I’ve had some great emails from friends, several suggesting that I should generally take measurements only weekly (or maybe even monthly). I totally agree with this (in terms of seeing progress toward my goals), and after this week I’ll drop back to (roughly) weekly measurements.

This week however I’m interested in seeing just how much variance I get in day to day measurements. I’m seeing this pretty much entirely as an exercise in investigating the error inherent in each of the measurements.

So here’s a link to todays measurements on the scales this morning.

One thing to mention is that I took two sets of scales measurements today, before and after I had my first thing in the morning pee. All in the name of science you understand.

I’m tempted to take the average of this week’s measurements as my base against which to measure my progress, rather than the presumably arbitrarily random error measurements I took on Day1.

Well tonight I had my first Big But. I think anyone trying to change the way they behave goes through this. It’s the classic reason for giving up on a diet. The great excuse for falling back…

My wife Debs cooks the evening meal for the family. Sometimes I’m home early enough to eat with Debs and the boys. More often I get back too late for that. Either way I phone Debs in the afternoon to find out what she’s planning for Dinner. I imagine this gives me something to look forward to, but in reality I’m just a bit of a control freak and like to know what’s happening in advance.

Anyway, as I walked through the front door I knew that Debs had prepared her homemade burgers for dinner. She cooked this last week as well and it’s lovely. Lean mince, quite dry, the healthiest version of a burger I could imagine.

Imagine then the scene. I’ve greeted Debs and the boys, and Debs has told me that dinner will be ready in about 10 minutes, she’s just got to cook the burgers. She goes into the kitchen and I chat for a couple more minutes with the boys before popping into the kitchen on the way up stairs to get changed.

As I poke my head into the kitchen I’m faced with a view I’d normally relish. Two juicy fat pink/red burgers, in a frying pan, bubbling and spitting away in a pool of oil, soaking up every drop they can.

This picture is like food porn for me. But my heart sank and I felt instantly sick. I looked at Debs and said all I could say was “BUT YOU’RE FRYING THEM IN OIL?”. I was so disappointed. I’ve tried so hard for the last week to do well on this health adventure. Eating fruit when I want doughnuts. Having reasonable portions. Eating more slowly and chewing lots. Today I even managed to pull off Habit 1. Only to get home and find the ultimate expression of what I’m trying to move away from, being lovingly prepared by the one person who’s supposed to be supporting me in this.

I went upstairs, and I’m not too proud to say I very almost cried.

I really felt sick. This was it, the end of it. In a few minutes I was going to walk downstairs and surrender to the hedonistic self gratification of fat soaked burgers. There’s no way I’d be able to blog with a clean concience tomorrow. No point in eating fruit or trying to exercise. It wasn’t like it was my fault. Debs did it, not me. I’d been as strong as anyone could expect, but Debs had let me down.

It was all over.

I lay on the bed and tried to figure out how to explain this to everyone I’ve told about the blog. They’d understand. Wouldn’t they? What if someone came up with a great idea for something I should have done. I’d be kicking myself tomorrow wouldn’t I. What might someone say? What could I do differently? What would I say to someone else right now in this second if they were in this situation? What would I advise them to do?

Well, the burgers could still be grilled couldn’t they? They’d only been in the fat for a few seconds, and the less time they’re in there the better right?

I called down to Debs and asked her to whip the burgers out of the pan straight away please, and then put them under the grill instead. She did.

Somehow in that moment of switching life around and imagining I was helping a friend in the situation, all the emotion dropped away. The sick feeling, the guilty pleasure of impending fat burger, the disappointment at failing, the misdirected disappointment with Debs. It just fell away from me. And with a relatively clear and open heart I could see the situation and a reasonable course of action to make it ok.

This, for me, is one of the biggest victories I’ve ever had.

Everything was ok again, but I knew Debs was upset. I went downstairs and explained to her how I was feeling. She was almost crying herself! She’d just gone into autopilot and prepared food as she normally would. We chatted it though, and we’re all good, but wow look how I had reacted to the whole thing. There’s obviously lots of emotion tied up inside me about all this stuff. I need to keep a careful eye on it. When I’m all emotionally charged up like that I’m not inclined to make great choices. Switching things around worked well. I’m sure there’s some NLP thing about this but can’t remember it. Something about looking at yourself from the outside maybe?

I’m going to call these things “Big But’s”. These events, these moments, which have previously pulled me out of diets. I’m starting a list of them so that I can look back at how I’ve made it past them before to help me do it again.

