Aedificamus: Pushing Steel and Tereré: #HealthyTech30 Day Three

Day three. Let's do this :)!!!

This is another post in my Aedificamus health and fitness series and specifically for Saron Yitbarek's #HealthyTech30 challenge. Today I will be showing what may be a blast from the past and another way to consume yerba mate. Yesterday it was the hot and traditional approach. Today will be a colder but still somewhat traditional approach :).

Exercise: Let's Push Some Steel

I'm curious if anyone out there knows what these are ;).

If you are my age or thereabouts, my guess is that you have come across these a time or two in your lives. If you are sitting there thinking "you have got to be kidding, you actually have a BULLWORKER?!" my answer is "yes, and not just one, I have two of them!"

I owned one of these when I was a teenager and I used it for conditioning when I was on my high school's track team. Years later, when I was thinking about having an easy to use at home exercise apparatus I thought, I wonder if they are still around or if I could buy a used one somewhere. Turns out they are indeed still around and thus I purchased two of them, a classic bullworker (the bigger one) as well as a smaller model called a Steel Bow.

OK, for those wondering, a Bullworker is basically a compression spring between two sleeves, with a pair of handles, one on each end and a pair of cables connected to the handles. The goal is to compress the spring either by pushing the handles or pulling on the cables. I also have a set of extension straps that allow me to do broader range movements and attach it to a door. The smaller Steel Bow model also comes apart easily and allows the user to put in one of three spring tensions (light, medium, heavy).

Today I focused on abdominals, lower back, and shoulders. Whee!!!

These devices work on the concept of isometrics, where you contract your muscles and hold them in that flexed position for an extended period, as well as a progressive resistance push. Some movements you will be able to cover a lot of range, others you will feel like you are barely moving the device at all. If you are putting pressure and able to hold it, you are getting the benefits. Point being, if you go to Goodwill you may be able to find one of these. For compact, at-home exercise equipment, this is actually pretty cool.

Food: Yerba Mate: Tereré

Thicker cut tereré leaf with a typical mate gourd
(made from calabash) and a bomba for drinking. 

Yesterday I told you all about how I've grown to love chimarrão, a variation of yerba mate that is popular in southern Brazil. It's a preparation that is, IMO, best enjoyed hot. However, I hear some of you say, what if I prefer it cold? Does it work for that too? It can be but if you like your mate cold, there's another preparation that is popular in Brazil and several other South American countries, particularly Argentina, and that's what I'll be telling you about today, tereré.

First, tereré has a different flavor profile altogether compared to chimarrão. The leaves are dried using hot air and smoke from a fire, so they have a distinctive smoky flavor to them. Additionally, the leaves are thicker, so you can prepare tereré right in a calabash gourd or you can also prepare it and drink it straight from a canning jar (granted, the second way is a bit less elegant but still works.

Traditional prep method first. This is a mate gourd and a bomba that are both well suited for drinking tereré. Preparation is simple, take about half a cup of tereré leaves and put them into the gourd. take cold water or ice water and pour it into the gourd, up to the brim. Let steep for about 10 to 15 minutes. From there, place the bomba into the gourd and drink. The bomba filters out the thicker leaves.

If you'd like to do this without having a fancy gourd and bomba, here's my other method. Again, Brazilian and South American tereré fans, my apologies if this is borderline blasphemy but hey, it works :).

1. Take a canning jar and fill it halfway with ice.
2. Put 1/2 a cup of tereré leaf into the jar.
3. Fill the jar with cold water.
4. Close the jar and shake.
5. Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Use a tea strainer and pour off the liquid into a cup.
7. Add more cold water to the jar and keep refilling.

After multiple refills, you will reach a dilution point but it will take a while.

It is also popular to punch up tereré by adding citrus juices (lime, lemon, orange, grapefruit) or pineapple juice but it is also very nice all by itself.

How healthy these are is open to interpretation but if you are someone who actively consumes soda or other beverages throughout the day, consider switching to yerba mate and see what you think. Hot or cold, I doth fully dig it :).

Aedificamus: Yoga and Chimarrão: #HealthyTech30 Day Two

I think I'm going to enjoy this feature :).

At this point, in case the hashtag picks up some new viewers, and if current viewers are wondering about the hashtag, I should probably explain for people who might be curious:

- "Aedificamus" is Latin and it (somewhat) means "building through practice". Latin aficionados will probably take exception to that but it's how I'm using it, so deal ;)!!! It is a tag and post title marker that I use here on TESTHEAD any time I talk about health or fitness.

