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Could Vaping be my Resolution for 2018?

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I’ve been a smoker for years. Many years.

Over the past year I’ve cut down quite a bit. Since I moved into my new house I haven’t been smoking inside at all. It’s a smoke free zone. I still smoke of course, but I tend to smoke more when I’m “out and about” than I do when I’m at home. Of course, admittedly, I travel quite a lot!

As I noted in the blog post linked to above, I’m not likely to go “cold turkey” overnight. However I know I need to cut down and move myself towards the magical zero. Several of my friends have switched to vaping over the last couple of years and while I’ve toyed with it in the past I never really adopted it.

Yesterday I picked up a new vaping kit and I plan to switch over to using it little by little over the next few weeks. The guy in the eSmoke Store in Midleton was very helpful and helped me to pick out an electronic cigarette kit that I’d be happy with. One of the reasons why I hadn’t bought a new vaping kit up until yesterday was that I didn’t have a clue about all the different models and types that are now available. (I’ve had a basic pen style kit for a few years, though I rarely use it since I keep misplacing it)

I ended up opting for an “arc slim kit” which has a couple of features I quite like:

  • long battery life
  • variable intensity (3 levels)
  • battery indicator (I hate guessing about how much is left in a battery)
  • variable airflow

Of course I might end up getting frustrated with vaping again and switching back to normal cigarettes, but I’m going to give it a try (again).

Yes I know that there are plenty of studies suggesting that vaping isn’t 100% healthy etc., but I’m fairly confident that vaping is preferable to smoking normal cigarettes.

 

 

Weight Loss Progress Update

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I haven’t posted an update on my progress for a while.

So here it is.

Total weight lost to date: 13.1 kg. That’s 28.88 lb or 2.06 stone.

I’ve still got a long way to go.

The graph I pulled from MyFitnessPal shows how much my weight oscillates over time:

weight loss graph november 2017

The first section of the graph is from when I wasn’t actually weighing myself, so it’s flat.

Overall I feel pretty good and I’m doing my best to sleep more.

I’m definitely going to bed earlier and getting up earlier consistently, which is probably a good thing.

I have misbehaved a small bit over the last month or so, but not dramatically ie. I haven’t fallen off the wagon completely.

One noticeable and tangible upside to this weight loss is that I have had fewer issues with the seatbelts on planes in the last month! (It’s the little things!)

Basic Equipment for Dieting and Weight Loss

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Invest in your health Healthy lifestyle concept with diet and fitness Get fit in 2017 fitness equipment and healthy food

Dieting isn’t just about what you eat, but also about your overall lifestyle. I’ll be the first one to admit that there are a number of aspects of my own lifestyle that are detrimental to my weight. I know that I need to sleep more (on average) and that I need to get more exercise.

So when you’re talking about equipment for dieting it’s not just about tracking what you eat, but also tracking other aspects of your life, as well as cooking decent wholesome food.

It’s fairly common these days to see people using activity trackers like the Fitbit. They’re not expensive especially when you realise that investing a little in your personal wellbeing is usually a lot cheaper than a trip to the doctor! I obviously track my movement with the Fitbit, but the other thing that I really keep a close eye on is my sleep. I’m trying to get a bit more sleep every night as I know that lack of sleep has a negative impact on weight loss as you tend to eat badly when you’re tired plus sleep is needed to keep your body healthy.

As I’ve mentioned before, I use MyFitnessPal as my “hub”. It’s not the only show in town, but it works well for my purposes. The key thing is you’ll need something to track your macros as accurately as possible. Using an app like MyFitnessPal, LoseIt or any of the other popular apps and services on the market means that you can leverage their extensive databases of food. You’ll probably find that none of them are 100% accurate and that sometimes you’ll need to choose a “generic” option, but as long as you track your intake fairly closely you should be fine.

A lot of my friends who have lost weight recommend taking a few photos of yourself at various stages of your diet, so that you can have a visual record of your progress. Not essential obviously, but it can help motivate you. You won’t need anything more complicated than your mobile phone for that one. I’ve taken a couple of shots of myself and I plan to take a photo about once every week or two as I go along. It’ll be interesting to see whether the changes are noticeable or not.

But what about actual equipment?

You’ll need a weighing scales. Personally I like the Withings, as it’s able to automatically record my weight and a few other metrics directly to MyFitnessPal. If you don’t feel like forking out for a wireless weighing scales you don’t have to. Just make sure you’ve got an accurate scales with reasonable graduations so you can easily see your progress and keep track of it. Personally I like digital scales as there’s zero ambiguity about what they’ve captured.

