Author: Jon Westfall

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Am I Hungry?

A small update in my Weight Loss Journey, Formerly Fat.

A little over a year ago, Karey discovered these Kind Energy Peanut Butter Bars, which she got in a sample pack. We liked them, so we ordered a pack of 12 from Amazon. Amazon, being Amazon, sent us 72 instead of 12. And we’re still eating them down (We have about 5 left, and you’d be surprised but they’re still pretty tasty past their “Best Buy” date). Anyway, I just ate one. Because I think I’m hungry. By the time I finish with this post, I will hopefully know if I was or not.

Am I Hungry?

If you’re asking yourself “How do you not know if you’re hungry?”, then you probably have a normally functioning metabolism and body. Turns out a lot of people don’t know their own hunger cues anymore, according to this article from MSU Extension, which actually lists your hunger cues:

  • “Empty stomach
  • Stomach growling
  • Headache
  • Light-headed feeling
  • Grumpiness
  • Lack of energy
  • Shakiness/weakness”

The article then goes on to talk about how lots of things can cause you to be disconnected from your true hunger cues – and it’s not just that “people eat when they’re bored” – they bring up good points about how stress can cause you to alter your food schedule, and so can being busy. It is true – some people do get so distracted with work that they forget to eat. We tend to applaud those folks as workaholics and we degrade the “boredom eaters” as having no self control when both of them have exactly the same problem: They don’t know when when they’re hungry! Interesting how society praises one of them and not the other, right?

Anyway, for a long time when I was really fat, my eating schedule was hardly what others expected. As I’ve noted in the past, people have a misconception that fat people eat all the freaking time, but many do not. I was fat because when I did eat, I was capable of eating a tremendous amount of food. We’re talking entire entrée, appetizer, and dessert at a chain restaurant. My favorite times of year were Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Bowl and Red Lobster’s Shrimp Fest because I could sample all of the varieties of pasta and/or shrimp. I had the capacity.

And when you have the capacity, you also don’t care about regular food schedules. For most of my life, I didn’t eat breakfast regularly. I’d skip it – I wasn’t really hungry when I woke up. In fact, if it were up to me, I probably would have eaten at exactly 2 times during the day: 10-11 AM and 4-6 PM. Snacking was pretty rare for me, maybe 2-3 times per month I’d grab something between meals. Of course since my capacity was large, I could easily put away 3,500 calories or so as a snack. I was fat not because I ate all the time, it was because when I ate… I really ate.

Go Big or Go Home, Right?

Back to the present day, my habits have changed slightly. I still don’t get hungry when I first wake up – it takes about an hour before I want to eat. This works well since my morning routine typically has me exercising at the start, doing some reading, and then eating later on. I eat lunch and dinner, but generally less food at each than when I was heavy. I more or less have 2 “schedules” of food – weekdays (7:30 AM, 11:30 AM, 5:30 PM), and Weekends (9-10 AM, 3-4 PM, and a late supper). My highest calorie meals tend to be my mid-day meals, although that can be swapped with my third meal. Snacks do happen, typically on weekends (since I go to bed later – I don’t tend to eat 2-3 hours before bed). My body is pretty well trained to expect food at these times. I also don’t deny myself little treats between meals if the opportunity presents itself (e.g., cake at a mid-afternoon celebration, donuts in the break room at 10 AM), especially since I went on maintenance mode.

So… how do I know I’m hungry? Good question – I eat regularly enough that it’s pretty rare that I’m absolutely famished by the time a meal rolls around. But I do notice a few things. And they aren’t any of the list I quoted above.

  • “Empty Stomach” – well, that’s not so much a feeling as something obvious when you haven’t eaten in awhile, right? If I haven’t eaten in 2-4 hours, my stomach is empty.
  • Stomach growling? My stomach makes all kinds of weird noises here and there, usually after I finish eating or am digesting. What’s a growl without a lion or tiger anyway?
  • Headache? I get 1-2 headaches per year. I’m very fortunate in that regard.
  • Light-headed feeling? I have some signs of Athletic Heart Syndrome thanks for my daily cardio, so the only time I get light headed is when I stand up suddenly after resting.
  • Grumpiness is one I can’t really judge (although I probably do display it) – after all, no one thinks they’re grumpy most of the time they are.
  • Lack of Energy? I’m not on the verge of starvation here.
  • And finally, Shakiness/Weakness? Nope.
nature summer yellow animal
Stomach Growling? Maybe you have a lion in there. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

