Before starting, a few things à propos my last post.
On the subject of publicly available advice from the French on "what should I serve my family?":
- Read French? Here is a website (put out by the French national health program Manger Bouger) that will generate random menus for your week, with links to recipes for everything. To stave off despair, don't forget to check the "Express" box which will give you meals that are supposedly quick to prepare and include convenience foods. You know, like individual pots of prepared tiramisu, which I'm sure you can find at the supermarket.
- Are readers interested in my doing a little more live-blogging of my experimental menu-planning with the help of my weird little French eating-plan book? It may have to wait till I finish my maintenance series. But it would be something along the lines of: hey, breakfast on the plan today is yogurt, 30 g of cereal, and 10 g of nuts; I'm having a mix of Cheerios and puffed kamut, with pecans, on my yogurt.
- Forgot to link yesterday, but the weird little book is available on Amazon.fr here. There is also a second volume which I will probably acquire.
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On to the Only One Number trap.
I've written before about The Numbers: as I put it, "the weight on the scale, the dress size, and even the calorie count."
"[T]he numbers" are not under your direct control. Behavior and habit development are under your direct control; the numbers aren't. If weight/size control for health is your desire. the numbers are useful -- not as goals or targets, because you cannot really aim at them -- but as diagnostics to evaluate existing habits and behaviors....
[I]f you're going to freak out and feel like a failure, don't do it because the numbers are bad. Focus all concern about failure, all motivation to succeed, on the behavior. Not on the numbers. The behavior is what you can control. The numbers are an indirect effect.
Let me restate the point of that post as follows:
Nothing that is a number is useful as a goal nor a resolution.
Self-deception is required to "resolve" to lose ten pounds or some such thing. We can only resolve to act upon things that are under our direct control. To do or do not. And none of the numbers are things we can control.
(Really? Miles per month? Can't I control that? Sort of--- you can decide to do it, but the resolution comes down to things like "I will set my alarm to go off every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 am" and "When my alarm goes off tomorrow, I'll get up and go running"). You don't just.... run 15 miles this month by force of will. Real, deception-free resolutions are, basically, yes-no questions and not quantitative ones.)
A better way to think of each number (the scale, the dress size, the lipid levels, calories per day, cigarettes per week, miles run per month) is this:
Numbers are metrics that measure our response to our resolutions.
They are measures of our body's response to the things we can control.
They are, mostly*, objective tests of whether our resolutions have been useful.
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Successfully reframing numbers as metrics rather than as resolutions takes away the power of the number as a number to cripple us with shame or despair.
The anguished question of "Why can't I make this number change?" fades away, because the plain truth is that no one can make this number change.
Instead, when the number fails to do what we hope, there's really only one question** to ask:
What resolution can I make that would be more useful for this number?
If we have kept a resolution faithfully and given it plenty of time but the number has not responded the way we want: That resolution is not useful, at least not for changing this number.
If the problem seems to be that we have made a useful resolution but have failed to keep it: The only useful resolutions are the ones that we keep. If we find that we have not kept a resolution, it needs to be tweaked until we do keep it.
So:
Nothing, here, about Why can't I keep my resolutions?!? either.
No Why can't I??? at all.
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All that is ground I've covered before. Here's the new bit:
Multiple metrics help you identify useful resolutions.
If the only metric I use is the scale, then I might give up too soon on resolutions that, behind the scenes, have been helping me in other ways.
Maybe I've changed my diet and my weight hasn't budged---but perhaps I haven't noticed that my blood pressure has gone down. Maybe I've been getting to the gym a couple of times a week for months and my pants size hasn't changed---but perhaps I haven't noticed that I can now climb a whole flight of stairs without getting out of breath.
I risk giving up, never having noticed that the effort I made was paying off in better health. And if I give up on enough resolutions, I may give up making new ones at all.
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One of my newer maintenance resolutions, therefore, is to actively track more numbers.
The number on the scale is not one that makes me happy on a regular basis, even though the news it delivers me is not objectively bad. I would like to decrease this metric's significance, its hold on my imagination.
I could do that by stepping, permanently, off that scale.
I'm not ready to take that step.
But... I am ready to make it just one of several numbers.
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Here's what I'm doing.
First: I'm adding physical performance metrics.
I'm trying out the free version of an app called Runkeeper to store exercise data. So far I'm tracking:
- my average running pace in 5K workouts (currently 12:30 minutes/mile)
- my average lap-swim pace, without regard to length of workout (currently 48:15 minutes/mile)
Second: I'm adding behavioral metrics. Right now, I'm tracking
- number of workouts per week (Runkeeper stores this data too)
- (temporarily) daily caloric intake, for which I am using the premium version of the app Lifesum
Besides these, I'm looking for a good data-recording method to track
- fraction of days on which I did, or didn't, have feelings that my habits were "out of control"
The third category is "body" metrics:
- the number on the scale
- upper arm measurement
- hip measurement
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I'm wary of tracking too many things, too often. I hope these aren't too onerous:
- Calorie entries are the most time-consuming and have to be entered every time I eat. I don't intend to do it every day for the rest of my life.
- Exercise metrics need to be entered into my app at the end of every workout. That's usually pretty fun and easy because I always feel satisfied to have finished the workout and eager to see progress.
- I'm trying to step on the scale only every few days rather than every single day. Once a week is plenty.
- There's no point in measuring with a measuring tape more often than every month or so (although getting average readings from several days in a row isn't a bad idea, because measuring tapes aren't so precise).
- I'm least likely to remember to do the "how did I feel about my eating today?" but in many ways it is the most important metric because it is probably the poorest metric related to my diet.
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What numbers could be useful for you to measure?
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*Remain humble and allow for the possibility that the numbers changed because of circumstances that are out of our control, not necessarily because of our smarts, strength, or lack thereof. It does happen.
** Supposing, of course, that the desired change would be a real good for us that is worth real effort.
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