Category: Healthy Lifestyle

Our Future Looks Rosy, Remote, Revolutionary

A decade from now, our lives will be simply more enjoyable, more friendly, more pleasant completely independent of any change or increase in income of material wealth. Do you think I’m overly optimistic?

There have been so many sociological shifts from COVID. Among the most fascinating to me is the reversal of the centuries old rural to urban migration. Prior to COVID, more than 80% of the world’s population lived in metropolitan areas. While the reversal has only just begun, it will be interesting to see the residential preferences of people who can remote work and don’t need to crowd into urban areas.

First, let’s put RTO to bed.  “Return-to-office died in ‘23,” said Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University and work-from-home expert.  Yes, large companies like Meta and Zoom made headlines by ordering workers back to the office. But, Bloom said, just as many other companies were quietly reducing office attendance to cut costs.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/21/remote-work-from-home-trends-2024/71991203007/

In addition to the fact that it’s cheaper for companies not to pay for office space, heating and cooling, Internet and electricity, remote workers report being happier and workers report they are more interested in remote work than in a raise. https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/11/27/are-remote-workers-more-productive-that-s-the-wrong-question/

The demand pull for remote work is going to put increased pressure on companies looking for talent. Where corporations can, they will be pushed to convert positions to remote work eligible over the coming decade. Some 40% of the current jobs can be done from home. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/23/post-poll-remote-work-hybrid-future/ The COVID surge followed by the slower, but continuing trend for remote positions, will free people up to move away from the metropolitan areas. 

Nearly 83 percent of the U.S. population lived in an urban area in 2020, and that number was expected to reach nearly 90 percent by 2050, https://www.statista.com/topics/7313/metropolitan-areas-in-the-us/#:~:text=Nearly%2083%20percent%20of%20the,nearly%2090%20percent%20by%202050.

But wait.

The data showed more residents moved out of the Golden State than into it in 2023, with 58% of California moves being outbound in 2023. California saw its first-ever population decline in 2020 when the state imposed rigid lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Housing prices are falling in cities like Phoenix, Pittsburg, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, New York City, Austin, Texas and Chicago where people are moving out toward areas with cheaper costs of living. https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/cities-where-home-prices-are-falling-most-this-year/ 

“Connecticut is gaining a huge bonus from the remote work and the pandemic flight from New York City,” says Dowell Myers, a professor and director of the Population Dynamics Research Group at the University of Southern California. 

Some people leaving concentrated areas are moving to traditional retirement states like Arizona and Florida for the year round summer experience. But many are moving to states that aren’t known for their metropolitan centers including North and South Carolina, North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma and Idaho.

But the service industry still exists. Even though computer programmers, project managers and accountants can do their jobs from anywhere, people working in retail and service industries still have to go to brick and mortar locations. However, the services will have to follow the migrant herds leaving the cities and going to the outback of Montana. So even those jobs will be exiting the populated centers, albeit slowly. 

How will all these changes impact the social fabric of our country? 

People in cities often ignore each other, but people in the country greet each other. This sociological change may be amplified by the sitting-is-the-new-smoking reality. Remote working office etiquette will change. One possibility is that meetings can be labeled screen visibility required meaning the participants will be best served by sitting at a screen. But more abstract theoretical discussion meetings will be labeled “walk-friendly.”  Since remote workers on discussion meetings can and will walk around their neighborhood, we’ll see a renaissance of the local community. We’ll have an increased ability to recognize our neighbors. 

The homeschooling trend that started with COVID will continue to increase both because parents are in the house remote working so they can provide security, such as calling 911 if there were an emergency, and because a new industry is growing up around the new demand for homeschooling. Online live or webapp courses will allow elementary, middle and high school students to study what they want, when they want and as long as they can show sufficient progress that parents can focus on remote work, kids will get more autonomy, mastery and purpose. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-growth-data-by-district/

School will become a series of day camps and activities like Singapore Math classes, Mathnasium and Coding camps, focused on interactive and entertaining activities as well as educational activities because the students have a say in what they are being taught and how and they can vote with their feet.

The dictatorship of being involuntarily committed to a particular school district and classroom based on a zip code will be replaced with choice.  Consumer choice has been a trend in the U.S. starting in the 1920s as documented in Jason Voiovich’s Booze, Babe and the Little Black Dress, but elementary education has so far managed to escape the conversion of choice. Not any more. The rise of homeschooling and unschooling is doing more than private schools or charter schools ever could. 

