Gyroscopic Investing

Hey Members,

I've been tracking my calories for a while, and recently started doing bodily measurements and weight. And I want to start tracking my lifting and biking progress (I already track them but only for calories burned). 

I am starting to think I should be measuring other things as well.  Such as blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. Is there anyone who would recommend certain measurements considering the cost/inconvenience of doing it, how often to do it, etc?

I realize that a doctor appt every 6 months is probably the ideal way to accomplish most of this. Let me know if any of you have any input!

Thanks.

Hey moda,

Here's what I do for life tracking every morning. I just log the orange numbers and let the calcs flow through my spreadsheet.  A wonderful friend once told me that everything boils down to just one number. And track that number.  It took me a long time to digest that.

I never got down to one number, but I've gotten down to just a few numbers that I think are representative of how my life is going.  I just log these numbers every morning - and chart the trends and interpretations.



Weight and Waist.  They get low pass filtered and converted into lean body mass and fat mass.  I just use the marine tape measure calcs.  Not exact, but good enough to follow trends. 

Resting Heart Rate.  Taken in the morning after laying on the couch and after updating my various spreadsheets with the morning data.  Resting heart rate is a reasonable poor man's proxy for Vo2Max - which my spreadsheet calcs and low pass filters.  Again, not exact, but good enough for trend following.  I use an iPhone app that measures heart rate via a finger held against the camera.  It is astoundingly accurate.

Net worth.  Well... yes.  I hope it goes up over time in spite of the volatility.  I follow the absolute values, the trend, the volatility...  But really, I just update my spreadsheet every morning with my bank and brokerage accounts and the cash in my wallet and let the calcs flow through.  This is the only number I need - to see if my spending patterns are lagging or leading my income sources.  No other budget required.

Steps walked per day.  I try to keep it over 10,000 on a 30 day moving average.  It seems like regular mobility is a good thing.  I can't swear to it, but that's what I'm betting.

Deadlift.  I thought long and hard about a single number to represent vitality and the best number that I could come up with was how much can you bend over, balance and then pick up off of the floor.  The deadlift is the ultimate metric of future lifespan.  When that starts going down, you know you are fucked.

The important thing to note about all of these metrics is that they are not ends in themselves.  Behind each one is an ever evolving plan.  But... as far as I know - regardless of the plan - these are the best metrics of success.

Are you getting leaner and increasing muscle mass?
Are you getting better at processing oxygen?
Are you getting richer?
Are you outside, in the sunshine, moving around, engaging in life?
Are you just really fucking strong?

Again - these are the metrics - not the systems.

You probably have a system for eating that you futz with.
Maybe a workout routine - Old sKool - or whatever the latest muscle mag fad is.
You're investing with the PP - or day trading to get rich - or saving 10% of your salary.

I have separate spreadsheets for monitoring my finances and my workouts - but these are the numbers that I transfer to my daily "Captain's Log" every morning.

Whatever you are doing - try to come up with some objective metric of progress and use that to evaluate your process and scheme.

I've listed my metrics.

I'd love to see what anyone else is using for their "Just one thing"


It seems to me that there should be some way to track engagement with friends, family, loved ones, mentors and world geniuses.

I strive to stay connected with these valuable people - but I haven't yet found any way to measure if I'm doing well on that front.  Any suggestions would be wonderful.

Mark

Thanks Mark!

I'll consider that.  Man do I love the dead lift!

I generally think within physical health, some diet and perhaps a sleep quality metric system is ideal. But that can get boiled down into a lot more than one number! (Micronutrition alone... Sheesh)

I don't mind having more things to track. What's of importance to me is the ability to react appropriately to the information. But it's probably more important for me to track the basics of one area of life health rather than get into the weeds of how many micrograms of chromium I'm consuming between the ideal hours of 8:30 and 9:30 every day.

With regards to family, maintaining a calendar and a budget that allows for some family trips has really allowed me to make sure I'm seeing my extended family a lot.  And I actually track the really interesting people I meet. Sounds weird but it's easy to lose track of folks.

But this is all great stuff. I appreciate the input. More ideas are welcome.

Tracking net worth daily would drive me insane.  Really beautiful spreadsheet though!

How are you getting the fat % number?  It seems that's the key to the whole calculation.  It's highly dependent not just on the instrument but where you check as well.

At home, blood pressure and blood sugar are no-brainers. Take your blood pressure morning and night. Test your fasting and 2-hr post meal (your highest carb meal) blood sugar once per week. Do it every day if you want, but the test strips aren't necessarily cheap. Obviously watch for trends and don't stress over individual readings.