But, undoubtedly, I do have signs of hunger that I’m starting to notice. Remember how I mentioned I just ate one of those Kind bars earlier? That was around 45 minutes ago. And I feel quite different now than I did an hour ago. Here are my signs of hunger as I’ve noted them:

  • Inability to think about anything other than food. For example, yesterday I didn’t eat until 10:15 after waking at 6:30… and I couldn’t stop thinking about the food I was going to eat for a solid hour beforehand.
  • Feeling of uneasiness / blah feeling. Yesterday I felt really “off” until I ate in the morning.
  • Heightened sensitivity to everything (which does make me grumpy – the room is too cold, the people are too loud, the lights are too dim). Yesterday, at one point, I wrote in my daily log “I am so cold and hungry”. Thankfully I ate 20 minutes later!

When I get one or more of those, and it’s been 2-4 hours since I last ate, I have started to put 2 and 2 together. And I eat something. And I feel better. Physically. Psychologically I’m still working through some stuff related to food that complicates matters. Allow me to explain (you’ve made it this far, you’re allowing me a lot already). Here are a few facts:

  1. When I was fat, I prided myself on not snacking. After all, the stereotype of the fat snacker was something I was actively trying to avoid feeding into.
  2. When I was fat, my body didn’t signal to me that I was full until 50-75 minutes after I finished eating. This is much longer than you normally see in weight loss advice columns (e.g., “If you want to lose weight, wait 10 minutes after you eat and see if you’re still hungry” – yeah… I always was). This led to me associating large portions with satiety. Why eat something as small as one energy bar? Even now I have to actively tell myself that I will be full when I finish the portion I’ve taken. And very rarely am I wrong (If I am, I take a little more).
  3. When I was fat, and still today, I associate food with celebration and enjoyment. This is pretty common – think about all of the celebratory events in your life – food is always present. So the idea of having a small snack alone in my office instead of going out with friends, or seeing my wife at home, or socializing in some way around food seemed like a waste. After all, if I was going to eat, I was going to enjoy it, right?
  4. Today I’m hyper sensitive to calorie counts and macros given my last 2 years. This is great if you want a walking dictionary of food facts and I’m around, but not so great when dialog goes through my head.

Let me explain this to you in terms of the dialog that entered my brain right before I ate that Kind bar that got me thinking about this blog post. In fact, it’s probably why this blog post exists.

11:25 AM: “Hmm… what should I do for lunch? I planned X… but do I want Y? Z? What are my friends doing?”
11:30 AM: “Lunch is going to be so good… normally if I eat alone I’m eating right now… but I still haven’t decided on what to do. I brought some lunch I could eat alone. Or I could go home and eat leftovers. I’ll wait to see what others are doing!”
11:32 AM: “Why isn’t anyone texting me back. I’m kinda feeling off. Maybe I should just eat by myself? Or those leftovers at home – half a meal from the Mexican place last night – that would be a good amount of food. But then I’d need to eat fewer calories at dinner, and I’d wanted to have a higher calorie dinner tonight… and if I eat a snack now…. that’s 250 calories that I can’t have at dinner or lunch! Why is food so hard?!?”
11:34 AM: “I’ll distract myself. I just got an email from King Arthur. Maybe I should buy some baking mixes online…. but those prices are too high….but the food is good… wait a minute, why am I thinking about food again?!?”
11:35 AM: “I’m an idiot – I should just eat one of those Kind bars in my bag”

See what happened there? Lots of debate that ultimately led me eating the kind bar. And ya know what happened in the last hour since then?

  • I felt better within 10 minutes.
  • I ended up working on a few projects when I didn’t hear back from anyone.
  • I wrote this blog post, and drank some Coke Zero.
  • At 12:35 PM all I’ve eaten was that one Kind bar. I’ll probably have some more lunch after I finish this post.
Feeling Better After Eating… Who Would Have Thought?