Backyard vegetable gardens, raising chickens and mason bees have all received a surge as a result of the remote work move. People who are at home and who are migrating to more remote locations with more space have the option of growing their own food. And they are both because it tastes good and because gardening is a great hobby. Homesteading YouTubers are making bank on this new trend with websites like “3 Mississippi” about a family that left San Diego to move to Houston … I mean Houston, MS and 30+ acre farm.

A decade from now, our lives will be simply more enjoyable, more friendly, more pleasant completely independent of any change or increase in income of material wealth.

Do you think I’m overly optimistic?

The future of education will be choice, characterized by an industry focused on live online or webapp courses and homeschooling local activities the way kids do sports activities now. There will be Singapore Math and coding camp and these will be the bulk of self selected courses for a significant number of American kids.

Solve For Happy: Notes for Myself

Solve for Happy

Chapter 1

Activity #1: Make your Happy List.

Activity #2: Try the Blank Brain Test. Find an unpleasant thought and focus on it. Then cause your mind to refocus by reading a few lines of text or blasting your favorite music or trying NOT to think about ice cream.

Chapter 2

Part 2: Chapters 4 through 8:

There are 6 grand illusions that keep you in confusion.

  1. Thought. The little voice in your head is not you.
  2. Self. Who are you?
  3. Knowledge
  4. Time
  5. Control
  6. Fear

Activity: Make a list of your fears

Part 3: Chapter 9

7 blind spots delude your judgement of life.

  1. Filters
  2. Assumptions
  3. Predictions
  4. Memories
  5. Labels
  6. Emotions
  7. Exaggeration

Part 4: Chapters 10 through 14

5 ultimate truths

Here and now

The Pendulum

Love

L.I.P

Who made who?

Solve for Happy

I’m listening to this amazing audiobook while walking through a shaded forest trail alone. I’m recovering from COVID. My husband and 7yo are playing in the creek. The author, Mo, haltingly describes the loss of his 21yo son, a university student. The story and his tone are heartbreaking.

Then he asks what makes me happy.

This, I thought. Listening to an audiobook while walking in the forest.

Watching the butterflies on the butterfly bush.

Taking photos of my mother in law’s garden.

Listening to my daughter laugh or seeing her smile.

Listening to my husband talk about his job with fascination and pride.

My daughter’s excitement today at finding a box turtle by the edge of the water.

What makes you happy?
Butterflies

Food Diversity – Gluten free for everyone

Maybe what matters most eating a larger diversity of different foods to improve the microbiome.

Several months ago, our 4yo started complaining of tummy aches. As time went on they got worse and more frequent and we tried a number of options at home to remedy the situation. I thought maybe she had acid reflux so I tried to get her to sleep with a tallish pillow to elevate her. We tried to avoid orange juice and other acidic foods under the same premise.

Finally, she refused to play because of stomach pain so we went to urgent care. The doctor said it could be a gluten issue, so we cut all gluten and ignored the acidic food. Orange juice did not make it worse. Cutting speghettios and shells and cheese made it better.

Several more trips to doctors and a Celiac Disease test, she tested negative. But there was the indisputable fact that she felt better when she wasn’t eating as much gluten. Doctors stressed that if you are going to go gluten free, go all the way, but … Grandma Huang cooks homemade Chinese dumplings and noodle dishes from standard white flour and our daughter LOVES them. And she ate some. And nothing happened.

What we know about the microbiome is that a diversity, a broad range of different foods is best for our digestive systems. However, the industrial complex overtook American farming as well as all other types of manufacturing and now just like the original Ford which you could get in any color as long as it was black, our food diversity has been sharply curtailed.

With the mass production of wheat, we can have wheat-based pancakes for breakfast, wheat based sandwiches or hamburger buns or hotdog buns for lunch and wheat based breaded foods for dinner like chicken nuggets or fish sticks. Wheat based breakfast cereal. Wheat. Wheat. And more Wheat. Not that wheat is a bad grain, but I’ve begun to wonder if what helped my daughter’s stomach move on wasn’t so much the elimination of wheat or gluten as it was the increase in diversity of grains from adding lots of gluten free products to her diet. Gluten free products are made from all kinds of different cereals and grains. Maybe we should all add a little gluten free to our diets. Like the Gluten free Dr. Schar bagel slide I just ate. Delish.

