Mental Wellness – 35-Year Public Affairs & IT Professional

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.

Thought. The little voice in your head is not you.
Self. Who are you?
Knowledge
Time
Control
Fear

Activity: Make a list of your fears

Part 3: Chapter 9

7 blind spots delude your judgement of life.

Filters
Assumptions
Predictions
Memories
Labels
Emotions
Exaggeration

Part 4: Chapters 10 through 14

5 ultimate truths

Here and now

The Pendulum

Love

L.I.P

Who made who?

Thoughts in preparation for next meeting with the KKI psychiatrist

There are a few administrative notes. The information in Vee’s chart regarding her sensory issues isn’t accurate. All 5 senses including sight are impacted. She experiences light sensitivity and we have an optometrist appointment this week to work on getting her sunglasses that fit, feel comfortable and can help with the light sensitivity.

We have also gone shopping for clothes in brick and mortar stores where she can physically feel the fabric and try on clothes before buying and we went shopping in a brick and mortar store for shampoo, conditioner, hand soap and body soap so she can smell them before buying.

Top priorities are sleep and her stomach. We’ll continue to give her Miralax daily, possibly indefinitely, to keep the chronic constipation at bay. We might need to evaluate for acid reflux. We might need to medicate for anxiety.

The book Navigating Autism lists the numerous blockers to sleep for Autistic kids/people.

Here’s an excerpt from Navigating Autism:

Symptoms of autism, such as reduced sensitivity to the sleep-wake circadian system, perseverative thoughts or behaviors, anxiety, and environmental hypersensitivity can all make sleep problems more likely. Sensory discomforts such as being aversive to the texture of the sheets (or pajamas), hearing traffic that others don’t notice, or being bothered by a streetlight, can be particularly interfering for a child with autism.

Other physical or psychiatric distress can also lead to sleep disturbance. A child with unrecognized pain or gastric distress is unlikely to sleep well. A hyperactive or anxious child may find it difficult to get to sleep. A depressed child who is experiencing ruminative thoughts will likely have delayed sleep onset as well.

Remembering how sleep disorders can cause a cascade of effects and how they have a bidirectional relationship with other comorbid conditions is critical to the mindset of viewing the whole child. Professionals and parents who keep this in mind will be more likely to spot signs that a child is not sleeping well and will be more apt to gather data on the possible consequences of that disturbance.

PJ Generation

Things that are changing: Rural to Urban Migration
Up to 40% could telework fulltime
More neighborly
More Walking, Fitness, Less Car, Gas & Pollution?
Death of the Office Building
Death of the Dry Cleaners and Business Suits
Increased Productivity, More Energy Focused on Work/Family, Less Driving
Possible Rise in Domestic Violence
Increased Learning Curve for Middle Class Kids
More Home Office, Home Improvement, IOT and More Screen Time
More eCommerce

We had a great opportunity to chat with Dror Shaked of Wix this week and asked him what the future of digital publishing holds. He said his latest public presentation was titled the pajama era. I started thinking what does that really mean across the social spectrum?

Urban to Rural Migration

For a dozen generations or more, the world’s population has been moving from rural to urban. The PJ Generation may reverse that. A new poll shows that nearly 40% of urbanites are considering fleeing the city as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. https://www.millersd.org/news/article/people-are-on-the-move-to-rural-251-415/ In the simple map above lies a stark spatial imbalance: half the people in the world cram into just 1 percent of the Earth’s surface. https://www.businessinsider.com/maps-show-worlds-insane-population-concentration-cities-2016-1

Historically, rural poor move to concentrated areas of population to find better employment. This includes the American farmer and the Chinese factory girls. Even in Egypt, where some 90+ percent of the population lives in that nation’s capital.

One of the many socio-economic elements that the rural to urban migration has had around the world is a shockingly high real estate cost in areas of concentration like Tokyo, Shanghai, London, San Francisco, Vancouver and DC. Obviously, the lure of cheap and spacious housing is attractive, but historically, rural areas with low cost housing had no industrial base, and thus, no substantive income opportunities.

