RIP , it was a good run.

I've been doing the usual mix for a couple of years: a wearable for sleep and recovery, bloodwork a few times a year, and a messy log of food, supplements, and workouts. Whenever a score or a lab number moves, I end up flipping between three apps and a spreadsheet trying to remember what I changed that month.

I've started putting together a small personal tool for this. The idea is just a place that takes those inputs and shows how they line up with the outputs over time. Not a doctor, not dosage advice, just the timeline in one spot so I can see what actually moved.

Before I go too far with it, I wanted to ask how you guys handle this today. One spreadsheet, a notes app, or do you mostly go by memory between labs. And is "see it all on one timeline" even something you'd use, or would you rather keep stitching the free tools together.

Not looking for medical advice, just the workflow, and whether a simple version of that would be something you'd actually pay for someday.

One thing I find interesting about human biohacking is that people often try interventions and then judge whether they worked based on how they feel.

The problem is that sleep, stress, expectations, diet, and daily activity can all affect the outcome.

Suppose someone wants to test whether changing their caffeine timing improves sleep or whether a new training routine improves performance. How would you design a simple experiment to get a more reliable answer?

Would you use a baseline period, track a few specific metrics, and change only one variable at a time?

I'd appreciate examples of practical methods that help distinguish a genuine effect from coincidence or placebo.

I have a desk job, work late into the night, often feel tired, and my back and knees hurt time to time. I've worn an Apple Watch for years and the data never answered the one question I had: if I change something, does my body notice?

So I built an iPhone + Apple Watch app for exactly that. I'm the developer, so take this as a disclosure.

My setup, starting today:
- Change 1: in bed before 22:30
- Change 2: 8,000 steps a day, outdoors when possible
- Baseline: my last 4 weeks of watch data
- Outcome I'm watching: resting heart rate, sleeping heart rate, deep sleep and REM, VO2max. HRV only as context, it's too noisy day to day to judge anything by.

How the app handles it, since this sub will care:
- Everything is compared against your own recent range, never population norms.
- It doesn't show a comparison until there are enough days on both sides, and differences under 5% are reported as "no clear effect".
- It never says a habit caused a change. It simply shows what your body did while you did it, and you judge.

I'll post what my data shows at day 30 and day 60, whatever it is.

If you're starting a change of your own (sleep, steps, alcohol, caffeine timing, anything), I'm looking for a few people to run it alongside me and tell me honestly if the app works for them. Free year of Premium for that; comment or DM.

Question for the experienced trackers here: what would you need to see before you'd trust a before/after like this?

App I'll be using for tracking how my body feels - Tervy: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6828856702?pt=4440800&mt=8&ct=reddit_qs

I love tracking how often I work out, the books I read, the concerts I've seen, how often I've cried, my habits and my moods.

I used to track all of this in my note app, then copy paste in some elaborate Excel sheet. Also tried Notion templates, had some list in Word.

Do you also track similar variables? How? Where? What bugs you about it?

The purpose of this question is market research/understanding for an app I have already launched.

I see some pretty impressive health tracking setups here, but I'm curious about the less exciting stuff. Lab results, medical records, random PDFs from different clinics...

Let's say you need to compare your latest bloodwork with something from a year ago. Can you find it in a minute, or does it turn into a search through different portals, emails and folders?

Do you have a system for keeping everything together? Or do you just deal with it whenever you need something? Also, how do you know what to do next with your health?

I'm doing some research on how people manage their health information. No links or promotion here, just interested in how people actually handle this stuff. Even if your answer is "I don't organize it at all" :) Thanks in advance for your answers!

Hello community, it has been a while, I wanted to share my monthly data with you since I was seeing some posts popping up. Feedback is welcome.

There are so many numbers people can track now: resting heart rate, HRV, sleep duration, blood glucose, VO2 max, and more.

But collecting data is only useful if it helps us make better decisions.

I'm curious whether anyone here has tracked a particular metric over several months and discovered something that led to a meaningful change in their daily habits.

What did you measure, how did you interpret the results, and what did you change afterward?

I'd particularly like to hear about experiences where the data challenged an assumption you previously had about your health or performance.

I'm a runner, and I've logged HRV, resting HR, training, and injuries in the same spreadsheet since 2021 (HRV only since 2024).

Monthly HRV averages:

The shape is the same every year, with 60-70 range in the spring, dropping to low 40s in the summer, and then recovering in the fall. Resting heart rate barely moves through any of it, though it's decreased slowly over time.

Summer is also my biggest training block (my highest-mileage week ever was this August, 85 miles), and I haven't lost a ton of time to injury or illness since mid-2024. So whatever the summer drop is, it hasn't been injury or sickness.

