Step 7 of 7

Listen to your body. It is a better coach than any app.

The first six steps give you a starting point. Lifetime results come from tuning the program to your own body, and your body gives constant feedback if you know what to look for.

The signals worth reading

• Urine color. Pale or clear at least once a day means you are hydrated. Dark means go back to Step 2.
• Energy four hours after a meal. If you are sleepy, moody or craving something sweet an hour after eating, the meal had too much fast carbohydrate and not enough protein or fat. The right meal keeps you level, and not hungry, for about four hours.
• Waking heart rate. Take it before you get up. A number well above your normal for a few days in a row means you are under-recovered: too much training, too little sleep, or both.
• Appetite. Both ravenous hunger and no appetite at all are signs of overtraining or under-eating. Steady, predictable hunger at mealtimes is the goal.
• Mood and sleep. Sugar, alcohol and processed carbohydrates late in the day disturb both. So does skipping exercise entirely; so does doing too much.
• Aches and digestion. Recurring stiffness, headaches or an unsettled stomach are usually a message about something you ate, drank or skipped in the last day or two, not a mystery.

Keep a simple diary

For the first 30 days, write down what you ate, when you moved, how you slept and how you felt, in a line or two a day. Patterns appear fast. The wine with dinner and the 3 a.m. wake-up. The skipped shake and the 11 a.m. vending machine. Once you can see the pattern, you can change it; before that you are guessing.

Adjust, do not abandon

1. Change one thing at a time and give it a week.
2. Re-measure your body composition once a month (Step 1). Judge by inches and energy, not by the daily scale.
3. When you fall off, and everyone does, go back to the shake the next morning. The program restarts at breakfast.

If something persists, whether pain, digestive trouble, poor sleep, fatigue that does not lift, see your doctor. Nothing here is a substitute for that.