You Are Not a Dashboard

In last week’s article, I switched things up a bit, mostly in response to the “noticing” exercise I participated in during the previous week. You may remember that the purpose of the exercise was to simply notice what, over the course of a single day, influenced us to do/buy/try/change something. I called it “things that make you go hmmm.” That seemingly simple experiment, conducted by my mentor, Andrea Nakayama, had quite an impact on me and on my perspective of why we do the things we do.

I also pointed out last week that midlife women are the most sought-after demographic targeted by marketing and advertising campaigns. Why? Likely because (due to cultural pressure to appear youthful and vibrant, no matter our biological age) we are deemed highly suggestible. Think about it for a minute. Why is it that actresses “age out” of leading roles in a way that their male counterparts do not? It’s what drives actresses toward plastic surgery, Botox, and a host of other interventions. I bet you can name a number of them who look alarmingly younger than their years, and some not in a good way. But I digress.

My day of noticing has turned into a couple of weeks of really dialing into various inputs I receive in the course of a day and the effects they have on my nervous system. As a functional nutrition and lifestyle practitioner trained by Andrea Nakayama, I was taught that everything is connected, we are all unique, and all things matter. That food is important, but context matters more. In other words, you can be eating the best diet – or the worst – but how you eat, when you eat, and how you feel while you’re eating can influence the input of food in either a positive or negative way.

And food isn’t the only factor that impacts our health. For instance, a person can eat in the healthiest and cleanest way, but if she’s eating that beautiful organic salad out of a container at her desk between meetings and not chewing thoroughly or eating mindfully, she’s likely to experience GI discomfort or other symptoms later.

Another example is the person who eats well but lives in a sedentary state most of the time. Or only gets 4 hours of sleep per night.

Or isn’t managing her high-stress circumstances in a healthy way.

You see where I’m going.

My training has taught me to focus on all these factors with my clients, because no single factor exists in a vacuum. And over the course of time since I became an FNLP, I’ve become more aware of the role of the nervous system on the way our body functions. It just cannot be ignored, no matter how much we wish it could.

This brings me to today’s focus, and I’m about to get really transparent. I’m speaking to you from my own perspective, because that’s the only one I’ve got 😉. I came to this line of work because health, specifically health span, is really important to me. Many years ago I developed a passion for learning how to optimize my health and that of my loved ones, and it led me to pursue further education. My colleagues and I frequently discuss the pull of all the “shiny new objects” we have exposure and access to as practitioners – how seductive they are, promising faster healing, more energy, the lure of longevity, etc. I mean, everyone wants the quick fix, right? Even we are not necessarily immune. (And by "we," I am speaking for myself).

I have mostly fallen prey to the appeal of metrics, even though I’m aware of the pitfalls. For so many years, I’ve been tracking and measuring everything – from what I eat, to how I poop, to what my lab work shows, and so on. I told myself I was doing it for the clues it would provide – except those clues never really brought me closer to my own health goals, which is supposed to be the point, right? And don’t get me wrong – there is a lot to be said in favor of tracking. I ask all my clients to do it for at least 5 days before we meet. It does provide valuable clues in our work together, especially as we make changes and shifts can be really subtle (especially in the beginning). However, I’m calling myself out for crossing a bridge too far.

We live in an age of endless information, always coming at us from all sides. Social media influencers tell us how to get rid of belly fat, brain fog, wrinkles, and bloating. Or how to increase energy, get better sleep, build more muscle, etc... all in just 30 days (or less). Ugh. And if you’re dialed into the functional health space (which, if we’re being honest, is starting to look suspiciously like the conventional “x-for-y” model it once criticized)… you have seen all the latest-greatest “wearables” and trackers being touted as the best ways to biohack your way to longevity. Listen to one wellness podcast and you’ll understand. By minute seven, someone is selling you a red light mask, a sauna blanket, a cold plunge tub, a smart ring, and at least three supplements that promise to optimize something you didn’t know was broken.

Now is where I tell you about all the things I’ve bought after listening to a podcast or attending a summit or webinar. (Biohackers Not-So-Anonymous: Hi, my name is Stacey. I own more devices than I care to admit 😆). Actually, I’ll tell you about two of those things, or really more about my revelation about how I use them, particularly in the past few weeks.

The two tracking devices I use daily are the Oura ring and the Hume body pad – both of which are great products and provide valuable feedback, as long as you keep yourself in check.

