Manage the inputs! Measure the outputs.

I'm in week 2 of Hal Higdon's marathon training program and all is going well. I went 5.6 miles last Sunday, and 3 miles each a couple times this week. This morning I did 7 miles (11.2k), to get ahead of the long weekend run. I haven't lost a lot of weight in the last week -- I was still 190.4 this morning, but I've gone from around 30% body fat to 28.5%, which I take to mean that I'm putting on muscle at about the same rate I'm losing fat (I hope).
But this brings me to the title of this post. One of the thing I've learned at work is that the way to optimize your output metrics, you need to manage the inputs. At work, the outputs are profit and sales. On the diet/weight loss/health kick, the outputs are weight, body fat, and (if you measure it) waist size. One can measure these outputs, but in the end the way that you affect these metrics has nothing to do with them.
Fortunately, in weight loss there are only a couple inputs...Calories in and calories out. If I have the right strategy I don't need to change it if the outputs slow up for a week or so. When I'm trying to lose weight, I want to decrease my calories in -- this is done through cutting out sugar, and increase my calories out -- this is done via running. So even if my weight is not decreasing, I'm going to continue with the strategy. Low carb in, exercise out.

My friend Laurie has started a health program and she doesn't even have a scale! She just got focused on reducing food (and beer) in, and she's been running several mornings/week. And all of a sudden, she moved down a size in jeans...all without a scale.

So it's interesting that I obsessively watch the scale every day to see if I've made progress. And if I'm making progress I watch my carbs and exercise. If I'm not making progress, I watch my carbs and exercise. Funny, maybe I should get rid of my scale -- not! If something's worth doing, it's worth obsessing over, so I'm going to keep obsessing over my scale!

In other good news, my friend Melinda is coming in from Hawaii to run the Rock n Roll half marathon while I (hopefully) do the full. I'm still trying to get Laurie to come from Beijing as well. Should be a fun time!