Yesterday, I completed my 2nd 5K running race of 2023. It was a road run and it was fun.
Stats from the race yesterday:
Chip time: 41:20 Position: 868 / 1384 Pace: 13:19 / mile Elevation gain: 15 ft Avg Power: 124 W
This was my 2nd race of 2023. I ran my first one in January. It was a trail run and it was tough. I was looking at my watch all the time to see how much farther I had to run. Every breath seemed tougher. That’s what I get for not training.
Stats from the Coyote Hills race in January:
Chip time: 53:13 Position: 220 / 289 Pace: 17:10 / mile Elevation gain: 437 ft Avg Power: 90 W
The Coyote Hills race was technically my 2nd race. I signed up for another race in Oct 2022, but I couldn’t attend it due to ill health.
I want to see how many miles I can cover this year. So far, I haven’t run much. In fact, I haven’t even trained for any of these races. It’s pretty clear that I need to put in more effort.
The last few months have been chaotic for me. They could’ve been better, but I managed to accidentally introduce confusion, making them chaotic.
I started way too many personal initiatives and ended up finishing none. These weren’t necessarily tech projects, just some personal initiatives around health, managing time, growth, etc. Not all of these initiatives were left unfinished due to my unwillingness to complete them. Some were interrupted by work-related stuff, health-related stuff, unexpected events, etc.
One major area that lacked progress is my blog. It’s funny really, ’cause I have around 30 drafts and none of them are even close to being published.
I just got back from a much needed break and I feel humbly motivated. During the break, I got a chance to calm down, take a step back and look at the whole picture to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it.
I won’t discuss the initiatives here except for the one about fixing my blog. I tried to transform my blog into something that it wasn’t and in hindsight, it’s clear that it was terrible idea. I haven’t paid much attention to it since a while now. I want to add more fresh content to my blog. I’m excited and feel motivated to move past this chaos.
My love for wearable tech started off in May 2012 with the launch of Nike+ Fuel Band. It was an amazing product. I absolutely loved everything about it. The design, the display, the battery, the style and of course, the UX.
The next year, Fitbit came up with a competing product – Fitbit Flex. So, obviously, I bought that too. I really liked it.
A year later, the company that I used to work at, gave all of its employees a brand new Fitbit Charge (the one without the heart-rate sensor), as a holiday gift. I used it for a few months and gave it away to a friend and bought myself the Fitbit Charge HR (the one with the heart-rate sensor). It felt amazing to be able to check my heart-rate without having to wear a chest band.
The next year, I bought Moov. I used it for a very brief period and lost interest in the product due to its minimal feature set. I switched back to using my Fitbit Charge HR.
Soon, Apple entered the game with the launch of the original Apple Watch. I didn’t really like it due to lack of any new features and the unreasonable price.
A couple of years later, in 2016, Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 2. It was water proof and had a built-in GPS. So, I pre-ordered it. The hardware design was fantastic. I loved it and wore it every single day. I used it for two full years.
Apple recently released the Apple Watch Series 4. I really liked the ECG feature and so, I got the new watch. So far, I like it.
A few months ago, a buddy of mine asked me what I use my smart watch for. It was surprising because I couldn’t think of anything other than “checking time”. After giving it a decent amount of thought, I came up with a list of things I typically use my Apple Watch for:
Check time (duh?)
Track my fitness
Keep track of meetings (calendar events)
Create and check reminders
Check notifications
Check Weather and weather conditions
Keep track of UVI & Air Quality (you need to keep track of these especially when you live in the Bay Area)
Check sports scores
Control music
Make payments at stores that support Apple Pay (especially at Gas Stations)
Ignore/Decline calls. I use my phone to answer calls.
Meditate with Breathe
I have seen some video reviews of the Samsung Gear S3 and it seems like a solid watch. There’s no way I am going to switch to it now, but, it’s good that Samsung is working hard to keep Apple on their toes. I would really like to see Google enter the competition with their own hardware.
