A fitness hobby offers opportunities a-plenty for the number-cruncher.  Every weight room has at least one or two denizens who are inseparable from their clipboards, tracking every ounce lifted and rep performed.  The same folks can jump on Fitday.com and track calories and macronutrients and fat grams, jump on their body-fat percentage scale, strap on their heart-rate monitors and GPS trackers when they go for their weekly long runs or rides, then feed their results into their PC, rejoicing at every uptick and cursing every downtick in the seventeen graphs they use to track every aspect of their fitness.

I probably shouldn't knock these people; in a way I'm envious.  The bean-counters are the ones who conduct the studies in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and other such publications, whose results ultimately shape what you and I do to shape up.  

Years ago, we'd take the advice of fitness gurus, mysterious wise men and women whose methods were largely supported by anecdotal evidence and personal experience; nowadays there's a study to prove or disprove the efficacy of just about anything you can think to do in a weight room, and an equal number of folks with a knack for internet searching, easily available any number of fitness websites, who would be more than happy to cite studies indicating that whatever you're doing to improve your fitness is a steaming pile of bull-puckey.    

I have to admit that most of the time, I'm not a facts-and-figures guy.  I'm more of a 'concepts' guy, interesting in ferreting out and applying the larger principles in fitness and sticking with 'em while I put my clients--and myself--through the wringer, unfettered by any but the most minimal paperwork or data points.  

But when I really want to improve at something--like a couple of years back, when I was really working on strength, or before that, when I was in my rookie year as a triathlete--I wore the number-cruncher mantle with pride.  A wise men once said, "That which is measured improves," and I found it to be true.  

When I had a clear personal record to shoot for every day in the weight room or on my bike or in the pool, I usually made it.  It's pretty easy to get fuzzy on the details when they aren't down in black and white, especially when you're talking about a matter of five pounds or three seconds or two laps, but when they're written down, you're either improving or you're spinning your wheels.  

So, on the off-chance that there's someone reading this who wants to lose weight in the new year, I'm going to suggest this website:  Skinnyr.com, which offers you a free graph to chart your progress as you inch your way towards your goal weight.  

There are lots of cool bells and whistles that you can see when you get there that are an absolute DREAM for data-heads.  

Enjoy!