So I’m still “In the program”. It could so easily have been different, but it doesn’t have to be. Onward and upward.

One more thing occured to me as I’ve been writing this. The way I reacted only makes sense if I believed that this was some sort of good vs evil thing. Once the burgers had been in a pan with oil they were ‘tainted’. The devils own burgers, representing the ultimate sin. I don’t want that to be how it works for me. It shouldn’t be about that. It should be about habitually chosing the healthy option in any given situation. Taking the burgers out of the frying pan and grilling them was the healiest option short of throwing away Debs homemade burgers. I made a healthy choice which I’m proud of.

Body Statistics

First thing this morning after waking up and having a wee, I took all my measurements. It’s 4 days since I did the tape measure stats, and 3 days since the scales stats. Not much has happened (not great feedback). In fact as many stats saw progress as got worse.

I have to recognise that both in using the tape measure, and with the scales, there’s a reasonable error built into each reading. Hopefully over time, the underlying true statistic change will show through, but right now it just looks like noise. Of course this isn’t helped by the fact that all I’ve done so far is address my eating habits and not my exercise habits.

So this isn’t positive feedback. In fact it’s slightly negative. Not negative because I’m doing something wrong though. But negative because I haven’t shown progress when I’ve been doing ‘good’. I have to recognise that. So where do I find the positive in it? Well I’ve taken the measurements again, which is building the Habit of doing it regularly. And I’m also building up data which will help estimate the error in each reading.

So focusing on and building on the positive aspect, the best way to establish the error is to take lots of readings without an expectation of a change in the underlying measurement. Right, so I should do the measurements every day for this week, and maybe next week. I know the numbers will be bouncing everywhere. But how much they bounce shows me how much ‘noise’ there is in each measurement. When I know that, then I can know subsequently when a measurement has changed by an amount that represents a significant change in the true underlying statistic.

Anyway, my Body Statistics Feedback page has been updated today, and I’ll try to do the same stats every day this week.

Habits

A quite Sunday at home with the Family, could have been a big snacking day but it wasn’t.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

Just this today. Better than nothing though and it’s keeping the momentum.

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Yep, all the way, and it’s still working well for me. Actually I forgot to do it before lunch and was half way through a “Chicken & Vegetable Big Soup” when I realised. Did it then tough, and still benefited.

No opportunity for the following though:

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station
Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

Habits

I realised I didn’t do the feedback post yesterday, so here’s a catch up and today’s folded together.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

I blogged yesterday morning and today

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station

I worked from home again yesterday, and it’s Saturday today so no opportunity.

Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

Still coughing, and I had plenty of Clementines, Apples, Bananas & grapes yesterday and today. Whenever I’ve had a hunger pang I’ve been satisfying it with fruit. I haven’t really had the “I feel poorly so I deserve a treat” feelings though, I think I’m past that phase. So I’m chalking this up as no opportunity from now on until the next time I feel poorly.

And the new one…

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Really established that today, and did it consciously both at Lunch and Dinner. Definitely improved the experience and so I’m sticking with it.

Here in the UK last week there has been a series of programs about various aspects of food and eating (Channel 4 – The Big Food Fight). On Thursday evening there was a program about how modern diets affect your body. The whole thing was quite moving for me, especially as the program culminated with the dissection of a guy only 16kg heavier than me, being compared with the innards of a ‘healthy’ guy.

The program was good motivation for me, but the bit I want to blog about was a little thing they just mentioned in passing about how chewing your food more can make you feel fuller (more satiated). I’ve done a quick wonder around the internet trying to find the details of the actual study without luck, but will press on. There are many many references to this “fact” with various contradictory explanations for it, but I’d like to find some proper research material before I spout about it.

The lack of research information doesn’t stop me trying it for myself though. That’s exactly what I’ve done for the past few days, and I’m not sure of the results. It has however lead me to form the next Habit I’d like to establish and commit to…

Habit 3 – Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy.

As part of chewing my food more I’ve found myself being more aware about the process of eating. This has turned out to be a very positive thing. No longer am I in shovel mode. I’ve always said that I love the act of eating as much as the food. But in hindsight I have rarely taken the trouble to savour the act.

Since doing this I have found my hunger sated by smaller portions than I would have expected just a few days ago. Maybe this can be attributed to chewing more. Or maybe simply being more concious of eating. Or possibly just that I’m eating more slowly. To be honest I don’t really care why. The fact that it works (at least for me) is good enough for me to build it into my habit system.

