Be Gentle With You

I should remember this:

When I’m frustrated by something, being really judge-y about it, I’m probably learning something important.

But, I don’t remember it. I just get frustrated and judge-y, absolutely sure I know better, or at least that I know something is wrong or dumb. And then that familiar feeling starts creeping in, that thing where humility starts to hover nearby, but I ignore it in order to stay judge-y. Maybe mostly, so I can stay “right.” I love being right.

I was excited to start the Omada program on Sunday. I had logged in and created my profile, but that’s all the website/app would let me do until it was unlocked for me on Sunday. On Sunday, I’d get to start diving into all the tools and exciting things on the website. I received my scale that sends them the data wirelessly, and I had weighed myself each day leading up to Sunday …because they told me to.

I am a good student. I have always been a good student. If you tell me you have something to teach me, and there are assignments and group work and goals and such, I’M ALL IN. I think that’s why I managed my way through a couple of Whole30s last year. It’s an assignment. Someone sat down and decided what I should do, made me a list I can follow. A puzzle to solve. I’m good at those.

I was ready for Omada to have various tools like calorie calculators or places to track my water intake, my exercise, my sleep, my stress, my choosing a small piece of dark chocolate instead of piece of chocolate cake. I was ready for a goal tracker, a countdown…anything that shows progress and feels like an assignment.

Sunday came, and the website opened!

I weighed myself (check!).

I read the profile of each of my cohort members (check!).

I read the assigned article (check!).

I wrote a response to the article in the group-chat section (check!).

I clicked around and saw where to record my physical activity and how to sync my Google Fit step counter to the Omada app. (check!).

I started charting my meals in the app….wait, what?!…this app isn’t like the ones I’ve used before. It’s super lame. You just type in what you ate. There are no calories listed, no fat grams, no salt, no carbs. You just type in anything you want. So, like, just type “pizza” if you want. Lame.

Then, when you have typed in your list of things you ate for that meal, two questions pop up:

Would you say this meal was small, medium, or large?

Would you say this meal was mostly unhealthful, somewhat healthful, or mostly healthful?

That’s it. Lame.

For three or four days I dutifully inputted my meals and snacks, answered the questions about size and quality of the meals/snacks, and felt wholly underwhelmed with the program.

Then, a couple days ago, I had some chocolate midmorning. I typed in “1 ounce dark chocolate”, selected “small” for the size of snack, and selected “mostly unhealthful”
as my judgment of the snack. Of course, I thought, dark chocolate is healthier than milk chocolate, so should I select “somewhat healthful”
instead? But, I left it as it was.

Sometime mid-afternoon, I had 5 or 6 bites of coconut cake and a small glass of 1% milk. So, I went back to the snacks input thingy and added the cake and the milk. In the other apps I’ve used, you record each snack separately, but Omada has just one place to put all your snacks for each day. When I added the coconut cake and milk to the dark chocolate, it asked me those questions again:

Would you say this meal was small, medium, or large?

Would you say this meal was mostly unhealthful, somewhat healthful, or mostly healthful?

Okay, so now I’m picturing a plate with a small piece of cake and some squares of dark chocolate on it – with a small glass of milk next to it. What size is this snack? It’s not small anymore, so I guess it’s medium. And it definitely doesn’t get a change from the “mostly unhealthful”
I gave it earlier.

In the evening, while I watched TV, I had some goldfish crackers and an Izzy fruit soda. (Izzies are my I-want-a-soda-but-I-shouldn’t-have-one drink. They are carbonated fruit juice. They are 90 calories, not 150. They weigh me down with less guilt than Pepsi does.)

When I pictured a plate with some squares of dark chocolate, a small piece of cake, a pile of goldfish crackers…and a glass of milk next to a can of Izzy, well it was definitely a large snack and it was mostly unhealthful
(thanks 1% milk for showing up with your calcium and a bit of protein).

So, Omada, with its lame-o meal recording app had me wondering all day long about my snacking habits. It had me shifting my understanding of snacking and how they add up. This is not news whatsoever. Every diet/exercise program has some kind of lesson in it about how “even small snacks add up in the end!” But, I had not thought it through in this way until this week…when someone asked me to put them all in the same place, rather than recording each one separately. Helping me to imagine sitting down to all of them at one time, rather than grazing on them throughout the day.

The Omada folks have said in every email or blurb or video they’ve provided me that this is not a weight-loss program. It is different. It’s about examining habits. Data. Patterns.

That’s what drew me in. I don’t have a lot of weight to lose. It’s really not about the long game of how to lose 100 pounds. For me, it’s the long game of not losing the same 10-15 over and over and over. Living healthier. Longer.

It’s 16 weeks long. A third of a year. Long enough to track some trends and examine some habits and wonder differently about food, health, activity, stress, sleep, etc. So, why I expected it to look and feel like other things I’ve experienced, I don’t know.

I guess I just like to be right. And when I do things I’ve done before, my odds are better.