What gets measured isn’t always what gets done.
Almost every day, I step on a Bluetooth scale and record my weight in an app on my phone. From April to November of 2019, I lost more than 20 pounds.
By February of 2023, I gained it all back, plus at least ten more.
And I have the daily records to show exactly how it happened.
I had faithfully measured my weight almost daily, but that wasn’t enough to keep it down.
What changed in November? Why did I go from losing weight to gaining it back?
I stopped tracking what I ate.
I was still measuring results, but I had stopped measuring my behaviors — my habits.
Two weeks ago, I started tracking what I ate again. I have a daily calorie budget, and I record the ingredients and my portion size for everything I eat. Measuring my behavior against a target, I’ve now lost four pounds in those two weeks.
My calorie targets aren’t public. Nobody else is checking up on me to see whether I’m staying under budget. But if I want the external results I’m after (fitting properly into my suit jacket), I need to take my behavior targets seriously, not just my result goal.
Do you have a result goal? What behavior targets have you set that will lead to that result? How are you measuring that behavior?
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