#HealthyTech30 is an initiative that Saron Yitbarek mentioned on Twitter with the net goal that tech people like me get up and do something healthy for 15 minutes, at least, and then eat or drink something healthy and share it. If that's not screaming for blog post series, I don't know what is. Even if it isn't, I thank you all for indulging me ;).

OK, let's get to the exercise portion first.

Exercise: Fightmaster Yoga on YouTube

First off, I think anyone can benefit from doing a regular Yoga practice. Second, I particularly like Lesley Fightmaster because, though she is a good instructor, she doesn't present herself as polished or perfect. She has a laugh when her cat interrupts or people stop to watch what she is doing and that is just so human, endearing, and wonderful.

For those who want to try out her approach, she has a 30 Day Yoga for Beginners course that is terrific. I did the whole thing and yes, I would recommend. I'm currently going through her Playlist of 20 Minute workouts (because there is a lot of them and I find that length to be about perfect for me).

This is the one I did today.



Note: I have this playlist set to shuffle just to make it interesting, so I never quite know what I will end up with. You are welcome to play along with me or you can start at the beginning and work through in sequential order.

Food: Yerba Mate: Chimarrão

I hadn't consumed much Yerba Mate before my daughter moved to Brazil to serve her mission. A number of her companions are from the southern part of the country (Porto Alegre area), and they turned her on to "chimarrão" which depending on where you are is a blanket term for mate or this particular style of preparation.  She, in turn, turned me on to it and it has fast become one of my favorite beverages.

This is a unique drink with some technique and ceremony behind it. It took me a while to learn how to prepare it properly in the traditional style using a "cuia" (the gourd it is served in) and a bomba (a straw with a filter at the bottom).

Cuia and bomba. Image courtesy of Amazon.com

For those interested, I've included some pictures and an explanation of two ways to prepare chimarrão. The first is the traditional way with a cuia and bomba, the second way is with a French press.

Disclaimer: I am not pretending I know how to do this "right", just that this is the way that was communicated to me and it seems to work effectively. Also, I'm sure the French press method will be seen as borderline heresy to some. Your mileage will certainly vary :).

Traditional

For me, the traditional way is the most enjoyable because there's a set up that just looks neat and is fun to go through. First, you need a mate gourd or "cuia" that has a wide mouth and that tapers down to a more narrow neck before opening up to a larger bowl underneath. This taper is important for this preparation as I have discovered. If you have a more circular gourd, this process doesn't work quite as well.

The second item you will need is a bomba and the best way to describe this is it is a metal straw that has a strainer on the bottom to keep out larger mate leaf material. To finish the drink, you need chimarrão style mate leaf (chimarrão is a finely ground powder, I should add, though there are larger pieces of material included, at least in the kind I use).

We will also need hot water. That's it :).

First, take about half a cup of dry chimarrão and place it in the cuia. Put your hand over the end, turn the cuia upside-down and shake hard. This will compact the chimarrão mate leaf material towards the top of the cuia. This is important as the next step will help to hold it in place.

Next, take some water (about 1/3 - 1/2 a cup) and pour it into the cuia, then set it on its side, packed mate side down, so that the water will seep into the packed material. This will make a sort of "mate clay" that will hold together on the side of the cup. Take the bomba and use the wide end at the bottom to push the packed mate leaf to the side. This will make it so that the leaf stays compressed and provide a cavity so that water that you pour in later will not get "silted up" with fine ground mate leaf.

Then take hot water and pour it into the cavity. Let the cuia sit upright for a few minutes as the mate steeps. If you have done this right, you will be able to drink from the bomba and pull in the liquid mate without any of the gritty leaf material.

I love my daughter's description of the flavor of chimarrão. She says, "it's so clean and refreshing. It's like you are drinking a tree!" There is a definite leafy and earthy quality to it. Once you finish the liquid in the cup, just add more hot water. Keep refilling as often as desired. A cup's worth of packed chimarrão should last a person all day, though at some point the "pack" will start to break down and collapse back into the cuia. From experience, I will say it will take quite a while before that happens :).


French press

For those that don't want to go the traditional route (though seriously, I suggest you try it, it is so cool when you get the process down :) ), you can also use a French press the same way that it is used for preparing coffee (or similarly at least).

