Comments on: Bad news and good news

By: Tim Mansfield

Tim Mansfield — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:19:07 +0000

Good for you!

Yay for health

By: Ralf

Ralf — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:41:02 +0000

I think it was a combination of:
- working through the emotional uncertainty that had been weighing on me
- starting the day with 1/2 hour sitting meditation
- replacing soy milk based coffee drinks with short blacks
I did a bit of exercise, mainly just the fitness ladder from the Hacker's Guide to Weight Loss, but not all that regularly, i.e. daily for a few weeks, then drop it again, etc.

But I'm a bit of a bastard when it comes to this stuff. A few days exercise and I tone up dramatically. No soy cappucino's for a week and I'll visibly lose the padding. One of those metabolisms...

R

By: Tim Mansfield

Tim Mansfield — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:53:24 +0000

Ahh... sorry for being a bit hyper-sensitive. I didn't get your experimental-error humour. Yes, you're completely right. Flat-ish is better than rising! Especially given how little I exercised.

I've never said, but I noticed when you dropped a bunch of fat a few years ago. What did you do?

By: Ralf

Ralf — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:08:01 +0000

The yay for health was serious, and I'm completely supportive of you being healthy, sorry if it didn't come across that way.

I think what's great is that you stabilised the rise in body fat, and that is worth really celebrating. I think the way you phrased it (18%+k vs 19%-l) made it sound like a drop, but surely both measurements are affected by a test error rate of m and a regular physiological variance of n? The scientist in me was chuckling... A trend line of regular measurements is the way to go though.

Ralf

By: Tim Mansfield

Tim Mansfield — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:38:49 +0000

Thanks for your support, Ralf

As you might recall, I originally dropped from 22% to 15% last year, but that was an “emergency mode” phase to deal with the health issue.

Since January, I've been focusing on long-term lifestyle change, rather than responding to a crisis. I can drop a lot of fat fast, but to stay healthy I need to keep it off. So with that context, that jump from 15% to 19% in the first three months of this years was a bit of suck and pretty disappointing and merely dropping a little over six weeks is pretty good.

If I can find myself back around 15% by this December, that will be awesome because it should mean I've successfully adapted my normal lifestyle to a more healthy style.

By: Ralf

Ralf — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:02:37 +0000

Great that you managed to get your body fat all the way down from nearly 19% to a bit over 18%….

Yay for health.

R