Maybe what matters most is eating a large diversity of different foods to improve the microbiome

Can CoronaVirus Improve US Quality of Life?

My husband was in China for SARS and Avian flu. He said all the gyms, clubs, community centers were closed. There were police outside the grocery stores taking people’s temperature. No one allowed inside with a fever.
He said a lot of people lost their jobs; homelessness increased. Many people couldn’t pay mortgages and committed suicide. He also says I’m naively optimistic.
But I wonder if there isn’t a silver lining in this cloud. We have a lot of technologies we have been experimenting with, but haven’t yet brought online.
We telework, but have only exploited that option to about 10% or 20% of its potential. And teleworking has so many advantages, including reduced pollution and greenhouse gas emissions due to lack of physical transportation. In major cities, the majority of people spend an hour on average just getting to or from work. All that time could be put to better use and the reduction in fossil fuels could be great.
People driving to work every day to stare at a computer screen for 8 hours is idiotic. Oh, but the meetings! Yes, those can be done online too. Our problem is a human bum in every chair is the way we’ve always done it. Maybe it’s time to do it differently to the improvement of quality of life for Dilbertville dwellers everywhere.
We have self-driving electric cars, but haven’t yet authorized them on the roads. Maybe if we trade out our taxis with people for taxis without people and create some kind of automatic sterilization process, we could get electric self-driving cars on the roads sooner.
Doctors can and probably should videoconference patients at home. I can certainly have the same conversation with my doctor via video conference that I had yesterday when she suspected I had strep, but determined it was just post nasal drip from seasonal allergies. I can dial in by videoconference, talk; she can order tests and I can go to a local kiosk for vitals and test. She can call me back and tell me her diagnosis, order prescriptions online and CVS delivers meds to my door.
We can shop online even more than we already do. Someone commented on one of my FB posts that we should all handle packages delivered to our homes with plastic gloves, but the truth of the matter is, most packages are mostly handled by robotic machines. There is one guy or gal who actually brings it to your door, but the number of human hands that is involved is remarkably few compared with going into a major supermarket. Amazon’s fulfillment warehouses are a marvel of modern technology with relatively few humans in sight. Items are pulled off the shelves, boxed, labelled and sent out without touching a human.
More online customized classes not only at the university level, but for high school, middle school and elementary school too. Yes, students need socialization, but much of school time is sitting silently in a chair which is hardly a social experience. My daughter’s piano teacher offers online piano classes for times when students or more often parents are unable to attend class. I doubt we’ll find any replacement for gymnastics, Tae Kwon Do or pony riding classes, but those are fun enough to warrant attending in person anyway.
My hope is that coronavirus creates a new standard for the use of the new technologies we have, but haven’t actually leveraged.

My Niece was Treated Nicely in a Job Interview

AllDolledUpKimberlyTilleyMy niece was treated nicely in a job interview. Yes, it comes as a surprise. She got addicted to Meth. I’m not going to apologize and neither should she. After 3+ years clean, she had a relapse. She was caught with drug paraphernalia and spent a couple of days in prison. She explained all this to both companies that interviewed her. One brilliant hiring official said all that matters is that you got clean. Both companies hired her.
It shouldn’t be so shocking, but people have treated her terribly in the past. Some called her a junkie. I’ve heard people refer to her as garbage. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), by the time individuals reach their senior year of high school, 70 percent will have tried alcohol, 50 percent will have abused an illicit drug, 40 percent will have smoked a cigarette, and 20 percent will have used a prescription drug recreationally, or for nonmedical purposes. With the OxyCotin scandal dragging down the national life expectancy and driving up the number children in foster care due to parents in rehab or worse, in morgues, we need to rethink how we classify people who are fighting addiction of any type.
Traditionally addiction has been viewed as a discipline problem, not unlike the way we fat shame people under the assumption that they have any control over their body weight. Reading the Secret Life of Fat, I learned we don’t know shit about fat. In fact, fat fights to stabilize the body’s weight and chances are pretty good, if you see anyone obese, her or she is most probably suffering from an undiagnosed and very possibly unknown medical illness. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Fat-Science-Understood/dp/0393244830
But back to addiction. Everything from alcoholism to drug addiction is generally viewed with scorn in our communities. As a part of a sociology of health undergraduate class in 1996, I visited Narcotics Anonymous groups, and what I saw were people fighting a heroic struggle. While it’s true sometimes they stumble, they can and do win, and that’s an extraordinary achievement that I think no one outside that world can truly appreciate.
Now that OxyCotin has brought to light what has actually always been true, that doctors, lawyers, dentists and other highly educated and well-paid people also fall into addiction. It’s not only those on the lower end of the economic spectrum. Everyone is susceptible. Please be kind to people who tell you they are addicts. And try to understand what an incredible achievement it is for them to get and stay clean and sober.

