So, I've got to admit, my wife and I have gotten aboard the app train with our iphones. We've got stuff for ourselves, stuff to keep our kids entertained and stuff that has no apparent purpose at all. The most recent addition that my wife turned us onto is an app called Lose It! Basically, it allows you to punch in your current weight, your desired weight, your desired weight loss per week and your height and it tells you how many calories you can eat in a day. Then you log what you eat (you can either enter the calories yourself or search its fairly well populated database of food items - both generic and branded) and it lets you track how many more calories you can eat and still stay within your allotment for the day.
My wife and I approach this app very differently. She carefully tracks every morsel of food she eats, painstakingly calculating the calories in the different dishes she might prepare or consume away from home. I'm a bit more loosey-goosey and do a lot more estimating - usually on the high side to be safe - and, I must admit, cheating off her calculations (feels a bit like high school...).
Regardless of the methodology, though, the result has been that we have both been much more cautious and deliberate about what we have been eating. We have been making much more conscious decisions, now that the implications of those extra calories will be highlighted in red once we go over our daily limit. Knowing that my exercise routine burns a little over 500 calories lets me make informed trade-offs and adjustments and gives me more room for error when I'm feeling like a Twix bar. And it is clearly paying off - I've already been losing more than the 1 lb per week budget...
Of course, weight loss is not the important thing here and nothing I've said is new to anyone in the diet or fitness field. But it highlights an important point. Before I started tracking what I ate, I wasn't doing anything egregiously wrong and I wasn't significantly overweight - but I had been packing on an extra couple of pounds a year and over the course of time that all adds up. Bad habits are formed and before you know it you are fighting weight related disorders that could have been avoided.
The same is true for brands. Left unchecked, things may seem to be going well, but it may be hard to really notice the little bad things that are piling up. Some money wasted here, some consumer loyalty lost there, some less-than-stellar advertising over yonder...before you know it, your brand is on a downward spiral and is carrying far more weight than it can carry.
But measurement is hard - right? What do we measure? How do we measure it? How actionable is it? What is the statistical significance? How do we get everyone on board with what to ask? How can we really quantify the long-term effect of advertising?
There are a million reasons you can come up with to not measure. The same holds true for dieting. What should we track? Fat? Calories? Sodium? Carbohydrates?
The fact is - it doesn't matter. Just the sheer exercise of measuring something...anything...will put you in a position to make better decisions, both in the short run and for the long run. The basic consciousness of where you are spending your money and what you seem to be getting for it will force you to look more closely at everything you do.
Now, of course, the recession already is forcing folks to do that. The unfortunate thing is that a point-in-time outside pressure usually results in the un-informed decisions that may look right in the short run but will have significantly negative long term effects. Instead, be proactive, take some measurements and don't just make decisions, make the right decisions.
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