When Do We Have Enough Information?

Both of my grandmothers and one of my great-grandmothers lived into their late eighties and early nineties. As far as I know, none of them ever counted a carb, a gram of protein, or a footstep.

I’ve been thinking about that lately, usually while trying to figure out whether I’ve eaten enough protein, had enough water, or remembered whatever else I’m supposed to be paying attention to this week.

When did taking care of ourselves get so complicated?

A trip to the grocery store can feel like homework. I might go in knowing exactly what I want, but then there are six versions of it. One has more protein, another has less sugar, and a third has something added that I hadn’t realized I might need. Do I want the one I usually buy, or should I read all the labels again? Sometimes I stand in the dairy aisle longer than I’d like to admit, holding two containers of yogurt, trying to decide if the extra four grams of protein are worth switching brands.

Sometimes I just want to buy yogurt and go home.

And that’s before we even get to the health information — cholesterol levels, blood sugar, bone density, calcium scores. I’m genuinely grateful we have ways to learn what’s happening in our bodies. Modern medicine has given us tools our grandmothers never had, and I don’t take that for granted. But I also know how easily one number can send me down a path of looking for more information, which leads to another question, another article, another conversation, and somehow, an hour later, I’m further from a decision than when I started.

Recently, I spent a considerable amount of time researching a medication my cardiologist recommended. She’s someone I’ve chosen carefully whose credentials I respect, and whose judgment I sought out on purpose. She walked me through her reasoning, answered my questions thoughtfully, and explained why she believed this was the right next step for me. I left her office feeling good about the conversation.

And then I went home and started researching.

I asked more questions, read about alternatives, looked up studies, and had conversations with people I trusted. I circled back to my cardiologist with follow-up questions. She answered them patiently. Eventually, after all of that, I found myself back where I’d started — believing that the recommendation she’d given me was reasonable and that I should follow it.

Which left me wondering why I was still checking.

Here’s what I eventually had to admit to myself: I wasn’t still researching because I needed more information. I was still researching because I didn’t like the answer I already had.

That’s a meaningfully different problem.

My cardiologist had identified markers — not a condition, not a crisis, but indicators that suggested a potential for future issues. Her recommendation was based on getting ahead of something that might happen, not treating something that currently exists. And I kept bumping up against the same resistance: I don’t have a problem. I have the possibility of a future problem. Those feel very different to me.

The medical world calls this preventive care, and I understand the logic. Intervene early, reduce risk, stay ahead of what could become serious. It’s sound reasoning. But here’s how I experience it on my end: taking a medication feels like treatment. It feels like acknowledging a problem. And I don’t have a problem yet.

What I have are markers. Tendencies. A propensity, as my cardiologist put it, for something that hasn’t happened and may never happen.

I’ve sat with that word — propensity — more times than I can count. It means a natural inclination toward something. It doesn’t mean inevitability. It doesn’t mean the thing is coming regardless of what I do. It means the odds are tilted in a particular direction, and medicine has a tool that might tilt them back.

But I kept asking: how much am I willing to treat a future that hasn’t arrived yet?

I want to be clear that I’m not dismissing my cardiologist’s expertise, and I’m not suggesting that preventive care is misguided. For many people and many conditions, it’s genuinely the right call. But I also think there’s something worth naming here, something I don’t hear discussed very often: the emotional experience of being asked to treat a problem you can’t feel, for a future you can’t predict, with side effects that are very real in your present.

That’s not nothing. And pretending it’s irrational to struggle with it doesn’t help anyone make a better decision.

So, I kept researching. Not because I was confused about the facts, but because I was hoping, somewhere in one more article or one more conversation, to find the thing that would make me feel at peace with a choice I didn’t want to make. I was looking for permission to say no. Or evidence compelling enough to help me say yes without reservation.

What I found instead was that neither of those things was coming from the outside. The research had given me everything I needed to make a decision. What I was actually avoiding was the weight of making it.

I wonder how often we do that in other parts of our lives too. We know what we’d like to do, but we read one more book, ask one more person, or look for someone who can assure us we’re making the right choice. Then we encounter a different opinion and find ourselves reconsidering something we thought we’d already decided. Then we start over. Then we’re tired.

It gets exhausting.

And sometimes — if we’re being really honest — the continued research isn’t about finding better information. It’s about finding an exit from a decision we don’t want to own. We keep looking because we’re hoping someone or something will make the choice for us, or at least make it feel less like ours.