Diet Food: Fiber, Fiber & More Fiber

If you are like me and have tried to diet and failed, you’ve already observed that you can literally burn more calories than you take in and still gain weight. It’s a mathematical impossibility that is biologically doable. But why? How? I’m not a scientist so I’m just speculating, but I think one of the things that happens when we eat less, is that our bodies’ pipelines slow down.
I’m guessing that the nutritional value published on the side of all our products is only an average. If the food stays in the body longer, the body can absorb more nutrients. If it passes through quickly, the body has a relatively short opportunity to absorb the contents. There’s also the whole microbiome thing.
So, I eat Mission Carb balance whole wheat small tortillas with everything. Each tortilla is about a day’s worth of fiber.

high-fiber-mission-carb

For my standard breakfast, I usually order 2 egg white delight McMuffins at McDonald’s both with extra egg and Canadian bacon and no cheese. I’m not opposed to cheese, but I throw the muffin away and usually the cheese is clinging to the muffin, so no reason to pay for it. I put the egg whites and Canadian bacon in a Mission Carb whole wheat tortilla as a wrap.

For lunch, I usually eat 3 to 4 cups of salad. Often I find I don’t need dressing if the salad is a good combination of things like avocado to moisten it up and make it tasty. But avocado has fat, you say? I don’t actually worry about fat. or carbs. or salt. or calories. I find that I actually don’t tend to consume much that is bad if I’m focusing on getting the specific items I want which is fiber and protein. I’m especially fond of the toasted sesame organic salad from Mom’s Market. I eat one entire bag at a sitting.

ocs-toasted-sesame-transparent

For protein, I tend toward liquids. I’m fond of Premier Protein shakes and clear. These make it easy to max out on protein and they do tend to minimize any hunger or desire for food. Sometimes I splurge on a protein bar, including premier protein bars. I buy the drinks and bars from Amazon because my schedule is too crazy. I used to buy the mission carb tortillas from Amazon too, but they stopped carrying them. Pity.

Then, the microbiome. I don’t really understand microbiome because again, I’m not a scientist. I read with interest the book The Secret Life of Fat, also a lot of Noom articles try to help members understand the importance of a good gut. I think the good gut goes back to the original idea that it’s not just how many calories you eat, but how much your body is absorbing. When the book The Secret Life of Fat was published, the PhD who wrote it speculated that fecal transplants would help people lose weight in the future. It’s not longer speculation, poop transplants are now a thing. Sounds pretty yucky, but what I understand generally is that a broad variety of foods can help improve the biome as does having pets. Keeping this in mind, I add small snacks to my day like 3 blueberries from my daughter’s snack, an olives-to-go pouch or raw carrots. I try to eat a banana, a pear, some strawberries each week. One day, I bought a box of raspberries at Mom’s Market because my daughter loves them. Once I started, I couldn’t stop eating them. I was super surprised and happy when I entered them into http://www.MyFitnessPal.com because, “One cup of raspberries contains a mere 64 calories and packs in a whopping 8 grams of fiber.” I went back and bought 3 more boxes. Raspberries are delish and really good for ya.
Also for the microbiome, fermented foods are good. kimchee. sauerkraut, which is awesome because I love dogs and kraut. yogurt. kefir. I also love seeds like chia seeds and flaxseeds. I sprinkle them in the kefir or yogurt.
But basically I fill up on high fiber tortillas, fat free Taco Bell refried beans, egg white delights and protein products. Then, when there’s no much space left, I eat a little something just to boost microbiome.
The pounds keep coming off, but that’s really the high quality sleep with technology biofeedback. It’s not as much about an exercise to calorie balance. But I think folks fighting with the scale already knew that.
I went out for a fitness walk and got caught in one of those crazy downpours. When I posted the photo on FB, my friends congratulated me on the weight loss. That wasn’t the point of the post but it was nice.
rainedout