So in sum, over the last year, my struggle hasn’t been so much avoiding large meals (e.g., “retro-eating”), it’s been:

  • figuring out when to eat between meals or when to start a meal earlier than my “usual” times.
  • not feeling guilty over a snack when I’m obviously telling myself I need one.
  • getting comfortable with being a “grazer” on some days.
  • getting used to the idea that I should always have some healthy snacks in my backpack in case I need them.

These are all big changes to me, and probably everyday life to the rest of you. But in the event you’re reading this and going “So when I feel blah and everything bugs me, I might just be hungry?!?”, I hope this helps you. And if you’ve been thin your entire life and wondered how those around you who were heavy thought, maybe this helped you too. Be well and stay warm,

Jon
(Today’s Weight: 195.2 lb, 220 lb lower than where I started!)

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So How Do I Just… Stop?

This is yet another update in my weight loss story. The landing page, Formerly Fat, has all of my previous entries. Check it out and read in order to catch up!

It’s been awhile since I last updated everyone on my weight loss journey, which I started in 2011, re-started in 2018, and then kicked into high gear in 2020-2021. When I last updated you, I had gotten to around 210 pounds, plateaued, then went into loss mode again. For the past 4 months, since around early September, I’ve been in the 193-198 range. My BMI is right around 25 (So I’m “normal” weight), my fat percentage is around 13.5%, and I feel pretty good. Long walks, HIIT workouts, Yoga, Pilates, and more are all things that I can do without issue, and I don’t feel hungry that much – in fact, I’d say I don’t really deny myself anything. With the holidays behind us, I’ve also experienced the slightly higher weights associated with eating, drinking, and being merry, and the subsequent return to a lower weight as life has returned to normal. So I think it’s time to transition to the scariest part of this journey… maintenance.

A Life of Vigilance

Losing weight isn’t easy because, as many can attest, it requires you to change (as I often joke), 7-8 major things in your life. Here’s a list of my ‘changes’:

  1. Tracking everything I ate, including the macronutrients, in order to try to balance them out.
  2. Religiously using tracking apps for everything from food to body fat to relaxation to metabolism (See my journey to learn more about Aura, Oura, Lumen, Bello, and Apollo).
  3. Logging my weight twice daily, morning and night.
  4. Paying attention to weight fluctionations (mostly out of curiosity).
  5. Telling myself that I’ve eaten enough food (Because my stomach still lags about 10 minutes behind my eyes – much better than the 75 minutes when I started!)
  6. Cutting out all the “little” things (e.g., a few piece of candy, a donut with my coffee at a social gathering, etc…). Little things do add up.
  7. Walking daily / exercising daily.
  8. Holding myself accountable – reminding myself that I can control my weight.

Simply put, 1-8 is kinda exhausting after you’ve done it for almost 600 days, as I have. While some of it is useful in the long term (e.g., #4, #7), some of it can be pretty joy-depriving after awhile. And what’s the point in losing a ton of weight if you also lose joy?

The Case of the Sunday Donut

Let me illustrate my dilemma: Sunday mornings after church, there is a fellowship hour with coffee and donuts. For the first 8 weeks we did this, I had just coffee. Let’s analyze that decision in a series of facts:

  1. A donut is 166 calories.
  2. I tend to eat around 1800-2000 calories a day (TDEE tells me my maintenance calories are nearly 2400 a day).
  3. Donuts are tasty.

Do I eat the donut or just drink the coffee? If you think this has an obvious answer, you haven’t lost a ton of weight by policing yourself.

The case to eat the donut: It’s 10:15 AM, I haven’t eaten yet, I won’t eat again for another hour, and coffee and donuts are a match made in heaven. Plus I’m in a church, so that ‘made in heaven’ thing might be literal.

The case not to eat the donut: I would rather spend the calories on something else. Donuts are unhealthy. I am a healthy person. In my prime of 415 pounds, I’d easily eat 3-4 donuts at a time. Maybe 1 donut is a gateway donut back?

So for 8 weeks, no donut. Then I realized a few things more:

  1. While Old Jon could eat 3-4 donuts without a problem, New Jon would probably feel physically sick if he did that.
  2. New Jon doesn’t really want to eat 3-4 donuts.
  3. One donut once a week would account for 0.09% of my caloric intake for that week.
  4. I enjoy fresh donuts – they’re one of my favorite foods.

So I started eating a donut. And I’ve enjoyed it over the past few weeks. And my weight has not changed.