I have to say I think it has a deeper affect than simply making me feel less hungry. I believe it might be able to change what eating means to me. Sounds heavy, but really 99% of the time eating for me has been about stopping feeling hungry (or sad or ill or some other bad feeling). That’s pretty sad really.

I’m beginning to realise that eating can be about savouring flavours, smells and textures. Enjoying the fruits of somebody’s labour. Sharing the experience with family and friends. Talking about the food and helping the children learn about it. That’s infinitely more ‘right minded’ than packing stuff in my gob^* so that my gut feels better!

^{* Gob is British ’slang’ for mouth.}

I started all of this because I felt the biggest and most unhealthy I ever have. But I managed to find the scales this morning and boy was it a surprise to me. I’m only 8.5Kg short of the maximum the scales can show, and I’m 7.5kg heavier than the heaviest I’ve ever measured myself before! This was a big shock to me.

I can safely say that pretty much every year my weight yo-yo’s by at least 20kg. But also, every year I reach a new max weight. That’s a trend (Habit!) that I’ve got to break. This can’t be a diet or a ‘change of lifestyle’. It has to be a fundamental change in me, or I’ll revert to this underlying trend until it kills me.

Anyway, enough doom and gloom. The upside is that starting from such an extreme should make it relatively easy to see some progress (Positive Feedback) fast.

I’ve added all the funky measurements that my Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) scales produce into my Body Statistics Feedback page. I’ve also added some (only slightly) unrealistic targets for each measurement. Obviously with 1 days data it isn’t the most exciting spreadsheet yet, but we’ll get there.

Oh, a quick point on blood pressure measurements. Because I’m not far off my target, the normal daily changes show up as quite big swings. I’m going to keep measuring it anyway as I’m interested to see long-term trends, and if there’s any correlations between my blood pressure and headaches (which I occasionally get).

Finally I think I’ve still got a blood glucose monitor kicking around somewhere. Guess I might add that into the mix now and again too if I can find it.

Habits

Habit 0: I blogged plenty here today (1 big post, this little one, and created a page each for my first two feedback systems – Habits & Body Stats)

Habit 1: Just like Day3, I’m still coughing and still working from my home office. So still haven’t managed to try out Habit 1 “Take a different walk through the train station”. Probably the same for tomorrow, so looks like Monday will be my big chance.

Habit 2: I ate plenty of fruit (Clementines and an Apple) today as part of Habit 2, so did well there.

Click here for a summary of my Habits progress…

Body Statistics

Well I started this today (this morning). Can’t find my fancy scales, so I’ve started with some basic body measurements with a measuring tape. These are actually the thing that’s most important to me. It makes a big difference to what clothes I can buy and how much trouble I have to go to, to buy them. Having said that I suspect it won’t be particularly motivational in the short term. When I’ve found my scales, then their weight, body fat, muscle mass stats etc. should show results much sooner than the measuring tape measurements.

I’ve set up a google docs spreadsheet and set it to publish through automatically to a page of my body statistics feedback on this site. This just shows my targets and my percentage progress toward them, so I get to maintain some modesty / privacy about my size. Clearly I haven’t made any progress toward my targets yet, as I’ve only taken 1 set of measurements!

Once we’ve got a few more data points I’ll look at doing a graph too. A little off topic here, but I have to just say how incredibly simple this all was to set up in google docs / WordPress. Every time I try something new with google docs it just impresses me more and more.

Click here for a summary of my Body Statistics…

On Day1 I mentioned the 3 key things that I believe helped me change my financial behaviour: Habits, Feedback and Accountability. I went through Habits in more detail on Day2 and today I want to talk about Feedback.

I’m the proud father of two young boys (aged 4 and 5). One of the things that being a father has really taught me is the importance of feedback when trying to achieve anything with young children. I think anyone in the situation of helping a child take their first steps would instinctively give positive feedback. There’s no way you’re going to sit there watching them with stern indifference as they haul themselves up against a chair and launch out into the fearful world of walking. You’re going to hold out your hands , let them know you’ll look after them, and then call them forward. And as they hesitate teetering on the brink you’ll call them softly and positively. “That’s it, That’s it”, “Good boy come on”, “Almost”, “good try” etc. Positive Feedback is clearly a great way to encourage children to try something new and keep trying it until they master it.