The no-exercise exercise

Coming of age as I did in the Marine Corps, my idea of exercise has always been synonymous with misery. “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.” “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

Among my failed attempts to lose weight since I moved to Washington, DC in the Spring of 2018, I decided to bike to work at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA from Hyattsville, MD. It took one to two hours each way. And when I finally got home to my toddler, I was exhausted and often in pain. The heat was overwhelming in the summer. I did lose some weight, but in the end it came back and I resorted to baggy sweaters and dark colored pants to try to cover the excess me that I didn’t want the world to see.

There’s a Noom quiz about whether running or walking is a more effective weight loss option and the trick answer is, it doesn’t matter. No one could have convinced me of this until I saw it for myself. Not only does torture not help, the Marine Corps’ mandatory 3 miles per day is NOT ENOUGH!!!

I haven’t broken a sweat working out for pretty much all of 2019. Now my “workouts” are strolls. When the weather is lovely, I walk outside my office or home. When the weather is too hot or cold, I walk inside the huge government buildings I work in or on the weekends go to a mall.

Using my wearable, I track the steps. I’ve discovered that I’m actually more successful if I do more short walks than if I commit to a 30- or 40-minute walk. A 10- to 15-minute walk once per hour is actually better since I’m too busy to spend a lot of time on a long walk. Additionally, working constantly on the computer as I do, a break every hour is a nice distraction from a screen-weary mind and screen-bleary eyes.

I actually achieved one mile running in circles in my daughter’s ballet class because the teacher was late and the girls were bored, so when a few of them started running in circles, I joined in to encourage them.

I shoot for 12,000 steps every day. Today I’m at 16,500. But the number of steps isn’t dictated by my weight loss goals, it’s actually dictated by how many steps normally correspond with the highest quality heart rate dip and best deep sleep. After monitoring my activity for a while, I realized that anything less than 12,000 steps and my sleep quality suffers. So, as counter intuitive as all this is, the steps are for sleep quality and not for operating in a caloric deficit.

I’ve been working on adding strength training, but I’ve been adding it the same way I do my endurance, without breaking a sweat or feeling any pain or torture. I have 2 10-pound weights by my desk and 2 at home. They are well within my ability to lift and my hope is to do 5 sets of bicep curls, shoulder presses and tricep presses per day, one set at a time, separated by an hour or more. I also love STEALTH Plankster Core Trainer, but I also use it lightly. Every hour or so, just one minute of planking with the video game. It’s fun, easy and involves no sweat or torture, but I see great gains from light, but constant training as opposed to 30 minutes of hard, intense training that leaves me exhausted.

Another bonus: no crazy logistics of carrying all my fitness clothes and shower gear and adding a shower after I arrive at work on the bike or after 30 minutes in the gym. I love the no-exercise exercise. It has completely upended everything I ever thought about fitness.

I do sometimes jog, but it’s only because I’m short on time and need to get more steps in. It honestly makes no difference how fast or slow I do my 12,000 steps. The deep secret is just move. Slowly, constantly throughout the day and your body and sleep will thank you. You’re quality of life will radically improve and so will your blood work.

It’s literally as easy as a walk in the park.

There’s an app for that: Weight loss & technology


It might seem crazy to talk about weight loss by talking first about sleep quality and second about technology, but they really set me up for success.

I have an iPhone with Apple Health app built in, but I don’t think this is the only technology available to provide the services it does. It’s just the one I know. The main function Apple Health serves is that it pulls in data from all the sources into a central location and then allows other apps, with my permission, to access my health data.

What health data?

Well, for starters, every morning after brushing my teeth, I step on my WeightGuru WiFi enabled scale that records my body weight, hydration level, bone density, BMI, and body fat percentage. All this information is then uploaded to the Weight Guru app and shared with Apple Health, which in turn shares the information with Noom. Subsequently, I never actually enter anything into Noom regarding my body weight. It all happens while I’m rubbing my eyes walking off into the shower.

I know have years of weight data ups and downs in the cloud that I can scan back and reflect on. Oh yes! We moved from Texas to DC, lived in hotels there and here, ate fast food. My weight went way up over those few months. And so on.

