The Importance of Counting

In de-Intimidator's work with business owners one theme that comes up again and again is the criticality of counting that which is important. People have this tendency to "feel" that they know what is happening. And in many cases they do. Unfortunately in many cases they are mistaken. When one measures and counts what is important there is much less room for error or self-delusion. Typically when we start tracking things that are important to us, it leads to improvement.

This little fact of light was brought home recently when I sat down to actually count a couple of factors that have been major recently in my personal life - how much I'm traveling and why the hell I gain so much weight when I travel.

People ask me all the time how much I travel. My own perception is that it is frequent but not that much. However, since the question keeps coming up I decided to actually measure a recent 8 week period. Over this period, I took 6 trips and was actually traveling on all or parts of 21 business days. A little simple math and that tells us...let's see 6 divided by 8....5 working days in in business week...Ok. Over the 8 week period that's 75% of the weeks I take a trip and I was traveling on 52.5% of the days. Zounds! As my daughter AinA might say, "That's a whole buttload".

Let's apply this same principle to the weight problem. I left last weekend on a trip to CHI and LA weighing 177 and came back weighing 181. (We'll skip the part where I ran to get my Mauser and blow my brains out in frustration). In my own mind, I was saying, "Jeepers, I know I was watching what I was eating. How could this happen."

Well let's use the objective light of measurement to see what actually happened

• Saturday Lunch - At Motherrocker's who made homemade pizza (yum!) and drank a few glasses of wine. # of calories - a lot
• Saturday Dinner - French picnic with triple cream cheeses and a soporessata with tons of fat plus more wine. # of caloires - a lot +
• Sunday Breakfast - Motherrocker makes homemade pretzel rolls. # of calories - not that many if you eat one with no butter. I didn't
• Sunday Dinner - We go out to dinner. Three course, drinks before, wine with. # of calories - don't even want to think about it
• Monday Dinner - Go to dinner with Lakeview Coffee at Goose Island Brewery. Jumbalaya and a beer. # of calories - probably not too bad
• Tuesday Lunch - At some Jimmy Buffett inspired chain (Cheeseburger in Paradise). A Tilapia Sandwich - # of calories - so, so
• Tuesday Dinner - Lebonese take out at Motherrockers where I devour seconds of everything including two helpings of the fattiest pieces of a roast chicken. # of calories - Danger, Danger Will Robinson!

We'll skip Wed and Thu because those were the days that I was actually making attempt to control my intake.

Conclusion - It's a wonder I didn't gain 10 pounds!