This example seems a bit strange, but I assure you, if you’ve spent months policing yourself, you find yourself having strange realizations like this. For so long, the answer to “Should I Eat that?” was a resounding “NO YOU FATA**, YOU SHOULDN’T”. Then it turned into a “Maybe… as long as you cross check it 3 times with your food journal”. Now it’s “Umm…. maybe?!?” In other words, it’s hard to lighten up on yourself.

The New Life Changes (e.g., Maintenance)

Over the next 6-12 months, my plan is to transition away from the hyper vigilance of weight loss mode to the normal vigilance of “staying healthy” mode. I’ve actually started doing this since mid-October (when I first started writing this life update). This is not reverting to the absolute lack of vigilance of “Jon doesn’t care about his weight” mode that I lived in for 35 years.

  1. Gradually stop tracking everything I eat. This is for 2 reasons: First, it takes a lot of time and effort and has very little reward associated if I don’t actually want to eat more. Second, there is evidence it can be linked to the development of an eating disorder. And while I don’t have some of the personality markers listed in that article, still seems like something I don’t want to do the rest of my life. Progress: 25% (I’m still tracking most of what I eat).
  2. Continue to use some of the tracking devices. My Lumen recently died (After faithful service for over a year, out of warranty so I would have had to pay for a replacement), so I will not be using it. The Bello is still debatable on it’s usefulness. Same goes for the Apollo band. I do enjoy the Oura ring and my Apple Watch, however, so I suspect I’ll still use those. And my Arboleaf Scale makes things very easy as it synchronizes to my health tracking apps. Basically if I can track it and I enjoy using it, I’ll continue using it. If not, I’ll phase it out or stop using it all together. Progress: 50% – No more lumen (since it’s dead), and I’ve stopped wearing my Apple Watch at night when I don’t need the alarm because the Oura does all the sleep tracking I need. Still using the Bello (not sure if it’s useful or not) and bring out the Apollo band every once in awhile.
  3. Log my weight daily, perhaps in the evening as well. Watching fluctuations is useful but it gets less useful when it becomes an obsession. I don’t need to know how quickly I lose weight during the day – I know it’s not a very useful metric and varies wildly depending on a ton of factors. Watching it closely did give me some insight, but not to the point that I think there is more I can learn. Progress: 20% – It’s still so tempting to wonder how I’m doing mid-day on weight, even if it’s a pretty meaningless number. While traveling I weighed myself daily if a scale was available, but I didn’t go out of my way to find one. So I count that as progress!
  4. I’ll still keep an active voice in my head while eating – but it’s much more of a conversation in terms of what I want to experience. A good example is my decision at the school cafeteria daily regarding dessert. If the dessert looks really good, or is something they don’t often have, or is one of my favorites, then I go for it. If the dessert is something they have every day (e.g., cookies), then I usually just grab a piece of fruit or nothing at all. Progress: 80% – I’d say I’m much more mindful now and also much more allowing of things that I really want versus a uniform “yes” or “no” to all food.
  5. One can’t cut out all the little things. 2 20-calorie starbursts are not going to make me go back up to 415 pounds. But they sometimes make a repetitive afternoon a little more relaxing. The trick is, along with #4, to be mindful. Of course, mindfulness is always useful regardless of the thought. Progress: See #4!
  6. Walking and exercising daily: Daily exercise is great – but there are some days I just don’t feel like it. So if once or twice a week I don’t want to do my exercise routine, or I want to do something less intense, I’ve been going with that over the last few weeks. My Oura ring actually tells me when my body is up for a challenge, so I may start listening to that a bit more. Progress: 50% – I still feel the urge to go out and exercise daily, and I’m working on figuring out when that’s my body wanting the exercise and when it’s my mind feeling obligated to exercise. On recent travels I skipped 1 daily walk out of 10 days on the road. The other 9 walks were mostly enjoyable despite the temperatures associated. I did get some gorgeous photos, such as this one:
View More Photos from my Winter Walks

So there you have it – I’m moving to maintenance. Goals for 2022 include maintaining my current weight, perhaps dropping to the 190-195 range (instead of 193-198, purely because it would be nice to never be near 200 again), and maybe working on some strength training in my arms and core. But honestly this would all just be icing on top of the 0-calorie metaphorical cake.