Tip: make sure that the scales is on an even surface or you can easily end up with inaccurate readings.

If you’re serious about going on a diet you’ll need to stop eating processed foods and start cooking. You don’t need to be a Jamie Oliver in the kitchen to cook for yourself. A lot of cooking comes from the quality of the ingredients you use and you’ll also find that cooking and preparing your own food works out a lot cheaper than eating out or buying prepared foods. How far you want to take it will depend on your confidence in the kitchen and how much time you want to spend on it. Personally I find cooking to be quite calming 🙂

However, no matter how good or bad a cook you are you will need one key piece of equipment – a kitchen scales. I’d recommend a digital one, but any scales that can clearly show you grams and goes up as far a kg or two should be fine. I’m currently using a Salter electronic scales that I picked up for about €10. It works fine and doesn’t take up much space when it’s not in use (though that’s rare!)

Salter electronic kitchen scales with digital display

As for the rest of your kitchen equipment – that’ll be up to you and how much you want to spend on it and what kind of food you like cooking. You will need things like a decent measuring jug and to preserve your sanity measuring spoons and cups. A lot of recipes, particularly American ones, refer to “cups” or “1/2 cups” of various ingredients and unless you want to spend your life calculating what those measurements mean in grams etc., the measuring spoons and cups will save you a lot of time and frustration.

A few items I find that make things easier or better:

  • a food processor – very handy for making quick work of pancake batter or making sauces and many other things.
  • nutribullet – if you want to make smoothies the nutribullet is king

Apart from the above the most important things you’ll need are patience and a strong will.

 

Going Low Carb With the Keto Diet

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Notepad with handwriting title low carb diet - the keto diet is low carb

For the last week or so I’ve been avoiding carbs. When I shop I read every label carefully to see how many grams of carbs there are per 100g or per portion.

It’s a little bit annoying, but I am slowly getting used to it.

Why am I suddenly so fixated with carbs?

After trying a variety of other diets over the last few years and failing to make a lot of progress I’ve decided to try out the ketogenic (keto) diet, which is basically low carb with high fat (LCHF), but with the emphasis on the low carbs and not on upping the proteins. There’s a fairly good explanation of the differences here.

Several of my staff have been on some variant of keto diet for the last few months and from what they’re saying and what I’m seeing it’s working pretty well.

For me it’s still a little early to draw any conclusions. Over the years I’ve tried a variety of different diet types, but I always ran into issues or simply fell off the wagon..

Have I lost weight?

Yes, but my weight goes up and down quite a bit. I’ve lost nearly 3kg in the last couple of weeks, which is a positive.

weight loss progress since I started the low carb keto diet

I’m not sure how successful I am “going keto”, though I have been doing my best to keep my carb intake low.

I have reduced my carb intake quite a bit. Whether I’ve got it low enough to be considered “keto” or not is hard to say. However if the “average” intake is between 225g and 325g of carbohydrates I’m now aiming for about 30g a day.

In practical terms that means I have to avoid bread, pasta, potatoes and rice, as well as a load of other things. That can be more than a little annoying when you’re trying to cook or eat out.

You’re encouraged to eat fat, which seems a little counterintuitive. However sautéd mushrooms are really tasty, so I can’t complain 🙂

Cooking mushrooms in an iron skillet. Mushrooms are low carb and sauteing them in butter is compatible with the keto diet

 

At the moment I’m doing my best to keep within the daily limits I’ve set:

  • 65% fat
  • 30% protein
  • 5% carbohydrates

What that breaks down to in “real money” is keeping my carbs below 30g per day, which is pretty low. Basically a couple of slices of bread would have enough carbs to hit your daily limit!

So what can you eat?

  • Eggs
  • salad (just avoid root vegetables)
  • bacon
  • fish (I’m getting quite bored with tuna at this stage, though I still do like it!)
  • cheese (full fat)
  • chicken
  • beef
  • pork

The list of things you can’t eat, or drink, is quite long. No bread, pasta, pizza, breakfast cereal, toast, tacos or anything else that has a high carb count. Eating out is “fun”, unless you’re in a steakhouse or seafood restaurant.

I love beer, but on this keto diet I cannot touch the stuff. This makes me sad. Very sad.