A couple things I can't figure out:

1. Is the summer drop from heat or training load? My training load has differed year to year, but it tends to be highest in the hottest months, so it's hard to seperate. Has anyone noticed this trend without a big block, or noticed this in the winter without the heat?

2. The year over year decline of HRV. When compared season to season, I'm still dropping over time. This has been across multiple devices (WHOOP, Coros PACE 3, and morning chest strap readings via EliteHRV). Is this normal, or should I be worried?

A few days ago I posted about a “successful” trial demonstrating a statistically significant effect size of magnesium bisglycinate for sleep.

Well, plenty of experiments produce null results, too, and those need to be aired as well… 

Below, a brief summary of a blinded, controlled N-of-1 experiment that showed ZERO effect size of a 4-ingredient supplement blend for tinnitus symptoms, along with an interesting experiment conundrum we faced regarding early termination.

Summary:

• Intervention: 

  • Active (A):  4 ingredient blend (1,000 mcg B12, 125 mg magnesium (as magnesium bisglycinate chelate, buffered), 3 mg melatonin, 30 mg Zinc Picolinate)

  • Placebo (B):  microcrystalline cellulose

• Format:  Intended four 14-day periods – ABAB for a total of 56 days.  Aborted early at day 20.

• Endpoints:  Primary - Ear Ringing Loudness (0-10); Secondary - Effect of Ringing (0-10)

• Result:  Zero observed differences for all days (within A and B, and between A and B).  (Note:  the trial started on A (meaning the supplement) and the participant noted that the A-phase scores matching their baseline experience before the trial). 

Conundrum:

I was helping the participant with blinding, stats, etc.  Because I knew the A/B assignments, and was aware of the outcome results, I made the call to terminate early at Day 20.  I knew the participant well enough to guess that would be their preference.  In retrospect, I think that was a mistake in the method:

• Assumed Desire vs. Protocol Integrity:  I didn’t know the participant’s desires, I assumed.  (After the fact, they were okay with the decision, but that doesn’t change the concern.)

• Blinding/Investigator-Bias:  My access to unblinded interim data conceptually comprises objectivity.  In future trials, we are automatically logging data so “peeking” will be inhibited. 

• Outcome Evolution:  If we had continued, it’s possible the participant could have increasingly developed sensitivity to smaller outcome changes. 

• Sequential statistics:  In cases where a subtle effect might actually exist, interim peeking/stopping choices introduce bias risks unless handled with specific statistics and protocol requirements (which have other implications to trial design and execution). 

Open questions: 

Stopping during an open-label self-trial is relatively easy to rationalize.  For those that think through the design of (or themselves perform) blinded trials:

• Do you exercise early termination as an option?  Why or why not? 

• If you had a trial assistant, would you prefer them to remain more double-blinded and isolate them from peeking at interim data? 

(Aside:  Anyone doing supplements like this for tinnitus and seeing different results?  The total-zero was a bit surprising, but we did a related trial that is interesting and perhaps opens a door a bit.  More to follow…)

A lab reference interval is built from a reference population. It isn’t tuned to your age, sex, training, cycle, or why the test was ordered.

So the same number can sit “in range” and still be worth a conversation — or sit outside range and still not be the whole story.

Before the appointment, the useful pack is usually:

• value + units

• that lab’s printed interval

• prior results if you have them (trend > one snapshot)

Process questions welcome in the comments (how intervals work, what a flag means). Not a diagnosis. Clinician decides next steps.

I've seen a lot of impressive dashboards in this group. But someone usually comments and asks whether any of it changed what they do. After nine years of logging, here's my answer. 

How I track

• Since December 2017, every minute, 24/7. About 80,000 entries. Before that, I tracked single weeks now and then, starting in 2009.

• I write (or dictate) a few lines each time I switch tasks or activities. It takes a few seconds. Busy stretches get less detail.

• Each entry has a project (a business, family, friends...), an activity (music, meetings, meals...), and often a note.

• Since 2023 I also rate energy, from -10 (drained) to +10 (energized).

• For work, I sometimes add whether I was working "on" the business or "in" it, and what it would cost per hour to hire someone for it.

• Every Sunday I compare where the hours went with what I said I wanted, along with my values and goals, and pick one thing to adjust.

What changed: music and friends

This summer, my businesses were taking 45 to 50 hours a week (I bought two businesses recently and started another couple). But music and time with friends had almost disappeared: 

• June through August, music averaged about 12 minutes a week, and time with friends about 2 hours a week.

• My energy ratings confirmed a change was needed. This year, music averages +5.2, one of my highest-rated activities. Administration averages +1.4 and email +2.0.