With a French press, the first step is to drop in about a 1/2 cup of chimarrão mate leaf. Add about a cup of hot water and stir. let sit for a couple of minutes. Add near-boiling hot water to the fill line and then give the contents anther stir. Take the top of the French press and put over the top to conserve heat. Let the mixture sit for five minutes.

Next, after letting the mate steep and settle, push the plunger on the French press and separate the leaf material from the liquid. The push-down should be fairly easy. If you feel much resistance before it reaches the bottom, wait several seconds to allow the contents to settle and push the plunger again.

If you will be pouring these into a cup to drink immediately, I suggest using a tea strainer to decant the liquid (it will stop the larger items but the really fine-grained chimarrão will pass through). From there, drink as you wish :).

I should also add that the French press method will also yield a strong enough liquid that you can keep adding hot water, stirring and repeating the pressing process all day if you wish. At some point, you will reach a maximum dilution but it will take a while, I can assure you :).

Pay Attention to Your Team: A Tester Invades Philmont

One of the factors that I had to deal with during our Philmont expedition was paying attention to the health of the participants. One of the more challenging issues, and something many of us were not used to dealing with, was altitude sickness. In a general sense, altitude sickness is the effect on the body of a lack of oxygen at high elevations, and is usually felt by people who have not had a chance to acclimatize to a higher elevation environment. Simple symptoms had to do with exhaustion, hyperventilation, and an overall feeling of nausea. In this environment, we had to weigh how long it would take us to get from point A to point B, but at the same time, monitoring what could be developing health problems that, left untreated, could become serious.

One of the most disheartening things is to watch someone physically suffering through a hike. The smile leaves their faces, there's a grim look to them, similar to the "thousand yard stare" that was often used to describe soldiers, and on occasion, listening to boys coming into camp literally breaking down from exhaustion (in some cases rendering them to the point of tears). We had practiced backpacking scenarios for months, and we had gone through numerous terrain variations as well as carrying heavy loads on these practice runs. We felt sure we had met the rigors required, but when you live at sea level, and the highest elevation in the vicinity is just a little over 3,000 feet, there's just no way of preparing for days at 10,000 and 12,000 feet without going to those elevations and hanging out for a few weeks. We didn't have that luxury, and at certain times, we paid for that.

Be Alert and Attentive to Your Team

Each morning, I would do a simple ritual with all of the participants. While I would not dictate the activities of the trek itself, I did have authority over the safety and health of the expedition, so every morning I ensured that every participant was leaving camp with a liter of water for every hour we anticipated being on the trail (meaning we carried four to eight liters of water each day). Additionally, I made sure each participant had a separate Nalgene bottle that was topped off and mixed with an electrolyte drink mix (Gatorade, All Sport, Skratch, etc.) and made sure that they were drinking from it regularly. It may seem counter-intuitive, but you have to actively think about drinking water when you are engaged in long hikes. I found that, when I got into the zone of a hike, I would go for extended periods without drinking anything. At seal level, that may not be a big deal, but at higher elevations, the body goes through more water more quickly. If you feel thirsty, you are already in trouble (as in you are already dealing with moderate dehydration).

One thing we found helpful, especially on quick elevation rises, was to use a "procrastination dash" approach to the hike. We often struggled with trying to find a balance between keeping a good pace and allowing for adequate rest and recovery (because elevation sickness becomes more pronounced if you do not allow yourself adequate rest). To this end, we decided to do a cadence of ten minutes active hiking and two minutes of "standing rest". We would repeat this sequence ten times, which would give us 100 minutes of active hiking and 20 minutes of rest. At the end of the two hours, we could take off our packs and have a genuine rest for twenty minutes. The rest breaks were mainly so I could ensure everyone was drinking water and actually see them do it. Over time, we were able to shake of the headaches, nausea and other symptoms that were becoming a regular occurrence.

This may seem like an odd story to relate to from a testing perspective, but I see similar parallels when I am looking at skill levels and abilities on our respective teams. Some people are super resilient and can take on anything, while others struggle and suffer quietly. As I watched the participants deal with the challenges of the trek, I came to realize that some would complain easily. They wore their discomfort on their sleeves, and it was easy to tell where they were on a mood level and a health level. The real challenge were my "stoics". I had a few guys who were determined to not let me "see them sweat". They never complained, never gave me any reason to believe they could be in danger, and yet each and every member of the expedition at some point dealt with symptoms of altitude sickness.