So for the last week or so I’ve been able to drink wine and whiskey, so most of the time I’ve stuck to drinking water or possibly herbal tea.

I’ve decided that I’ll stick with it for a month. If I feel after a month that it’s working for me ie. I’m losing weight and I’m not totally miserable, then I’ll stick with it.

Weight Loss Realisations of the Morbidly Obese

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Guest post by Jason.

I have never liked the phrase “Morbidly Obese”. It sounded so dramatic a diagnosis from a white coated stranger with a body mass index calculator. Obesity comes with a large disclaimer of a future of complications with high cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes to name a few.

Lifetime of Realisations

I’m a relatively young guy who is just about to enter his thirties. I haven’t yet developed any of the above conditions. Yet my twenties has taken its toll on my young body. Apart from my BMI that is off the richter scale; I’ve developed problems with my back in the form of two prolapsed disks as well as sleep apnoea.

English: The graph shows the correlation betwe...

The graph shows the correlation between body mass index (BMI) and percent body fat (%BF)..

The only cure to my sleep apnoea is CPAP therapy that feels like trying to sleep with a bicycle pump blowing up your nostrils and significant weight loss. The back problems have a similar cure combined with strengthening core mussels and weight loss. I have to loose over 7 stone+ to get me out of the obesity range.

Turning Point

My first child was born this year and it forced me to reflect on my lifestyle choices. It was a bit of a turning point for me. I was concerned that I might not be physically able to look after him in the future if I continued on my current downward heath trajectory. So I decided to tackle the problem head on.

I’ve taken part in many weight loss regimens in the past. I’ve tried Weight Watchers, Atkins and Motivation weight management. With mixed success, loosing a few stone and then putting it all back on over the following years.

About three weeks ago I signed up for Slimming World and I’ve attended two out of three weigh in meetings. The meetings provide a support group, with a weight in and then a chat from the groups coordinator. I lost 5 pound and put one back on but I’m going to stick with the plan as some of the group have already lost 6 stone+.

To be continued ..

Standing Desk Time

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Standing desks and other types of desks that encourage office workers to be that bit more active during their day are becoming more and more popular. On a recent trip to Los Angeles I found that quite a few of my friends had switched to either standing desks or ones that could be switched between standing and sitting depending on the user’s mood / energy.

I’d been thinking about getting one for some time, as I was very conscious of how long I’m spending in the one place .. sitting. It’s not good.

So I ordered a Varidesk

varidesk blacknight office

I probably need to take better photos of it! Essentially it’s a monitor stand that sits on your desk which is big enough to take my 27″ monitor, keyboard, mouse and other bits and pieces. The stand can be adjusted quickly and quite easily to allow for either a sitting position or a standing one.

Conn, who works on technology.ie with me, did a video review which might explain it a little better:

 

I’ve only been using my Varidesk for about a week, so I haven’t reached any firm conclusions as yet ..

What I have noticed so far is that I enjoy standing at the desk and only sit for a fraction of the working day. The downside of this, however, is that my legs are quite tired, as I’m not used to spending that much time on my feet. However that will pass, as I become used to it.

Hopefully this will help – other friends have reported feeling a lot better once they’ve been using a standing desk for a few weeks.

 

Tracking Coffee Consumption With Up Coffee

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I love coffee. However I’m also conscious that I probably drink a bit too much.

But how much coffee and caffeine am I consuming every day? What kind of impact does it have on me?

While the new app from Jawbone “UP Coffee” might not be able to able to answer these questions with 100% accuracy, it does a pretty good job of trying to.

The app is pretty simple.

You log the coffees and other caffeine beverages that you consume throughout the day (including the time you drank them) and the app calculates how much caffeine is in your system and how soon you’ll be able to sleep:
upcoffee-logging-screen

So after two cups of coffee I should be able to sleep again after 4pm.

up-coffee-overview-image

The app can hook into your Jawbone UP, if you have one, and if you tie the two together you should be able to access more data about things like your sleep quality. As I’m a Fitbit user I can’t take advantage of those options, but I can still use it to track coffee consumption over time and compare my habits to those of other users.

Of course the problem with this app and most other apps that track food etc., is that you have to remember to log what you consume. Sure, you can go back and add things “after the fact”, but you still need to do it.

The app’s a nice idea and if I was seriously concerned about my coffee consumption or suffered from insomnia I might use it more.. As it is it’s a bit of a fun gimmick.

You can grab the app via the Apple app store.

 

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