Bloodwork

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So this is my blood. I got the lab results in the mail today. This felt a little weird typing up, but hey, why not? I'm pretty healthy... Oh wait. What is that at the bottom? Oh shit, I need Vitamin D. I have about half of what I should have for the lower limit. Well, this should be expected given I work in a cave perhaps, but I'm not going to take it laying down (in the shade no less). The doctor gave me a prescription for a mega Vitamin-D pill that I take once a week. I try and spend a good amount of time outside on my days off, but I'll admit it: I need a tan.

Summon the vampire jokes...

Young Data: Carbohydrates

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I've not just been counting calories, but also I've been monitoring the composition of my diet. Here are the numbers thus far in terms of carbohydrates (the above chart is in grams, sorry for the absence of units). I admit at this time, I haven't done much ground work as to being able to read into the daily carbohydrate contribution should be for my body. What I can tell by looking at this graph is that I've been on a upswing of carbohydrates even though in general I'm decreasing the over all amount in my diet.

I've also been monitoring fat (g), sugar (g), fiber (g), and protein (g). My hope is to post about a component of my composition diet on Thursdays. Also, I'm trying to make thee graphs more fun. As you can see this is also a journey in Microsoft Excel.

If you have any useful info on composition diets, please do share in the comment data. Thank you!

Sleep Number

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It's late and I guess that means it's perfect for me to post of the last week's metrics on sleep. This is an area that will be fun to trend with my work lifestyle. This is a wellness blog, so I have other things that I'll be tracking here other than my diet and exercise. To mix things up, I'll try and post this information on Tuesdays.

Monday Weigh-In (April 26, 2010)

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The weigh-in went well this morning. I'm down to 179.2 lbs. I have not been below 180 lbs in since my 5th year in college (not an encouraging statement for multiple reasons.

This week, I'm off Tuesday through Friday, so my days will have less structure. This will provide me a challenge to keep numbers in tolerance and use my time effectively to get as many workouts in as I can (my shoulders are still sore from Thursday's Aikido class).

Week 1

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So here is the data for the first week of my diet. The blue line represents the daily caloric value I have calculated for myself (1,972 Cal for a 5'9" male with moderate activity). The red line represents my recorded values for the week. This chart will be one that is posted on a weekly basis.

Some notes here. The weekend was erratic. This was largely due to me eating many new foods. I can't fully trust the numbers for either day (especially Sunday). I may end up going back and recalculating numbers to see if I was actually that low. I find that when I feel I don't know what (as in nutrition facts) I'm eating, I'm very "portion shy" to be on the safe side.

Last week I also had some good workouts. We'll see if the diet along with the week's activity produced any results! I'm feeling confident.

Workout Data

Monday: Interval training - 00:30

Tuesday: Aikido - 01:30

Thursday: Aikido - 01:15

Sunday: Yoga - 01:30

Nutritional Data 2.0

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The completion of week one has taught me a lot in terms of tracking numbers. First lesson: It's hard. The best thing I think I've done is use good tools. In this case, constantly updating the nutrition data chart to include new food items, and literally printing out weekend diet worksheets to fill in for the days i'm away from the computer.

Fashion Metrics

I thought of some more measurements that seem easy enough to keep track of today: Clothes.

I can already tell many of mine are fitting looser (over the last 3 months). It could be that I've shrunk, or I've just stretched out my jeans... Hmmm. I'm going to track this metric as well, even if it is more a measure of what I spend my money on.

Clothes Data

T-shirt: L

Button up Shirt: M

Jeans: 34/30

Shoes: 10 US (9.5 UK)

Hat: 7 and 3/8

Nutritional Data 1.0

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So my approach to nutrition currently is to examine the places I eat already and the common foods at my home. For the restaurants I go to regularly (or order carry out from work, I will pre-examine the data and have ready to order purchases so I can know I'm making the healthiest selection possible. For foods at home, I looked around and tried to find healthier selections at the grocery. This spreadsheet will continue to be updated as I gather and pull more data.

E.g. - I now purchase Baked Tostitos instead of the regular type. This is part of my strategy to control my portion sizes. My roommate makes his own awesome healthy salsa, but our consumption of it is limited by the old chips we had.

Serving Size Data

Tostitos: 6 chips (weak shit)

Baked Tostitos: 14 chips (Hadoken!)

Cat Cohabitation 1983 to 2010

I think this deserves further investigation. Hmm... Interesting.

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Cat Data

Number of Cats: 1

First Data Point

Today is the beginning, so today should be recorded for a measure of success. I've actually lost about 8 lbs already, but for the purposes of this journey, today is day one. Having said that, I have lost 0 lbs so far. Today defines the successes of tomorrow. I will weight myself once per week (usually on Mondays)

If I had to pick an arbitrary day to be day one, today isn't bad. Yesterday was my 27th birthday, so today is Julian day one on my 28th orbit around the sun. For instrumentation, I purchased a scale and the scale told me that I did not gain any weight over my birthday weekend (booze, pecan pie, booze, Japanese food) which means one thing: I love this scale.

Data

Name: Chi

Age: 27 years (9,855 days)

Weight: 182.0 lbs (82.55 kg)

Height: 5'9" (175.26)

BMI: 26.6 "Overweight" (calculated using NIH online calculator)

Blood Pressure: 120/80

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Science Arrives

Hello, my name is Chi. I'm a long time blogger and I've just started a new phase of my life. I've decided to loose some weight, regain range in my joints, and reenter the world of martial arts (and perhaps some others too). I'm an engineer by trade, and I've been watching a few people close by as they are embarking on similar challenges. This blog will be not only about my exercise and diet routine, but also some fun with me inspecting my world and documenting it.

Today is the beginning (well, actually I'm like a week into the plan already, but here is a good starting point to blog).