Awareness

aware·​ness ə-ˈwer-nəs

Synonyms of awareness

: the quality or state of being aware : knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists

promoting a heightened awareness of the problem

seemed to have only a slight awareness of what was going on

an acute awareness of subtle differences.

From Merriam-Webster

So often we claim we are aware of how we eat, how we exercise or how we may feel, but how often do we really measure this?

I am writing this today to help you see that we may not be aware of our unconscious acts each day. How many of you really know how many carbs you eat in a day. In your mind you may think you are doing fine but until you measure what you eat, you may not realize what you are taking in. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to lose weight, reduce your carbs for diabetes or just trying to eat a healthier lifestyle, you have to know where you begin, before you can decide if you're improving.

I live a lifestyle of roughly 30 carbs a day, this is not for weight loss, this is for sugar control with my diabetes. It wasn’t until I started tracking all my meals in My Fitness Pal, that I really knew what my intake was. Now that I have done this for two years, I don’t track it that close, I know what I can eat and what I can’t.

In the business world I work in, we measure all kinds of things. How can we ever know if we are improving any metrics, if we don’t know our starting point. Any business is probably measuring many metrics to know how well we are doing. Think about it this way, does a business run all year and at tax time they determine how well they did for the year? No, it is to late at that point. Same for us, do we just hope and then see how we are doing at your yearly physical? If we have one.

If you want to improve your health, you first must be aware of our current numbers. How much we weigh, what is our Blood Glucose Numbers (A1c), what is our macro intake, (Carbs, Fat, Protien and Calories), our resting heart rate or any other metric we want to improve. Maybe it is our cholesterol numbers or another number in a blood test.

The next step is having a way to consistently measure whatever number we are wanting to improve. We also need to know how activities or foods affect the outcome of these numbers. Which brings me back to awareness. If you want to eat 30 carbs each day, you need to know what you eat and how it adds up. There are a lot of hidden macros in our foods. Fruit and vegetables are good for you but if you are trying to hit carb numbers you better be careful. My suggestion is to start measuring before you ever start reducing and then reduce in steps. What if you really measure and you find out your eating 1000 carbs a day, you will struggle going right to 30. A good rule of thumb I suggest to people is cut your carbs in half every two weeks. I didn’t get to 30 carbs overnight.

I see people at their desk at work or at night at home snack on certain foods and not realizing that they may take in several hundred carbs in a snack. Start measuring before you even start your plan. Also remember that a lot of people you see on the internet, promoting health, didn’t get there overnight either. Be realistic and make a lifestyle change rather than a diet plan.

The more we are aware of our own self, the better we will be at knowing how to improve ourselves.