Likewise, you’re not going to sit watching with bland disinterest as a young child picks up a sharp knife and starts playing with it. If you walk over and ask them to hand it to you, surely you wouldn’t just quietly take it to the kitchen without explaining why. Well I assume you wouldn’t. I’ve found myself launching into a 30 minute conversation with my boys, explaining the dangers of the knife, whilst giving them the uneasy sense that I might demonstrate it to them directly. Maybe you wouldn’t, but I’m guessing that one way or the other you’d give a child some Negative Feedback about the potential dangers of playing with sharp knives.

These are clearly important things to do. How likely were we to be here today just as we are if our parents hadn’t done the same thing to us?

Well I believe that this remains important no matter how old we are. We’re likely to do the things that give us Positive Feedback. Positive Feedback makes us feel good. The mindless inner us that I talked about on Day2 lives for these good feelings. If we don’t create our own Positive Feedbacks, then we’re just left with the raw functional feedbacks built into our bodies, and the (sometimes bizarre) psychological associations we’ve made as we grow up. That’s nothing but the mindless subconcious running the show again isn’t it. That’s what I’m trying to stop for me. Mindless Dave’s been running the food & fitness show for far too long and hasn’t done a great job so far. I want to reclaim ‘me’ back, it’s my turn to try.

So I want to make my own decisions about what behaviours I do and don’t want in my life. I know how powerful these good and bad feelings are. I want to set things up so that I get good feelings (Positive Feedback) when I do the things I’ve consciously chosen to do. I want bad feelings (Negative Feedback) when I do the things I’ve consciously chosen not to do. Now I get to choose how this works, and I like that. I get to take some control back.

Put simply, Feedback allows us to decide to align our feelings with what we want to achieve. There is an art to this though. You get to design it. Choosing the right ways for the feedback to work is vitally important.

Here are some things that I think are essential in choosing and setting up your feedback systems:

1. Keep it simple in every way
2. Make it regular and often
3. Make it very measurable (time/length/count/weight/kCals etc. If it’s a touchy feely thing do max of 5 categories eg. Mood: Ecstatic,Happy,Neutral,Sad,F*#&€d)
4. Define it properly so you can’t change the rules later
5. Set a target that is only slightly unrealistic
6. Remove opportunities for excuses (don’t rely on others, get spares, have a box to keep everything in etc)
7. Record it immediately every time (write it down then and there, and type it up later if you have to)

So I’ve got 2 feedback systems now. I’m going give each one it’s own page (links at the top just under the big picture), and then summarise progress in a blog post every time there’s an update.

Feedback 1: Habits List. I started this on Day3. It’s a list of all of the Habits I’m committing to, and my progress on each.

Feedback 2: Body Statistics. This includes stuff like blood pressure & waist size. And will soon include weight, body fat, muscle mass and more (once I manage to dig out my fancy scales)

So keep coming back, keep me Accountable (and there’ll be more on Accountability soon). Next post (in a few minutes) will be a Habits list update.

Didn’t get the chance to gloriously action Habit 1 today as I’m working from my home-office. I’ve had this hacking tickly cough for over a week now, and felt it was time to let a professional pass judgment.

Professional judgment is: I’m better working from home if I can, both from a spreading the contagion point of view, and apparently it’ll likely clear up quicker if I take it easy.

But this was an opportunity to break another bad habit. I realised as I left the pharmacy having picked up my antibiotics, that almost without fail, my normal course of action would be to buy a doughnut (well it’s 3 for a pound, so 3 doughnuts) on the way home. Yep, when I’m poorly I clearly deserve a sweet sticky ball of sugar and fat. So here’s my approach for breaking that habit…

Habit 2 : When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want.

I figure I am feeling rough, so I deserve to feel I’m getting a treat. But it might as well be one with a degree of in-built damage limitation. I find it hard to believe that I can gorge myself on oranges, apples and bananas enough to have anywhere near the impact that 3 doughnuts would have on my health.

I’ll chat about feedback in more detail soon, but I need to start it now. I need to see how I’m doing. I need to get feedback. So I’m going to start a score table for my Habits. I’m going to score my habits based on the number of time’s I’ve actioned them vs opportinities I’ve had vs target actions (target always being 30 for me). So here we go:

Habit 0 (3/3/30) : Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day
Habit 1 (0/0/30) : Take a different walk through the train station.
Habit 2 (1/1/30): When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want.

There we go – I’m doing ok so far I think (patting self on back). It’s not much – but it’s progress.