The Great Tracking Debate

I love Spreadsheets!

A friend of mine in the WW world gifted me with this mug. She heard me talk about my love of spreadsheets over the timespan of my WW journey. Long before I engaged in the WW community, I have been a keeper of data. Most of the time it was tracking things from one moment of time to the next. Keeping track of the minutes, hours, days and weeks between this period and that period. I believe this keeping track began long before my mom died in 1979. However, putting pen to paper became a habit after her death.

I have been a tracker of my health over the last 45. In 2013 I began a journey of tracking my mindset as I engaged in learning new skills to shift and shape my world within the Acceptance and Commitment journey I was on. When I joined CrossFit in 2018 I was a tracker of all things exercise related. Since 2020 when I joined WW, I added sleep and Food.

Spreadsheets give me concrete data in which to ponder. Sometimes the data gives me new directions and sometimes it stays as data until I am ready to see the patterns in the information.

Seeing patterns has been a journey for me and I am curious about the patterns I am able to see and embrace and the ones I do not.... yet anyway.

Last week our WW meeting was shaped by the great tracking debate. Asking us to look at our style, preferences and tendencies regarding tracking. When asked about tracking my mind went to so many things I track. I track gratitude, activity, sleep, mindset and even though I track food as a daily habit my mind did not go there. I find this curious.

In 2016 I was gifted with the opportunity to do a vision of my future. An anchor and roadmap to bring my dreams to reality. I tracked my journey in a sketchbook.

17 January 2016

As I sit here today, I know from the inside out... I matter. I am learning to live with this knowing beneath my skin. In 2016 it was a concept. I am celebrating that I have created a life where I feel safe emotionally, physically and financially. That I know I matter from the inside out. I risk showing up each day embracing the beautiful life I am co-creating with so many others from a place of gratitude.

The focus on the week was our style of food tracking and why this might be important. In a weight loss program.... food and weight loss are scientifically connected.

In my world.... all the things I do to live a valued life will have as one of its outcomes a healthy weight at the end of the day. Now the question is which day?

I track food so that making menu plans will be easier, developing a grocery list and having food in the house that functionally feeds me. So far.... connecting the dots on my spreadsheet to the leap of menu planning continues to challenge me. One day I will be like my friend Donna, a WW member in BC who appears to not only have the skills needed to do all this food stuff and more she embraces it and enjoys that part of her journey. There is hope!