For the stoics, their conditions were often more challenging, because I didn't see the signs until they were deep in the hole. Likewise, with our teams, we may have those same stoics among us, willing to shoulder their load and muscle through, but lacking in technique or additional understanding that could make them more effective. Too often, we don't learn about what the stoics need until they have actually cracked or gotten themselves into a situation where they can't hide any longer. From this trek, I realized that it was worth a moment's annoyance to confirm that everyone was doing what they needed to do, and was getting the food, water and rest that they needed. Our work teams have similar needs, if not so physically oriented.

Aedificamus: Book Review: The Negative Calorie Diet

All right, I confess. The title lured me in. With parts incredulity and general curiosity, I decided I had to see what this was all about. Was it just some slick marketing, or if there was something of substance to this claim?

Rocco DiSpirito is a celebrity chef, and has appeared in a number of media outlets over the past decade plus. I have heard him on Kara Rota's "Clever Cookstr" podcast. It was the most recent episode, in fact that covered "The Negative Calorie Diet" that finally made me say "all right, I'm curious, what is the premise and what is on offer with this?" (I'm reviewing the Kindle version of this book, just in case anyone is curious).

First things first, what in the world is a "negative calorie diet"? That doesn't make any sense on the surface, and in truth, there really isn't a truly "negative" food, is there? What is DiSpirito driving at here? Turns out that what he is really emphasizing is eating whole, unprocessed foods that, when taken in and metabolized, the net effect is that your body, on balance, works harder to digest them than the nutrient content provides. DiSpirito identifies three aspects to foods that make them "negative calorie foods".

Whole foods rather than processed foods

The idea here is that whole, unprocessed or very lightly processed foods contain more fiber and denser nutrient profiles as compared to processed foods. The density of the nutrient profile, as well as the inclusion of cellulose, bran, germ and other components of a whole food diet means your body has to work harder to process and break down the food consumed than the total calories that food provides. This sounds a little far fetched, but I've actually seen this in action, especially when I buy bulk vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli and carrots. There's a lot of volume to make two hundred calories of these vegetables, with fiber and water making up a large percentage.

The Fat Burn Factor

Here the idea follows the thought that certain foods provide a low level "work load" in your body, and by the virtue of that consistent work load, it is priming the body for fat burning. DiSpirito points out that certain foods like cruciferous vegetables and protein have a "thermic effect", in that your body works harder to break down these foods, and in the process, requires more fuel to do its work. Granted, the workload is not on the same scale as, say, a strenuous weightlifting session or high intensity training activities, but it's not insignificant, either. By leveraging this thermic property of certain foods, the net result can be more calories burned than consumed.

The Fullness Factor

Skeptic hat firmly on, here's where I think a large part of this "diet" really comes into play. By focusing on whole, unprocessed foods, we are taking them in in their least broken down state. Whole oranges are going to take up more room in our stomach than orange juice. Fiber and water take up space. Proteins and fats have the ability to let our brain know that we have some dense stuff to work through. In short, we get full on items that take up space, rather than consuming small, concentrated convenience foods that may taste good, but are largely concentrated, small volume items that pack in a lot of calories but offer little in the way of satiation. In certain circumstances, that's fine. When I go on a backpack trip, I personally love having calorically dense foods in very small and light containers. Less to carry and more fuel for the pound, but that's not what I do, or should do, every day. In most cases, allowing myself to be filled by whole foods, chased with water in most cases, I should find myself in situations where I am not hungry, I am full and satisfied with my meals, and ultimately, my body is burning more energy working through the food I am eating than I am actually consuming.

"The Negative Calorie Diet" is split into three sections.

Part One talks about the Negative Calorie Diet concepts, and describes the philosophy behind the diet (much of which is explained in the three points above) and highlighting foods that help reach the goals DiSpirito sets out. It then goes into a thirty day "course" the reader can choose to take to get results from the diet as described. The first ten days are described as a "cleanse". Skeptic hat back on; I tend to think of the notion of "detox" to be food quackery, but as it is termed here, it's really more an adjustment of the food items consumed, and for the first ten days, it leverages eating via smoothies, soups and salads. In other words, we are aiming to up the intake of a lot of food items we may not already be consuming. In that light, I'm OK with the process. The next twenty days goes into preparing three meals and one snack each day, with the goal of not worrying about portion or calorie count. It may sound like DiSpirito is saying you an eat as much as you want of these foods, and in a way, that's true, but really, what's going on is that you will likely find yourself full before the size of the caloric payload will be of much concern. This section also provides shopping lists for the items recommended for each of the days in question, as well as links to the recipes in the book for each meal.

