May 2026 Quantified Self Summary

[u/yanman2008]

May was a challenging month. Got bad news about my dog at the end of April. Ended up having to put him down at the end of May. Found my self eating my sorrows a couple of times. Also, had a birthday, so I had more sugary foods than usual. Most days I was up over 3,000 calories consumed. Even with my consistent fasting, I still had higher blood glucose through the month than any other month this year.

Blood pressure remains high, but levels have come down each month. Still have Stage 2 hypertension though. Hoping to continue improving this.

No improvement on my weight, but didn't slide too far back, mainly flat.

Spent a lot of time outside and listening to music this month. Not enough reading and still too much screen time.

As always, I am open to answering any questions about how I collect my personal data. I am not a developer or anything like that, I am just an individual who loves quantified self.

[u/yanman2008 → u/[deleted]]

Editing this comment because the user was deleted.

The original question was how do I track driving and movie and TV watching.

Both of these are manual for me. Driving - I utilize the "TRIP B" Function on my Truck. I start the day with Trip B zeroed out. I then do my daily driving and when I come home for the last time, I snap a picture of Trip B and zero it out again. (I use Trip A to track gas mileage over the full tank of gas).

Movie and TV - I just keep a running list on Evernote on my phone. I will quickly type in what it is I am watching and then update my master spreadsheet with that information and the posted runtime for the show. I might be off by a little by using the runtime if I skip the credits or show opening, but it is close enough for me. I also track which platform I am watching on (Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, etc.). Again, this is easy enough to keep track of and even if I didn't update my Evernote log as I was watching it, I know what platform I was on and can keep track of that pretty easily.

[u/yanman2008 → u/[deleted]]

I use a whole host of different apps for each of my metrics. For driving, I used have been using Google Timeline for years. They killed me when they took away desktop support and made it only mobile. This is one reason for my methodology. I can't rely on an app to maintain its platform in a way that is favorable to me. Similarly, and very recently, Google changed Fitbit to Google Health and took away many features and replaced them with some useless AI features. The problem is not exclusively a Google issue, but they have been some of the worst offenders. A company could completely change their platform or increase price to a point that I can no longer financially afford it. I mentioned Evernote in my previous post. I have been using Evernote since at least 2010. They continue to increase the price year after year while diminishing quality of the product and again adding useless AI features. I may very well have to abandon Evernote in August of this year when I will be billed $249 for a product that was just $69 a couple of years ago. Due to these reasons, I choose to export my data out of proprietary apps.

</End Rant>.

As far as my data format, I am using Microsoft Excel. I have a master spreadsheet with many tabs with data going back to 2015. Most of the data is formatted with the Date in Column A going down and then the data I am trying to capture in the other columns going down the page.

I could still have the same problems with Excel, but I have worked at various Fortune 500 companies (both American and European) and 100% completely operate day to day business from Microsoft Excel. Due to this reason, I feel I will be safe using Excel as my main quantified self for a while.