I had an interesting experience. It brought to mind a 19th century poem that has the words, “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.”
After I wrote Pick Nits Only When Useful, Then Stop, I realized that while I had been monitoring my change in weight, I wasn’t really tracking. In other words, other than progress reported in this blog, I wasn’t really recording and reviewing my progress. It’s funny how even when we know something, that we humans try to cut corners.
Now, I don’t like tracking things closely unless it’s useful. It’s a bother. I don’t like doing it. I assumed that I could get away with simply monitoring my progress without actually putting date and weight into a spreadsheet because I had hard evidence that I was succeeding.
When decided to move up my accountability a notch and actually record and review, I plugged the numbers into the spreadsheet and graphed the result, I was completely caught off guard. Put these two things side by side.
| My Actions | My Beliefs |
|---|---|
| I have been diligent in sticking to my new eating habits and doing more butt-moving. | In my mind I was “stuck” for the last week or two in May. My mind told me that I wasn’t progressing. |
So, given what I was doing, and what I thought was happening, which carried the day? Take a look for yourself. Here is a graph from the spreadsheet, showing weight over time. (Forgive the Japanese labels.)
Notice how there is no plateau through May. Mother Nature carried the day. Because I remained quite consistent in my daily disciplines, I reaped the natural consequence of my actions.
I don’t know where the phrase “You can’t fool Mother Nature” came from, but for me it represents a vital bit of real life. Actions have consequences independent of our intentions, beliefs, hopes, wishes, etc. Jump off a cliff naked and you’ll make a mark on the floor of the canyon, every time, despite any beliefs to the contrary.
Now, I know this. I’ve experienced this. I have the victories and scars to show for it. But as I heard in a writer’s conference today, emotion exaggerates [distorts] reality. What I was perceiving and what was happening in the real world were two separate thing.
So I had reinforced a fundamental lesson: have faith in the process.
- Fall in love with your vision.
- Live it in your mind daily.
- Live and act in the moment according to your vision.
- Track your progress and make course corrections when needed.
Joe Average needs reminding.
Status: 46 pounds (21 kg) lighter.
I couldn’t agree more with your conviction that mind-and-brain is the key to living a healthy life and becoming fit. You put it all into words very well and I feel I am on your journey with you. I have added your blog as a link in mine (happy-well.com).
That’s pretty dramatic!
Are you gonna get yourself a Progress Ticker now?
@Charles: Wow! Thanks for the link. I’ve been reading through your blog. I really like the selection of articles that you’ve featured. Looks like you’ve a good eye for finding interesting articles.
@Paola: That progress ticker site is a pretty interesting idea. I like it. I think my brain has been poisoned since I like the extra information the graph gives me. Kind of scary.
Actually, tickerfactory.com can turn your progress meter into a graph too (and you can add historical data). I use both.
Inspired by your graph, I also updated a graph I made in March showing trends of calories, carbs, protein, etc., for the duration of my diet!
Ahhh… very nice. I poked around tickerfactory for a few minutes, but didn’t see that. I’ll put that in my toolbox of neat tricks. Thank you so much for letting me know.
And… congratulations on your progress. That’s quite impressive!
I noticed that there was a dip and rise before your last downward trend. May I ask what changed? You don’t have to share, of course. I’m just curious about things that lead to positive change in people’s lives.
@Charles: I like your mix of posts and added a link back to your site. Keep it up, and I look forward to your future articles.
Ah, it’s all explained in my blog post, “But you already have a boyfriend”.
If you enjoy reading that, have a look at the other highlights at the Food Confessional.
Joe Average,
Thanks for the link!
Charles
Gosh. There’s a lot of gentle wisdom here. And what’s more, from your lessons, I have learned too. Thank you for sharing them.
j
Hey,
I always find your thought process interesting. Good reminder to have faith in the process!
Courtney
I love your step one: Fall in love with your vision. That is a perspective I would like to incorporate into my life, too.
I really get into the details of weight loss, which is why I love Physics Diet for weight tracking. Have you ever tried it?
I’m evaluating the Physics Diet site now. My spreadsheet doesn’t have any moving average functions, which is what I was thinking of before. Thanks for pointing it out. You guys come up with the best stuff!
@keenlife: I’ve been using my spreadsheet and physicsdiet.com side by side. Overall I think it’s a useful tool. Thanks for the tip!
Keeping track does work and when I feel like I am stalled I just work a little harder and go a little longer. You can have faith on the process, I prefer to just call it having faith. Keep up the great work, I’m impressed.