This is a post on a health-related topic. We are not medical or other trained health professionals. The information presented here was what learned about ourselves on our journey. Your journey is different and it is best to consult your doctor or other medical professional before making a change. Please see our disclaimer at Before Making Lifestyle Changes before making any changes to diet, activity, etc.
We know people fear failure and we feel it truly holds people back from being all they want to be. In many cases, failures are more a mindset than a reality. We found way too many opinions (see here and here) instead of facts about the items we were learning about. Instead of trusting the information we found, we wanted to learn our own truth.
Why Failure is Not an Option
To reduce the fear of failure that limits some of us this post will offer a different mindset on how to be ok with experiments. Learning to experiment has helped with weight management and all aspects of new things we have taken on. For us, this mindset has set us free to try new things without fear of failure.
First, let’s talk about failure and align on a simple concept. Failure is doing something wrong. The concept of wrong implies you know what you’re doing and fail to achieve a result despite that knowledge. Nobody knows everything. We learn by reading, observing, trying, and measuring how close we are to a desired outcome. We may repeat this process until we become successful. That is called learning, not failing.
Isn’t That Cheating?
Yes, what we are discussing is a bit of mental sleight of hand but that is the point. For us, it was helpful to remove the idea of failure by being open to creating a learning exercise. These experiments do fail, however, if they don’t improve your knowledge of the learning exercise. To improve knowledge, you have to constrain the learning you are doing. That is how we landed on considering our weight management learnings. With so many competing theories, pundits, and information, we found no one an expert. If everyone and no one was right, how could we fail?
What is an Experiment?
Let’s talk about creating an experiment. Here are the basic tenets you have to have:
- A hunch or belief is something you can’t prove.
- An expectation of outcome based on input (cause and effect).
- An idea of how long an observation period should be observed between input and expected output.
- How you will prove you were right or wrong so you can learn.
- Make sure it doesn’t conflict with another experiment that could impact it.
Applying that to weight management here is one example:
- Hunch: I believe if I eat 500 calories less a day for a month I can lose a pound in a week.
- Cause and Effect: Removing 500 calories a day from my diet will result in a reduction of one pound of weight per week.
- Observation Period: I want to do this for a month so I can see ups and downs over an aggregate to confirm it is working.
- How To Prove: I will record my calories and weight.
- Eliminating Variables: We will use our current workouts and not add or subtract from them during this experiment.
We Gained an Insight
We did that and it was annoying. In all honesty, it was truly and amazingly annoying but we learned a lot. It was also very telling data. We learned a lot from it. Did we lose 4 lbs. over 4 weeks as the pundits predicted? Um…no. Then why write a post on it?
As we said, we don’t believe in failure if learning comes out of it. It did produce a result of losing 2 lbs but not the 4 lbs expected. What this told us was that a calorie deficit was only part of managing our weight. This created another hypothesis which led to another experiment which created another learning experiment. Not once did we feel like we failed. We also knew that without trying it, and counting the calories, we still would have no answer.
Why it Works
This methodology also allows us to discuss things more publicly with others. Opening up a conversation with ‘I tried to lose 4 pounds last month on X diet and it didn’t work’ feels like a failure for many people. When we spin it into an experiment it doesn’t sound like we failed. ‘I was experimenting and learned that I could lose 2 pounds over 4 weeks by cutting my calories. I also learned about how much I was eating.’ That outcome feels more positive and conversational than something that went wrong.
While it sounds like ‘feel good’ wordsmithing it is not. We learned how to give ourselves positive reinforcement and create success cycles in learning. In a sense, we gamified it. We learned how to give ourselves positive outcomes even if we didn’t like the results. By switching out our ideas of hard and fast goals for hypothesis, cause, effect outcome, and learning, we created a way to begin managing our weight. That is a win.
Some Tips to Make Experiments Easier
Do:
- Keep an experiment to a single cause/effect.
- Timebox it to know if it works.
- Look at the data objectively.
- Write them down and keep notes to revisit.
Don’t
- Make broad sweeping changes as you can’t understand cause/effect in them.
- Make the time box too short or you may not get enough data.
- Be honest with the results. Something changed or it didn’t.
- Expect to be right all the time. If you aren’t getting surprised by outcomes, you aren’t challenging yourself.
These experiments were how we started to unlock many aspects of our weight management. They gave us a fearless way to address changes we wanted to make. Further, they allowed us to prove what worked for us and what didn’t through evidence. In an area that has so much information we feel taking this approach will also help others meet their goals without fear.
Invent the truth for yourself.