Part Two covers the Negative Diet Recipes. For many, this may be all you are really interested in. To that end, there are indeed a lot of options.

Chapter 6 is all about Smoothies, fifteen to be specific, with tastes ranging everywhere from fruits to vegetables to a Virgin Mary smoothie for good measure (memories of "Tuna Shake, Baby!" are going through my head right now from years on the misc.fitness.weights newsgroup in the 1990s, but this is a little different ;) ).

Chapter 7 focuses on Breakfasts, providing nine recipes ranging from a breakfast "risotto" to Mexican cauliflower chili and spinach and mushroom omelets.

Chapter 8 covers Soups and Salads. Fifteen options are available here, and an emphasis is placed on variety, fresh ingredients, and a judicious use of spices. There are options for omnivores as well as vegetarians and vegans.

Chapter 9 goes into Mains, and provides seventeen entrees that, again, cover a broad variety of cuisine styles, ingredients, and dietary goals. Various cuts of meat, seafood, vegetables, fruits and spices make their way into these recipes, and again, there's sure to be something to please just about everyone.

Chapter 10 brings us to the topic of Snacks. Yes, snacks are encouraged, as long as you are the one making them and they use the foods recommended to reach the negative calorie goals. Eight unique ideas ranging from homemade cucumber and almond sushi, red ants on a log (which is really celery stalks, peanut butter and cranberries, which frankly works fine for me :) ),  to making your own granola bars.

Chapter 11 is Desserts. Yep, desserts. We all crave sweets, so rather than deny us the pleasure, DiSpirito has developed options that let us enjoy them, albeit with some modifications. Almond cake, crepes suzette, citrus and berry bowls with whipped topping, no need to deny your sweet toth while pursuing this course.

Part Three focuses on The Negative Calorie Lifestyle. DiSpirito's aim is to encourage healthy eating for the long haul, and to that end, he makes a number of suggestions. Go meatless, or barring that, use meat sparingly and up your intake of fresh fruits and vegetables. Encourage your family to participate in this approach with you. To this end I am painfully aware that it is much harder to eat when you are preparing your food separate from the rest of the family. Getting everyone on board makes for a big boost in the likelihood the habits you develop will stick. Eating Out and On the Go need not be a black hole of unhealthy food or limited options, but it helps to be forewarned and forearmed, and DiSpirito devotes a chapter to suggested approaches for a variety of restaurants and cuisine styles. The last chapter focuses on Maintenance, and helping you keep to the habits while losing weight, and in that approach, keeping the weight off.

Bottom Line:

The title is a bit gimmicky, but the concept DiSpirito is describing does make sense, and I've used variations of it myself over the past seven months as I have lost close to 70 pounds. It is entirely possible to expend more energy than we consume, and that ultimately helps us develop a deficit so that we lose weight. The ideas in "the Negative Calorie Diet" do indeed meet that goal, both through nutrient quality and variety, as well as nutrient density, including insoluble fiber and water. If I have to offer a criticism, it's that there are a lot of terms and studies thrown around in the sections setting up the first part of the book, but no references to those studies. Granted, this is a cookbook, so that may be overkill, but I would think that, at least, a list of studies as an Appendix would be a huge plus. Yes, we live in the era of Google and the ability to search, but some more clarity on where these terms came from and the basis for making the claims would have been nice.

Even if you are not interested in going all out and living a "Negative calorie lifestyle" but want to see how to create some interesting whole food options, and perhaps try some things you've never had before that would taste great and also be overall healthy, there is much to like here.

Aedificamus: Sixty Days In: Testing Myself as I Lose Weight

Two hundred and sixty pounds. That’s where I was on August 14, 2015. Officially recording the heaviest I have ever been. The thoughts going through my head were not pretty, but I decided on that day I needed to do something, anything other than stay the course I had found myself on.

Over the last twenty-five years, I have had a variety of ups and downs when it came to weight, fitness, leanness and other factors both health and aesthetic related. The past few years, my exercise habits have been mostly nonexistent. My eating has been haphazard, often on the side of over-indulging (yes, I did go to Kilwin's in Grand Rapids five times while I was there. It was fantastic, but I’m sure it had a part to play in the number I was looking at on the scale August 14th as well).

