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I’ve been feeling frustrated with my health. Despite building what is a rather aggressive approach through supplements and powders, it’s hard to see much empirical change.
The first moment I’ll truly know whether things have shifted is when I next get a blood test. My hope is that I can have demonstrably better insulin sensitivity, reduced liver fat and an increase of HDL cholesterol.
In the meantime, all I can do is interpret the subtler signs. My energy is a bit better, and I have been doing more exercise. My eating is objectively better, and I’m generally improving in sleep.
At the same time, I have new woes that have appeared. My knees feel far more delicate with additional walking, and I’ve been consistently waking up with a headache in the mornings. It’s hard to tell whether this is genuine progress when each stage seems to have a new issue crop up.
When I get so caught up in analysing my health everyday, the temptation is to delve ever deeper. I’ve been watching videos, reading books and getting AI interpretations with some attempt to understand what each daily shift might mean.
But at some point, I have to recognise that there are some things that I can’t really know. And to be honest, even if I did, it would probably not change a whole lot anyway. I can vaguely infer that my body is getting better. And even if that’s not the case, my approach is not likely to change right now anyway. Any attempt to push harder will cause more harm than good. I’m better off just letting things be for a while.
It’s a trap that nearly all of us fall into. When we get so caught up in a goal, we can end up making them our whole existence. The irony is that when we focus too much on that one issue, the lack of progress ends up hitting harder and we end up doing much worse.
Of course, recognising the pattern is one thing, shifting the behaviour is another. Although I have experienced such a challenge before, I recognise that this test is probably bigger than any other I’ve had. This challenge to my health and wellbeing spans multiple years, and honestly, despite my imperfectiosn I think I’m handling it better than most people would. Nonetheless, it’s tapping into lifelong difficulties around weight, which has been the one area that I’ve never really succeeded in getting to grips with, despite numerous substantive efforts.
So I’m giving myself some grace. I’ll follow the approach I’ve come up with, then see how it lines up with the next blood test. If I then need to do something different, I can adapt. But there’s little point in fretting on the details on a day to day basis. Even in the most optimistic of scenarios, sizeable, sustained change will take months. Realistically, it may even be years.
I’m better off shifting away from overanalysis and instead focus on living life. It’ll probably be more beneficial for my health anyway.