In late 2022, I suffered a health issue relating to a stroke that affect my right eyes’ movement. This is due to a combination of several factors, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol level. It had been indicated to me that I really need to take the issue seriously. Nonetheless, I had issue with engaging in the actions needed to preserve my health and my life. Compliance with the recommendation set by my doctor didn’t really kick into gear until late March.

Since then, I have been iterating my protocol over time, mostly on a week to week basis.

Operating Principles

• Exercise is the most important thing I can do for my health. By engaging in a wide range of modality, it will help increase my health and lifespan. However, what I am not allowed to do is to try to use exercise as a tool to lose weight. I even assume that exercise will play no to little role in my weight loss journey. This can be explained by the theory of constrained energy metabolism which note that one’s basal metabolism tends to adjust to one physical’s activity level, thus resulting in lower than expected caloric expenditure, which works against weight loss.

• Weight loss is a matter of what happens in the kitchen or what I ingest. It doesn’t matter how I achieve the object of eating less calories whether that’s time restricted feeding, food category eliminination, or counting calories. Use whatever method works, and what I can sustain on an indefinite basis. Everyday, I weigh myself to keep myself accountable. I am well aware of the frequent flucutation of weight throughout the day, and I do not see a number as meaningful except over long enough timespan, which is at least a week.

• Every week, I try to keep the changes small and incremental. Sometime it’s too incremental for me, so I may add two or more changes to my routine. This way, I am keeping a routine that works for me, while experimenting on its edge. This let me get used to the changes and to see if I like or tolerate the changes. The best routine is the one that works for me. A strong signal to pay attention to if I hate or dispise a change. For example, I used to have a regular routine that consists of walking 10K steps every morning, while working on projects or studying at the same time. It was additional stress that I could not handle. I eventually discarded it and never went back, which was a major setback. In my current routine, I also introduce stress by adding or updating goals or duties. However, I tried to be slow and deliberate about it, and when possible, I would like to reduce stress.

Previous Attempt

The most successful feat of weight loss happened in 2021, in which I lost around 27 lbs starting at 187 lbs to around 160 lbs over five months.

Status Log

On 05/02/2023, the injury was worse than yesterday. I made a visit to see the doctor. He didn’t change anything other than suggest I take tyrenol to help with my medication. Other than that, blood test and urine sample were ordered. I found out that my blood sugar was abnormal despite not eating anything since yesterday. I resolve to make blood sugar measurement a part of my measurement routine.

On 05/01/2023, the injury noticably improved from yesterday such that I was able to partake cycling activity, lower body resistance training(but not as high in intensity and some exercises were skipped), and walk without the use of a special shoe that minimized pressure on my left foot. It seemed to have worsen quite a bit as I approach bedtime, which dissuaded me from performing a one leg stand on my left foot. It could be due to the medicine wearing off.

On 04/30/2023, I became stricken with injury in my left foot on the outer edge of my foot. I don’t know the origin of this injury but I noticed this injury waking from slumber in the middle of the night. When it did not resolve, I visit a clinic staffed by health insurance provider. They did an X-ray and ruled out any bone fracture or damage and gout as well. Thus, it is assumed to be a sprain or damage to my ligament. I scheduled a follow up appointment with my primary care doctor later this week to see if it can be resolved. In the meantime, I received an anti-inflammatory medication to help with the injury.

Almost all cardiovascular activities that I would normally do is off limit since it involves the use of my foot one way or another. A promising potential alternative is doing battle ropes, but I do not have such equipment in my possession. Plus, given my budget, it isn’t something that I could purchase normally. However, given that I am working on making my own gym equipment it is something I am considering as a project in the future. I could have made use of the arms ergometer that I saw in the gym, but didn’t, since it was unfamiliar with me. Alternatively, I could try to add cardio elements to my upper body resistance training session. This is why injury prevention is important to my exercise routine. Injuries limit the amount of physical activities that I can do until such time that it properly healed.

05/05/2023, my protocol had fallen apart in the last two days, undoing much of my habits that was built in the last month. It was a metastable system that suffered an event that precipitate in its catastrophic failure. Mainly, my phone functioned coupled with a still recovering injury. However, not all hopes are lost, as long as I make effort to reconstitutes my habits and continue the system and get back on track.

05/13/2023, For the past week or so, my protocol wasn’t being followed much, if any at all. I followed most of my protocol yesterday. I wasn’t able to complete the weight loss and dietary restriction component, nor last long enough in the sauna. Next week, I will be trying to complete as much as of the current protocol as I can.