There’s an aphorism that says people will not do anything until they are “sick and tired of being sick and tired”. I reached that point, and I decided that, once again, it was time to do something. This time, though, I decided to get a bit more “tech” in my approach, and use it as an excuse to do a long term software testing project. In this case, the products being tested are health apps (currently focusing on two, but looked at a few more to evaluate), a Bluetooth digital scale, and revisiting some old exercise companions from decades ago (one of which I had not done anything with in more than 30 years).

My first course of action was to download an app called Pacer. The express purpose was to track my steps, with a goal to get in 10,000 each day. I would allow myself one day per week to not have to make that goal (typically Sunday). Over the ensuing two weeks, I explored every aspect of this app I could. I wanted to see how it tracked my steps, how accurate it was, what the GPS function could tell me, and what the graphs and charts could tell me. I decided to spring for a year’s premium service just to see what the deal was with the extended options (mostly around setting goals and tracking them). I’ve collected a pretty nice list of GPS maps showing me where I’ve been and what ground I’ve covered. I have feelings of “oh, that’s neat” mixed with “wow, that’s a little creepy”, but if people want to see where I’ve walked and it intrigues them, be my guest :).

At the two week mark, I had already dropped ten pounds. Going from doing nothing structured to putting in 10,000 steps a day, that’s not at all surprising. It was at this point I added the LoseIt app to my daily routine for conscious calorie counting. I had first put together my own little spreadsheet with some of my own calculations, but a touch of laziness and a desire to have the device directly gather and present the data won out. I’ve been actively using LoseIt since August 30, 2015.

After two weeks of calorie counting, tracking meals, scanning labels, and getting involved with a few challenges, I added a Bluetooth scale into the mix, and committed to using it every day. More on that in a bit.

Once I squared away the walking, the calorie counting and regular weighing, I decided to add additional exercise in the form of free weights, an old school isometric device called a Bullworker and its smaller cousin, the Steel-Bow, and to keep things interesting, I’ve added in yoga as a daily practice (using a lot of different resources, but I've found the Fitstar Yoga app to be a good one). Like with the steps, I typically take a day off each week, usually Sunday.

This morning (10/13/15), I stepped on the scale and weighed in at 226.6 pounds. That’s 33.4 pounds less than I weighed 60 days ago. Averaged out, that's a little over four pounds weight loss per week. An ideal amount would be two pounds per week, maximize fat burning and minimizing catabolism (muscle loss). When you get beyond two pounds a week, it’s a guarantee that water weight, and muscle mass, is getting put to the torch as well. Granted, I am going to lose some muscle mass regardless (that's just the nature of the tradeoff; I can put on appreciable muscle by adding a little fat, or I can remove appreciable bodyfat by sacrificing a little muscle).

Overall, I feel pretty good about this weight loss and what it’s meant for me and my overall health. There have been some significant positives:

• According to my spouse, I no longer snore, or at least, if I do, it’s significantly less frequent.
• Walking for considerable distances is no longer a chore or feels like it takes much effort. 
• Even with the brief period of time I have been doing yoga, my flexibility is slowly improving, and many aches in joints are slowly disappearing.
• My clothes, which were getting embarrassingly tight, are now becoming embarrassingly loose. 
• My calorie budget, which at first felt hard to meet, now feels very doable each day. 

Sounds all rosy and great, right? As a software tester, have I found any “bugs” in these protocols? Perhaps.

The scale I use measures weight, body fat percentage, hydration and BMI. I feel I can trust the physical weight and the BMI calculation, because they are fairly consistent and based on pretty simple algorithms. The body fat percentage and hydration values, however, I don’t feel I can trust at all. The reason? They are directly counter to one another. If I have a day where I have significant body hydration, then my body fat reading is lower. If I have a day with significantly low body hydration, then I get a body fat percentage reading that is much higher, as in six or seven percentage points higher. The dramatic rise and fall of my bodyfat percentages are tied exactly to the increase and decrease of hydration. In other words, the readings are not worth calculating and tracking as any official values, but it is good to know that when I’m well hydrated, I’m skinnier… err, sorta’.

