Math

It's no secret I love the numbers. I find them very motivating. I love beautiful graphs. I love how meaning and insights can be gained by rearranging numbers, sorting them, using them to draw pictures, teasing out meaning by emphasizing one part of the data with color, intensity, or size.

But sometimes its the most simple recording of numbers that is all that is needed.  Once I stopped trying to lose weight, the weight started going back on. I still weighed in every day, but somehow the numbers I saw there were disconnected from my behavior during the day.  But then I hit a truly alarming number - the highest in over a year.  So back to the most simple and easy tracking system I've found - Weight Watchers. The commitment I made to myself was only to track, to meticulously enter everything I eat.  I did not make a commitment to even stay within the allocated points, only to write it down.

Look at how this impacts my weight:

The lesson to be learned here is so obvious, it's smacking me in the face.  TRACK. Keep my behavior front and center all the time. Do not eat unconsciously.  Last night, with a stressful week behind me, I ate ice cream. But I tracked it - I even used the cool tool where I could scan the bar code on the package and load it into the WW tracker automatically. So easy, and it so makes a difference - because I will eat less today to keep the weekly numbers down where they need to be.

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times about how mathematical analysis can shed light on messy real life. And here is the last bit from the article:

"There’s no magic bullet on this. You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life."

A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity