Category: health

grab bag

OK, I haven’t written a blog post in a while, so this one is going to be a bit of a grab bag.

First, on the weight loss front, I’m down 15 pounds so far, over about eight weeks, so I’m losing almost two pounds a week. My plan was to shoot for one lb per week, so I’m doing fine on that. I’m also getting in maybe five or six hours of walking a week, which is pretty reasonable. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do when it gets too cold to walk outside though.

On the tech front, I picked up a new iPhone 5s a couple of weeks ago. My previous phone was an iPhone 4, so there’s a good bit of new stuff for me in the 5s, including Siri.

  • I’m finding that I’m not using Siri much, though it’s kind of fun and does seem to work well.
  • The fingerprint sensor works quite well, and I’m using that to unlock the phone most of the time now.
  • Overall, I’ve found that the speed of the phone is greatly improved over the iPhone 4, especially for certain things, like using the camera.
  • The battery life is pretty bad. I’m usually at 50% by the end of the day, and I really don’t think I do anything that crazy with it.
  • The iPhone 4, on Verizon was 3G. The 5s is LTE. I haven’t seen much of a difference in speed, in everyday use. But I haven’t really done much that would stress the network connection. In general, anything that relies on the internet connection over LTE has worked well.

I went to NYCC this year. I didn’t go to San Diego this year, nor did I go to any other conventions, so this was my one and only convention for the year. The con was very well managed, and very crowded. Getting in could take a while, but once you were in, it wasn’t that much of a hassle to move around. The exhibit hall was quite crowded, but navigable. There were a few interesting panels, but nothing quite like you get in San Diego. I bought only a handful of books, mostly discounted hardcovers and trade paperbacks. (I realized at one point that I still have stuff I bought at NYCC 2011 that I haven’t read yet.) I’m not sure if I’ll bother going next year. Maybe I’ll just go in for one day. It’s fun, but there’s not really enough interesting stuff to keep me occupied for all four days. (In fact, I wound up skipping Sunday and going to the Met and MoMA instead. The Magritte exhibit at MoMA is pretty good, by the way.)

losing it

I decided recently that I really need to lose some weight. So I started using Lose It about two weeks ago, to track my calories. I also bought (and read) their book. I’m not sure if my scale is accurate enough to say whether or not I’ve really lost any weight yet, but, if it is, then I’ve lost a couple of pounds. My goal is one pound a week, until I’ve lost 30 pounds, so, if that works, I should hit my goal in mid-March 2014. Assuming that Lose It is giving me correct numbers about my calorie budget, then I don’t think I’ll have a huge problem sticking with the program. I’ve stayed within my calorie budget every day so far, though I’ve had to make some guesses about calories recently, so I don’t know if I’ve *really* stayed within the budget.

The last several days have been a bit rough.  I went out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday, and had a meatball parm sandwich, which was definitely a bad idea. Then, we had a department lunch on Thursday at an Italian restaurant. We had three entree choices, and I ordered the one that seemed likely to have the fewest calories, but it probably still had more calories than I wanted. Then, on Friday, we had a department barbeque, which I just skipped out on. But another friend wanted to go out for dinner Friday night, so I did that, and had a small steak. Saturday was fine; I only ate good stuff that I knew the calorie count on. But today, I went downhill a bit again, since I went out to brunch with my brother (banana pancakes), then picked up a couple of empanadas at the Somerville Jazz Festival this afternoon. (They were from a restaurant here on Main St that makes *great* empanadas!) If I guessed right on calorie counts, then I’m still within my budget. But who knows, really?

I should be able to do reasonably well in this coming week. We’ve got no work events that should cause me to deviate from eating relatively low-calorie lunches. I don’t have any particular plans for going out to dinner, but I probably will once or twice. I’ll just have to be careful.

On the exercise front, I’m just trying to get in a lot of walking. The weather has been pretty good, so it hasn’t been a problem to do a fair amount of walking. I’m worried about keeping that up once it gets cold out though. I’ve been looking around at cheap treadmills that would fit in my apartment, or a local gym that’s got treadmills. (We have a gym at work, but I’m not that enthusiastic about it, for several reasons.) The treadmill thing is actually turning into a challenge. I haven’t found a local store that actually carries manual treadmills, which is what I’d need to buy if I want a reasonably-priced, compact, folding, model. I can just order one from Amazon, but I’d really like to check one out first. And, on the gym front, there’s a new fitness place opening on Main St, but they only have exercise bikes, no treadmills. I also tried the local YMCA, but I had trouble finding anyone to talk to there, so I have no idea if they have treadmills or not. I may have to try calling them during the week.

I don’t want to turn my blog into a diet and fitness blog, but I thought there would be some value in writing this up, for future reference. If I meet my goal in March, then I can look back and see where I started. And, if I don’t, maybe I can look back and figure out what I did wrong!

Allergies – still a big problem


2010-04-07_1120-allergies
Originally uploaded by andyhuey

Here’s a screenshot of the allergy alert for Somerville for the next few days. Yep, still a problem. I’m taking generic Zyrtec now, which seems to be working a bit better than the generic Claritin was, but it’s still not quite got me back to normal.

Allergies

Happy Easter.  My allergies have been bothering me a lot lately.  (At least I think it’s allergies.)  I took a generic Claritin last night before bed, but it really didn’t help much.  This morning, I ran out to Walgreen’s and picked up some generic Zyrtec (Wal-Zyr).  I just took one, and I sure hope it works.

For Many Employees, A Dream Job Is One That Isn’t a Nightmare

And one more WSJ article! This ties into the stress factor mentioned in my last post. And here’s an article on burnout from CNET. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about job-related stress, and what I can do to minimize the amount of stress, both for myself and for the people who report to me. I really think I *do* like my job, though it’s challenging at times. I do get stressed out a lot. I’ve found that a quick afternoon trip to Starbucks helps out, if I’m feeling weird. And I try to shift gears between different projects often, if one particular thing is driving me nuts. And of course I try to remember the advice of people like David Allen and Randy Pausch, in terms of keeping things in perspective and keeping things organized.

read more | digg story

Gut Check: Why Doctors Say Not All Fat Is Created Equal

Okay, here’s another WSJ article. This article, on risks associated with “beer bellies,” plus sites like this one on diabetes, are motivating me to try and lose some weight. I’ve been going out for walks pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks. And I’ve been trying to keep to a (somewhat) reasonable and healthy diet. The WSJ article mentions that stress comes into play here, too. I don’t know if there’s much I can do about that, though, especially if I’m going to be drinking less beer!

read more | digg story

Exercise

It was such a nice day, I went out for a long walk after dinner tonight. I walked for about an hour. That’s probably the most exercise I’ve gotten since Wondercon in February. I’ve got to try to keep this up. If the weather cooperates, maybe I can get in the habit of doing this every day or so.