As much as 40% of the workforce could telework fulltime

COVID-19 may yet do what years of advocacy have failed to: Make telework a benefit available to more than a relative handful of U.S. workers. Only 7% of civilian workers in the United States, or roughly 9.8 million of the nation’s approximately 140 million civilian workers, have access to a “flexible workplace” benefit, or telework, according to the 2019 National Compensation Survey (NCS) from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. And those workers who have access to it are largely managers, other white-collar professionals and the highly paid. (“Civilian workers” refers to private industry workers and state and local government workers combined.) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/20/before-the-coronavirus-telework-was-an-optional-benefit-mostly-for-the-affluent-few/

However, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, “The authors find that 37 percent of U.S. jobs can be performed entirely at home—a number that greatly exceeds any recent estimate of how many workers telecommute on an average day. According to the 2018 American Time Use Survey, ‘less than a quarter of all full-time workers work from home on an average day, and even those workers typically spend well less than half of their working hours at home.'” https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/beyond-bls/the-number-of-people-who-can-telework-is-higher-than-was-estimated.htm

We May See More of Our Neighbors

I’m scratching my brain trying to remember which book I read in grad school talked about the elimination of the neighborhood as a result of women joining the work force. It might have been one of those Bowling Alone dystopian view books. I read Turkle’s Alone Together and wasn’t impressed. I was more impressed by Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody, Cognitive Surplus and Don Tapscott’s Growing Up Digital because they focused on how technology was remaking our social connections based on passions and shared interests. This seemed more compelling to me than just hanging out with whoever happened to be born in a geographically co-located residence.

But the dystopian authors bemoaned the time lost in face to face interactions. This summer and fall, I’ve seen a LOT of my neighbors. We are all walking circles around the same blocks and hanging out with kids and dogs at the same neighborhood parks. I’m learning names of neighbors and kids and dogs. This is the kind of community that was apparently lost when women joined the work force because the book whose name I can’t recall talked about how housewives used to spend time together watching kids, sharing recipes, pantry items, etc.

So work from home, some 40-ish percent who may also be moving to rural areas for cheaper, more spacious housing could change the national landscape, including house prices and social fabric, allowing for more awareness of neighbor’s names and lives.

More Walking, Fitness, Less Car, Gas & Pollution?

For me and from what I hear, many of my coworkers, often walk around the neighborhood while on teleconference discussions. I do it mainly so I can resist the temptation to read that email that just popped up. I find I remain more deeply engaged in telephonic conversations or Google Meets if I’m not sitting at a computer. And like many of my peers, I’ve become an obedient slave to my smart watch that complains if I sit too long, warns me that I haven’t yet walked as many steps as I had yesterday at this time and I need 30 minutes of elevated heart rate, so I should get moving. Walking around the neighborhood while teleworking means I see and wave at more neighbors, their kids and dogs.

The PJ Generation almost certainly means a sharp reduction in gas use and car mileage, cleaner air and less pollution. It means less cafeteria food. It might even mean a reduction in our nation’s growing waist lines. My iWatch often complained at me while I was driving home from the Pentagon that I’d been stationary for too long, but I couldn’t very well get up and walk around while stuck in beltway traffic.

Death of the Office Building

And corporations and local, state and federal governments don’t need huge buildings. We don’t need all those wider highways.

Death of the Dry Cleaners and Business Suits

Obviously, less suits, which means the decline of the dry cleaner and Ann Taylor, the only real women’s professional suit maker. Yesterday, Bloomberg featured an article: Work from Home Crushes Dry Cleaners. If you want to know the state of the return to office, take a look at U.S. dry cleaners. 1 in 6 have closed or gone bankrupt as more people work in their sweatpants instead of freshly pressed dress slacks.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-11-25/work-from-home-crushes-u-s-dry-cleaners-video

Of course, Zuckerberg and Bezos had already changed the nation’s social expectations of the dress code for the smartest guys (and gals) in the room. So, Americans go even more casual that we always were. I think this is great. Since I was a kid in a Catholic Church, I hated the pageantry and wealth displayed in our clothes.

So we down-cost our homes and dress down our clothes. Get out and see our neighbors. What else?

Increased Productivity, More Energy Focused on Work/Family, Less Driving

I think the workplace is going to gain a significant boost in productivity. Some reports have already talked about this. Since people aren’t spending an average of an hour each way in traffic, they have more energy to focus on work and home. There has been some discussion about the lack of work/life balance because work never ends, but I find that something like a split shift works well for our household. I hit the computer as soon as I wake up, sometimes as early at 5:30, when had I been driving to the Pentagon, I would have wasted time, showering, suiting up and driving. I work until my daughter takes a break from her teleschool and we do something together – eat lunch, LEGOs, tennis, read a book. Then back to work until she’s finished with school. Another break until she goes to tae kwon do or pony riding class or when she hits the bath. Then just before bed, I hit the computer again.

The previous work day was 8 hours at the office, 1 hour of lunchbreak that I couldn’t share with my family or neighbors and at least an hour each way driving, sometimes more. Even if work infringes a bit outside of the 8 hours required, I should still get more family time. After all, the total work day used to require 12 hours outside the house.

