Life Change
This Blog Post was originally published on adagia.org.
Since I was around ten years old, my love for food was somehow amplified. I started to eat more, and with more came along "bad" food. I fell for popcorn, potato chipsand chocolate. Although my braces set a limit on the chocolate input (since then, eating "normal" milk chocolate kinda "hurts" on my teeth, even now), eating unhealthy and pretty much no exercise led to being overweight.
Luckily I have been around 100 kilograms for more than ten years now. Although my weight shifts upwards and downwards from time to time (I really should step on the scale daily again), it always stays around the 100 mark.
A few years back, I tried a diet with my mother (I think it is called the Duncan diet, where you stay on ketosis all the time). I did feel "healthier", but it didn't have the effect I thought it would have. I was also getting fed up with the eggs, tuna and turkey I ate. I knew you can't change your fitnessby only changing your eating habit. You have to exercise.
So before Everyone's Favorite Virusâ¢ï¸it I was working out regularly in a gym, but you guessed it, I didn't change my eating habit. I was going three times a week and quickly built up muscles. Then our Everyone's Favorite Virusâ¢ï¸ came along, and I was locked down in homeofficefor three months.
Of course, I cancelled the gym subscription, and I was mainly eating shit again. Soon I will be in a permanent homeoffice for weeks at a time, so I have to think about my body again. I'm in my late twenties, and if I don't tackle my healthnow, I will pay for it sooner than later.
So what is the course of action? A puppy(or adult rescue) came to my mind again. If you got a dogthat can't use the toilet, you're forced to take walks. But with the upcoming work change, I don't want to introduce another significant change to my life.
But since I'm losing the opportunity to eat in a restaurant daily (currently my employer is paying for my lunch) with the company change, I will go from September to December on yfood.eu. I tested their meals a few weeks back and was astounded by how good their stuff is. They produce shakes, bars and even warm meals with balanced nutrients. You can change to their product entirely and don't miss out on anything the body needs. I tested jakefood.eu, and Huel a few years back, but their stuff isn't nearly at the level of yfood.
Since I will know the exact calories of every meal, I can also cut down on them. This means my body will have to burn more fat, which brings me to the second part: working out. In the middle of 2020 (or was it 2021), I bought an expensive indoor cycle. I can use it together with Zwift(a great app where you drive around virtually) and Strava, where I can track my rides. I used it many times, but that degraded over a few months (when it got hot in May, it wasn't bearable to sit in my living room).
I'm setting the goal to jump on the indoor cycle daily. Of course, that won't be possible when I'm doing a paramedic duty or not at home, but I will also find a solution for that days.
It is time to build up some streaks again! Sadly I can't start cyclingyet, as I'm still recovering from my recent COVIDinfection, but I want to start the daily cycling habit as soon as possible.
And since I can promise anything, I will create a website to track these streaks to hold me accountable. I still have showyourstreak.com lying around unused, so I just need to build something that will import everything into one place. I should be able to import my weight from my Fitbitscale, the exercises from Strava and even my daily steps from Samsung Health.
Sure, that sounds like a bunch of APIs to interact with, but since I'm crafting it for me alone, I can write the ugliest code that works. :)
It might also be nice to import my Writingstreaks from Adagia and my blog, but that will not be the main priority.
In the long run, the project might lead to a large "track your life" (like https://howisfelix.today/?) kind of thing, but I'm not sure about that yet.