Tag Archives: health

Recalibration time

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I bought a new watch and when setting it up, I messed up. I got on the treadmill to do a walk and it asked me to calibrate by sharing the distance I walked. I took the distance in miles and converted it to kilometres. Except after recording 3 walks that have been recorded as runs it has become obvious to me that the calibration should have been in miles, and I never should have made the conversation.

What it comes down to is human error. 100% my fault, and the watch settings probably even asked for the distance in miles. But now I’ve got to figure out how to recalibrate my pace.

Something else I’m looking to recalibrate is my sleep patterns, my watch tells me that I don’t get a lot of deep sleep in a night. That’s part of the recalibrating, but hopefully the other part is the watch learning more about me. It suggests that I get 9 hours sleep to be fully recovered. I don’t remember the last decade where 9 hours sleep was something I could achieve… not just because I can’t schedule it, but because I simply can’t sleep that long. Any time I go past 8 hours I’m up whether I want to be or not.

All that said, the watch isn’t even a week old, so maybe I’ll just do a hard reset and start over. This time I’ll pay a little more attention when I’m calibrating it.

What I need

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I’m going to be joining a gym. I feel that I need to.

Sure I have a pretty good home gym. Sure I have been disciplined, working out on average 6 days a week. Sure it’s convenient not to leave the house early in the morning, and not add 25 minutes in my car getting to and from the gym. These are all wonderful perks of working out at home, and they’ve served me well for almost 7 years… but I need something else.

I need the camaraderie of working out with a friend.

I need a facility that will provide me with machines that I can work my legs without putting pressure on my back.

I need a place where I’m motivated to do more than my one-muscle-group workouts I’ve been doing at home.

I need to be around other people working hard to make themselves feel better.

But above all that, what I also need is to rebalance my morning routine to include longer workouts and travel time. I’ve loved my morning routine. I’ve developed great habits where my motivation to get going sits at zero and I still get everything done… it’s robotic, finish one task, immediately head to the next. Stacked habits that just happen once I wake up in the morning.

This morning I went to the gym for the first time and I’m writing this when I’m usually getting out of the shower to go to work. I’ll be arriving at work later than usual today, not late for work, just later than the norm. I also haven’t done my morning meditation, which will need to be moved to the evening. So already I see that things will need to change. And with that change, the autopilot gets turned off.

So, I need to create new systems, a different stacking of my habits, such that it gets re-automated. I’m sure I’ll have to pump up my motivation until that happens, but I’m so ready for this change.

This is what I need right now.

My new watch

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I bought myself a new watch. This is the first time that I’m going to be regularly wearing a watch in over 20 years. I chose the Garmin Venu 4, for a few reasons, mostly related to health tracking. I would have chosen the Apple Watch, but I want sleep data and my family members all have the Apple Watch and end up having to charge it every night. The Venu 4 has a 12 day battery life, and even if I use it on full brightness, I’m sure it will last well over a week, which is something I really wanted.

Right now I feel like I bought a race car and I’m only driving it in a school zone. This watch has so many capabilities that I’m not yet using. That’s because I got it late yesterday afternoon and I had a dinner function to go to, so I really haven’t had time to play with it and set up all the fancy bells and whistles it comes with.

So far what I like is that I can easily check my heart rate. This is an important feature for me because I think that I’m not getting myself into the heart rate zone that I want to be in when I’m on the treadmill. Now I’ll be able to monitor this. Also, the sleep data from last night suggests that most the night I was in a light sleep and I woke up quite a lot. This is something I really want to monitor. I already tend to get only 7 hours sleep a night, I’m hoping I can figure out a way to use that time more effectively, sleeping more deeply. Monitoring my sleep data will help me on that journey.

I’ll be learning more about how to fully take advantage of all the features this watch has over the next few workouts and evenings. My only disappointment so far is that it isn’t compatible with Apple Music, because Apple doesn’t share music with non-Apple products. But this isn’t a huge deal since I keep my phone with me anyway. Other than that, I’m pretty excited to see what this watch can do, and how I’m going to use it to track my health living journey.

Sick season

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One of my secretaries was sick all last week. Last night I had two messages from teachers telling me they’ll be away today. One of them doesn’t even work in my building on Mondays so it’s not like they caught it from each other. It’s that time of year when colds and flus start spreading like wildfires through students and staff.

I got the flu shot this weekend, I work out regularly, try to eat well, and I take vitamin and mineral supplements. I am careful about touching my face, and keeping my hands clean. I try to do everything I can to prevent myself from getting sick.

