I've always had a tendency to overeat and get overweight. In 1997 I hit 190 lbs. I went on a diet consisting of only eating 1 meal a day 6 days a week, plus heavy exercise and in about 3 months managed to get down to 175.
In 2008 my weight reached 195 and I developed high blood pressure. Over the course of the next 9 months I managed to get down to 165 (mainly cutting out carbs, sugar, fast food) and the blood pressure issues cleared up.
I was pretty happy with that for a year or so, but my weight still kept trying to creep up. If I got over 170 or so then my blood pressure would start to rise. I was in a pattern where every week my weight was fluctuating between 165 and 170. I had still had love handles and a slight paunch. I came to the 6 week cure with the idea of just a quick, one-time fix to lose 5 or 10 lbs and get a buffer zone between my top weight and where it started to elevate my BP.
This diet is not for the faint of heart. I almost walked away when I saw the words 'no alcohol whatsoever for the first 2 weeks'. It may as well say 4 weeks. Given the tiny amount you are allowed to drink in weeks 3 and 4 I didn't bother.
For the first four days I felt like I was fasting. The muscles in my legs ached. I felt weak from hunger. One day I had cold symptoms. A couple of times I had migraines, which I never get. It was difficult to concentrate on tasks at work. I felt cold. The book didn't prepare me for any of this, though from the reviews at Amazon I learned others had a similar experience. My usual jogging routine went out the window. I absolutely didn't want to do anything that would burn calories and make me feel even hungrier.
On day 5, something clicked and I started to feel better. On day 8 I felt well enough to go jogging. After that I more or less resumed my regular jogging routine (3X a week), though I did not fully recover my normal strength and didn't attempt the longer distances I usually run on the weekends.
Throughout the first 4 weeks I felt hungry a lot of the time.
Constipation was a constant problem. Towards the middle of the second week my bowels started moving somewhat normally again. When I switched from shakes to meat it took about another week to start getting 'regular' again.
At the end of 4 weeks of almost constant hunger, weakness and the other symptoms mentioned... the grim, sober weekends... the sacrifice and self-denial... my weight was down a disappointing 5 lbs.
In week five I went back to a diet of mostly meat and salads, plus the occasional shake. I ate a few things I hadn't eaten for a while like (home made) chili and actual condiments (mustard contains sugar) and beef jerky (ditto contains sugar), as well as liquor. Weirdly, eating a salad almost every day, yet another episode of constipation strikes. My weight still declined a bit in week 5.
Week 6, pretty much the same as week 5. The constipation pretty much cleared up.
Here's my weekly weigh-in leading up to, during, and after the cure:
2/11 166.4
2/20 168.6
2/25 166.8
3/3 166.0 (0)
3/11 166.6 (1)
3/18 164.2 (2)
3/25 163.0 (3)
3/31 161.6 (4)
4/7 160.8 (5)
4/14 161.2 (6)
4/21 159.0
4/28 160.6
5/5 159.6
Total weight loss was about 7 lbs. I'm more or less keeping it off although there's no magic and you can see there are episodes of my weight creeping up again. The thought of possibly going through this torture again motivates me.
In spite of my complaining I don't really regret doing this. The benefits weren't as great as expected. The cost was greater than expected. Still, I never would have lost even this modest amount of weight just continuing on the way I was doing. I suspect if I had done this when I was 30 lbs overweight I would have lost 20 lbs instead of 7 or so. I think I'm just at a point where my body is fighting tooth and nail to hang on to those last few extra pounds.
My current thinking about losing weight and keeping it off follows:
(1) Avoid sugar. This includes high fructose corn syrup. Also note that some fruits are loaded with sugar. Check the ingredients label; this is present in a lot of stuff where you might not expect it.
(2) Avoid carbohydrates, which your body metabolizes into more sugar.
(3) Exercise. The benefit of this is not as great as you might think because exercise gives you an appetite and you wind up eating more. But I still think there is a net benefit.
