If you read these blogs for any period of time you’ll know that one of the things I often recommend with regards to our food is to track what we’ve eaten for at least a few days.

Record on an app like MyFitnessPal and use that data to help make some more tactical adjustments.

Identify appropriate portion sizes for someone of our size and activity level.

Make some tactical swaps to things we’re just as happy to have that contribute less calories (or some other measure of improved eating).

Just make us stop and question our choices and create a degree of accountability.

And I get that it’s “a bit of a pain in the @rse”.

I get that from both doing it myself at times and from countless conversations with people.

But I’ll also question how much of a “pain in the @rse” it actually is.

Especially compared to the alternative.

And I thought of a little sum to help us question this just now.

How much of a pain somethings is multiplied by how long it is a pain for.

So, how long does it take to track even the most complicated of meals?

3 minutes?

If it’s longer put an actual number on it.

And on a scale of 1 to 10 how much of a pain is it?

Lets say 7 out of 10?

So 3 x 7 = 21.

Times 21 meals a week equals a ‘score’ of 441 (and that’s assuming they’re all complicated – many things can take 20 seconds).

Now how much of a pain do we find our body, health, fitness, energy levels and mood not being where we’d like it to be?

I’d estimate most people would put a higher score than the tracking so shall we say 8?

And how much of the time is it a pain?

If it’s “all of the time” then shall we say that we’re awake for 7,000 minutes a week?

7,000 times 8 is 56,000.

Over 125 times as much of a total pain.

And I’m pretty sure there are no numbers that we could put into this equation that makes the tracking more of a total pain (or even anywhere remotely near) than the situation we are in, that the tracking would help solve, is.

It’s useful to remember that we can’t stop life being hard.

We can, in places, choose our hard (what we do maks it as easy as possible. But yeah, it does require some effort. Effort that repays itself many, many, many times over —-> www.myrise.co.uk/apply)

Much love,

Jon ‘Total eclipse of the heart’ Hall