Up until mid 2008, I had always been underweight. I used to be extremely lean and my focus back then was to gain weight. I wanted to look decent when I wore shirts and not look like someone hung a shirt on a coat hanger. To get a mental picture, I’m a little over 5’9” and weighed 120 lbs. With the focus to get bigger and look more muscular, I joined a gym. Every single day, besides the weekends, I put in my best effort and exercised sincerely. I knew I had to gain weight and so, I ate a lot of food. I didn’t really care about which foods to eat or if a particular food was healthy or not. My focus was purely on gaining weight and building muscle. Within 6 months, these changes started showing. I gained a decent amount of weight and by August 2009, I weighed 154 lbs. Mission accomplished.
Becoming Overweight
In the Summer of 2010, I decided to look for an internship to get some industry experience. However, I failed to find an internship and so, I spent the entire summer learning iOS application development and built an iOS app. I basically ended up all day staying home, watching football, learning iOS programming and doing nothing else. As a result, I gained a lot of weight due to my sedentary lifestyle. I ended up weighing 174 lbs by the end of that summer. That was the first time I became overweight. The ideal weight for a male of my height lies in the range of 125 lbs to 168 lbs.
Ever since that summer, I stopped caring about my health. Way too many things became higher priority. For a few years, I had “hit the gym regularly and stay healthy” as one of my New Year resolutions. I could never really do it as I hit the gym only a few times a year. I became really lazy. Fast forward to January 2018, I weighed 187 lbs.
Road to Improvement
Upon my wife’s recommendation (and enough motivation), I booked an appointment for my annual physical with my Doctor. On June 8th, as per my doctor’s suggestion, I started using MyFitnessPal and started keeping track of my weight using my Withings Smart Body Analyzer. I’ve used MyFitnessPal in the past, but, never consistently. This time, I knew I would use it religiously since my doctor suggested it. I have my Withings Smart Body Analyzer setup such that it pushes my weight data to MyFitnessPal every time I step on the scale. I cannot recommend this enough! This is such a useful feature.
Current State
As of September 13th, I weigh 165.8 lbs. That means, I’ve lost 21.2 lbs since January 1st and 18.5 lbs since June 8th, the date my doctor suggested that I get my shit together. :tada: This puts me back in the healthy weight range for my height and age. For the first time in a little over 8 years, I am in the healthy weight range.
Here’s an (updated 10/14/18) image showing where I currently stand on the BMI scale:
How Did I do it?
If you want to lose weight, you need to understand 2 things:
The science behind weight loss
How to keep yourself motivated and maintain consistency
The science behind weight loss
Weight loss ultimately boils down to simple science. At least for the most part.
Caloric Deficit leads to weight loss
You need to burn 3,500 calories in order to burn 1 pound of fat. What it means is that you lose 1 pound of fat over a period of 1 week, by consuming 500 fewer calories than your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), everyday.
500 cals (caloric deficit per day) x 7 (days of the week) = 3,500 cals (caloric deficit over a week) = 1 pound (weight lost by the end of the week).
Motivation and Consistency
There’s only so much understanding the science behind weight loss can do to your weight loss journey. Motivation is extremely important. Discipline and Consistency, even more. Staying motivated through out the period is really hard. The following helped me stay motivated throughout the process:
Not over-thinking about the process
Focussing on the result of no more than 1 week at a time
Being sincere and respecting the process, since, perspective drives performance
Every week, I’d check my weight and watching my weight drop really motivated me.
What’s next
I still need to lose some more weight. My goal weight is 163.2 lbs. Here’s a live tracker of the progress of my weight loss.
Update (10/14/18): I’ve hit my goal! and here’s a screenshot of the tracker.
Conclusion
There’re so many people out there, who’ve lost way more than 20 lbs of weight. I’ve always believed that if they can do it, I can too. Now you just need to believe that if I can do it, you sure can too!
I want to inspire at least a few people and help them achieve their weight loss goals.