(4) Mostly eat meat, eggs, cheese, fruits and vegetables. Limit fruit intake because of the sugar they contain.
(5) It's useless to go on a diet if you can't stick to it. Occasionally going off your diet for a day for a birthday or a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas won't kill you. So think about 3 or 4 special days a year when you are going to relax or celebrate something. But if you are making little exceptions every week, you might as well not bother dieting. If you screw up, it's important to limit the damage and get back on the diet right away. Each decision you make about eating sets a precedent for the next decision. You're not just making isolated, individual decisions, you're cultivating a habit.
(6) Think in terms of a permanent lifestyle change where eventually your new lifestyle will feel enjoyable and not sacrificial.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Uberconf 2012 themes, trends, observations
What's hot:
Mobile. This market is growing explosively. My dabbling in Android programming is OK for a hobby, but to seriously compete in this space you have to cover at least Android and IOS, IOS being the more important. Solution is either stick to HTML5+CSS3+Javascript, losing some performance and device-specific capabilities, or go with a framework like PhoneGap or Titanium.
Javascript. It's standardized and ubiquitous. Javascript and AJAX will be the key to rich web content in the post-Flash world of HTML5. No one wants to deal with the flaws (browser compatibility issues, for one) of plain vanilla Javascript, so there's an accelerating profusion of frameworks. There's growing recognition that Javascript's lack of multithreading is a problem.
Gradle. Gradle recently made it to release 1.0. I have it in mind to learn more about this and start using it. Too bad Spring is so joined at the hip with Maven these days, but I wouldn't be surprised if that changed soon.
NoSQL databases.
Conspicuously absent:
The big emphasis on concurrency and multithreading.
Book sales.
Round table discussion.
'No Fluff'... There was an actual vendor booth. Gradleware is definitely one of the good guys, but this was still a conspicuous departure from the NFJS tradition. Will this be the first step down a slippery slope?
Random observations:
The MacBook Pro is still a popular choice.
My impression was the presenters were more slack than in the past about having their slides ready on time. Does this have to do with the iPads? I suppose when the slides were being printed they had to be delivered earlier. I liked not lugging the binder full of printouts around, but just having everything on the USB drive, on time, would have been fine with me.
Mobile. This market is growing explosively. My dabbling in Android programming is OK for a hobby, but to seriously compete in this space you have to cover at least Android and IOS, IOS being the more important. Solution is either stick to HTML5+CSS3+Javascript, losing some performance and device-specific capabilities, or go with a framework like PhoneGap or Titanium.
Javascript. It's standardized and ubiquitous. Javascript and AJAX will be the key to rich web content in the post-Flash world of HTML5. No one wants to deal with the flaws (browser compatibility issues, for one) of plain vanilla Javascript, so there's an accelerating profusion of frameworks. There's growing recognition that Javascript's lack of multithreading is a problem.
Gradle. Gradle recently made it to release 1.0. I have it in mind to learn more about this and start using it. Too bad Spring is so joined at the hip with Maven these days, but I wouldn't be surprised if that changed soon.
NoSQL databases.
Conspicuously absent:
The big emphasis on concurrency and multithreading.
Book sales.
Round table discussion.
'No Fluff'... There was an actual vendor booth. Gradleware is definitely one of the good guys, but this was still a conspicuous departure from the NFJS tradition. Will this be the first step down a slippery slope?
Random observations:
The MacBook Pro is still a popular choice.
My impression was the presenters were more slack than in the past about having their slides ready on time. Does this have to do with the iPads? I suppose when the slides were being printed they had to be delivered earlier. I liked not lugging the binder full of printouts around, but just having everything on the USB drive, on time, would have been fine with me.
Uberconf day 4
Scott Bain "Sustainable Test-Driven Development"
"In TDD, we are conducting an analysis to create the functional specification."
Tests aren't tests, they're requirements. I agree with this line of reasoning, but non-programmers won't accept requirements that are written in code.
"A good test is a unique test."
"Behavior-based Analysis and Design"
I was a little worried this was going to be all review for me, but he touched on some points I never thought of. Good presentation.
