Taking Inventory

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You can only see what you are looking for...
Life is a series of choices. But, life is also a series of problems to be solved.
SO what happens if you apply a solution that doesn’t match the problem? I see this daily  whether in business, health or even driving the car for the love of God. There are so many solutions out there, but if you have not identified the problem... You have a bigger problem. 
For example: It’s naive to think that weight loss is the key to handling your health.
Why? You can only successfully manage what you accurately measure. You may be saying to yourself. Well I measure my weight every day! Throw your scale out the window that’s not even what I’m talking about. The misconception here is that weight caries the most weight! The reality is that weight is a by-product or result of everything else not being measured. Not only that, health is really on a continuum where it is ALWAYS changing. Day over day it can change. Obviously we do not go through major health changes daily, but we are always aging.
With age comes certainties. Our hormones change, our body fat changes, our family changes, our stress level changes, our sleep patterns change, our ability to move changes, our job changes. You get the point. Our life is always changing... I’m going to repeat myself... Our life is ALWAYS CHANGING. And honestly if it didn’t, you would probably get bored.
Take a moment to write down the areas in your life that have OBVIOUSLY changed in the past year.
Then the last 5 years.
Now the last 10 years.
Can you even remember the changes that happened? If you had been measuring the things that are most important, you would be able to say with confidence... I know exactly what my health is doing and I am doing “this” about it. Instead, most of you don’t have a clue why you are feeling the way you do. Unable to differentiate good from bad pain, but you want to lose weight and tone up I bet.
The fact is, the sooner we learn how to measure, what to measure and when to measure the more important things, the more ownership we will have over our own body, the more we will be able to foresee and act on the negative risks, and the less backwards we will have to go to regain optimal health.
Quick example: In sports... what do you measure? Just the score? Or are there other statistics that are involved that make up the score? Based off of the stats, there are smaller pieces of the skill that can be assessed and improved upon.
The same goes for our health. For our health, what should we be measuring? How often should we measure? And what actions should we take based off the feedback we receive from it?
At Life Time, we refer to this as “Know It”. It’s part of our CORE3 methodology and simply comes from the original “education” leg of the 3 legged stool (exercise, education, nutrition). Simply put, you have to KNOW why your body is doing what it’s doing before you take action. It’s part of the exploratory or discovery you need to do before you make your action plan.
This information will give you a snapshot of what you are doing to yourself.
Similarly to money, we have to take inventory or ‘make a budget’. Account for everything and spend it all on paper before it gets into the bank account.
If you don’t know what you are doing to yourself and/or your family, you probably should not change anything. Why? How many times in the last 10 years have you “tried” to make changes? Did they last? How’s that working for you? Did it stress you and/or your family out? Were there things involved you had no idea about until you were already bought in to the program? Did you not get the results that were promised?

I’ve come up with a list of behaviors that I HOPE will help you find your NEW path towards optimal health.
#1 on that list is Taking Inventory. Measure everything you can.
It’s time for you to be honest. I want you to be brutally honest with yourself. The reason I chose this to be behavior 1 is because the #1 thing I have noticed over the years is that we lie to ourselves about our status. In lots of areas, but we are focusing on health for now.
This is an opportunity for you to throw yourself under the bus and be ok with it. It’s what you are here for. It’s the first step in making LASTING change in your life.
This will be the easiest and the hardest part of this program. Why the easiest? Because we all really know where we lack when we are honest with ourselves. Why the hardest? Because you have to own it and get over it!
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting to get a different result. However, if you are consistently measuring things you will be able to change your expectations appropriately so that you can predict a better outcome as long as you apply the appropriate stressors. Time to change the recipe.