The Quantified Self - FitBit

As part of the ongoing process of measuring sleep, I took a leap and bought a FitBit Ultra.

Initially I was interested in evaluating my sleep to see how it tracked compared with the Zeo, and maybe I'll eventually do that, but an initial glance at the FitBit sleep stats tells me that it won't stack up to the way Zeo monitors actual brainwaves.

What it does do very well, though, is count the steps and stairs you take in a day, convert them to miles traveled and stairs climbed, and give you instant feedback on how well you've done that day. It initially sets targets (for me, anyways) of 10,000 steps a day, and 10 flights of stairs. On days when I'm out riding the bike and walking the dog, it's easy to get a lot more exercise than that recommended. When it's raining outside (like yesterday) and you want to take the dog for the shortest walks possible, I find I fall to about 50% of the recommended activity.

I read until 11pm, but FitBit thought I was asleep

Since FitBit can't really "measure" the bike properly, I'm thinking that it considers each pedal revolution as a step, and measures it that way. If you're a real keener, there are ways to more accurately measure activity on a bike.

For those of you who run, FitBit can be calibrated (as it can with walking) to measure your average stride length and give you distance based on that measurement. It will also track things manually - like BP, heartrate, blood glucose levels, caloric intake and weight.  You would enter these values on their user website, where it would time stamp them so you can see progress over time. It might be a powerful feedback tool for self-measurement.

This is on a day I did a long bikeride

The FitBit attaches to your clothing and is pretty unobtrusive. For sleep, it comes with a wristband you wear at night with the FitBit attached to the wrist (it measures motion at night, so that's why it's data is more inaccurate compared with a Zeo).

FitBit costs $100, and I'm using it as a glorified pedometer - but it's got that hi-tech edge which is hard for me to resist.

Learning Through Frustration

The Unintended Rest-Stop

We had been anticipating our annual May Long Weekend trip down to Deception Pass for months. Bruce reserved the sites for us in November, and we had six couples commit.

Last year, we had a problem with one of the brake shoes on the Airstream, and ended up having it replaced. So all the brakes were essentially of the same vintage, I had the other three replaced this year.

Driving down the highway, only a few miles south of the trailer service business, we had to pull over at a rest-stop and call the repair place. Our wheels (well, 3/4 of them) were red hot, and smelled terribly of burning rubber. Fortunately, we weren't too far down the road, and a mechanic and the service manager came to meet us at the rest-stop (bringing half the garage with them - they had no idea what to expect). They re-adjusted the three affected wheels, and after a short test drive, sent us on our way to Deception. When we pulled into the campground, the wheels were hot again. So we spent most of the weekend wondering what was up. We called the service folks again, and said we'd go slow, and bring the trailer back to them on Tuesday for a closer look.

Half of Us

We drove about half way home on Monday, and spent the night at a KOA in Burlington. This is where we discovered that our converter system (converts 120VAC into 12VDC for the trailer) wasn't working properly. It wouldn't recharge the batteries or supply 12VDC to the coach, so the lights in the trailer started to dim. Now we have a converter problem and a brake problem.

And we could smell propane too.

And it's raining.

And the trailer is filthy from having a dog track in the outdoors.

All this was getting to be a bit much for me. I do find I get more easily overwhelmed now, but still acknowledge that getting upset about all this solves nothing.

Fortunately, with Laura and I it seems that if one is down, the other is up. So on the whole we're pretty steady, and one of us can see that the "glass is half full". It's just that I wish these lessons came one at a time, and not in groups of five or six.

Is The Paleo Diet Improving My Sleep?

Photo Credit: Bryan Wright via Compfight

I have to wonder whether this Paleo (Primal, Archevore) eating  I've been doing for the last 100+ days has had an unintended side effect.

Sleep.

• I now get to sleep quickly at 11pm, after reading in bed for an hour or so. 
• I still wake up frequently during the night, but get back to sleep almost immediately. 
• I'm able to return to sleep successfully as late as 6am in the morning. 
• Finally, at 7am, I cannot sleep any longer, and get up for the day. I don't need an alarm to wake at 7am anymore. 