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Easy In-Class Presentation Ratings Using Google Forms, Sheets, and R

man in beige blazer holding tablet computer

In my classes I’ll often have students give short presentations, and recently I wanted to allow my students to also rate each other. Here’s a very quick and easy way to accomplish that while also having the data analyzed to tell you who is the ‘winner’

  1. Create your rating forms in Google Forms. I made a very simple form that just asked for a couple of ratings and some feedback.
  2. Optionally have some way for students to easily get to the form – you could send it out via your LMS or create a QR code that students can scan in class (I chose the latter).
  3. In Google Forms, choose the “Responses” button and then the green Google Sheets link – this will store the responses for your form in Google Sheets.
  4. In the Google Sheets spreadsheet, go to “File” then “Publish to Web”. Choose CSV as your format, and copy the link that it gives you after you press Publish. This is what we’ll feed into R to do our analysis.
  5. Open R, create a new script, and put in these lines:

data <- read.csv("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACsdavPPIE-qn0w1Ot5T/pub?output=csv")
names(data) <- c("Timestamp","GroupID","overall","interest","groupcomments","privatecomments")
tapply(data$overall, data$GroupID, summary)
tapply(data$interest, data$GroupID, summary)

Modify line 1 to have the CSV file link you got from Step 4, and change line 2 to be the easy-to-remember variable names for your form fields. Lines 3 & 4 simply show how to get summary data for each interest by a group identifier.

6. At this point you could just run the R script after your students enter in their ratings, and it will give you all of the information you need. However I took a little extra step: I installed the script on one of my Virtual Private Servers – it runs the script every minute and creates an HTML report that I can access from Safari on my iPad. That way I can easily see what the group scores were while in class to award the winner. This step takes a little extra time, but it will be worth it, especially if you want to share the results with your students (Or you want them to be able to see the results in near-real-time).

Easy hookup of data to analysis, with a lot of possibilities for customization!

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I’m Busy – My Best Tips and Tricks for A Productive Professional Life

person using macbook pro on white table

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked productivity on this blog, but recently I’ve had a number of people point out to me that I’m extremely busy. If you don’t know, I have a few different roles professionally and personally – if you’re really curious, here’s the list as of today. But without boring you, know that I have multiple job titles and roles. I’m at the point this fall that I’m openly telling people that if they hear a story of me throwing someone out a window, it’s because that person told me “I’m too busy”, because I don’t know of anyone else on my campus that has as many irons in the fire, as it were, as myself. They probably exist, but haven’t revealed their true amount of overloadedness to me.

Anyway, this post isn’t about how busy I am – it’s about how I maintain a high level of productivity while being so busy. I figure every so often it’s a great idea to point out what I’m doing that makes me productive, so that I can share it with others. Also helps me highlight some of my older content that you may have missed. So here’s what I do:

  1. Everything is on every device or accessible from every device. I wander around with my iPad Pro, which can connect to my MacBook from anywhere, meaning that when I’m out at a meeting across campus and I have a few moments to take care of some work, I can do it remotely.
  2. I also dispatch and answer emails and texts as quickly as possible, so that they don’t bunch up. There is an added psychological benefit both to myself and for myself in this as well. I honestly believe I’m seen as much more competent than I might be just because I get back to people quickly. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not ill-equipped for my job, I just don’t think I’m as great at it as others tell me I am!
  3. I use a calendar booking service (YouCanBookMe) and I send automated reminders to people that we’re scheduled to meet. Prior to this I’d say I probably spent at least 10-15 minutes per day answering emails that purely were about scheduling time to meet. YouCanBookMe, and to a lesser extent, sites like Doodle.com and SignupGenius.com are essential scheduling tools.
  4. In the classroom, I take advantage of technology to facilitate my teaching – through entry/exit tickets and tracking participation in Microsoft Excel. Both save time when entering information into my Gradebook.
  5. While I have 2 offices on campus, I also try to be as productive out of the office as possible. This post, written prior to the pandemic, highlights 5 tips I gave then that helped me weather the “work from home” storm much easier in 2020 than I might have otherwise done.
  6. Sometimes when I get tired of having to type the same things out over and over again, I write them down so I can direct people to them. This might seem a bit callous or flippant, but it’s the honest truth:
    1. Students having issues with registering? See my DSU Probs posts.
    2. Want to know all my best R tips? Read this book (I put 10 years of tips in this)
    3. Want to run a server like I do? Read this book (I put 20 years of tips in this).
    4. And, ya know, posts like the one you’re reading right now!

