Lose It!

So my quest for an insane body for summer has been given a HUGE boost by the calorie counter app called Lose It! from a company called Fit Now. While I read random things about it online, I got turned onto it through a friend who is undergoing her own transformation. Last time I saw her, she looked amazing.

I've never been much of a calorie counter, having usually lost weight through just exercise alone. But I thought doing this would be a good exercise. I remember I did a post some time ago on 'life tracking' – keeping track of the stats of one's health. So while I have a motive in mind – Speedo this summer – I also wanted to understand my eating habits in general. In addition, I worked on a diet product recently and I began thinking about how and what we ate. It's sad seeing so many people

Overall, I eat a lot better than I thought. Where I fall off the wagon is at night and on the weekends, which is common for most people. I'm also a little concerned on my sodium intake so will be making adjustments there.

Even if you don't need to lose weight, it's a well-designed intuitive program with a great database. It's also easy to add your own items. Many recipes now come with nutritional information but there are many sites – such as this one – that help you calculate that information based on the ingredients and the number of servings. Fun!

Maybe I'm getting too anal. But I'll worry about that when the summer is over.

Quantifying myself

The original source escapes me but I have run across a website where the author captures data about himself and has set up a little community of people who do similar things. It's a Wiki called Quantified Selves and there are a few people on there who track different things. 

One woman tracks 40 things about herself – from how she feels, to her mood, to her childcare and even the quality and quantity of sex. Talk about performance pressure for her husband! "Uh, honey, last night was a 2. I'm going to have to see some improvement or I'll be taking matters into my own hands."

In the spirit of the New Year, I'm thinking of doing something similar – tracking different elements about myself. I'll share what I'll be tracking in the days to come. Much of the heavy lifting will be done by the Jott iPhone app [iTunes Store Link] an amazing program that captures what you say and transcribes it into notes/to do's. I've started to capture my diet, mood, and an ever-growing inbox of stuff to do. Check out the Wiki because there are some great thought starters on what one could track about oneself. A filmmaker tracks media consumption, which is helpful for those in the industry. 

What would our society be like if we all tracked ourselves so rigourously as a matter of course? What would you track about yourself? If more of us did this, or could be encouraged to do this, would you sell this information if offered? For example, how much would P&G pay their eternal target – the Mom – to get access to her tracking data? What kind of product innovation would result from such efforts? 

Would we be more like Warren Buffett? I'm in the middle – a stationary middle at the moment – of Buffet's recent autobiography The Snowball. I did not know much about him prior to reading the book. He's a fascinating guy. One of the most interesting things about him is his childhood obsession with numbers and tracking things, which obviously foretold his success. At the age of 6, he used to track how fast his marbles swirled around the sink. I'm sure Buffett has a ton of things he tracks about himself and the areas he is involved. I'd love to see that data.