How to Lose 30lbs in 3 Months: An Intro to Quantified Self

Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist, health advisor, doctor or any other type of certified anything in medicine. Any opinions are entirely my own, if you die or get injured after reading this it's your fault.


My Favorite Picture for Summer 2017

My Body Weight: From 205 to 175 in 3 months

I've spent the past 3 years working as a Project Manager for Global Strategic Initiatives. All the travel, with the lavish lunches, dinners, and early morning breakfast buffets, took a toll on my health. I gained a lot of weight, and although I never entirely stopped exercising my routine suffered.

A few months ago I decided to make some changes. For years I had heard of Quantified Self (QS) and had even dabbled in apps to check my steps, how much I eat, etc. Now it was time to make a concerted effort to test how much of an impact QS can really have.

QS is a broad category that covers all sorts of sensors people can use to track quantitative data about different aspects of their body. There is an essential mantra though, and that is to "support new discoveries about ourselves and our communities that are grounded in accurate observation...." There is a lot going on here... so I decided to just focus on two things: Exercise and Diet. These are the quintessential variables of weight loss, and I wanted to know how much more effective I would be at losing weight by keeping track of them every day.


Getting Started

Since at least the 1950s people have said that weight-loss is about Reducing Caloric Intake while Increasing Caloric Burn. In other words, "eat less, exercise more." Just getting started I didn't want to burden myself with too much information, so I decided to just worry about these two stats.

I had used LoseIt in the past with some success, and I really like the app. So I decided to try using it every day to track how much I eat and burn. It's really easy to do:

1. Download the app and signup
2. Set a weight loss goal: target weight and finish date
3. LoseIt will calculate how many aggregate calories are available to you every day
4. Track everything: food, and exercise
5. BE HONEST: if you go over because of a dinner party, make it count and don't hide it

LoseIt App

LoseIt includes a massive database of foods including groceries and meal items from international restaurants, has a Barcode Scanner for quickly adding new foods, and will analyse images as well.

Next, I am a huge fan of Strava. While LoseIt has an excellent database of exercises and estimates for calories burned for each, Strava is the best tool for sharing your epic rides, runs, or walks. It's also a good tool to give you confidence in how you are making inputs to the LoseIt app so you can be sure you are tracking the right amount of calories burned.


Being Honest

Be really honest about how much you consume in terms of calories. It will only take a couple nights-out with the boys to realize that alcohol and bar foods are your enemy #1. Likewise, it will only take a couple of breakfast scones and vanilla lattes to realize that sugar-filled pastries and beverages are your enemy #2.

If you are serious about weight-loss, you will quickly overcome these vices. Tracking them will help you acknowledge the problem and deal with it.


Hitting My Stride

The first thing you realise is that exercise will make you hungry, and if you want to combat hunger-pangs you need to find food that is low-calorie and filling. Sweet Potatoes are the champions, but also Light Yogurt, or Soy Milk, and Almonds (not too many) can be great. Sweet Potatoes have a lot of complex carbs so they take a while to digest. Yogurt, Soy Milk, and Almonds have protein and fats that are great for your body.

Fat is fuel, so the goal was to get my body to eat as much of my stored fats as possible. I really didn't know how to do that, but I figured giving my body food that was easy to convert to energy would divert energy away from digestion toward fat-burning.

Bring on the fruits and vegetables that give you lots of energy but are easy to digest.


Putting it in High Gear

After a month I started to see results. I was noticeably thinner and felt better.  Feeling better was the most crucial thing. Many of us start to feel pain in our body around our mid-thirties, and this launches us into a vicious cycle of exercising less (because it hurts). However, by eating healthy and exercising daily I started to feel up to more challenges and decided to set some new goals.

These could be anything, but I recommend doing something really awesome like Hiking Across Spain, or Ride a Century.

Since I had started to intensify my workouts with a new goal (I'm going to Spain!), I decided to get the most out of them by going 100% Vegan for at least a few weeks. Living in South Korea, only the most die-hard vegans survive, so I didn't expect to sustain a vegan diet forever. However, this got me cooking ultra lean super foods at home: lentils, broccoli, avocados, etc.

Although I only stayed vegan for a short while, I now prefer seafood and fish, or lean meats in really moderate quantities (around 100 grams). Also, having gone vegan for a few weeks has shown me how amazing that diet will make you feel. I highly recommend making an effort to eat a lot less of meats and dairy products.


Taking it in Stride

After a few months, I have lost almost 30lbs. I'm exercising almost every day, and have added a daily 3x3x30 routine: 3 sets of 30 pushups, squats, and planks. The weight continues to peel-off, though at a more tempered pace. I have allowed myself to reintroduce meat and dairy into my diet, but since I am tracking everything the amount of these foods is greatly reduced.

In short, I look really good, feel even better, eat all the things I love only in more moderate and measured amounts.


