These days I’m very focused on numbers, from the ones on my scale in the morning to the number of words that I’ve written in a week. Some people might look at this as getting stuck in the weeds, but for me, they’re regular reminders of how far I’ve come.
I weigh myself every morning and note what the scale says in the Health app on my phone. In the past 13 months I’ve lost 25 pounds and right now I’m sitting in just the range that I want to be. I’m not obsessed about weighing myself. I don’t go through withdrawal when I’m away for work or on vacation and don’t have access to my scale.
I track everything I eat and enter it in MyFitness pal to make sure I’m eating the appropriate number of calories every day, that those calories are made up of a good percentage mix of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, and that I’m getting a healthy amount of various nutrients. I don’t measure my food, but rather eyeball the amounts and enter them in the app, which has worked. I’ve done this consistently for a little more than a year.
I track my healthy fluid intake meticulously, and enter it in WaterMinder throughout the day. I have a daily goal and in the past two and half years I’ve probably met it 90 percent of the time. This is a bit of an obsession, but with good reason. Three painful weeks with a kidney stone is not something I wish to repeat, so yes, I’m a little obsessed about drinking fluid and tracking it to make sure I’m getting enough every day.
I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at and tracking things like my weight, calories and nutrients, and water intake allows me to not only know that I’ve lost 25 pounds and become the healthiest I’ve been in my adult life, but also that it was a journey. It was about daily progress, not an instant change. It wasn’t easy, and it’s important to remember that so that I continue to eat healthy, drink plenty of water, and be active, but also that I’ve accomplished the goal to be this healthy over time, through hard work, and that I can do that with other goals.
Numbers are frequently a snap shot of a moment in time, but moments add up to weeks, months, and years. Sometimes, looking at the weeds leads to seeing the big picture.
Photo courtesy of franchise opportunities under a CC-BY-SA license.