Oleg Zhurakousky "Enterprise Integration Patterns with Spring Integration"
I like this guy... he's got a MacBook Pro and he put a sticker over the glowing Apple logo.
Great presentation. I feel like I learned the maximum possible in 3 hours.
Plus another endorsement for Springsource STS.
Lunch
I sat down next to Craig Walls at lunch and he gave me a Spring Roo t-shirt. Cool!
Craig Walls "Client-side MVC: Web and Mobile Development with Spine.js"
"Knockout has an awesome tutorial."
"Mobile extension Spine Mobile"
Once Craig got into the details, this was a bit over my head. Looks cool but I'd need to come up to speed on CoffeeScript first.
"REST API follows Rails convention."
Spine apps can be wrapped in Cordova/PhoneGap.
Links
Approaches to Legacy Code
Lean-Agile Resources
"In TDD, we are conducting an analysis to create the functional specification."
Tests aren't tests, they're requirements. I agree with this line of reasoning, but non-programmers won't accept requirements that are written in code.
"A good test is a unique test."
"Behavior-based Analysis and Design"
I was a little worried this was going to be all review for me, but he touched on some points I never thought of. Good presentation.
Oleg Zhurakousky "Enterprise Integration Patterns with Spring Integration"
I like this guy... he's got a MacBook Pro and he put a sticker over the glowing Apple logo.
Great presentation. I feel like I learned the maximum possible in 3 hours.
Plus another endorsement for Springsource STS.
Lunch
I sat down next to Craig Walls at lunch and he gave me a Spring Roo t-shirt. Cool!
Craig Walls "Client-side MVC: Web and Mobile Development with Spine.js"
"Knockout has an awesome tutorial."
"Mobile extension Spine Mobile"
Once Craig got into the details, this was a bit over my head. Looks cool but I'd need to come up to speed on CoffeeScript first.
"REST API follows Rails convention."
Spine apps can be wrapped in Cordova/PhoneGap.
Links
Approaches to Legacy Code
Lean-Agile Resources
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Uberconf day 3
First stop is Craig Walls "Spring Data Workshop".
We're looking at Spring Data support for JPA, MongoDB, Neo4J, Redis.
Craig zipped up his Maven repository and passed it around the room on a couple of USB drives to address the problems we experienced yesterday.
"Don't use JPA Templates... it's just there for consistency. Exception translation is not needed for JPA. Works similar to Hibernate contextual sessions."
"Spring Data = GORM"
This was one of the better presentations so far. Craig was up all night working on a solution to the previous day's problem which proved effective.
It was refreshing to hear Craig endorsing Springsource STS (Eclipse) and disparaging IntelliJ/IDEA... quite a change for this formerly IDEA-centric venue.
Venkat Subramaniam "Mastering Javascript"
"Gets are deep, sets are shallow."
I never got past the casual use of Javascript, and that was about 2 years ago, so good review, plus some off-the-beaten-path stuff I don't think you'd find in the O'Reilly book.
"It's hard to get Javascript right, so don't actually write Javascript." Venkat recommends CoffeeScript.
Szczepan Faber "Mockito Workshop"
Unit testing is an area of special interest for me. I would like to learn more about Mockito but this just wasn't an effective presentation.
This guy just started coding like a demon with almost no introduction or discussion. No one could keep up. After a while he started pushing to his git repository at regular intervals and the rest of us could keep up doing git pulls. So this turned into more of a coding demonstration than a workshop.
Even then he was doing a lot of refactoring and seemed to focus on developing his application more than demonstrating the features of Mockito.
I didn't come back for part 2 of this.
Pratik Patel "Mobile Development Options"
Lots more technical detail than yesterday's Nathaniel Schutta presentation, focused on PhoneGap and Titanium.
"Titanium's run-time performance is way better than PhoneGap/Cordova."
Keynote: Matthew McCullough "Adam Smith builds an application"
Links
Infinitest Eclipse or IntelliJ/IDEA runs your unit tests every time you save
We're looking at Spring Data support for JPA, MongoDB, Neo4J, Redis.