I’ve worn an Oura ring since before it was cool. My husband bought it for me many years ago, hoping it would help me understand more about my sleep, (among other things). I love all the metrics it provides and have learned a lot about my sleep and stress management, as well as my cardiovascular health. We bought the Hume device a couple of years ago because, as a post-menopausal woman with osteoporosis, I’ve been laser-focused on building muscle and wanted a way to track my progress. It shows me trunk muscle, skeletal muscle, arm and leg muscle mass. (It also shows body fat percentage, visceral, subcutaneous, arm and leg fat). There are other metrics as well, including metabolic age.

So here’s the thing – I’ve sort of developed a love-hate relationship with both of these trackers. At first, it was true love in both cases (most likely because my metrics looked favorable, and we all love to be told just what we want to hear). However, over the past couple of years when my stress levels increased and self-care decreased, those metrics have taken a nosedive (meaning they’re all trending in the wrong direction). And guess what? My stress and anxiety over the state of my health have increased exponentially. Every single day, I get on that scale (not because I’m trying to lose weight – but because I’m trying so hard to gain muscle mass), and most days I’m frustrated and disappointed in what I see. My muscle is trending down, my fat is trending up — and I haven’t made any significant dietary changes. (Context, remember)?

The same can be said for my Oura data. For the first several years, my HRV (a measure of stress resilience) was consistently in the 100s – occasionally it hit the 200s (higher is generally considered better for this metric). Over the past year? I’m lucky to see it get out of the 20s. I have actually celebrated when I saw it hit the 40s a couple of times. And don’t even get me started on my sleep data 🤦‍♀️ What changed? I guess the stress in my life finally caught up with me. The other troubling metrics are my cardiovascular age (+3 years…what?!)  and metabolic age (50…which is up 4 years from where it started when we got the Hume). You may be wondering why I’m telling you all this (and part of me may regret it later)…

Circling back around to the noticing exercise – I have come to realize how dependent I’ve become on the data. (Perhaps fixated is a better word). Somewhere along the line I transitioned from treating the data as clues, signals from my body to be viewed with curiosity – to viewing the metrics as if they are decrees about my health written in stone. “Oura says my cardiovascular age is 3 years older than my biological age, so it must be true.”

And “my muscle mass is not increasing despite the fact that I’m working out 6 days a week.”

As if these trackers are absolutely 100% accurate in all their measurements. What happened to “how am I feeling in my body today?” or “how are my clothes fitting now,” or “do I actually see more muscle on my body?” I will admit, I lost my way a bit. And if it happened to me, taking into account the training I have, I bet it happens to a lot of people using these devices. I always say to others that instead of focusing on all the ways we feel our bodies are betraying us, the better approach is to acknowledge all the functions our bodies perform for us, each and every minute of the day. We don’t tell our heart to beat, our lungs to breathe, our kidneys and liver to filter toxins, and yet they do. Over and over, throughout the day, throughout our lifetime.

Andrea’s exercise served as a much-needed reminder for me to be more present with myself, to trust my instincts, and to go back to the basics of my training – the things that matter, that will help me achieve my health goals as well as help me guide others to achieve theirs – the core basics that serve as mediators: Sleep.

Nutrition.

Hydration.

Movement.

Stress resilience.

Community.

They are all connected, and they all matter – more than what Oura or Hume tell me. Because the nervous system piece cannot be over-stated. Allowing myself to become wrapped around the axle over numbers on a screen only serves to keep my system on high alert — exactly the place where healing is least likely to happen.

And here’s the irony — I’ve spent years counseling women to listen inward.

To notice their energy.

Their digestion.

Their mood.

Their resilience.

Their strength.

And somewhere along the way, I outsourced my own sense of “how am I doing?” to a ring and a scale. Data is useful. But it is not divine. Metrics are clues. Not commandments.

My HRV dipping into the 20s is not a moral failure. My metabolic age creeping upward is not a prophecy. My muscle mass fluctuating does not erase the fact that I am strong, capable, and showing up six days a week.

And maybe that’s the real noticing. Not just noticing the marketing. Not just noticing the influence. But noticing when we’ve handed over authority — even subtly — to something outside ourselves.

So here’s what I’m practicing now:

Using the data. But not worshipping it.

Respecting the metrics. But not letting them narrate my worth.

Returning — again and again — to the basics: Sleep. Movement. Food. Hydration. Stress resilience. Connection.

Because those are the true mediators. Those are the levers.

And perhaps most importantly…

Asking myself: How do I actually feel in my body today? Not what does the screen say. Not what does the app predict. But what do I know to be true?

If I — with all my training — can drift into performance-mode health, I suspect I’m not alone.

So maybe this week’s invitation is this:

Track the noise. Notice the pull. Use the tools.

But don’t forget that you are not a dashboard. You are a living, adapting, resilient being.

And that matters more than any metric ever could.