Among all the details a person can monitor in their life, sometimes I wish it were easy to stick to things that require tedious and consistent tracking, and to be more specific, what I eat.

I’ve used different apps to log my food intake so I can have a rough idea of how much I’m eating versus how much energy I put out. (Currently I’m using “Lose It!” to track my calories.) And sometimes I do good at tracking meticulously every single day, while other times I’ll use it for a day or two, maybe a week, and then fall off the wagon again.

The reason I wish I paid more attention to these details is because these food tracking apps are getting more sophisticated, and the more people that use them the better they get. There is a plethora of data to be found in them, although sometimes it’s behind a paywall. Calories. Nutrients. Macros. Fasting windows. Eating periods. There are details in there that take a bit to notice, but also require some out of the box thinking for the normal person and a little extra effort. What am I eating and when? How did it make me feel? Is there a pattern? If I eat specific things at specific times on a routine enough frequency, is there an explanation?

This is just an example of one thing I could do to pay more attention to the details, but it’s a good way of looking at things in other areas. Reading between the lines, so to speak, to figure out the causal relations between everyday choices and actions.

It just takes a lot of work.