Possible Rise in Domestic Violence

One possibly negative impact of all the PJ Generation is domestic violence. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200818/radiology-study-suggests-horrifying-rise-in-domestic-violence-during-pandemic#1

For kids in healthy families, more time with parents could help increase their learning curves. However, some kids, myself included, saw school as an escape from an uncomfortable home life. We’re already seeing an increase in the income gap as a result of COVID. The PJ Generation might see a greater separation between low and upper middle income which is exasperated by triumvirate of income, mental and physical wellness, and substance abuse. It’s a well know and understood element of life for people struggling with debilitating illnesses like depression and PTSD that “self medication” is often a logical extension of the mental misery. Domestic violence is often related to alcohol or other substance consumption. Additionally, mental and physical illnesses can interfere with a person’s income generating capabilities. As a result the 3 elements interact together in a terrible way to bring people and families down.

One possibility is that people who suffer might be able to find gainful online employment and/or education that they would never have been able to engage in due to their illness. But another possibility is this cohort falls further away from the social fabric.

Increased Learning Curve for Middle Class Kids

For my daughter, she loves having all 3 adults in the house with her – grandma, dad and mom. And it allows us to tag team with her insatiable need for attention that is exhausting for any one person. So, for the middle class, I think kids will benefit from the PJ generation.

More Home Office, Home Improvement, IOT and More Screen Time

More time at home means more IOT. More voice interactive speakers, TVs, lights and thermostats. More smart homes and more home offices. We’ve already seen a sharp uptick in home improvement during COVID. Americans spent over $6B more dollars this year than previously on home improvement at Home Depot alone. https://thehill.com/policy/finance/526305-home-depot-sales-surge-as-americans-spend-on-home-improvement-amid-covid-19

We’ll probably see an increase in screen time. “Zoom meetings. Distance learning. Online shopping. The coronavirus pandemic has caused us to spend more hours than ever facing a screen. While that allows us to carry on many of our daily activities safely, it may also bring with it some concerns.” https://www.rivertowns.net/news/education/6749222-Screen-time-increases-with-pandemic-adjustments

More eCommerce

During the first two quarters of 2020, stores like Ulta, Macy’s and Kohl’s experienced dramatic spikes in their ecommerce revenue, rising roughly 200%, 53% and 60% respectively. The International Council of Shopping Centers predicts a 25% rise in ecommerce sales in 2020. https://insights.digitalmediasolutions.com/news/ecommerce-transactions-rising

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

AllDolledUpKimberlyTilley My 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.

Concluding that humans need less than 7 hours of sleep is a tabloid myth

A short section from a book that changed my priorities and my life. Nothing is more important than high quality sleep!
De-mythifying sleep: Concluding that humans, modern-living or pre-industrial, need less than 7 hours of sleep is a tabloid myth.
“sleep study on modern day hunter-gatherers dispels notion that we’re wired to need 8 hours a day”
First, when you read the research paper, you learn that the tribes people actually give themselves a 7 to 8.5 hour sleep opportunity each day with an estimated range of 6 to 7.5 hours of sleep. The sleep opportunity that these tribes people provide themselves is therefore almost identical to what the National Sleep Foundation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend for all adult humans: 7 to 9 hours of time in bed.
The problem is that people confuse time slept with sleep opportunity. Many people conclude they only need 6 hours so they give themselves 6 hours sleep opportunity which means they will only obtain 4.5 to 6 hours of actual sleep.
Need is not defined by what is obtained (as the disorder of insomnia teaches us), but rather or not the amount of sleep is sufficient to accomplish what sleep does. The most obvious need then, would before life – and healthy life. The average lifespan of these hunter-gatherers is jut 58. Epidemiological data says any adult sleeping an average of 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only into their early 60s, close to the median life span of the .
More prescient, however, is what kills people in these tribes. The most common immune system failures that kill hunter-gather members are intestinal infections. This is the same fatal consequence of keeping rats alive for 15 continuous days in a lab. No sleep for 15 days kills rats by striping their immune system and killing them by infection.
Finally, one of the few universal ways of forcing animals of all kinds to sleep less than normal is to limit food. When food becomes scarce, sleep becomes scarce as animals try to stay away longer to forage. The Hadza will face days when they obtain 1,400 calories or less and routinely eat 300 to 600 fewer calories than those of us in Western cultures. A large portion of their year is therefore spent in a state of lower-level starvation, on that can trigged well-characterized biological pathways that reduce sleep even though the sleep need remains high. Concluding that humans, modern-living or pre-industrial, need less than 7 hours of sleep is a tabloid myth.

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.

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.

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.

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!