Conclusion... 

Getting serious about tracking has transformed me. I am a huge believer and have become interested in what other benefits there could be by discovering other areas for improvement. Starting out with the basics, getting a handle over those first is a great idea for anyone. You will see results, promise.

What can I track next? Well, for starters LoseIt has a pro version that allows me to track sleep and water intake. Next, I'm planning to add the new Apple Watch to my repertoire, and maybe Cat Eye computer to track my cadence while cycling.

Bio-hacking, the end of Jolt, and the future of retail

A few years ago I wrote a short essay about “Flow” and how the ideas in that book apply to a world where mobile computing enhances every moment of our lives. I never published it or anything, just showed it to a few friends. However, I did mention those ideas in my first post this year where I said that photo-sharing apps (and other “time-wasters”) are giving people a false sense of productivity and hence happiness.

My point is that mobile computing is going to make us happier, assuming Mihaly’s book is true. We can maximize the output of our day, improving our knowledge about things that interest us, and also ourselves. Apps that allow us to track (or check-in) to routines or habits -- like Lift, backed by Evan Williams -- are becoming very common and fairly popular. Even smarter tools like the products Nike has been pumping out for iOS users, or some of the new health care applications that can track all sorts of data about your body, are getting enough traction today that one can easily envision them becoming part of mainstream medicine within a few years.  

Bio-Hacking

Along with all this new technology, an avalanche of information about diet and health has been hitting the bookstores and blogs for the past decade. And it’s only getting better/worse(?). One of my favorite sites, the bulletproof executive, comes right out and says they update the site every few months at new breakthroughs occur (and are hopefully confirmed). This trend have a new name, that’s “bio-hacking” or the idea of hacking our own bodies to improve productivity at home, at work, in the bedroom, on the field, etc.

Are the days of Jolt-powered nerds at an end? It looks like it, sort-of. While there will always be the more cosmopolitan nerd who craves espresso romano, wine, and gourmet cheese -- yours truly ;-) -- the impact of a new generation of super-nerds who are hacking software AND their bodies could be something incredible. Most people will go through a super bio-hacking phase, and return to a better (though not totally ideal) lifestyle. However, the interest in itself means we’ll see more and more software integrating with our lifestyle goals, helping us overcome craving for example, or somehow infusing us with positive reinforcement when embarking on the challenging endeavor to break.. um create new habits.

How this will impact marketing

Data will become more accurate and more specific, of course. Imagine we have these really awesome applications which “speak” to machines at retail shops, and instead of promoting whatever junk-food is the craze… it knows we are on diet (it should even know what our streak is) and it recommends we purchase items that support that diet. Great right!? Furthermore, with the right technology installed at the store your software could be alert when you veer too close to say… the ice-cream, sending some kind of notification that “hey, you should get some apples” or “if you are craving something cold and sweet, why not a fruit popsicle!” You get the idea.

This could transform the image of many retailers, and could really improve the happiness of millions.

Content Is King

Content Marketing is not new, but it has changed dramatically in the past 10 years or so. Mashable released a simple yet effective illustration a while back, which I came across while looking through my old bookmarks. They described this shift as a comparison between “Content That Humans What to Share” vs. “Content That Ranks High in Search.” While there was a noticeable disconnect in 2002, by 2012 content people wanted to share and high search ranks were in near alignment.

That article was about SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and included some wise-words from SEO Moz CEO Rand Fishkin about what kind of content businesses or start-ups should create to get noticed in this “new” paradigm. The conclusion... basically, “good.”

Good Content

It’s impossible to say at a granular-level what “good content” is. We can all only speculate and abide by some fairly good guiding points: 

1. Good content must be genuine.

2. It tells a compelling story about you or your brand.

3. It is relevant to the target audience. 

4. Video and other visuals are used to convey information. 

5. Form follows function.  

Naturally, I intend to tap-away on my keyboard for the next 20 minutes or so to provide some thoughtful ideas about each of these points. But first, it’s important to consider just how important content is for business. 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing, and are spending 28% of their marketing budget on that content (37% for companies with less than 10 employees!). And that budget is enormous, reaching $100 Billion in 2012 and estimated to increase to nearly $120 Billion in 2013.

1. Good Content Must Be Genuine 

There are lot’s of ways to interpret this, so here’s what I mean. You want to genuinely want to improve your consumers experience, life, cup-of-coffee. Whatever it is you are into, you are into it because you sincerely see a way you can help improve the community. Think about it.

Ultimately, your business (user-base, etc) will grow because influential people like what you are doing. This doesn’t have to be some cohort of celebrities, but ultimately it may be. People will want to work with you, will want to support you, if they feel you are doing something they believe in. In the words of Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

2. Good Content Tells A Compelling Story About Your Brand

This is not the same as point 1, but yeah they are (they all are) related. YOU MUST HAVE A STORY... this doesn’t matter if you are selling yourself, selling your business, or selling a house. Stories sell, and for lot’s of good reasons.

