Recording Every Day

Recording Every Day 

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 

Managing weight and fitness the SparkPeople way has some things in common with managing money. Since I've spent a few years obsessing about my budget, I find it instructive to compare and contrast the nutrition and fitness tracking with money tracking. 

On a budget forum, a newbie once asked if I recorded my transactions every day. Ever the smart ass, I replied, "No. I only record transactions on days that I have them." The idea was to get the newbie to realize that if he didn't spend his money on that latte or Shiny New Toy, he wouldn't have to record it. The system was giving him an incentive to make better spending decisions.

I notice the same thing with recording food. Today is my ninth day of recording what I eat, and I've chosen not to eat stuff several times because I'd have to record it. Sometimes the element of running down the nutrition information for, say, a Milky Way Simply Caramel bar is off-putting; sometimes the simple idea of seeing that I ate *HOW MANY* servings of something that is allowable in small quantities is a deterrent, even if the food in question is already on my list of favorites. 

The funny thing is that this mental game works even though I know that nobody else gets to see my food log, and the people who see me at work don't care if I walk to the vending machine to get that Simply Caramel bar. 

The same psychological trick works on the other side of the calorie ledger. Today I wimped out of my lunch walk due to heat. I didn't want to arrive back at my desk dripping in sweat, so I cut it short. I told myself I'd make up the cardio in the evening. Now, I've told myself this many times in the past and not followed through . . . before recording exercise on this site. 

Today, I went to the gym after work. This was the first gym visit in quite a while. It would have happened some time or other, but the impetus now was to get some strength training recorded. Since it had been quite a while, I knew I needed to limit how much I did. Because I had cut the cardio short at lunch, I deliberately limited my time with weights to allow a half hour on the treadmill. Warm up with a few Turkish getups, do some deadlifts, renegade rows, and lat pulls, and leave enough gas in the tank for a half hour of cardio. 

A treadmill is the second most boring form of exercise known to mankind, behind only the exercycle. But I managed to put in a half hour, in spite of not owning an iPod and expecting the pumped in music to really suck. (Turned out the pumped in music wasn't bad. Management has improved the selection while I've been away.) 

As I was walking out of the gym, I realized I could have walked on the street because the evening was cool enough. I just hadn't thought of leaving the gym to walk while still in my exercise clothing. Oh, well. Maybe next time. For today, I have my 30 minutes of cardio recorded to keep that streak alive.

The other thing I noticed, when I came home, was that I had no spending transactions to record, for the second day in a row. Hmm. Looks like the Spark system is contributing to prudent money management, as well as to health. Time was, I'd stay away from the vending machines for money but not for health; this week, the reverse is true. 

Recording. Every. Day. Doing this for food has meant that I don't need to record every day for money . . . because some days I don't spend any.