So there you have it – in very basic terms how I stay productive. What I perhaps didn’t put here is that one also must balance things out within oneself to be productive – if you haven’t thought about it, I suggest two small additions to your life:

  1. Routine / Ritual: Whether it’s a morning ritual to get pepped up, an evening ritual to wind down, or a lunchtime moment of enjoyment, find something that you can structure around and try to hold is sacred. This trains your brain to understand that even when life is absolutely crazy, there are almost always constants. This is also a great way to add new habits to your life that you want to take pride in.
  2. Balance work and life as best as possible. I do this in a few little ways:
    1. Saving work – If something isn’t time sensitive, I have no problem putting it down to do later in the week. It’s a common misconception that you should keep working until your to-do list is empty. The honest truth is that your to-do list should never be empty, but your time sensitive tasks for today should be. Think about it this way: If you have something due in a week, and you know you have a light day later this week, what is better – assign that task to the light day, or do it today and miss out on a) dinner with your spouse, b) a conversation with co-workers, c) a TV show you enjoy relaxing to? A-C are much better options than being bored at 10 AM on Thursday because you did the work Tuesday night.
    2. Don’t be afraid of embracing unmotivated boredom time at work. I have, on several occasions, freaked out co-workers by dropping by their offices and saying “I’m bored, what are you up to?”. They usually tell me “Don’t say you’re bored – it looks bad!” – but the honest truth is, sometimes we aren’t motivated. Sometimes we are bored. And those are times when a little human interaction can be really beneficial. Not only does it give you something to do that many people find rewarding (e.g., talking to people they like, assuming you like your co-workers), it also creates relationships that are reciprocal in nature. No one wants to be that co-worker that only talks to you if they need something.
    3. While I personally plan on saying “No” a bit more this fall (given my work level), I generally give the advice to not be afraid of saying “Yes”. Be an “experience junkie” – take on new challenges and find enjoyment in them. Just don’t overload yourself.

So there you have it, my tips and tricks, Fall 2021 edition. Stay safe, stay sane, and stay busy!

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With a Little Love and Luck, You Will Get By

As goes the Jimmy Buffett song goes,

“Better days are in the cards I feel
I feel it in the changing winds
I feel it when I fly
So talk to me
Listen to this story
I’ve been around enough to know
That there’s more than meets the eye”

Seems appropriate for a school year that is starting out amidst uncertainty over what will be the norm, with a virus that won’t just go away, with people who are desperate for some bit of the familiar in still unfamiliar times.

The last 18 months have been really unique and challenging, but I think the best we can do is realize that all things do pass. Tomorrow might not be better than today, in fact, it might be worse – but every day offers the possibility of things getting better, and eventually the better days offset the worse. As we move into the 2021-22 school year, watch out for each other, be kind, and if I can help, reach out to me.

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Rest Days that Don’t Break Your Apple Activity Streaks!

If you ask around the internet about rest days, you find a debate between the “be active every day” crowd and those who insist that your body needs recovery time. And honestly, the answer is somewhat in the middle. If you’re doing something that requires regeneration, such as strength training to build muscle, than yes, a rest day is critical to give your muscles time to heal. If you’re power walking, which is one of my main forms of workout (e.g., walking at a pace of a 13:30 mile, or about 5.5 MPH), you will find there are mornings your legs are on fire from last night’s walk. And if you walk outside, like I do, you also have the weather to contend with. Hard to go for a long walk or run when it’s pouring out (Although I have been the crazy guy out there in light rain with an umbrella walking!)

Sometimes walking in the rain and snow is pretty, though.

However you feel about rest days, one thing that’s very clear is that Apple doesn’t give you any days off if you’re a fan of the mantra “Close Your Rings”. Heck, it wasn’t even until last year that they gave us the option to change the amount of exercise minutes and stand hours (It was previously set to a hard 30 minutes and 12 hours, respectively). Plenty have complained that this is unrealistic – why should your 400+ day move streak end because of circumstances outside of your control. What circumstances, oh…

  • You get sick
  • Your family is sick and you have to care for them.
  • Your Apple Watch dies temporarily or permanently.
  • You decide to go on a technology-free retreat.