There’s also something strange about trying to understand our individual lives through so many general measurements. A score or a guideline can give us useful information, but it still has to be interpreted through the lens of who we actually are, what our bodies are actually doing, and what matters most in the life we’re actually living. A number is data. It isn’t a verdict.

I think about shoe sizes. I know my size, but I still try on the shoes. Sometimes they fit beautifully, but more often, than not, my foot swims in them, but the size down is too short. When that happens, I don’t stand in the store wondering what’s wrong with my foot. I don’t go home and research the average dimensions of a size eleven. I try another pair.

I’m not always that sensible when some other number doesn’t line up with what I expected. I can give a lab result or a guideline an enormous amount of authority before I’ve even figured out what it actually means for me specifically. And somewhere in that process, I hand over a surprising amount of my time and mental energy to a question that may or may not deserve it.

I’ve been working hard over the past couple of years on building habits that take care of my future self — the woman I intend to be at seventy-five and eighty-five, who still wants to travel, move her body, and show up fully for her life. I walk in the early mornings before the Arizona heat makes it impossible. I pay attention to protein and sleep and strength. I take this seriously, and I’m proud of that. But somewhere along the way, the information meant to support my health started requiring more of my attention than the actual living of my life. And that’s a trade-off worth examining.

I don’t know what my grandmothers would think about all the information available to us now. Their long lives don’t answer the specific questions I need to make about my own health — our circumstances are different, medicine has changed, and I’m grateful for what I have access to. But remembering them does make me pause. How much attention do I want to give to measuring my life? How much do I want available for actually enjoying it?

My grandmother, who made it to ninety-one, was still making pie from scratch well into her eighties. She wasn’t tracking macros. She was living. I’m not suggesting we ignore our health — I’m suggesting we notice when the pursuit of perfect information starts to cost us the very thing we’re trying to protect.

This connects to something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I step into this next season. I want to become a woman who is comfortable deciding when she has enough. Not a woman who settles for less than she deserves, or who makes careless decisions, or who dismisses expert guidance because it’s inconvenient. But a woman who can ask thoughtful questions, learn what she needs to learn, and then recognize when she’s circling the same question for the fourth time not because she needs more information, but because she’s reluctant to commit to a choice.

Those are two very different things. And learning to tell them apart is part of the work.

In my cardiologist situation, I eventually had to separate two questions that I’d been treating as one. The first was: do I have enough information to make this decision? The answer, honestly, was yes. I’d done thorough research, asked good questions, and understood the reasoning on both sides. The second question was harder: am I willing to make a decision I don’t love, about a future I can’t see, based on a risk I can’t feel? That question didn’t need more research. It needed me to decide what kind of relationship I want to have with uncertainty — and with my own body.

I can trust myself to choose professionals whose expertise I respect. I’ve done that with my cardiologist, with my coaches, with the people I’ve invited into my health and my business over the years. I can ask good questions and weigh the answers thoughtfully. I can make a decision with the information I have and revisit it if something meaningful changes. That’s not recklessness. That’s self-trust in action.

And yes, I can also buy the yogurt I like without conducting a full investigation in the dairy aisle.

There will always be more information available. There will always be another study, another opinion, another perspective that could theoretically change what I think I know. The question isn’t whether more information exists. The question is whether I need it before I can move forward — or whether I’m using the search for it to avoid the discomfort of simply deciding.

I’ve spent a good portion of my coaching career helping women untangle exactly this pattern. The endless research, the polling of friends and family, the reopening of decisions that were already made. It rarely comes from a lack of intelligence. It almost always comes from a lack of permission — permission to trust themselves, to be wrong sometimes, to make the best decision they can with what they have and then move forward without a guarantee.

So, I want to ask you something, and I’m asking myself right alongside you: is there a decision you keep reopening, even though you’ve already given it real, thoughtful consideration? Not a decision that genuinely needs more information — there are plenty of those, and they deserve the time. But one you’ve actually already made, that you keep pulling back out because something about committing to it feels uncomfortable?

And here’s the follow-up question worth exploring: are you still researching because you need more information, or because you already know what you think and you’re hoping something will change your mind — or make it easier to live with?

Those are different problems. And they deserve different responses.

I have a life I want to enjoy. A chorus to sing in, a husband to spend time with, a mother who lives with us and needs me present, a business I care about, mornings to walk through before the sun gets too high, and plans I haven’t made yet for things I haven’t tried yet. My attention is one of the most valuable things I have, and I’d like more of it back.

I’m learning that I don’t have to collect all the available information before I can move forward. I just have to trust myself enough to move.