In project management there was a simple saying, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
It was also true in marketing and analytics, and I’ve carried these professional realities into my day to day life.
Guess what? It works.
I mentioned how with my diet, I started by having lower sodium foods, but I wasn’t really tracking what I ate. I also found we tend to unintentionally cheat and we remember things the way we want to and not the way it actually happened, which is why you need to write things down and document them if you want to know where you are at and then be able to identify what needs to be changed or improved.
I decided if I was going to take things more seriously I needed to better track my activity, so I bought a smart watch.
I had Fitbits in the past, one got lost when it fell off and I didn’t notice it right away, another broke, and the third I had a hardware issue with it. So I hadn’t had one in years.
I got a K-42 Military style watch. I liked that it came with a real band, not rubber, and I paid a few dollars more to have one with a blood pressure reading. In total I got it for something like $40.
Apps and Software
There was a recommended app to synch with that was free called FitCloudPro. I researched several other apps and as it turned out the one that worked best came with my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S24+) called Samsung Health.
I now use my watch, FitCloudPro and Samsung Health to collect data and I then enter it all into a custom Google Sheet I developed. I spend 30 minutes every morning adding data from the apps to my Google Sheet.
There are three reasons for doing it this way:
- I own the spreadsheet, maintain all the data without relying on a 3rd party, and can customize as needed
- I can more accurately reflect my nutritional intake than what I can do on the app
- I add notes and calculations based specifically on my needs
What I Track
I call my spreadsheet VEN for Vital Signs, Exercise, and Nutrition. It is a daily tracking tool.
I take my daily totals and create a month end report.
Finally, I take monthly totals and compare them so I can track progress and identify areas that need improvement.
Vital Signs
The vitals I maintain inform me of the extent to which my combination of exercise and nutrition are working. I track sleep, deep sleep, height, weight, heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen flow rate.
Since I don’t have a scale at home, during wrestling season, I check my weight every day in my practice clothes and out of season, I periodically will stop in the trainers room or nurses office and check it with street clothes on.
When the season was over, I did get one, so I started checking my weight every morning when I wake up. This simply became a part of my routine.
Exercise
I track a few basic activities: Step Count, Circuit Training, Exercise Bike, and Other.
My step count is a combination of regular daily walking coupled with planned walks or hikes.
Circuit training is a basic dumbbell free weight routine I created. I have an A day and a B day. My goal is to do the work out twice a week with A day on Monday and Thursday and B day on Tuesday and Friday. The circuit I do non-stop, low weight and it takes 20 minutes.
The Exercise Bike I use daily in the winter and my goal is one hour. I use a low tension and while I ride I catch up on my feeds, email, etc., so the time is good for me mentally and physically.
Other is used for when I play racquetball and do more strenuous outdoor work. I simply time it.
Nutrition
I had the directive to keep my sodium at or under 2000 grams and liquids at 50 ounces per day. As I began to feel better, I slowly upped the liquid ounces and am now between 60 and 75 per day.
I decided in addition to those, I’d keep track of my calories, protein, and iron. Since my Samsung App had a macro-nutrient tracker I recorded those (Carb-Fat-Protein). Electrolytes were an issue so I track all of those and threw in Anti-oxidants and B-Complex.
I don’t track sugar or fiber, as the doctor didn’t ask me to, but I do take a fiber supplement each day.
Lessons Learned
As I learned in project management, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
The daily tracking may seem to be time consuming, but it does give me the information I need to make adjustments to my diet or exercise. The vital signs show me definitively that what I am doing is working or not working. I validate my vitals at doctor’s visits to ensure accuracy, but for the most part I am looking for consistency, for instance if my blood pressure or heart rate would change significantly, it wouldn’t matter if the number was accurate, but that it indicates I should get checked.
At my appointment in September I weighed 190 pounds and by December 31 I broke 160 and stayed under that weight through late February when I started putting weight back on and was weighing between 158 and 164.
This was by design. As I upped my step count and bike time, I implemented my circuit training and as I gained a better understanding of my nutrition I was able to increase my calories and protein while reducing my sodium and keeping it under 1800 and some days it was under 1000.
Questions for You
Like much of what I was doing, I started simple and as I saw additional needs I slowly added them to my routine, instead of trying to do everything at first. I also learned this from my project management experience where I always tried to define an MVP (minimally viable product) and iterate and prioritize once the MVP was launched.
Have you been faced with a situation where you took on too much too fast and didn’t stick with it? In hindsight how would you manage it today?
Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker 