Basic Pursuits

In my Internet wanderings this morning, I saw where someone had developed a gadget that keeps track of your weight. The gadget works on Google's homepage service known as IGoogle.

Here is a fact. Tracking your weight is one of the most frustrating and useless wastes of time you will ever undertake.

Weigh yourself and you are basically charting your bodies reaction to a dizzying flurry of input, only one of which is your effort to lose weight. Your weight reflects, among other things, how hot or cold it has been, the amount of salt you are eating, what stage of recovery you are in from exercise, if you are having or about to have a period, if you have an infection, and whether or not you got drunk last night.

You feel good when the weight drops from the last weigh-in, and you feel bad when it goes the other way. You experience a roller coaster of emotion that becomes very unpleasant over time. That little inner voice starts to whisper, "Screw this." And pretty soon you do. That little voice always wins.

Here is what you should track. You should track what you eat and make sure you are getting the nutrition you need from the food that you eat without exceeding your daily caloric needs. For good health, lower the calories that you eat a few hundred a day less than what you need. Track the quality and quantity of the food that you eat and the weight will take care of itself. When things don't go well, you know why and can fix them.

You'll feel pretty good about that and so will the little voice.