Plenty of reasons you might not be able to log your move calories, your exercise minutes, or your stand hours. Should you just let the streak die? No!

Well, perhaps Yes – you see this all gets into how you measure your own success. Unless you’re competing with another, the majority of the time you’re using your rings as a way to be honest with yourself. Closing them gives you a sense of accomplishment, earning badges gives you small boosts of dopamine that say “I’m doing stuff…”. And failing to close them can make you discouraged if it was due to circumstances not related to your fitness. I’ve certainly had friends joke “If you workout and your watch doesn’t record it, what was the point?!?” – And for some of us, psychologically, there is a grain of truth there. So should you let a streak die? Here’s my simple rule:

  • If you view your streaks as part of a life change that you want to affirm to yourself regularly – if you’ve assigned substantial meaning to them, then you should keep the streak going even if you didn’t technically do the work on a given day due to things you couldn’t control. After all, your intention was still there.
  • If you view your streaks as simply metrics on what you’re doing, in the way that you might view any other number without emotional connection, then just let them die.

I’m assuming if you’ve made it this far, you fall into the “Save my Streak” category, so I’m going to use the rest of this post to tell you how to do that without having to install any special software. Turns out there is a way to preserve your streaks without much effort.

The Obligatory “Why I Figured This Out” portion of the Recipe

So I know you just want to know how to do it, so skip this unless you know me personally and are curious. Anyway, as of today, here are my streaks:

As of August 6, 2021

As you can see, I have been working out a lot over the past year. As I mentioned in Part 3 of my weight loss story, I really wanted to make it to 365 days. Which I did. Then I kept going. But at some point the streak that I set each day became further affirmation of my changing body and mind, and I really wanted to keep it. So much that I changed my move goal from 810 calories to 480, my workout goal from 30 minutes to 10, and my stand hours remained at 12. Now here’s the kicker – I’ve never needed to “use” these lower levels, on average – over the past 90 days, my average Move is 880 calories, and my average exercise minutes is at 72 minutes. With the exception of a few days of driving for summer trips, I don’t need to use the lower goals to maintain the streak.

This got me thinking: What if there were a way I could return to my actual goals, but still have the security of being able to persist in my streaks even if my watch dies (like it tried to do the other day), or in an emergency I can’t work out. And maybe, just maybe, it would be useful if I wanted to give myself a “day off”, but more on that later.

Then I realized – Apple lets you do this already, all you need to know is where to look.

How Do I Fill My Rings Manually?

It’s easy – follow these steps:

  1. Open the Apple Health app on your iPhone.
  2. Go to Browse and type “Workouts” in the search.
  3. Open the Workouts data, and choose “Add Data” at the upper right.
  4. Enter whatever activity type you like (while not completely accurate, a rest day could be “Preparation and Recovery”, or just use “Other”)
  5. Enter the calories burned, These will increase your red move ring.
  6. Enter a start and end time, These will be counted toward your exercise ring.
  7. Hit “Add”

And there you have it – You should see the Apple Activity app on your watch update as well as on your phone. You’ve essentially done exactly what your phone would have done if you’d worked out, but you entered it in manually. Yes, the iPhone will flag this as “Entered by user”, but it will still count it.

When Should You Use This Power?

Again, this question is largely up to you. But one thing that I have thought a lot about lately is “rest days” – as in, days when either my Oura ring outright tells me to rest…

The Oura Ring telling me to “Pay Attention” in Readiness

Or on special occasions – a holiday or a day I feel I’ve earned a break. I’ve considered having 10-15 days per year that I could “use” (Sort of the equivalent of workout “paid time off”) as I like. I haven’t decided yet on if I will do this, or how I would track it, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

In fact, I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this “nonsense” (Which I put in quotes because sometimes the realist in me calls my mind out and says “Dude, this stuff doesn’t really matter – health is for you, who cares if a stupid smart device confirms what you already know!”). Are streaks meaningful? Do you care about a sleeve of virtual medals? If so, why? If not, why not? And will you “cheat” or stay honest in your streaks?

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