Avoiding Self-Delusion Through Objective Behavior Tracking

I think this post will resonate immediately with my fellow Weight Watchers, but for patient non-Weight Watchers there is a message for you as well.

I have been committed to the Weight Watchers program for eleven months. I have lost 62 pounds, in much better physical condition, and I feel great. For those not familiar with Weight Watchers, the program is designed to bring focus and awareness to food consumption via daily planning and tracking. In addition, the program forces accountability and provides support through a multitude of tools and venues like weekly meetings and online tools.

I had an unusual week last week and I am sharing it because it is a shining example of how easy it is to fool ourselves. I am not sharing this to beat myself up as although there are a few things I would have changed if I had it to over again, there are many things I would not or should not change if a redo magically presented itself.

It is awfully easy to fool ourselves in many areas of our life – eating habits, drinking habits, relationships, time management…the list goes on and on. My experience this past week merely illustrates the need to monitor ourselves within areas of our lives we want to change as changing anything is nearly impossible unless we are able to truly “see” the behavior that is causing the problem.

My Weight Watchers stats and approach at a glance:

• Daily PointsPlus Allowance - 29 pts
• On a typical week I exercise 4 or 5 times and earn 21 – 24 Activity Points
• I typically eat about half to two thirds of my earned activity points on weekends and virtually never dip into my weekly PointsPlus allowance.

Last week was not a typical week. My PointsPlus and activity points log tells an interesting tale.

Monday, May 30 (Memorial Day)
Breakfast – hummus, pita and a banana – 6 pts
Lunch – Jimmy John’s Beach Club no mayo and Skinny Chips – 16 pts
Dinner – hummus, pita, cheese, salads – 14 pts
Dessert – McDonalds Vanilla Ice Cream Cone – 4 pts
Total: 40 PointsPlus consumed
Activity: Three and a half hours of gardening (light and sometimes moderate intensity level) 9 activity points

Tuesday, May 31
28 PointsPlus consumed

Wednesday, June 1
25 PointsPlus consumed
Activity: Walked 60 minutes – 4 activity points

Thursday, June 2
29 PointsPlus consumed

Friday, June 3
35 PointsPlus consumed
Activity: Bikram yoga class – 4 activity points

Saturday, June 4 (Avon Walk for Breast Cancer Day 1 - 26.2 miles)
Breakfast – eggs (2) and 2 slices HealthyLife Bread – 6 pts
Lunch – turkey sandwich, Sun Chips, apple, carrots, cookie– 18 pts
Snacks – Uncrustables, pretzels, Ritz Bits Peanut Butter crackers – 15 pts
Drink – Gatorade periodically – 5 pts, lots of water – 0 pts
Dinner – bread, pasta, meat balls, green beans, salad with a little dressing, piece of chocolate cake– 22 pts
Total: 66 PointsPlus consumed
Activity: Walked 26.2 miles (and then some), about 7.5 hours, 22 activity points

Sunday, June 5 (Avon Walk for Breast Cancer Day 2 - 13.1 miles)
Breakfast – eggs, potatoes, oatmeal, fruit – 15 pts
Lunch – turkey sandwich, Sun Chips, apple, carrots, cookie– 18 pts
Dinner– Sushi and dumplings- 16 pts
Dessert - McDonalads Vanilla Ice Cream Cone - 4 pts
Total: 53 PointsPlus consumed
Activity: walked 13.1 miles (and then some), about 4 hours, 13 activity points

Weekly Summary:

• Walked 43.3 miles (and then some)
• Expended significant time and energy gardening
• Sweated profusely and worked hard in a Bikram yoga class in which the studio temperature is about 105 degrees
• Total Activity: 52 activity points (again, my normal week is 21- 24 activity points)
• Total Food Consumption: 276 PointsPlus (my typical week is about 203 – 210)
  

So, about 66 more weekly PointsPlus than my norm and about 28 more activity points than the norm…..hmmmmm.

Again, I am not posting this to beat myself up. When I look back on the week, there are about 20 – 25 PointPlus I could have easily and arguable should have trimmed.

It was really hot for two thirds of the day on Saturday during the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. I needed to drink some Gatorade (which I never do) in addition to lots of water and I needed to eat some salty snacks to balance dehydration and water retention risks - both uncomfortable and potentially dangerous outcomes of being active in intense heat for as long as I was. Also, eating a small piece of cake and having a McDonalds ice cream cone after walking the distances I did seemed like reasonable rewards. However, the Ritz Bits and the Crustables on Saturday was pure “entertainment eating.” I also could have trimmed a few points on Friday and eaten Subway instead of Jimmy Johns on Monday.

There are some specific learnings and things I would have done slightly differently had I to do it over again. For instance, who eats Uncrustables? They are not even good. I can certainly live without Ritz Bitz (I never eat that kind of stuff) and I did some random noshing at a couple points in the week. However, the larger point and the point I wanted to illustrate to you is just how easy it is to lose track of what we are doing and to fool ourselves. If you walk a marathon and a half, plus a lot of other activity in the week you should be able to eat anything you want to, right? Wrong. But, it is so easy to fool ourselves as it relates to our eating habits as well as in a whole host of other areas of our lives.

Non-Weight Watchers if you for some reason hung in this long, this is my point for you. In any area of our lives, if we are not getting the outcomes we want we have to honestly and objectively access what is going on. The power of the Weight Watchers program is that the program is designed to bring objectivity and clarity to our food intake and activity levels. But, what if we applied a similar approach to other areas of our lives where we are experiencing outcomes other than those we desire?

If we are having time management and prioritization problems, a Weight Watchers approach I think would work brilliantly and I am going to try it. Just as Weight Watchers outlines how many PointsPlus (which translate into calories) we can eat per day, we all only have 24 hours in the day - seems like a similar dynamic. If our life feels out of control (work and/or personal), if we log our time there will undoubtedly be a lot of wasted time we did not realize we were wasting just as most Weight Watchers members were eating a lot of calories they did not realize they were eating.

This type of approach could work in a lot of other areas too. For instance, a modified approach could work for trying to improved strained relationships. This is tricky because close relationships tend to be so emotional, but maybe we could figure out a way to gain clarity on our contribution to strained or failed relationships by somehow logging our behavior in these relationships. Just as I hate looking at days I have gone over points in my Weight Watchers food journal, maybe I would hate looking at a record of unflattering behavior just as much. I am not sure this would work, but it is a thought.

If you are concerned that you might be drinking too much, watching too much television, spending too much time playing video games….log it so that you can analyze an objective picture rather than the heavily modified mental image we all create for ourselves. Pictures that are always full of justifications and delusion.

We can’t log every aspect of our lives all of the time or we would spend all of our time logging and no time living. But this past week, a week where it would be so, so easy to fool myself then be disappointed when I got on the scale because after walking 43.3 miles it is simply not "fair" not to lose, brought clarity to the power of tracking in order to facilitate change.