How I stay motivated to live healthy by tracking these 4 stats

I started tracking my health stats a few months ago to have a good idea of where I can improve month to month. The awareness I get from seeing the stats has really been motivating me to keep good health habits.

Here’s what I track at the beginning of every month on a notes page in my phone

• waist size — I aim for under 40 inches
• resting heart rate — the aim is for 60 bpm
• blood pressure — the aim is for 120/80 or lower
• average hours slept — the aim is for 6 or 7 hours

Note — although I have numbers that I aim for in each category, my goal month to month is just to improve and make progress over the last month. Even if it’s just 1 minute of sleep or 1 inch or 1 bpm, the goal is just to make progress over the last month. That’s it.

I think that if I keep making progress over time, I’ll reach the numbers I’m aiming for in each category. To get those numbers for myself, I just looked up “what’s considered a healthy (insert category)” for a guy my age. I also asked my mom what’s considered healthy for these categories to confirm. She a nurse.

What does each category tell me?

Waist size — It answers the question, “how healthy is my digestive system?”

• In other words, it’s a good indicator of whether I used what I ate(food choice) and when I ate(food timing) over the last month to my advantage or to my detriment.
• If I ate healthy food and ate within a time window instead of eating unhealthy food and doing it all throughout the day and night, then my waist size will usually be either lower than the month before or in the good zone of under 40 inches.

Resting heart rate and blood pressure — These answer the question, “how healthy are my circulatory, cardiovascular, and muscular systems?”

• In other words, the resting heart rate and blood pressure are good indicators of whether or not I got enough exercise over the last month.

Average hours slept — This answers the question, “how healthy are my immune and nervous systems?”

• Hours slept isn’t a direct indicator of how much stress someone has or how healthy their immune system is, but sleep definitely is correlated to those two things. Think about it… when you don’t get enough sleep you’re probably a lot more likely to get sick or feel stressed out and moody.
• That said, I feel that it’s important to track how many hours of nightly sleep I got throughout the month to be sure it was enough.

What I do if….

… my waist size increases month to month?

• Over the next month, I make a conscious effort to cut out unhealthy food & drinks(better food choice), or only eat either between 9–5pm or 11–7pm(better food timing).
• The biggest thing that helps me on eating better is to not buy groceries that are unhealthy. I’ll buy a healthy alternative instead. For example, I buy fruit and make fire smoothies instead of getting ice cream

… my resting heart rate or blood pressure increases month to month?

• Over the next month, I make a conscious effort to exercise more.
• Most of the times that I’ve fallen off in my daily routine on exercising consistently, it was because I forgot to make it the priority when I woke up over all the other things that I had to do in the day. So the biggest thing that helps when I focus on exercising over the month is to make this my #1 priority when I wake up.

… I got less hours of sleep on average month to month?

• Over the next month, I make a conscious effort to get 6 of 7 hours of sleep.
• Similar to when I’ve stopped exercising consistently in the past, I realize that when I’m not getting enough sleep at night it’s usually because I’ve forgotten to make going to bed and putting down my phone the top priority. So more than making a conscious effort to get more sleep, I try to make a conscious effort to turn off all my lights, put on an audiobook, and turn off all of my electronic screens before midnight.

Note — I only focus on doing 1 of these things per month. For example, let’s say I recorded my health stats one month and all of them were lower than the month before. In that case, I wouldn’t then try to focus on exercising more, sleeping earlier and eating healthier over the next month. Instead, I’d just focus on the one category that I felt would make the most overall impact.

How do you track each thing?

Waist size

• Just a simple body measuring tape. Here’s a link to one on Amazon. They’re pretty cheap — (click here)

Resting heart rate

• A fitness watch(Fitbit, Apple watch, etc.) Or…
• A heart rate monitor app that uses your phone sensor to check your pulse. Here’s one I used. It worked pretty well when I compared it to the stats on my Fitbit. If you’re using an app instead of a watch, you’d get the best stats by checking your heart rate once a day — (click here for app store and click here for play store)

Blood pressure

• A blood pressure monitor. This is the one I use — (click here)

Average hours slept

• A fitness watch(Fitbit, Apple watch, etc.) Or manually track your hours slept with an app. Just search “fitness tracker” in the app store