There is some interesting weirdness that happens when you try to “share” data from one app to another. iOS 8 and above has the Apple Health app, and Health can help use a lot of data being generated by the phone (its accelerometer in particular) and coordinate with other apps and devices to tell you how many steps you have taken and how many calories you have burned. This data can be read by Health coming from apps, and can be written back to apps from Health and from other respective apps. In some conditions, LoseIt will add a calorie and step bonus that gets recorded back as more steps than you took, which then gets fed to Pacer which adds to the total as you walk, which causes further step rewards to be added, and the count can feel wildly off. Limit the two way read and write options allowed so that apps don’t conflict with each other and inflate numbers.

I’ve been playing with a LoseIt challenge based around eating more fresh fruit and vegetables. For every seventy-five calories I consume of fruit, I earn a point, with a maximum of three per day. For every twenty five calories of vegetables I eat, I earn a point, with a maximum of eight points per day. That means I aim to get two hundred and twenty-five calories from fruit and two hundred calories from vegetables each day. Getting the fruit calories? Not difficult. Getting the vegetable calories? That is proving to be a challenge. In addition, I’m keeping track of how much it costs to get those vegetables and fruit so I can get those proportions. Suffice it to say, it is not cheap! Also, many packaged foods, such as vegetable mixes with a variety of ingredients, don't get calculated well. You will have to take the items, separate them (physically or mentally) and tally up the total of each item. rather than just scanning the code for the bag, you enter in the amount of carrots, the amount of peas, the amount of beans, and so on. I keep a set of measuring spoons, measuring cups and a digital scale in my bag at all times for this purpose... yes, I sometimes get interesting stares ;). Over time, you also get good at guessing content, so you can "eyeball" an amount of a food and come to a close approximation of its size and quantity.

I always knew that sodium was a big part of weight gain (specifically because of its role in holding water in your system) but I didn’t realize just how much of an issue it really was, or how prevalent sodium is in the food we eat. Generally, every time I would eat out I would put on one or two pounds, and I would subsequently lose that one or two pounds in a couple of days if I prepared my own food and focused on adding no additional sodium.

Exercise helps you burn calories, but nowhere near the rate you think that it will. I have a little bag of trail mix that is three hundred calories when eaten. To counteract that three hundred calories, I need to walk for an hour, or run several miles, or some other combination that will cover that three hundred calories through exercise. In short, it is much easier to just say "no" to the trail mix than it is to say “sure, have at it, I can walk it off later!”

Fitness takes time, and if you are looking to lose a significant amount of weight, it takes a significant amount of time! Ten thousand steps is on average an hour and forty minutes of active walking. A Yoga session lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, a weight training session takes about the same time. Keeping the walking consistent and switching up the exercise options, you are still looking at two to three hours of activity each day to make a dent in your weight. No question, it takes time and effort, and that time and effort takes away from other things. In my case, it really takes away from my time to blog. I’m still working out how to keep these two options going at the same time.

There you have it. Sixty days in, and a piece of what is my reality today. Anyone who says losing weight is easy needs to be kicked. It’s simple, sure, but on the whole, it’s a hard thing to do day in and day out. Additionally, as I’ve said to myself many times before, it’s not a “brief change of behavior” thing. If I hope to be successful, I need to be making commitments and scheduling the time to do this and developing the discipline to eat like this daily for the rest of my life. Too often, I sabotage myself through complacency. I reach a goal, I let go of the reigns, and then I find myself back where I started, and then some. I’m really hoping to make this time be different. Perhaps by making this public, and part of my site legacy, that extra motivation will do the trick. We shall see :).

Aedificamus: Product Review: LoseIt! Health-o-meter

I should've seen this coming. When I decided to check out the Lose It!! app, I figured I'd be content with just weighing myself, tracking calories, and seeing what happened. I wouldn't be seduced by other offers, or other technology… especially not some tricked-out Bluetooth data sharing scale. Not me. Oh no. Oh, who am I kidding?!

Yes, I am now the proud owner of a LoseIt! Health-o-meter. Well, the proud part I might have to work on, but I most certainly now own one ;). The intrigue factor overcame the slightly creeped out factor. Yes, I admit it, the thought that my smart phone can get all sorts of information from a scale, store it, analyze it and give me advice about it just seems a bit... odd, but the "oh wow, how cool is that?!" aspect ultimately won out in the end.


So how exactly does this work? The scale uses Bluetooth to interface with a smart phone (iPhone in this case), and specifically with the LoseIt! app. Part of me considers that a little bit of a letdown, because it is a dedicated device for a dedicated app. Still, the ability to gather data, crunch it, and do something interesting with it always brings a smile to my face.