I've noticed all of this in the last few weeks, and this relatively new phenomenon could be related to one of three things:

1. the introduction of calcium and magnesium supplements into my diet 
2. the natural healing of the brain 
3. the change in my diet 

I cannot tell which of the three has had the most significant impact - mostly because I've done #1 and #3 almost simultaneously, and we have no way of measuring the healing of the brain.

My inclination after thinking about it, is that the most radical change I've made in the last six months is the way that I eat. Specifically, I've cut down the carbohydrates I eat by about 75%, and the grain products I eat by nearly 100%. I've also double or tripled the amount of fat in my diet (both saturated and unsaturated, including all the derivatives - polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, etc).

I wouldn't think that diet could have such a large effect on something like insomnia (unless you're eating habits do something to cause you to wake up during the night).

Now I'm not so sure.

Sailing and One and Two Thirds Book Reviews

The weather this last weekend here in Vancouver was wonderful. It was still a bit (a lot) chilly on the water, but when we dropped anchor somewhere it was toasty warm. Funny thing was, there was almost nobody out on the water ... kinda spooky. This is from our first night anchoring at Wallace Island - almost postcard perfect. Thanks again to Andrew M for allowing this incompetent "can't read a tide chart if his life depended on it" sailor to go with him.

And now on to the reading list this week. I've got several books on the go - one I've finished, two I'd like to comment on, and then a whole bunch more that need no comment (at this point anyways).

1. Abundance - The Future Is Better Than You Think. For the longest time I've been a "cup is half empty" person when it came to the world's problems. Global Weirding, Water Shortages, The Financial Crisis - it's a long list. After Harry W's suggestion last year I read "The Rational Optimist", thinking that it might change my mind about all this - but it didn't. This time, even though the authors of Abundance refer to The Rational Optimist all the time, something finally stuck. In example after example, the authors show how we've (the human race) repeatedly pulled back from the fire, avoided catastrophe, and moved on. And this time, we really have technology on our side. Maybe it was the repeated references to technology that got me on board this time, but whatever it was, I'm now a "cup is half full" person. But my money is still in T-Bills.
2. Religion for Atheists. This book was brought back from London for me by Dave K, who thought that I'd enjoy the read. I'm only at the first part of this book, but I can already tell that it will cause me to think in a different way about religion. The premise is to throw out all the standard theology arguments and dogma (free will, suffering children, hurricanes and tsunamis, etc), and concentrate instead on what religions of all sorts have brought to the party. If you take God out of religion, it becomes interesting and and the whole a force for good. Fascinating stuff. More later.
3. The Four Hour Body. This is the second best-seller by a blogger/human experimenter that I follow - Tim Ferris. Andrew's wife, Cheryl, lent me the book while we were off sailing and I read through most of the parts that interested me - but it's encyclopedic in length, so it should serve more as a reference book that you have on your shelf. This morning when I got to my desk, the first thing I did was some research on what the Paleo community said about this book. Tim talks a lot about diet, among a lot of other things, and although I follow much of what he says there's a lot that I don't. The best interpretation of the diet part of this book is that it's a fantastic transition from the SAD (Standard American Diet) to a more Ancient, Whole-Foods Diet (Paleo or, as I prefer, Archevore). He has things like "cheat days" where you eat whatever you want for one day a week, but the comments about this I read were "it takes you a week to recover from the cheat" - and Laura and I can confirm this after an over-the-top meal for our anniversary. He eschews processed foods and "anything white", and I think that may just be the single biggest thing you can do to improve your health. Ferris also has several other sections on exercise and sexual health that are quite enlightening. I'll probably get this book for my Kindle and use it as a reference!

Reconfirming What Has Already Been Reconfirmed

Over the last several weeks, I've been on the lookout for anything contrary to what I've found about the low-carb diet I've implemented.

Fortunately for me, all I can find is confirmation (and I really am looking). Yesterday I watched a presentation from Christopher Gardner, a researcher at Stanford University. Although it was made in 2008, nothing much has changed except more studies that confirm his conclusions. This would all be "preaching to the choir" except for the fact that Chris is a committed, long term, vegetarian - and an actual "stand-up scientist" that believes the data even though it's contrary to what he thought.

The video is worth a look (it's quite long, but very interesting):