Half a year ago, I let you all know that I am suffering from liver disease and doing what I can to reverse it.
I’ve been trying out different habits, exercises, and eating patterns and posting on how I’m progressing every six weeks.
Goal update
Weight at start: 105kg / 47.5% fat
Eight weeks ago: 90kg / 31.0% fat
Current weight: 90kg / 32.4% fat
Goal weight: 74kg (according to BMI) or 20% body fat.
Habits report
| Habit | Measure | Kept to it? |
|---|---|---|
| I am a healthier living person | Aim to lose 3kg every six weeks | No weight loss |
| I am a keen exerciser | I have 30 minutes of exercise every day | 2 weeks out of 6 |
| I’m an occasional drinker | Have at most one night a week with alcohol consumption | 2 weeks out of 6 |
Thoughts on the last six weeks
Well, this all started poorly.
If you look closely at the chart, you’ll see there were four weeks of excess, followed by two weeks of good progress. This experience had made me think back to when I first started this adventure. It took weeks to get each of my habits to become, well, habitual. With lockdown starting, all my habits disappeared along with my regular schedule. As much as I wanted to have a good week, my willpower would run out around Wednesday or Thursday. It took four weeks to push those habits back into being again.
Around this time, I came across this quote:
A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought - they must be earned. @Naval
It came at the right time. Thirty minutes of vigorous daily exercise is as close to a panacea as you will find in life. We can’t buy health, mindfulness or a loving household; we must work at these things. It’s not good enough to be killing things at work if we are neglecting these other three areas of our life.
I was harsh on myself for the first four weeks, but things have been good since then, I suppose I should see even keeping the same weight as a victory given the circumstances.
Next six weeks
It requires less willpower to do the right things again thankfully, so no new habits, just keeping up with the schedule.
For exercise, it will be three runs a week and long walks on the other days. I’m trying to hit 10k steps every day during lockdown from now on.
It was easy to fall back into the habit of weekday drinking in the evenings; my extra push during this period is only to drink every second weekend.
Good things in this period
- 5k time down to 26m:53s from 27m:37s.
- I ran a remote workshop for the Glasgow Javascript meetup on promises. It was a fun challenge to convert an in-person format into an online one. I’m happy with the result
I just ran my first ever remote workshop (https://t.co/cjzdZgxYEn)
— Joe Wright (@joe_jag) April 23, 2020
Some thoughts:
* Zoom polls help you check for consensus. Breakout rooms are a killer feature
* It's really hard to know if people are struggling or having fun when you can't see them
* It feels weird just now
- After getting 25kg of flour and loads of yeast: I experimented with baking many different breads: pizza, chapati, tortilla, pitta and white loaf. I still can’t do a decent bread roll, thats the next challenge. I even tried out a Romanian sweet bread:
It’s here! 25Kg of flour https://t.co/xhjpyTv9XX pic.twitter.com/uIShweUIcV
— Joe Wright (@joe_jag) April 4, 2020
Yeast! @robblockwood pic.twitter.com/IM1Bl7ze6V
— Joe Wright (@joe_jag) April 6, 2020
I made the traditional Romanian dessert of Cozonac (kinda like Nutella in Brioche)
— Joe Wright (@joe_jag) April 21, 2020
h/t @MariusCiocanel @robblockwood @tooky @branaby pic.twitter.com/qxcNYIg17E
Best Tweets
This is how @alisonthewliss let’s me know she’s in a meeting pic.twitter.com/cEt6qctGzt
— Joe Wright (@joe_jag) May 6, 2020
Knowing the usual gotchas while parsing CSV files has been more useful than knowing about Big O notation so far in my software development career
— Joe Wright (@joe_jag) May 5, 2020
See you, hopefully outside, around the 21st of June 2020.