When lef.org has blood test sales, I order this panel: http://www.lifeextension.com/Vitamins-S ... Blood-Test - it's on sale right now actually, just shy of $100. Doctors just won't order all of these tests unless there are diagnostic reasons to do so. I'm in my mid 30s, so I figure once per year is enough. When I hit 40, I'll do it twice/yr.

Keeping an eye on your HbA1C, fasting blood sugar, and particularly your fasting insulin levels is so, so important.

iwealth wrote: At home, blood pressure and blood sugar are no-brainers. Take your blood pressure morning and night. Test your fasting and 2-hr post meal (your highest carb meal) blood sugar once per week. Do it every day if you want, but the test strips aren't necessarily cheap. Obviously watch for trends and don't stress over individual readings.

When lef.org has blood test sales, I order this panel: http://www.lifeextension.com/Vitamins-S ... Blood-Test - it's on sale right now actually, just shy of $100. Doctors just won't order all of these tests unless there are diagnostic reasons to do so. I'm in my mid 30s, so I figure once per year is enough. When I hit 40, I'll do it twice/yr.

Keeping an eye on your HbA1C, fasting blood sugar, and particularly your fasting insulin levels is so, so important.

Any evidence about any of your recommendations increasing quality of life or longevity so we can weigh the benefits against the hassle?

I just know heart disease and diabetes are bad for quality of life and longevity. Elevated blood pressure is a contributing factor to heart disease and elevated blood sugar is more or less the definition of diabetes. Taking your blood pressure at home takes seconds. Testing blood sugar takes seconds. I guess I don't consider these tasks to be any more of a hassle than eating, showering, brushing my teeth, etc.

Getting blood drawn is a hassle, I'll admit that. But I much prefer to order my own tests and skip the even greater hassle of hanging out in the doctor's office for an hour to get a prescription for a barebones blood panel that tells me relatively little.

Obviously it's not the testing that increases the quality of life or longevity, but the actions one takes if things start to go awry.

iwealth wrote: I just know heart disease and diabetes are bad for quality of life and longevity. Elevated blood pressure is a contributing factor to heart disease and elevated blood sugar is more or less the definition of diabetes. Taking your blood pressure at home takes seconds. Testing blood sugar takes seconds. I guess I don't consider these tasks to be any more of a hassle than eating, showering, brushing my teeth, etc.

Getting blood drawn is a hassle, I'll admit that. But I much prefer to order my own tests and skip the even greater hassle of hanging out in the doctor's office for an hour to get a prescription for a barebones blood panel that tells me relatively little.

Obviously it's not the testing that increases the quality of life or longevity, but the actions one takes if things start to go awry.

Just can't see the point of all the testing.

If your goal is maximum health and longevity why not just establish healthy habits of diet and exercise and be done with it? I have no science to back up my own theory but I tend to think fretting about the numbers is bound to be counter productive.

And on a somewhat related note, here is a story claiming that the first person to live to the age of 1,000 may very well be alive today (Methusaleh in the Bible was only 969, BTW).

http://www.news.com.au/technology/scien ... 7304902553

Count me out. Already spent nearly 40 years sitting at a desk in a cubicle and don't need another 900.

WiseOne wrote: How are you getting the fat % number?  It seems that's the key to the whole calculation.  It's highly dependent not just on the instrument but where you check as well.

I measure my waist with a tape measure each morning.  I assume my height and neck size are constant and then use the "marine tape measure" test to calculate the body fat percentag.  It is not super accurate, but it is reasonably accurate and relative measurements trend correctly.  I don't know if it works the same for women, but for men, waist measurement is a decent body fat proxy.

madbean wrote: Just can't see the point of all the testing.

If your goal is maximum health and longevity why not just establish healthy habits of diet and exercise and be done with it? I have no science to back up my own theory but I tend to think fretting about the numbers is bound to be counter productive.

Sure, to each their own. When my wife and I had a child last year, I also wanted to know as soon as possible whether we were having a boy or girl. Didn't really matter in the end, still had a ton of preparation to do, but knowing allowed me to tweak that preparation a bit to suit the little guy. I feel the same way about keeping an eye on my vitals and body chemistry. Healthy habits are a given, but I can tweak based on the details.

In the near future I plan on taking this even farther. I'll never get my doctor to prescribe an ultrasound or MRI to check my carotid or coronary arteries for signs of thickening or blockages. The insurance companies just won't have it, and I don't blame them. But I can pay cash for these services at a privately owned facility. We're talking $275 for an MRI, $100 for an ultrasound - a tiny fraction of what the hospitals charge insurance companies.