Craig zipped up his Maven repository and passed it around the room on a couple of USB drives to address the problems we experienced yesterday.
"Don't use JPA Templates... it's just there for consistency. Exception translation is not needed for JPA. Works similar to Hibernate contextual sessions."
"Spring Data = GORM"
This was one of the better presentations so far. Craig was up all night working on a solution to the previous day's problem which proved effective.
It was refreshing to hear Craig endorsing Springsource STS (Eclipse) and disparaging IntelliJ/IDEA... quite a change for this formerly IDEA-centric venue.
Venkat Subramaniam "Mastering Javascript"
"Gets are deep, sets are shallow."
I never got past the casual use of Javascript, and that was about 2 years ago, so good review, plus some off-the-beaten-path stuff I don't think you'd find in the O'Reilly book.
"It's hard to get Javascript right, so don't actually write Javascript." Venkat recommends CoffeeScript.
Szczepan Faber "Mockito Workshop"
Unit testing is an area of special interest for me. I would like to learn more about Mockito but this just wasn't an effective presentation.
This guy just started coding like a demon with almost no introduction or discussion. No one could keep up. After a while he started pushing to his git repository at regular intervals and the rest of us could keep up doing git pulls. So this turned into more of a coding demonstration than a workshop.
Even then he was doing a lot of refactoring and seemed to focus on developing his application more than demonstrating the features of Mockito.
I didn't come back for part 2 of this.
Pratik Patel "Mobile Development Options"
Lots more technical detail than yesterday's Nathaniel Schutta presentation, focused on PhoneGap and Titanium.
"Titanium's run-time performance is way better than PhoneGap/Cordova."
Keynote: Matthew McCullough "Adam Smith builds an application"
Links
Infinitest Eclipse or IntelliJ/IDEA runs your unit tests every time you save
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Uberconf day 2
"Effective Spring Workshop" with Craig Walls was disappointing. The presenter set up an application for all of us to download and work on together. There were about 100 people in the room all trying to get dependencies for this application with Maven all at the same time. Apparently it's quite possible for Maven to download the first half of a file, then time out and abandon the download attempt, leaving a JAR file sitting there in the directory, then at the next download attempt seeing that JAR file present and assuming it doesn't need to be downloaded. You'd think there'd be some logic with checksums or something, but no.
I gained a new appreciation for the shortcomings of Maven today. My Maven repository was so corrupted after this, I wound up recovering $HOME/.m2 from backups when I got home in the evening. Everyone was cracking jokes about Maven in the aftermath of Tim Berglund's poem the previous night.
I wish there had been something in writing for this one. I spent probably 2/3 of the sessions trying to get the application up and thus was only half paying attention to the lecture.
Profiles is a cool new Spring 3.1 feature I had not heard of before this.
"Designing for Mobile" by Nathaniel Schutta: non-technical presentation emphasizing the explosive growth of the market for mobile devices and apps and some special considerations developing for mobile platforms. This was pretty good, kind of a nice break from all the technical workshops without being a waste of time.
"Building Next Generation Apps" by Craig Walls. "Next Generation" = mobile. Due to the technical issues with Maven and the limited network bandwidth already mentioned, Craig did this as a lecture rather than a workshop.
This covered a lot of ground, some of it familiar to me (Spring MVC, OAuth), some new to me (Spring Security and Spring Security for OAuth, Spine.js, CoffeeScript, Spring Data for Neo4J).
"Servlet filters are aspects."
"Adaptive rendering is wasteful of resources on a mobile device."
Venkat Subramaniam keynote
I missed the title of this one and it didn't appear on the schedule. Something about how computer languages have evolved over time. One of the points he made was how functional programming was invented in the 50s with LISP, went out of style and is now being embraced again for the sake of immutability in concurrent programming. "There's nothing new under the sun." Viewing the languages we use now as 'bridge languages' to the better languages to come.