What doesn't bring a smile to my face, however, is the level of precision that I can now be provided. Prior to today, I was content to have a scale that rounded in half pounds. Now I have a scale that is accurate to a 10th of a pound. But wait, there's more! I can now also get a reading (through the electrical impedance pads) of my overall hydration levels, my body fat percentage, and my body mass index (BMI). I used to take comfort in the fact that these were nebulous numbers; they just existed in the ether someplace and, oh, they might be derived through some inconsistent formula on a web site some place or another. Now, I know what they are… in vivid, gory detail.







Yep, there it is… I can't pretend it's something else any longer (LOL!).

Now, to be frank, there's a lot of ambiguity to these numbers even as they're presented. How precise are these values, really? They may be accurate, they may be off. However, for what I am planning to do, they're a good enough heuristic (i.e. rule of thumb) to be useful. I'm not really doing anything (competitive sports, bodybuilding, etc.) where they have to be super precise. They just need to do one thing… trend downward over time.

On a technical level, the set up is simple; go into the app, pair it with the health-o-meter, press a button on the underside of the scale to pair the devices, create a scale profile for yourself, step on (barefoot, of course), let it get your measurements, transfer data, and then it is there in the app, ready to be logged and sync'd with the app's other algorithms. Each day you weigh in, the pairing profile does the rest. The scale itself feels fairly sturdy. For a day-one comparison, it does the job well.


Bottom Line:


This product pairing fills me with equal parts dread and wonder. I'm weirded out by the level of detail it provides, and the fact that my phone can carry this and share it with a whole bunch of different apps. On the other hand, I'm super intrigued to see if this level of granularity and focus with the data will make me more efficient, or more aggressive, when it comes to weight loss, nutrition and exercise.

I guess you'll have to stay tuned for that latter part ;).

Aedificamus: Product Review: #FluidStance #Level

As a blogger, one of the nice perks that happens from time to time is that people send you items to review. Most of the time, my reviews have centered around books in PDF form or software as downloads. In other words, the item I'm reviewing is not a tangible "thing" but an electronic file(s). Today, I received my first "real thing" to review, and intriguing doesn't even begin to describe this.

I have a setup that I use that converts a regular table into a standing desk, using two Ikea Lack end tables. When I want to sit down, I just take the tables and set them to the side, but when the standing desk configuration is in place, well, I typically stand up and do my thing. Often that also involves shifting around, putting my foot up on an upturned wastebasket, and changing positions. With my desk in the seated setup, I sometimes break out a yoga ball to use as a chair, the consistent shifting back and forth giving my core some movement and some variation. I've often lamented that I didn't have something similar for a standing desk configuration.

Enter the FluidStance Level.

"What, dare say, is the FluidStance Level?" you might ask. To put it simply, it's a balance board that you stand on while you are at your standing desk.

This is the top sheet, made of bamboo. It's sturdy and smooth, plus it looks like a nice piece of furniture. 

The underside of the board looks like this. The base is made from aluminum with a powder coat finish. It's very smooth and the curve of the base creates a moderate imbalance while you stand, but doesn't feel dangerously so. 

First impressions while standing on it is that the balance point feels natural. At shoulder width stance, it feels a little like standing on a small boat out on the water. With a narrower stance, you work a bit harder to keep the balance, but it doesn't feel at all clumsy or unpredictable. Instead, it gives a gentle swaying motion with consistent feedback to help you right your stance and keep balanced.

All well and good, I hear you saying, but what is the point to this thing? Put simply, while you are at your standing desk, you stand on the board. The consistent shifting of balance and readjusting gives your body something to do while you are working. I decided to see what thirty minutes of working would be like with The Level, and I found it to be surprisingly fluid and, dare I say it, natural. 

As you stand on the Level, you are definitely "active", which means that you are going to probably need to step away from the desk a little more often, but what I did not feel was fatigued or sore. In fact, it felt the opposite. I found myself feeling very relaxed, even with the shifting weight. Of course, the standing desk to balance myself against also helps.

So what's my verdict on the FluidStance Level? I personally enjoy the sense of shifting movement. I liken it very much to sitting on yoga ball if you have a sitting arrangement set up. It's surprisingly comfortable, and it's easy to get the hang of the sweet spot to balance with little effort. There's something nice about having a product that you did not even know existed come into your reality and have you say "wow, I've waited years for this!" but of course you didn't because you had no idea such a device even existed. I'm looking forward to using this balance board in the years to come.