The previous post talked about how important sleep is
https://charlotteannhu.com/2019/11/16/diet-weight-loss-meditation-sleep/
And the SleepWatch app is a critical element in my ability to understand the impact and effectiveness of all my efforts to improve my sleep quality.

I have used MyFitnessPal for years on and off, but it’s a really wonderful way to track intake. The Noom staff noted that while the calories automatically transfer to Apple Health and Noom, the specific foods consumed do not, so if they are working on coaching eating habits, this automation doesn’t help. I haven’t had problems with my intake and I’ll talk about food specifically in another post, but the MyFitnessPal is critical to understanding what’s coming in and how much it’s worth in terms of calories, carbohydrates, protein, fiber, etc.

I mentioned the value of meditation in the previous post and since I had zero knowledge of meditation, I just use an app for that. I still don’t consider myself to have any understanding of meditation, but I love listening to the content on Calm, Oak, Abide, Headspace. The other night, Calm told me I had listened to their app 500+ times. Wow! I had no idea. I also love Amazon’s Audible and audiobooks. You might like podcasts, but I find that listening with my eyes closed is a great way to relax at night.

Noom exists solely in an app. Unlike other digital support systems like MyFitnessPal and WeightGuru which have corresponding websites, there is no website interface for Noom. It’s only available in an app.

So, get your tech set. Upload all your data into your apps. And even if you have zero plans to eat healthy, once you know exactly what you’re eating and how much you’re moving and how those two balance out, you almost can’t help but start tweaking it.

Early on with MyFitnessPal, I had a crazy urge to eat something delicious. But when I put it in the app, I was shocked how much calories, fat, sugar, etc. Then I considered whether a half of quarter serving of the same dessert might not hit the spot. I ate a fraction of what I was planning on eating and felt really happy with having eaten it. I undoubtedly would have eaten the whole thing if I hadn’t put it in the app first. I tend to do that a lot. I’ll think about eating something and wonder if it’s going to give me sufficient fiber or protein and if the numbers don’t add up like I want, I make another food choice.

That’s another detail. I don’t avoid carbs, fat, calories, etc. I chase protein and fiber. But that’s part of the food discussion, so I’ll cover that next time. For now, just set up your tech. Download all the apps. Tryout some meditation. Start logging food. Give your Apple Health permission to record your exercise, steps, hours standing, etc. Give it permission to share that information with your Noom app.

Buy a WiFi enabled scale. Step on it naked every day just after you wake up. Buy some kind of wearable (watch) that tracks your steps, health, heartrate, sleep quality. I talked about the options in the previous post: iWatch ($300?), FitBit ($140?) and HuaWise ($28).

Sleep & Tech 1st. Worry about food and exercise later.

Happy Health!

Diet, Weight loss, Meditation & Sleep

I didn’t take a New Year’s resolution for 2019, so I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I dropped from 160 pounds to 135.

Let me try to recount the sequence of events not only for the readers, but because I haven’t always been cognizant of the comprehensive nature of all the interlocking decisions I’ve made.

Obviously, I was unhappy with my body weight and so was my doctor. I gave birth in early 2016. Prior to the pregnancy, I was 125 pounds. I’m 5’3 3/4″. While working with a fertility doctor, the medications I took to try to help me get pregnant caused me to gain 15 pounds. I lost 7 pounds after stopping the meds, but stopped trying to diet when it looked like our attempts at pregnancy might be successful. I didn’t want to risk losing a chance at a child. During the pregnancy, I topped out at 170 pounds and afterward while breastfeeding, the pounds melted off, dropping to 136 7 or 8 months after giving birth. However, once I stopped breastfeeding, the weight came back.

For a couple of years, I played yo-yo and tried numerous diets, the most successful of which was Jenny Craigs, but I never managed to keep the weight off. In addition to weight problems, our daughter didn’t sleep through the night until around 3 1/2 years old. We were horribly sleep deprived. I read a lot about the damaging effects, including weight gain of insufficient or bad quality sleep. I also read the book The Secret Life of Fat. Finally, I joined Noom and announced on Facebook that I was going to get 125 pounds back.

I haven’t. I’m still 10 pounds away, but I have become confident that I can. Step 1 was a wearable and a focus on sleep.

