Even short-lived, ineffective effort is better than no effort.
Category: t_visPgress
visible progress over the years, often thanks to analytical blogging.
(Best practice to remove a blogpost from this ‘club’ once it is well-known.)
examples: earn/deduct points unfairly #wellness++
Compared to ##加分不够: effort,improvement… this blogpost is mostly about wellness. In all of these personal experiences, the improvement, however small, required an disproportionate effort to overcome really tough obstacles. I deserve a lot of reward. Same for my son.
- eg: When I was unsuccessful for months with weight loss, I felt a crushing load of guilt. However, when I endured tough diet regime and finally achieved some visible weight loss, the satisfaction didn’t last more than a day — unfair
- .. see 63kg was very hard for 20Y
- eg: Yoga offered a similar illustration. I wanted to continue yoga after arriving in the U.S. I was unable to and felt deeply guilty and disappointed with myself. When I finally restarted yoga practice and managed to keep it up for a few months, the satisfaction lasted only a few days — unfair
##blockbuster surprises in cal numbers
Let’s not spend too much time. This list is not exhaustive. It’s put together as reminder of the recent findings, so no need to elaborate on the already-memorable discoveries
- === The blockbusters
- my un-shelled peanuts are many times heavier than my nonfat ice cream and cottage cheese.
- cottage cheese — has a fifth of the calories of regular cheese .. ridiculous. Even cottage cheese with fat is lighter than nonfat American/Swiss/Cheddar !
- heated carrot (and other raw veg) — tastes starchy, much better than feared, but much lower calorie than starches
- === unsorted
- satisfying@low-cal — is not contradictory and impossible. We have extremely poor intuition for “low-cal” until we compare calorie numbers across a few dozen foods and build our “intuition”
- radish: #1 bargain among raw veg
- rice pudding: bargain dessert@111 cal/100g, less than half that of cheesecake
- last meal — can be a low-calorie dinner
- frozen green peas — (see lighter starch) beat sweet potato, edamame, rice, bread, even banana ! … on many aspects
- light ice cream — can be as low as 100cal/100g.. see separate blog
- nonfat ice cream — can taste good
- cold cut cal — no unknowable hidden fat
- ham — can hit as low as 90 cal/100g, lighter than many starch foods
- hot milo — lighter than regular milk
- almond milk — lighter than nonfat milk, and can tastes good if heated
- edamame, sweet-potato, green peas — satisfying but not high-fat or high-calorie
- calorie ] white rice ~ half of wheat bread, presumably due to water
- === now some of the nasty surprises
- 90% of the “OK” foods discussed online are calorie-dense and should be taken in moderation. Below are some prime examples:
- my unshelled peanut — (and most other nuts) are 15 times heavier than my fruits and vegetables .. excerpt from peanuts: calorie-dense, Extremely
- cheese — almost as fatty as butter. Cheese has a positive reputation online and traditionally
- avocado — one of the heaviest fruits
## extremely calorie-dense food ranking
- 900: ghee is more pure than butter. This is the max possible calorie density because pure fat is 900 cal/100g and protein/carb is 400 cal/100g
- 700+ butter and mayo — tied at 720 cal/100g, but luckily I seldom eat them directly 🙂
- butter cookies and pastries
- 600: peanuts and almonds — 550-600 cal/100g, but more heart-healthy than animal fats. Has fiber
- 500: brownie 500 cal/100g
- 400+ croissant (butter) 410 cal/100g. I saw small croissant at 300 cal and I can eat four in one meal.
- 400: cheese 400 cal/100g
- 🙂 i don’t eat cheese in bulk
- 🙂 cheese alone isn’t tempting
- 300+ cheesecake 300+ cal/100g
- potato salad with mayo. Due to the fiber, I probably will stop after 1000 calories. Without mayo, it’s only 110 cal/100g
- ice cream is often 600 cal/pint but the range can be 300-1200 cal/pint. I think the H2O concentration is much lower than in my milkshake.
- avocado 250 cal/mid-sized piece, 160 cal/100g
- white sauce
Pattern — Every item is fatty, and many of them sugary or starchy
Water content can be a saving grace but not in creamy soups
not all fattening foods are equal4me
k_daily_battle
Many such foods are expensive but not satisfying/delicious. Analogy — at comparable stress levels, some jobs (GS) are less rewarding in learning, brank or income.