Does this mean I’ll escape the contagion? Only time will tell. You can do everything right and still get sick… but I know that I’ve significantly increased my odds of staying healthy, and if I can’t avoid the sick season altogether, hopefully I’ve at least reduced how hard it will hit me.

I’m just grateful that the people I work with stay home when they are sick. In my younger years I used to ‘soldier on’ and just come to work sick like I was doing everyone a favour. Now I realize that I’m not just helping myself recover, but I’m also helping prevent others from getting sick when I stay home. I appreciate everyone else doing the same. It makes the work environment better for everyone.

Mantra: Avoid injury

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I know that ‘Avoid injury’ is not a great mantra because it’s a negative… a thing to steer clear of, rather than to head towards… but ‘staying safe’, or ‘being smart’ don’t get the same message across. So, ‘avoid injury’ is the thing I’m going to focus on in the gym, and in general, as I continue my healthy living journey.

I’ve been on a health kick since the start of 2019. Back then, I was the heaviest I’ve ever been, about 6-8 pounds heavier than I am now, and my belly was where I wore most of my excess. I dropped just over 25 pounds in less than 2 years, then I started putting some muscle on. I’ve put back on almost 20 pounds of muscle, at least half of which came in the last year and a half.

The biggest difference in the last year and a half has been my protein intake. I started having a protein shake for breakfast 4 years ago, but then instead of seeing that as enough, I started thinking of that as an insufficient base, which I supplemented daily. For example, adding a protein bar at work, and/or 2 hard boiled eggs as an extra boost in addition to my regular meals, and eating more protein at meal time.

This extra protein plus my efforts in the gym have really paid off. So much so that my wardrobe has needed an upgrade. I’ve still got quite a few things that used to fit me loosely, which now look like something I’m trying to show off in. The long sleeve sports shirt I’m in now used to fit over top of another shirt, now it’s tight on me without an undershirt.

My new goal has been to add 6-8 more pounds, reaching my all time high again, but with a totally transformed physique. Oddly enough, I think I’m at my ideal weight now, but I still have back issues and I’m always one stupid move away from a debilitating injury that will prevent me from working out for an extended period. So I work on strengthening my back, stretching, massages, and hot tubs to keep injury at bay. Because it is likely that some time in the next 10-15 years I could have an injury keep we away from the gym, and I could lose muscle then… never to get it back since it gets harder every year to add more muscle. I figure if I’m 6-10 pounds heavier in the next year, a bad injury scenario would set me back to this weight, rather than something less than ideal.

Thus my mantra, ‘avoid injury’. I like to lift heavy weights, but going too heavy could mean an injury. I like to play sports, but going too hard in a game like basketball could put me out of commission. I often have an ache in my back that makes me have to take it easy, pushing hard while my back hurts is a really bad idea that could leave me injured and out of the gym and off the treadmill for weeks or even months. Avoid injury.

This summer I was visiting a friend and we scootered to a pizza place for dinner. We had a couple beers with dinner and I told him we were going to Uber back. I don’t scooter much, we didn’t have helmets or any protective gear, and I wasn’t going to chance scootering home with my poor tolerance to alcohol these days. 10 years ago, there’s no way I would have made this decision, I would have scootered back to his place, but the wisdom of ‘avoid injury’ was on my mind.

The biggest issue with this mantra isn’t that it’s negative, it’s that it always has to be playing in my head: When I wake up feeling sore before a morning workout; when I go to do something as simple as tossing a ball or frisbee around; when I’m on a ladder; when I want to add weight to a set I’m doing in the gym…

The name of the game from this age on is staying healthy, staying strong, and keeping injuries at bay. Ultimately, avoiding injury is now a lifelong goal. I’m simply not going to bounce back from an injury like I did 20+ years ago, and so my mantra will keep me feeling as young as possible for as long as possible. Avoid injury!

Bells and whistles

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My wife bought a scale that tells you more than your weight. It’s called Hume and it gives a whole bunch of data to you about your body. You stand on it barefoot and hold a handle with sensors on it and it gives you your fat percentage, lean mass, subcutaneous fat mass, body water percentage, heart rate, and more information.

It seems interesting and I’ll try it for a few more weeks, but I’m questioning the accuracy of it. First of all, it had my body fat percentage go up over 3% in 10 days. That seems odd. And it says my heart rate is higher than I think it is. Yesterday and today I canceled and redid my first weigh-in because it said my heart rate was above 80 yesterday and 78 today. I know that when I wake up in the morning my heart rate is not that high. My second reading today was 70. I then took out our blood pressure monitor which also measures my heart rate and it measured it at 57.