Current Protocol

• Diet: Under 1500 calories a day, with 150 being my target weight. I aim for 120 grams of protein each day to prevent muscle loss. The protein goal is based on target weight multipled by 0.8, because there’s only a certain amount of protein that I can tolerate..
• Exercise:
  • Resistance training: 1 hour everyday except Saturday. It is split into upper body and lower body day.
  • 1 hour of low intensity cardio everyday except Saturday, split between walking, cycling, and stairmaster.
  • Minimum of 10K steps a day. Ideally, I should be tracking the amount of time dedicated to walking to 10K deadline.
  • Saturday is rest day except walking to 10K steps.. This is usually done by afternoon.
  • Exercise snacks: I do at least four of them throughout a day, usually focus on specific exercises to reinforce a certain attribute or body part. These snacks are intended to supplement the main resistance training session, especially for exercises I wanted to do but didn’t get into.
  • Scheduled exercise total: At least over 12 hours each week, ideally the limit being 20 hours scheduled in total.
• Sauna: 16 minutes time in a gym sauna. I do this at the end of my exercise session in a gym. I take a heart rate monitor and a stopwatch, as well a water bottle. I don’t take any other electronics due to potential issue from the heat.
  • Since overheating is a possible danger, I intend to let my body acclimate to the heat. In the first week was five minutes. I felt comfortable enough to then jump to ten minutes next week. I intend to increase total sauna time by an additional minute each week unti I reach twenty.
  • There’s some epidemological study suggesting sauna may be good for cardiovascular health, but there’s no definite randomized control trials as far as I am aware of. Thus, I am willing to abandon this practice if the scientific benefit doesn’t pan out, or if the time spent in a sauna could be spent somewhere with greater benefits.
• Medication: I manage them with a pill box and make sure I swallowed them each morning, including a B12 supplement.
• Blood pressure measurement: My blood pressure measurement isn’t perfect in that I don’t follow all the rules to ensure accuracy, but I tried to follow what I can, and do so on a daily basis. As far as I can tell, my blood pressure need to be better under control.
• Bodyweight scale: I weighed myself to measure how I weight and what is my body composition.

Removed (Temporarily of Permanently)

• A threshold cardio activity(defined as zone 4 according to Garmin) for at least six minute. There’s tremendous pain involved.
• Weight loss plan: 18 hours intermittent fasting or until 12 noon, usually after exercise. Eating period should be less than 6 hours. My caloric budget is under 1.5K Calories.
  • Notice that the caloric budget does not take into account physical activity. I anticipate that due to the theory of constrained energy metabolism, much of the caloric expenditure for scheduled physical activity will be blunted by the body’s basal metabolism expenditure lowering. I used MyFitnessPal to keep track of what I put into my body and to ensure that I don’t overeat.
  • The reason why I used intermittent fasting in combination with calories counting is that I have trouble achieving success with intermittent fasting unless I engage in a much harsher fasting regimen. I was also concerned about the loss in the amount of protein that I could ingest to build muscle or stave off muscle loss.

Update

• 04/23/2023 - Increase sauna time by 1 minutes. Added exercise snacks and threshold zone 4 experiment.
• 04/26/2023 - Reword some things in the protocol section. Update TODO about my resistance training routine.
• 04/29/2023 - Rewrite the exercise protocol section. Increased sauna time by 1 mminute. Added a TODO item.
• 04/30/2023 - Status update.
• 05/01/2023 - Update on my injury. Expanded the weight loss protocol and explain my reasoning.
• 05/02/2023 - Status and TODO update.
• 05/05/2023 - Note catastrophic failure. Outline operating principles.
• 05/13/2023 - Status update.
• 05/23/2023 - Update sauna protocol.
• 05/29/2023 - Update sauna protocol again. Added a section called Removed, (temporarily or permanently) for parts of the protocol I am not doing for one reason or another. & 06/05/2023 - Update sauna protocol to 16 minutes. Add new diet protocol.

TODO

• Look into getting lab works for certain numbers, such as my APOB.
• Implement a skin care routine to protect my body from the sun.
• Find and create a Health Saving Account. Healthcare can get expensive.
• Skin cancer screening? I have lot of moles on my body.
• Work on diet, cooking skill, and kitchen organization.
  • 04/29/2023: This is my focus for May.
  • 04/30/2023: Experimented with red lentils and grounded beef. 200 grams of lentil and grounded beef is too large of a serving. Note the lack of standardized containers which means I can’t eat the same meal for each day over and over again.

Done

• Improve my resistance training protocol.
  • 04/26/2023, I revamped my upper and lower body days in an attempt to emphasize all muscles trained, as opposed to the singular focus on some exercises, such as 100 tibialis raise, 100 bicep curls, etc. It isn’t perfect, and I’ll probably continue tweaking my routine, but I should be working on adding in a specific section for exercise now that it is becoming an increasingly complex bullet point.
• Talk to the doctor about stronger blood pressure medication.
  • 04/30. Scheduled an appointment with the doctor for other things.
  • 05/02. Talked a bunch of stuff other than just blood pressure meds like foot injury and persistent cough.