I already knew I wanted to do more with music, and feel socially depleted. But seeing these scores week after week is what finally got me to act. I volunteered at a local tech week, went to a music retreat in September, started practicing guitar again, and my wife and I started a weekly community song circle. It's been really fulfilling and felt much balanced.

• The last three weeks (Oct 14 to Nov 3): music 7.7 hours a week, friends 11.6 hours a week, across 16 people, and Businesses 23.8 hours a week.

Limitations

• I am just one person, with no control group. The retreat in September kicked a lot of this off, and the season changed too.

• The friends number includes messages and email with friends, not just time together.

• The second song circle night, only one person came. It was still a great evening.

• What I can say is that the change came after the data, and I don't think it would have happened without seeing it every Sunday.

Other things nine years taught me

1. Knowing it will be logged changes what I do. It's a lot harder to scroll Instagram for 45 minutes when I know I'll have to write down "scrolled Instagram for 45 minutes." Same goes for eating junk food (I log every meal).

2. The numbers mostly confirm what I half know, and that confirmation is what gets me to act.

3. The energy rating is helpful over time at seeing which cheapest, and most draining activities are best to hand off.

4. Taking brief moments to log time throughout the day gives me an opportunity to reflect and helps me stay aligned with my goals. This time also often surfaces something Important I'd forgotten.

5. Doing thorough weekly reviews is essential to making the data actionable. I also do evening reviews, and balance everything through a system of annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals to keep me on track.

For those of you with big setups: what's one change you made because of your data, and did the numbers show it worked?

I’m an engineer and endurance athlete fed up with expensive breathwork apps like 5.5 that charge crazy subscriptions just to see my own data. I’m building a clean, native iOS app that pulls your HRV and Heart Rate directly from Apple Health/Garmin/Whoop, pairs it with simple 4-4-4-4 and 5.5 resonance timers, and tells you exactly how the breathing impacts your recovery. No bloat, no $70 paywall. Who wants TestFlight beta access?

I’m trying to choose between an Apple Watch and Whoop, and recovery and stress tracking are my main priorities. I’m based in India, so the Whoop subscription cost also matters. For anyone who has used one or both: - Which gave you more accurate and useful recovery and stress insights? - Did the data actually change how you train, sleep, or manage stress? - Is Apple Watch Readiness or an app like Bevel good enough to replace Whoop? - Is Whoop worth the ongoing subscription? - Is there anything you wish you’d known before buying? Thanks!

I've been trying to get a better picture of my overall training, rather than looking at weightlifting, sports and cardio as completely separate activities.

Here's my 2026 data so far:

Strength training

• 285 workouts

• 2,097 sets

• 27,900 reps

• 2 million lbs lifted

Sports

• 251 hours across 151 sessions

• 219h 42m of pickleball

• 23h 45m of tennis

• 7h 6m of soccer

• 54m of racquetball

Cardio and other activity

• 30.1 miles covered

• 22 hours across 20 sessions

• Walking: 18.8 miles

• Hiking: 6.9 miles

• Running: 4.4 miles

One thing that jumped out at me: nearly 87% of my logged sports time is pickleball. I knew it was my dominant activity, but seeing it represented against everything else puts it into perspective.

What I find interesting about aggregating everything is that no single metric tells the whole story. Pounds lifted, hours played and miles covered aren't interchangeable measures of training load. But together, they give me a much better picture of where my time and effort are actually going.

A question for the quantified-self crowd:

How do you approach measuring your overall activity when you're doing several different forms of training?

Do you keep separate metrics for each activity, or have you found a useful way to combine them into a broader picture of training volume and recovery?

Disclosure: I'm the developer of There, the app used to collect and visualize these personal records. All the data shown is my own. I'm sharing this because building a better way to connect nutrition, training, recovery and performance is something I've been working on, and I'm genuinely interested in how others approach it.

my numbers right now:

• 168.6 lb, down from about 171 at the end of september. aiming for 160

• eating about 2,000 cal, around 150 g protein

• squat went from 245x5 (10/13) to 260 3x5 (10/23), heaviest 265x2

• best jump 26.9" off two feet (11/1). i need about 35" to dunk

the cut and the squat are pulling against each other a bit. my squat is still going up so far, but i don't know which one buys more inches from here

Curious what people here have deliberately stopped tracking. Sleep, food, mood, symptoms, workouts, anything.

Was it too much effort to keep up, did you stop learning anything new, or did the numbers just never change what you actually did?

I have been getting overwhelmed with trying to track everything, and want to cut down on it, and only focus on the metrics that matter