2023 Health Strategy

Your health REALLY IS the foundation of running a successful business. Here’s a sustainable plan that has already helped me lose 35lbs this year.

This year I have already lost 35 lbs. It’s a big visual change that has also improved several unexpected other health benefits.

The benefits have been numerous:

1. regaining the ability to run – and now working towards a half-marathon
2. back pain have mostly gone away, a long standing issue with my thorasic spine has finally improved
3. The weight loss makes simple things like getting out of bed easier
4. I can do a lot more pull-ups (without trying to improve reps)
5. better sleep, falling asleep faster and sleeping deeper, better energy in the morning
6. significant improvement in resting heart rate, trending from 66bpm down to 57bpm, and seeing 52bpm more often now.

There are 3 pillars to this working:

1. Eating habits
2. Exercise habits
3. Measurement habits

Ignore one of these habits and things fall apart relatively quickly.

Eating Habits

The strategy to do this starts with diet. I have tested a lot of diets – it can be fun to see how your body reacts to changing food. I’ve tested vegitarian, carnivore, slow-carb, keto, atkins, calorie counting, journaling, and various fasting schedules.

The best approach has been the fasting protocols. Why do they work best for me?

1. very clear simple rules – eat only within very clear times
2. Fasting beyond just time while asleep, gives your body more hours to tap into fat for energy
3. After adapting it’s very easy, and never feel hungry
4. it’s not too prescriptive about what food you eat, burgers and fries and pizza are fine

In addition to the fasting schedule I added one additional constraint to restrict snacks or treats.

This year my fasting schedule has modified to reflect the measurements as time passed.

At the beginning of the year I started with a simple schedule that restricted eating within the 9am-5pm window. Eating only during business hours. This essentially just cut any evening snacks. But I did have a little chocolate or something for desert after supper.

As I hit a plateau on weight loss from this schedule, I shifted to 11-5. having only a black coffee in the morning at about 9am.

At the next pleateau, I shifted to 12-5, and removed any snacks. I often removed carbs from the lunch. I ate a lot of eggs/omlettes for lunch during this period.

Next plan changes were to increase protein proportion of food. This was driven from lingering muscle fatigue. I try to take 100-150g of protein per day, most of that is from whey – 2 scoups for lunch + 2 scoups just before supper.

I will continue to tweak depending on how my measurements go over time. One of the biggest lessons from this has been to not trust your emotions and feelings about food.

A 4 day business trip threw a wrench in my eating habits, I got back home 5lbs heavier. This trip took 3 weeks to recover from and get back to the pre-trip weight. Things like this happen.

So what food am I actually eating these days?

• black coffee at 9am
• Lunch (noon):
  • protein shake (60g) mixed with water
  • and peanut butter sandwich
• Supper (5:30):
  • protein shake (60g) mixed with water
  • balanced meal that usually includes chicken/beef/fish with a starchy food like rice/potatoe and some other vegetables.
• Eating Nothing after 6:30pm
• A lot of water, usually with some zero calorie flavoring added.

Exercise Habits

I have attempted to exericse more many times. and it’s never stuck. Working out is a struggle, and I usually end up with some sort of minor injury that derails any habit building. Avoiding injury has become a key consideration of any exercise plan.

This year, I focused on walking. Low impact, easy.

I added walking to the mix of things around March. It started with outdoor walks, but really ramped up when I got a walking treadmill in mid-April. The treadmil is too bulky and heavy to move out of the way, so I rarely sit down. I walk 6-10 hours per day, and have many days > 30,000 steps now.

Walking daily at this level was hard at first, but has gotten easier. It fixed some posture issues since it’s very difficult to hunch over while walking.

Walking uncovered some issues that I didn’t know were issues as well. For example, I developed some pain in my quads on the right leg, after some research I found out it was muscle adhesion that required some active release. Active release proved to be a 5 minute fix that resolved it for weeks. This muscle adhesion would be reducing the efficiency of my muscles so discovering and fixing this will improve running performance.

Now that my weight has come down (<160lbs), running is easier on joints and less likely to result in injury. I’m starting very low distance (less than 1km).

Running brought to focus cardio. My heart rate and lungs cannot keep up with a long run anymore. unfortunately my treadmill cannot handle a run, so these are outdoors and weather dependent which makes it harder to work into the day.

Measurement Habits

I dislike wearing watches, last year I tried to wear an Apple watch but it just never worked well for me. In December 2023 I got a fitbit Charge 5, and that proved convenient enough to stay on my wrist. The slim design doesn’t push into my wrist, and the battery lasts 5 days at a time, so it stays on.

The fitbit primarily measures steps. The measurement of steps started out as goals – 250 steps every houry, and 10,000 steps a day. Over time the goal of hitting those numbers has faded away and the benefit has just been in seeing the trends over time and collecting the historical data.

One surprise from having the fitbit has been seeing my resting heart rate trend down along with my weight. This has proven to be an extra motivation that this exercise and diet program is working and I should stick with it.

Another basic measure I take daily is my weight. I weigh myself as part of my morning ritual, it’s first thing in the morning before consuming any water or coffee, before getting a shower. This is generally the lowest weight I have throughout the day. In the past I have gone so far as to measure my weight before and after doing things to see what the impact is. Before and after meals, before and after using the restroom, before and after showering, before and after exercise, before and after sleeping. Weight can fluctuate by several lbs through the day. Consistency helps makes the measurements more stable and comparable between days.

Tracking weight daily helps to identify some of the effects of what actions you take on a short enough timeline to learn the association, and make micro adjustments. Things can go sideways a lot over the course of a week.

I record my weight in the fitbit app because it’s convenient.

Motivation

What I’ve found is that these three pillars of eating, exercise and metrics work together to maintain momentum and encourage sticking with it. Food eating habits alone are hard to change, without metrics caving on a plan once can often derail the habit and it can be hard to jump back on the train. Doing a food plan with measurements but without exercise can hit a plateau that becomes frustrating enough to give up.

If this is helpful, or you have questions, connect with me on Twitter. It would be great to know if it’s valuable, or if there’s room for improvement.