Sometimes I think too many features are put onto things and they come at a cost to other features. In this day and age, heart rate should be a low bar for accuracy. Being off about 20 beats a minute is not acceptable. I don’t want ‘all the bells and whistles’ if they are not hitting accurate notes.

Again, I’ll try this new toy out for a couple more weeks, but I have to say I’m disappointed so far, and if it can’t get heart rate and body fat percentage right, can you blame me for questioning the other results? And if I’m not accurately tracking these data points, why would I use the product, no matter what bells and whistles it claims to offer.

Daily Sunshine

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I have always loved sitting out in the early morning sun. I feel energized, like I’m recharging my batteries. No sun tan lotion, just the heat of the low sun, not yet too hot. Recently I’ve been listening to a 10 minute meditation as I soak in the rays.

Now I’m seeing more and more information coming out about how important sunshine is to our health. For me it was intuitive, I feel better when I get my dose. However a sample size of one anecdotal story isn’t evidence. But more and more research is coming out to suggest sunshine affects us far more than we thought, and while it’s unhealthy to sunburn, it’s also unhealthy to hide from the sun.

Spend some time each day in the sun… it’s good for.

The pump

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I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to work out with my buddy at his gym, at least once a week for the past few months. My home routine is usually just cardio, stretching, then working one muscle group to fatigue… sometimes with just 3 sets of one exercise, and sometimes 3 each of two exercises, but again using the same muscle group.

With my buddy, at his gym, we do a bit more than that. The last couple workouts have focused on shoulders with some biceps and triceps thrown in. Both of these last two workouts I’ve pushed hard enough that my shoulder muscles were jacked up. I could feel the pump long after the workout was done.

While I’m not used to this feeling, and it’s a bit uncomfortable, I have to say that I really enjoy it! It’s a feeling that says, ‘I’ve pushed myself’, and while it isn’t necessarily a pleasant feeling, it comes with a good sense of accomplishment. The pump is not something you feel unless you’ve really made your muscles work.

Now I need to figure out how to add more to my home program so that I get this feeling a bit more often. It’s hard when I’m on a time crunch, but I know I can do this more often, and I want to get to that ‘pumped up’ feeling on a regular basis.

As an aside, I’m blown away by how much creatine helps with reducing soreness. A workout like today’s would normally lead me to total soreness in a couple days that would make lifting my arms above my head feel like work. But since adding creatine to my daily health regimen, I’ve hardly ever had that level of soreness, even after hitting personal bests or working to a pump like I did today. And that makes the pump so much more enjoyable when I’m not going to feel like I’m physically paying for it two days from now.

Small reset

I had a bout of food poisoning that put me out of commission for a good day and a half. While I am not yet 100%, I can say that other than my tummy feeling a bit off, I am not feeling any other effects. I wrote yesterday that I was in recovery mode, I realize that I was also in a bit of a reset.

I was getting swallowed up in news about the Canadian election and the goings on of US politics as well. I was swept up in the news and for me that’s never good. In the last 48 hours I just didn’t have the mental capacity to care, and so I haven’t been paying attention.

Refreshing.

I need to remember to take these small breaks, small resets, where I let the crazy news headlines of the day slip by without putting mental energy into them. I don’t need to be dismissive, just less sensitized to things beyond my control. Because when I’m paying attention, I get deep in because even my social media algorithms get pulled towards news and so even my mental breaks end up being more of the same information.

Reset completed, I’m going to try to stay away a little longer… there will be enough craziness happening next week that I can let this week’s news go for a little while longer.

Recovery mode

Well, despite eating only things that many other people ate for takeout yesterday, I’m the one that got hit with food poisoning. I’m usually the one with be iron stomach. I didn’t get sick once in my 2 years living in China, and I was the bravest of everyone when it came to eating street food.

I broke my streak of not throwing up in over 25 years, not even when our whole family got the Norwalk Flu many years ago. I guess that’s a pretty good streak and it was indeed my turn.

Unfortunately tonight is the night that my niece is cooking for the family. She’s an incredible cook and I’ve been looking forward to this meal for days… and now I’ll barely be able to eat. Poor me! Again, it was my turn. I’m glad I was the only one that got hit, and hopefully I’ll be back at 100% tomorrow.