Feeling Nerdy? Taking Notes for Weight Loss Success

[spoiler title=’Click for video transcript’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’] let’s talk about how taking notes can help you succeed at weight loss so on your weight loss journey it’s really important to track your data and what I’ve found is that by taking really good notes on your data as you’re going along helps you to make better decisions so that you continue to make progress and you don’t make mistakes as you move towards your weight loss goals what has helped me throughout this entire process is to once a week sit down and look at my numbers and while I’m looking at my numbers I also take notes and what I’ve learned is the more notes I take the more verbose I am the better off I am in the long run now in my experience a spreadsheet is really helpful here and putting it on the calendar with a calendar reminder was also helpful I actually put a calendar event that repeated weekly and then had an email that was sent to me and a notification that would pop up on my phone to tell me it’s time to sit down and look at your numbers and when I would do that I would actually have the link to the spreadsheet in my calendar event so that I had no excuse I could just tap on that and sit down and do the task and what I learned by doing that over the course of several years was first of all I learned about myself you know I could observe myself because I was taking notes as I went along I would you know sit down and look at my numbers and review those and also by looking at the notes I was taking about what was going on in my life it gave me insight as to what was working and what wasn’t so for example at the end of my spreadsheet for the past year and what I saw because I was looking at notes I saw that I was not being consistent at all I was quitting a lot I would say you know this thing isn’t working out intermittent fasting isn’t working I’m gonna quit and you know then a couple of weeks later I go back to it and why would I go back to it because it was actually working you know when I looked at the data I was able to see these things so it’s not to say that when you’re taking notes that you’re gonna immediately have that insight because a lot of times we’re just looking at the day to day and week to week and we’re not paying attention to the long-term trends but if you can do this over time you’ll be able to spot patterns over the course of the year it also helps you to be able to run experiments because you know another thing I was able to do was because I was taking notes I could see you know what I was doing week to week and one thing I experimented with was counting calories so I did that for you know several weeks and then I was able to compare that to you know when I stopped counting calories and then started just eating until I was full and I was able to look at my notes because I did take notes and see what my results were and as it turned out I realized like counting calories was not helping me and it was actually making me feel kind of miserable when I was doing it and that’s an important thing when you’re taking notes don’t just focus on what you’re doing but I think probably more importantly focus on how you’re feeling about what you’re doing so you know how are you feeling energy wise how are you feeling about the plan like is it making you miserable and if it’s making you miserable and it’s causing you to be resentful then you know change it make a change based on what you’re feeling it’s also really helpful when you do find something that you know you’re resentful of making a note of it writing it down so that you can see in black and white why you stopped doing that thing is helpful because you forget you think you won’t forget but you will forget and then you know a few months down the road you’ll think maybe I should go back to doing that thing and then if you have a note sitting there that says I am resentful of this or I hate this it will help you to not make that mistake again another great thing that happens when you take notes is that you can see just how far you’ve come mentally during your weight loss journey and you can see the things that used to really frustrate you or things that used to intimidate you that don’t anymore it can even be kind of embarrassing I think that’s one thing that can happen is you think you know this is gonna be embarrassing to read you know a year from now and it is in a way embarrassing but it’s also really motivating to see that change is possible in your life if you just take action and lastly it can really help your resolve to keep the weight off because if you have a written record of exactly how much pain you were in while you were you know obese or overweight that can help motivate you to keep the weight off because again you forget otherwise so right now if you are not currently tracking or maybe you’re tracking but not taking notes I would encourage you to start today start taking notes about what you’re doing and how you’re feeling about what you’re doing and I think you’ll be able to see better results as you go along thank you for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next one thank you for watching that video I hope you found it useful and if you’d like more information about intermittent fasting head on over to my website sixmilestosupper.com and you can find tons of information on how to lose weight sustainably and keep it off for good [/spoiler]

Video Notes

• Each week, sit down with your numbers and review them and make notes.
• Err on the side of being too verbose with your notes.
• Write down what you’re doing (including days off/inconsistency), how you’re feeling energy-wise, and how you’re feeling about the plan.
• Taking good notes helps you experiment and know what’s working.
• Good notes help prevent you from going back to a plan that you hated (or that wasn’t working for some other reason.)
• Notes can help you see in black and white how far you’ve come in the weight loss journey.
• Notes can help you remember the pain you were feeling because of the excess weight, which helps you stay motivated to keep it off.

Need help getting started with tracking your numbers? I recommend weighing daily and keeping track of your 7 day average. Click the button below to download a free copy of my 7 day average weight tracking spreadsheet.