Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin Page B

the Quantified Self movement, a community of those who use technology to track every aspect of their daily life and performance—but most of us aren’t ready to make quite such a commitment to the process. Monitoring is valuable, but it’s also time-consuming and a bit tiresome, so I monitor only the aspects of my life that really matter.
    I decided I needed to have a long talk with my sister, Elizabeth, about the Strategy of Monitoring. To my continual regret, Elizabeth lives far away; Los Angeles is a long flight from New York City, which means we don’t often see each other, and there’s a big time difference, which makes it hard to talk by phone. But one day I was determined to track her down, because I knew she’d have interesting insights about monitoring.
    Elizabeth has type 1 diabetes, which means that her pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin. (In type 2 diabetes, which is far more common, the body produces insulin but doesn’t react properly to it.) Without insulin, blood sugar can spike to dangerous, even life-threatening levels, so Elizabeth must give herself multiple daily insulin injections, and to inject herself correctly, she must know her blood sugar level. For years, she’d tested her blood sugar by pricking her finger to check her blood, but she’d recently gotten a device inserted under her skin to monitor her blood sugar continuously. I wanted to know if she found the monitor effective.
    â€œMonitoring is key ,” she said. “For years, I hated the idea of having a device attached to my stomach, but with diabetes, accurate tracking is so important that I finally caved. Now I can’t imagine not having the monitor.”
    When she told me she was getting the device, I’d imagined that it might administer insulin directly, or tell her what she needed. Nope. The monitor merely provides a continuous record of her blood sugar levels—but that information makes a big difference.
    â€œWithout a monitor, I might test my blood sugar ten times a day, but the monitor checks it constantly,” she explained. “I know where my blood sugar is and where it’s heading. Also, I know the effect of what I’m doing, so I can’t kid myself. Like I was eating this frozen yogurt that claimed to be low-carb, but from the readings I got on my monitor, I know that can’t be true.”
    â€œEven though the monitor doesn’t actually do anything, seeing the numbers makes you behave differently?”
    â€œFor sure. Without a monitor, if I ate something questionable, I might unconsciously wait a few hours to test, so I’d get a better number, but that doesn’t work with a monitor. I can’t fool myself.”
    That’s why the Strategy of Monitoring works so well: no more fooling ourselves. I decided to exploit it for my own habits. If I had a better handle on what I was doing, I could focus my habit-formation energy in the right place. I suspected that in certain areas, I was giving myself more credit for good habits than I deserved.
    First up: eating and exercise.
    I care a lot about eating and exercise, partly for health, partly out of vanity. It’s funny; I’ve noticed that many people focus mostly on one aspect of their appearance—a bald spot, wrinkles, a paunch, a “bad hair day”—and don’t worry much about anything else. That’s certainly true for me. I’ve always been focused on my weight.
    I’m not alone in this concern about weight, of course. “Eat and drink more healthfully” is one of the Essential Seven, and while there are many good reasons to eat and drink more healthfully, weight loss is one of most important. As of 2010, 70 percent of Americans were overweight or obese, which increases risk of coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and sleep apnea, among other things. And it’s not just about physical health. I felt