After joining Noom, the counselor asked me what I wanted to focus on and I said 8 continuous hours of sleep with 60% deep sleep and average heart rate dip, which is 20% or more. This was an odd goal for a weight loss program, but to their credit, the Noom team didn’t balk. I said I’d work on weight loss after I mastered sleep.

The Sleep Craze
I bought an iWatch. Later I wished I would have bought a $28 HuaWise Fitness Tracker, Waterproof Activity Tracker with Heart Rate Monitor and Sleep Monitor, Waterproof Pedometer, Step Counter, Calories Counter for Android & iPhone. My niece, her boyfriend and my nephew all have fitbits, which are also cheaper than an iWatch. Neither the HuaWise nor the fitbit requires a monthly cellular service charge. Also both fitbit and HuaWise only need to be charged once per week. I constantly fight to keep my iWatch charged, but regardless, some kind of wearable that tracks steps, heartrate, sleep and so on provides critical feedback for both sleep and weight loss management.

I read a lot of blogs, add a black paper accordion folded shade with super sticky glue behind my blinds. I made my room super dark and increased the air condition to make deeper sleep more likely. (Original Blackout Pleated Paper Shade Black, 36” x 72”, 6-Pack by Redi Shade) I guarded my sleep religiously, stopping all action outside the home by 6 p.m. to be able to get the toddler bathed, fed and relaxing in bed by 8 p.m. so I could consistently fall asleep between 8:30 and 9 p.m.

I quit caffeine. No shit! The most extreme part of this whole 9 month process has been eliminating my chemical dependence. It was painful. Headaches. And it took me a while to switch to Diet Sprite or 7 Up or Diet A&W root beer, but after 3 or 4 months, I had the impression that I had actually won. Another goal that Noom didn’t argue with, but simply supported.

I stock several sleep aids. Chamomile tea is the best but tastes horrible. Sleepy Time tea tastes better, but doesn’t seem to be quite as powerful. I gave up on melatonin which is great for changing time zones, but doesn’t keep me asleep. When my mind is restless and I can’t sleep within 20 minutes of laying down, I take dreamwater, luna or sleepy bear gummies. Dreamwater has melatonin with GABA and other stuff. Luna’s advertisement says: made with Herbal Extracts such as Valerian, Chamomile, Passionflower, Lemon Balm, Melatonin & More. The Amazon description for sleepy bear gummies says: Formulated with Melatonin, the berry-flavored chewable gummies also include our proprietary Rest Well Blend consisting of Lemon Balm Leaf, Passion Flower, Valerian Root, and 5-HTP.

But I started meditating. I use several apps: Calm. Oak. Headspace. There are more. I ignore the part about sitting in the lotus position imaging a string above my head holding me straight up, relaxed but alert. I lay in my bed, one leg over a body pillow with the smart phone beside my pillow and most nights I’m asleep before I finish the meditation. Of course, if the meditation works, no need for sleep aids, but if I’m still awake 20 minutes after laying down, I don’t think twice, I just sleep aid. Nothing is going to keep me from hitting that 9 p.m. deadline.

In order to hit my heart rate dip and deep sleep requirements, I discovered that I must do at least 12k steps per day. If not, my sleep quality suffers. What’s more, it doesn’t matter if I jog or stroll. However, unlike the Marines taught me, 3 miles per day is not enough. I usually log something closer to 7 miles per day in order assure quality sleep. Of course, this amount of movement also helps with weight loss. But even if operating in a caloric deficit, a sleep deprived body can hold on to weight. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But I have seen over the last 9 months that even if I do everything else right, but my sleep isn’t good, the weight will not come off. This might be because of the incredible power of intermittent fasting. Of course, sleeping people don’t eat.

just before giving birth max body weight at 170. a year later, I’d be 160 pound without the baby.
Both of us pretty close to perfect bodyweight. I don’t know about Bin, but I was 125 pounds in this photo.
Charlotte Ann Hu (Crouch) lowest adult body weight in 2012
During NCO School Camp Hansen, Okinawa, Japan, 1987

I’ll do more weight loss posts with information regarding food and daily habits, but for now, sleep well!

During NCO School Camp Hansen, Okinawa, Japan, 1987
Charlotte Ann Hu (Crouch) lowest adult body weight in 2012
Both of us pretty close to perfect bodyweight. I don’t know about Bin, but I was 125 pounds in this photo.
just before giving birth max body weight at 170. a year later, I’d be 160 pound without the baby.