What I Track and Why

I measure my weight in the morning after going to the bathroom.  I also measure my blood pressure and pulse, and I write down notes for the previous day's food if it is unusual.

I've heard many people say to throw away the scale, and I can certainly see that point if it is something over which one obsesses or if any upward movement on the scale results in resignation.  Neither is the case for me.  I find my weight fluctuations interesting, and I enjoy it because it provides data that is easily analyzed.

I tend to be analytical.  :)

Since I know I want to be leaner I am seeking a steady decrease in weight. Steady can't be defined as daily though.  In looking at the data I've settled on a 10 day rolling average because it appears that my 10 day average (or even 7 day average) tends to show progress when I'm eating and exercising according to plan.

So what does this process actually look like for me?  It's pretty simple:  I weigh myself and write it down on a legal pad I keep in the bathroom.  Next to that I write down any notes about what I ate the previous day if it was out of the ordinary.  Then I add my blood pressure and pulse to that and I'm done.  A minute or two each morning.

That's my source of raw data.  No stress, no freaking out if I gained weight, it's just a measurement.

Each entry on a single line, and a typical one may look like this:

185.0 112/60 50...Ate half a gallon of ice cream last night.

The half gallon of ice cream is cleary "unusal" so I write that down as my note after writing that my weight was 185.0, blood pressure was 112/60 and my pulse was 50.

Then about once a week I'll sit down on my computer and add those numbers into a spreadsheet I've maintained since November 2010.  From that spreadsheet I can easily see a graph of my 10 day rolling average.  And THAT is interesting to look at, especially in light of the notes I took.

If my average for any 10 days isn't lower than the 10 days one day before that, it's worth looking at my diet and exercise to see why not. And because I make notes on my weight every morning, that's easy to do.   Obviously this pattern will break down as I approach my desired body composition, and then I'll probably just look at my performance as a marker instead.

What patterns have I seen in the data? Here are three points that I've seen evidence of many times:

• Going off diet may show up the next morning, or it may show up two days later in increased weight. It's not always immediate.
• Going off diet immediately after a workout results in less weight increase than the same type of meal on a rest day.
• Just before I start to feel overtrained and exhausted my morning resting pulse increases.

This is pretty useful stuff.  First of all, the weight increase I see the day after going off diet is usually just bloating.  I've seen 5 pound increases the morning after a real food bender.  That weight then drops steadily for a couple of days and I'm back to where I was or lower.  No way that's 5 pounds of fat, it's mostly water.  My theory is that on the days I don't see the largest increase until two days after off diet food I didn't fully hydrate myself the first day and the bloating/water weight lagged behind until I drank enough.  Doesn't matter much one way or the other, but I find it interesting.

The second observation is more useful.  I've seen many times that I return to my original weight faster and I end up having a lower 10 day average from the day I go off diet if that meal immediately follows an intense workout rather than having it on a rest day.  I have theories related to insulin sensitivity, muscle glycogen repletion, etc.  But once again, it doesn't matter much except in planning.  If I plan to have a meal once a week in which I allow myself things like ice cream, sushi, and milk chocolate then it makes sense to plan them to follow a hard workout.  I currently do not allow myself off diet foods unless I have done intense exercise within the previous two hours.

The final observation is the most interesting to me.  I've seen my pulse suddenly go from a range of 50 to 54 for the previous 5 days, then jump to 70.  Then jump to 74 the day after that.  Over time I correlated that with feeling lack of drive for my workouts and noticed myself just crashing during a CrossFit workout.  A couple of days of rest or long casual walks and my pulse would drop back down into the 50-54 range.  And suddenly I felt like working out again!  So I now just look for that change in pulse.  If my pulse is over 60 in the morning I'll take a rest day if I had planned to go to CrossFit.  By noticing the increase in pulse before I feel exhausted, I've avoided any feeling of being overtrained and worn out.

Since I recently posted my 45 day challenge results and pictures, here's my 7 day rolling averages of weight for that same time:

It took a little while to get the movement I wanted, but the last half of the challenge was fantastic.  And if you read any of my food journals you know I wasn't starving myself to do this, I was stuffing myself.  Never hungry, felt great...what a difference 6-7 pounds makes.  I don't think it will be more than another month or two before I no longer desire any further decrease in body fat.