Welcome to step 1 of the 2-week eating experiment. This post is of massive importance. For reasons not known to me self-evaluation is continuously being ignored by a large part of the health community in their efforts to help people achieve optimal health. That’s a mistake and here’s why: In order to be confident about the impact any experiment has on anything we need to first know how the subject we’re experimenting with was performing before the start of the experiment. Consequently, this post is about evaluating how you’re currently doing.
In order to make this step nice and smooth the evaluation will only consist of four categories:
- Your daily energy & performance levels
- Your daily emotions
- The quality of your sleep
- The quality of your digestion
There will definitely be people out there who argue we need to measure more, less, or that we don’t need to measure anything at all. They have their reasons of course, however in order to test this particular experiment the abovementioned four categories will serve us well.
Evaluate your energy levels, daily emotions, sleep, and digestion quality
It’s important that you fill out the evaluation form below and keep a record of it. Let me say that last part again: keep a record of the evaluation form after you’ve filled it out. You will use this form to evaluate the effect of the eating experiment after 2-weeks have passed. In order for you to be able to measure the effect of the experiment you need to know how you scored before the experiment started.
Fill out the evaluation form and think carefully before you answer the questions
It’s important that you spend some time thinking carefully before you decide which score is correct for you. The questions I’m asking aren’t the ones you’re typically asked in your daily life. Hence, please do think twice before putting down your scores.
Rate the criteria below based on how you generally feel before you start the experiment on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is terrible and 10 is great. For the digestion section the scores are explained as part of the questions. Click on any of the tables below to download the excel spreadsheet version.
The weighting table below illustrates the max scores and how each question category is weighted. Use the table to calculate your final score.
Add up your scores pr. question category and then multiply each category score with its corresponding weight to get your final score.
Check how I view your current state and understand that almost everyone has room for improvement
See the below table for a brief summary of how I view the different score ranges:
If you are one of the many that end up in one of the three low-performing score-ranges; don’t worry, things will get a lot better very soon. If you are in the top score range great for you, many things are going well and things will be even better after the experiment.
When you have carried out the self-evaluation you’ve understood that there are lots of things in your life that can be improved by eating excellent food. I can almost guarantee that your scores will improve significantly after completing the 2-week experiment. It will be interesting to see just how much of an improvement there’ll be for you! Do post your scores here as comments or send them individually to me if you would like me to comment on your particular situation.
Summary
Let me quickly summarize the key to-dos from this post:
- Evaluate your daily energy & performance levels, your daily emotions, the quality of your sleep, and the quality of your digestion
- Calculate your scores using the weighting table
- Check how I view your current state and improvement potential based on your scores
- Keep your scores in a safe place so that you can use them as a baseline for measuring your improvement after the 2-week experiment is over
What’s next?
Having carried out the self-evaluation you have established a baseline of how you’re currently doing that we can effectively use in this experiment. This means you’re ready for the next step of the exciting 2-week eating experiment series. In step 2 we will address what to eat, establish what good eating habits are, and discuss how to minimize possible adverse effects of eating differently. Something to look forward to!
Acknowledgements & recommended resources
For this post I’d like to present yet another inspirational figure in the health community that I highly appreciate. Peter Attia is a former surgeon & management consultant, he’s keen on evaluation & measurement of his personal health, and he has created the excellent blog www.eatingacademy.com.. His blog is particularly interesting for those of you who want to understand the “why” side of nutrition in a lot of detail. Peter’s style of writing is generally based on Barbara Minto’s structural principles which the management consultant in me absolutely loves. Check out his blog.
For this post I borrowed the following pictures:
– woman
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That’s a skillful answer to a difcifult question