Your story is what is going to convey that genuine desire, it’s the vehicle that carries your excitement, your inspiration, your love, your frustration, whatever emotions you feel are motivating you to do whatever it is you are doing... those are carried to the hearts and minds of your audience via the words, those compelling words of your story.

You can start getting the right story by having the right mission statement. Your mission statement should convey your reason for existence, your "why," in addition to some hint at "what" you do. 

It’s like the mantra of your brand. Make sure you nail it! Check this out.

Wasting Time, Sharing Photos, & Being Happy

People love photo-sharing applications because they provide a false sense of productivity. In reality, they are basically Time-waster applications.

What are time wasters

What is a Time-waster application?

I’d like to attribute this term to Chris Dixon, though I’m not sure if he coined it or not.  In the post “Four types of mobile apps” he categorizes mobile applications in four broad strokes:

>Time-wasters

>Core Utilities

>Episodic Utilities

>Notification Driven

Each has a reasonable description, and I encourage you to read the post. I’d like to focus on Time-wasters, which according to Chris Dixon are apps you use while waiting in line -- you could include a lazy Sunday afternoon, or before you go to bed, etc. Often we fill those times with activities we hope are productive like reading a book or magazine, writing in a journal, etc. However, often we fill those times by “wasting” it... watching TV, playing games, using facebook or other social networks, and surfing the web, or using photo-sharing sites like Instagram, WeHeartIt, FFFFound, Tumblr, 500px, Pinterest, etc.

Few people would argue that browsing the web isn’t a go-to time-waster for anyone born circa... well, anyone. Likewise, few would argue that social-networking is not, at least sometimes, also a go-to method for time-killing. Still, other than games, photo-sharing services arguably been the biggest drivers of time-wasting growth in recent years.

Growth of photo-sharing

Writing about the growth of photo-sharing is passe, so bear with me. I’d like to frame it in a slightly different context.

Most readers probably already know the growth of photo sharing has been incredible in 2012. Just how incredible this growth has been can really be exemplified by 3 services: Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Particularly in the case of Pinterest, the incredibly rapid  growth is pretty much common-knowledge. Tumblr’s bright future is less commonly known (only 6% of internet users on on it), unless you are a teen. According to Business Insider, Tumblr is more popular than Facebook among teens... at least for now.

But why!?

So why are these services so popular? Please allow me to digress.

One of the best books ever written about human behavior is, in my humble opinion (not to mention the opinon of The New York Times), “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi... or just, “Mihaly.” At the risk of oversimplifying Mihaly’s seminal work, the basic premise is that we find more happiness by creating meaningful experiences, and the happiest people are those who make each moment meaningful; meaningful experiences can be generated any time we are creating order out of disorder, or gaining knowledge. The flow-state exists when the sum of our meaningful experiences is appropriately matched to a circumstance where we can apply whatever value, knowledge, those particular experiences have provided us. In other words, we are up to a challenge... it is neither too easy, nor too hard.   

The most interesting part of this theory, however, is not the definition of the “flow state.” Rather, it’s how people find intrinsic happiness by developing some expertise. And that intrinsic happiness is in the process of developing that skill, as much as in the application of the skill.

Taking this to another level, perhaps more abstract, we could infer that our level of happiness would increase any time we feel we have made a moment valuable. This feeling could exist anytime we are gaining knowledge, or making order out of disorder (structured information equals knowledge, yadda yadda).  

So web search... makes me happy. In truth it is often a time-wasting activity, but we can rationalize that activity to be more valuable than doing nothing at all. Mobility has added to our ability to create meaning even more.

However, we are also creatures of evolution, and evolution says we are lazy.

Photo-sharing Makes People Happier

Researching takes time, so making meaning through research in the pre-Google days (dare I say pre-internet) was a challenge that made few people happy. However, as Google endeavoured to make information useful, browsing the web became a grand way to satisfy our need for meaning. Still, it wasn’t something anyone would do.

Enter photo-sharing.

Even babies like it... it is the next level of simplicity in terms of finding meaning (if not, at times, false meaning) in our lives from moment to moment. When people create enormous collections on Pinterest it provides a sense of completion and satisfaction. For many it may indeed be an incredibly useful tool, but for most it is an enabler. Photo-sharing enables more people to create meaningful experience every moment. It’s easy, it’s fast, it’s intuitive, and, of course.... since pictures say a thousand words, it gives us a sense that we are conveying (or consuming) huge amounts of information relatively effortlessly.

Assuming that Mihaly is correct, and the frequency with which we are generating meaningful experiences relates to our happiness, photo-sharing has made happiness that much more plentiful for humanity. Thanks Ben.