What to track in the first month, and what to ignore

Tracking is useful for about four weeks and then it becomes a hobby. This is the shortest version that produces a decision, and the list of things not worth measuring at all.

Four things, once a day, at the same time

Hunger, from 0 to 10, at 9pm.

Energy, from 0 to 10, at 3pm, because the afternoon is where the difference shows up.

Stool form, as a Bristol scale number from 1 to 7. Type 1 is separate hard lumps, 4 is a smooth sausage, 7 is entirely liquid.

Sleep quality, from 0 to 10, in the morning.

Four numbers and a date. A notebook does this better than any app, because the page does not ask you to subscribe to anything.

Why these four

They are the things you actually care about, and they are the things a diet can plausibly change within a month. Energy at three in the afternoon is a better measure of whether this is working for you than any number from a wearable.

The Bristol scale is worth learning once, because a description of your stool that is a number is comparable across weeks and a description that is a word is not.

What to add once a week

Weight, first thing, after the toilet, same clothes, once a week rather than daily. Daily weight on a low carbohydrate intake swings 1 to 2kg on water and salt alone, which produces anxiety and no information.

Waist, at the navel, same time of day.

Nothing else.

What not to track

Ketones every day. A reading tells you almost nothing you can act on, strips are a pound each, and the number invites you to chase a target that has no evidence behind it.

Calories, unless you are troubleshooting a specific problem and want two weeks of data. Weighing food for a fortnight to calibrate your eye is useful; doing it for a year is a different hobby.

Daily weight.

Anything a watch tells you about readiness, stress or recovery, unless you have a specific use for it. The numbers are not wrong so much as unactionable.

How long to keep it up

Four weeks of recording, then a review where you compare week three and four against the week before you started.

After that, drop to two numbers: hunger and stool form. Those are the ones that change your behaviour if they move. Everything else can go back in the drawer.

The baseline that is not a daily number

The measurements worth having once are the ones a GP can order: a full blood count, ferritin, HbA1c, a lipid profile, kidney and liver function, vitamin D, B12 and folate. Ask before you start, and repeat the lipid profile and HbA1c at three months.

Record the results in the same notebook, with the date and the units, because six months from now the number without the date is useless.

If you want a page to copy

Date. Hunger at 9pm. Energy at 3pm. Bristol number. Sleep. One line of notes: anything unusual, anything you ate that was new, anything that happened that was not food.

Five columns. That is the whole system, and it is the one people actually keep.