"Applying Groovy Closures for Fun and Productivity" by Venkat Subramaniam.
I haven't given a lot of thought to Groovy lately. This language rocks. Why aren't we all using it?
Links
All of Venkat Subramaniam's content on InfoQ
Redcar TextMate-like editor for Linux
I gained a new appreciation for the shortcomings of Maven today. My Maven repository was so corrupted after this, I wound up recovering $HOME/.m2 from backups when I got home in the evening. Everyone was cracking jokes about Maven in the aftermath of Tim Berglund's poem the previous night.
I wish there had been something in writing for this one. I spent probably 2/3 of the sessions trying to get the application up and thus was only half paying attention to the lecture.
Profiles is a cool new Spring 3.1 feature I had not heard of before this.
"Designing for Mobile" by Nathaniel Schutta: non-technical presentation emphasizing the explosive growth of the market for mobile devices and apps and some special considerations developing for mobile platforms. This was pretty good, kind of a nice break from all the technical workshops without being a waste of time.
"Building Next Generation Apps" by Craig Walls. "Next Generation" = mobile. Due to the technical issues with Maven and the limited network bandwidth already mentioned, Craig did this as a lecture rather than a workshop.
This covered a lot of ground, some of it familiar to me (Spring MVC, OAuth), some new to me (Spring Security and Spring Security for OAuth, Spine.js, CoffeeScript, Spring Data for Neo4J).
"Servlet filters are aspects."
"Adaptive rendering is wasteful of resources on a mobile device."
Venkat Subramaniam keynote
I missed the title of this one and it didn't appear on the schedule. Something about how computer languages have evolved over time. One of the points he made was how functional programming was invented in the 50s with LISP, went out of style and is now being embraced again for the sake of immutability in concurrent programming. "There's nothing new under the sun." Viewing the languages we use now as 'bridge languages' to the better languages to come.
"Applying Groovy Closures for Fun and Productivity" by Venkat Subramaniam.
I haven't given a lot of thought to Groovy lately. This language rocks. Why aren't we all using it?
Links
All of Venkat Subramaniam's content on InfoQ
Redcar TextMate-like editor for Linux
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Uberconf day 1
This time the James Bond USB drive is disguised as a pen.
They're offering a choice of five all-day workshops for the first day. Big improvement over 2 years ago when it was iPad only. I'm doing the Android workshop. Here are the slides and stuff.
Apparently we're going to be issued (loaner) iPads with all the handouts on them. We'll see how this works out.
"Stackoverflow.com is the official Android support forum".
The Android Sources plugin will organize your Android source code so Eclipse can find it.
James Harmon brought easily enough Android material for 2 days. I think I could have handled another day. I feel like I'm at a point where I could mostly work through the rest of this material myself, except where would I ever get that kind of time?
Great keynote from Tim Berglund "Then Our Buildings Shape Us", plus "The Maven".
Links:
AndroidDevTools
They're offering a choice of five all-day workshops for the first day. Big improvement over 2 years ago when it was iPad only. I'm doing the Android workshop. Here are the slides and stuff.
Apparently we're going to be issued (loaner) iPads with all the handouts on them. We'll see how this works out.
"Stackoverflow.com is the official Android support forum".
The Android Sources plugin will organize your Android source code so Eclipse can find it.
James Harmon brought easily enough Android material for 2 days. I think I could have handled another day. I feel like I'm at a point where I could mostly work through the rest of this material myself, except where would I ever get that kind of time?
Great keynote from Tim Berglund "Then Our Buildings Shape Us", plus "The Maven".
Links:
AndroidDevTools
Monday, June 18, 2012
Twas the Night before Uberconf
I'm going to Uberconf tomorrow. As usual the schedule poses some tough choices. I'm going to keep the focus on Spring and mobile where possible.
Some of the presenters are tweeting about a power outage in Westminster. I presume that's at the Westin. Power is fine here.
Some of the presenters are tweeting about a power outage in Westminster. I presume that's at the Westin. Power is fine here.
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