Re: Gentleman Johnny's Lifestyle Challenge: Year 3

by Aggrax Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:33 pm

Alright, goals. Goals are good. As of right now, I have two. The first is to start using my CPAP machine more. I love the sleep I get while using it, but can't get to sleep while wearing it. Had a meeting with my sleep specialist yesterday and have a few ideas for what to do going forward.

Second goal is weight loss. Ideally I would like to get below 400, but for the short term my immediate goal is sub 420. My last weigh in was 424 which is 2 lbs. down from the one before that, so hopefully I'm headed in the right direction.

by Hae Thu Nov 13, 2014 5:03 pm

It took me two Lifestyle Challenge years to do it, but now I can actually live on home cooking. It turned out to involve more than cooking skill and a large repertoire of recipes. It was more like whittling down recipes til they resembled bare bones, rediscovering the foods I enjoy to motivate myself to cook, and slooowly building up a habit from there.

I think my next lifestyle challenge will be to manage my glucose levels naturally, and therefore stabilize my mood. This should involve daily exercise, food management, and self-observation.

by InkAndComb Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:23 pm

Gentleman Johnny wrote:Have you tried seeing if your school has a counseling program? I've been going to my local college's for the last year or so. Just put myself on the inactive list last week.

Response spoilered to not derail; if I did it wrong my bad, I've never used spoilers before x.x

Spoiler:

by Kaz Fri Nov 14, 2014 7:07 pm

JSYK I am totally looking at the programming talk here with interest... I'm currently finishing a PhD in pure maths and want to try to get a job in programming afterwards, which basically means that I have a waaay more of a maths background that anyone who isn't working in mathematical research could possibly need but no real formal programming knowledge at all. So it's interesting to see how other people have managed getting into the field! (And suggestions on how to understand object-oriented programming... I remember having a lot of trouble with that the last time I tried, although I do have about ten years more algebra and a working algebraist's understanding of category theory under my belt now which might help.)

That said, my project is going to be: regular exercise. My main focus is going to be on the thesis/viva/job/etc. anyway, it'll be really easy to let hobbies and suchlike slip and I really want to start doing something physical on a regular basis beyond cycling (which I don't do as much of as I'd like, for that matter). I actually had a stab at this last year, started rollerblading lessons and had lots of fun to start, but it turned out skating doesn't play well with a problem involving foot pain I have. I ended up spending probably around 1/4 of the sessions sitting on a bench waiting for the pain to die down enough that I could stand again which rather put a damper on the whole thing. I'm pondering trying swimming this time - no standing involved in that!

(Cooking more is also a serious candidate, but one thing at a time.)

by caliseivy Sat Nov 15, 2014 12:49 pm

Kaz wrote:JSYK I am totally looking at the programming talk here with interest...

Same here. I understand possibly half of what's being talked about, so I feel a little less like I'm making a mistake taking these programming classes.
I mean, they're darn-near free since I work at this college, but it's nice to know I haven't wasted time I can't get back.

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