My father was about 60 when he landed in the emergency room with severe angina, narrowly avoiding a heart attack with a 99% blockage in a main coronary artery. And a few years later he found out his carotid arteries were all blocked up, only discovered when he had a scan for a non-related shoulder injury that just happened to catch some of his neck. Typically (but not always) these issues take years to develop and worsen to the point of being symptomatic, and I just want the opportunity to deal with them head on before getting to that point,

I thought I got a lot of value out of Life Line Screening... they did peripheral artery disease and aortic aneurysm and carotid artery screening, and it was not expensive. 

I think the testing is probably a bit useless unless you think it will directly or indirectly drive behavior.  I know that I'm better at eating healthy when I have to enter food into My Fitness Pal.  As a scale and gym membership I'm paying for and measuring waist, arms, etc, and it got even more motivating.  But I have my bouts of too much beer drinking and carb consuming.  If my blood sugar measurements looked awful after a binge of that, I might be motivated to change behavior considerably more than I have.  Also, if I have good cholesterol levels after weeks of consuming eggs, animal meat and fat, and few sugars, I might be motivated to eat more bacon.

And anything that will induce me to eat more bacon, by definition, is a good thing.

Mark Leavy wrote: Deadlift.  I thought long and hard about a single number to represent vitality and the best number that I could come up with was how much can you bend over, balance and then pick up off of the floor.  The deadlift is the ultimate metric of future lifespan.  When that starts going down, you know you are fucked.

Or your back is fucked.

moda0306 wrote: But this is all great stuff. I appreciate the input. More ideas are welcome.

It seems to me what you're looking for is a fitness tracker.  Or one of those fitness tracking apps if you got a smartphone or tablet with all the required measurement gizmos.  I haven't seen one so far that I'm impressed with but I'm no longer actively looking.  I want a little more than just pulse, heart rate and steps walked, i.e. a tricorder.  I think temperature could be useful since its a bit of a hassle to check your in-bed morning temperature without moving.  There's a temperature monitor fundraising campaign on Kickstarter that uses peel on patches to monitor your body temperature sent to your smartphone and only needs to be replaced weekly.  But like Alton Brown, I hate single taskers.

iwealth wrote: When lef.org has blood test sales, I order this panel: http://www.lifeextension.com/Vitamins-S ... Blood-Test - it's on sale right now actually, just shy of $100. Doctors just won't order all of these tests unless there are diagnostic reasons to do so. I'm in my mid 30s, so I figure once per year is enough. When I hit 40, I'll do it twice/yr.

That's a pretty good panel for $97.50!  I've gotten the Male Comprehensive Hormone Panel for $199 before but thats a bit much to chew on every year.  I wish doctors were less stubborn about having to have a "disease" to get preventive tests ordered.  I thought everyone practiced defensive medicine?  Not on an HMO!

My ideal fitness tracking device would monitor: blood sugar, blood pressure, body temperature, body fat percentage and the various hormone levels.

madbean wrote: If your goal is maximum health and longevity why not just establish healthy habits of diet and exercise and be done with it? I have no science to back up my own theory but I tend to think fretting about the numbers is bound to be counter productive.

Haven't you heard of aging?  Your body wears down via metabolism and things can go haywire no matter how healthy of a diet or lifestyle you live or how many supplements or drugs you take.  And you don't know exactly what will go haywire, hence the monitoring so if something does go haywire (guaranteed with hormones), you can take the appropriate corrective actions before too much irreversible damage is done.  You also need to know if the actions of whatever you're doing/taking is having the intended effect.  Otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.

madbean wrote: Count me out. Already spent nearly 40 years sitting at a desk in a cubicle and don't need another 900.

Do not project the present into the future.  The world will change.  Radically.

I've been using myfitnesspal to count calories for the last 50 days with the goal of losing weight.  It can also track other nutrition too along with weight, body measurements, water intake and exercise.

I also donate blood regularly, and they tell me my hemoglobin,content and total cholesterol each time.

I'm thinking of getting one of those cheap/free blood glucose trackers.  Anybody have advice on that?

Are there any other body tracking devices you guys (and gals) have found valuable?

moda0306 wrote: I'm thinking of getting one of those cheap/free blood glucose trackers.  Anybody have advice on that?

Lost cost are very inaccurate in general but I can vouch for the ReliOn ULTIMA from Walmart.  It is a re-branded Johnson & Johnson (or something major like that).  The devil is in the strips used, not the device.