you consume throughout the day will be a factor in that weight. I weigh in first thing in the morning after using the restroom. By that point its been 10-12 hours since my last meal, and my body has churned through the nutrients and gathered what it needs. As you progress, you should notice that trend look like shark teeth on a graph. Weight fluctuates more than we think it does. The true measurement is in the downward trend of that number. Remember, I can chug 16oz and immediately gain a pound. Keep your eye focused on the trend and not the data point.

The second metric is calories. I take a shotgun approach to logging my food. I don’t weigh it on a food scale. I use the My Fitness Pal app to log my daily meals. I don’t currently pay for the premium subscription, so I don’t get the benefit of being able to scan food labels for automatic logging, but the search feature has a fairly extensive database of crowd sourced items. I’ve had really good luck with finding the product and estimating my portion. This metric is probably the most tedious. I have a reminder set on my phone 3 times a day to log my meals. It probably takes 2-3 minutes to complete depending on how complicated I’ve made my meal. Again, this is a shotgun approach where close enough counts. Unless you’re hyper concerned with 100% accuracy, the point of this exercise is just gaining visibility on your caloric intake. My recommendation is to pick a routine that keeps you below 2000 calories a day. You can get more stringent with that number as you go. I don’t want to dive too deep into the micros and macros of nutrition here, so here’s the highlights: keep it low on the carbs (breads, pastas, oats, grains, etc.), reduce sugar, find veggies that you are comfortable consuming in bucket loads and use those as your fillers, eat proteins, and reduce dairy as much as possible. As you’re logging your food, you’ll probably notice a lot of the items I listed to reduce or eliminate are high in calories, so by reducing those items, you’re already well on your way to a win.

The last metric I want you to start measuring is your workout. Day 1 of the DFC was 4 minutes for me, and I only burned 32 calories. As the days progressed, that calorie burn increased. Logging your workout is an effective gauge to compare to your calorie intake. This will begin to show you how the 2 are interlocked. I use Garmin for every activity I log. It automatically synchronizes with My Fitness Pal to account for calories, and uploads my activity to Strava because you know “Strava or it didn’t happen”. If you’re just getting started, invest in something like a Fitbit that has an HR monitor. Both Apple and Android have smart watch offerings with fitness metrics included. I would imagine most of you already have something strapped to your wrist giving you all of this data already. For this metric simply log your time, calories burned, and the activity.

One word of caution with measuring your workouts. If you’re using an app like My Fitness Pal or Garmin Connect to log calories, you might notice there is a “remaining” category that will increase as you log a workout. The apps are adjusting for your effort to tell you how many calories you have available to consume for the rest of the day. Ignore it! Keep with your 2000 or below metric. As tempting as it is, and as helpful as these apps are trying to be, this is the exact same vicious cycle we’ve already talked about: “I worked hard therefore I deserve to reward myself with this meal”. Many of these apps allow you to enter a weight goal, and will adjust your daily calorie allowance to account for that goal. Consider the extra calories above 2000 that they are giving you as a tax to keep your focus on maintaining that number.

Data can be overwhelming. Keep it simple. I gave you three metrics to measure; weight, calorie intake, and workout (time, calorie burn, activity). You can use an app that automatically captures all of this data, or an excel spreadsheet (are we still using these?). As you progress, those data points will fill the page and you can start to see a more complete picture of your progress. Ignore all the other stuff for now, just start with these 3 metrics. As the challenge gets more difficult, those numbers will start to morph accordingly. You’re building your own personal database, and if you’re a nerd like me, it will be fun to see all of that data come together.

Happy Monday. Crush your push-ups and kickstart your week!