* eg: ice cream is much better than fried peanuts. In fact many nus are more calorie dense than ice cream
* many fried social foods are not delicious at all
* Indian desserts are oily and starchy
* 油条
Since my hackathon weekend in mid May 2019, I have loosened my self-restriction and eaten quite a lot of
- ice cream
- millet porridge
- taro
— My intensity of guilt is tied to the quantity of food but 1 pound of these foods are NOT equally nutritious or fattening. I’m ignoring the facts that
- fiber — in taro (also millet) is relatively healthy and automatically stops me from overeating
- water content — in porridge is filling and automatically stops me from overeating
- fat and sugar — is only in the ice cream and missing in the other two
- I chose relatively low-calorie flavors of ice cream
— I also failed to give enough credit to the self-reward factor. I did two exercise classes and 10-20 hours of coding practice in the 2nd weekend of May. I didn’t go out.
Q: Do I rather not have this motivation and avoid this mild level of indulgence?
A: No! Thus motivation is so extremely precious that I would willingly pay this price in terms of some overeating
— This episode of overeating is not loss of control, but rather a controlled indulgence.
— I also failed to look at the other foods I had throughout these days … mostly fruits and frozen vegetables, some tuna, some smoothies at gym. Very little starch (sweet yams) and no fat no chocolates.
On previous “normal” days I frequently eat more chocolates.
I also gave myself a Chinatown 4-dish treat … more calories than this time !
— Clear, sharp and critical thinking is … critical! Writing down these pointers help me … focus.
[19] am taking on the toughest of ALL absorbency endeavors
Look at absorbency[def#2]worn_out by endeavors . Incredibly, as of late 2018 to early 2019 am making visible progress on the very toughest endeavors in terms of absorbency, such as
- daily stretch at home or in RetroFitness + chin-up
- starch abstinence + delaying meals
- coding drill
- … and some other tough endeavors like
- standing desk
- raw veg
By my own standard or external standards, the current level of progress, willpower, and personal effectiveness is heroic, probably unsustainable.
I may not have the environment or the willpower to reach this peak performance again, but I don’t have to. I will aim at 1 or 2 tough endeavors at any time.
git-blogg as back burner#G2 blogg innovation@all time
See also blogging on-the-go
A few English words describing the back burner
- brewing
- soaking — before wash
- slow-cooking
- hatching — sitting on eggs
- .. before giving birth
prefer bulk-operationS #G3 blogg insight { 2010
- best eg: publishing from git-blog is multi-step — create new blogpost (many clicks) >> tag >> remove it from git-blog >> commit >> git-push… Better do it in batches.
- eg: better do WP tagging in batches.
- eg: relocating a blogpost is also multi-step, better done in batches.
- eg: I now prefer to read and re-read blog print-outs, mark up my edits, then transcribe them en-masse
- eg: moving a post between blogs is too time consuming, probably not worth it. Should do that en-masse
##[19] achieved many successes despite boy’s math
As I told grandpa, even though my son’s math feels like a failure, over 2 years I have achieved many successes elsewhere:
- ffree
- weight and diet improvements
- pull-up, push-up, jogging
- 2019 health check-up result
- c++ critical mass, after so many years of trying
- web2.0 coding test improvement
- career longevity — see other blogposts #too time-consuming to list them here
blogg@the_go: post-it,phone #G9 blogg`innovate {2010
updates:
When overloaded with commitments, spend the MRT git-blogging time on the urgent items
As a thinker, my focus is far better when I write than without paper, or when I talk or …. Therefore, for my reflective writing, I much prefer printer + real keyboard + git + post-it. Other thinkers may rely on their brain alone, but I don’t really need to compare with them.
For lengthy blogging (including QQ), laptop feels better than smartphone or post-it. Blogging on laptop (not post-it) often feels like (somewhat measurable) progress on career, kids, investment, .. Not really burn/rot but I ought to reduce fixation on burn/rot ! As a comparison, how do I feel about yoga or coding drill..? More “burn” and less pleasure but in terms of long term impact I don’t know.
git-blogging often beats wordpress, so I use it even at home !
— A top-3 heaviest tcosts in blogging — searching for related blog posts, and updating some of them.
Git-blogging lets me work on a new content gradually, and only publish it after 10 revisions in git. At that time, it could be a new blogpost or an update to one old blogpost.
git-blogging on laptop lets me chip away at multiple (new or existing) posts, until it’s polished and complete. Can be more efficient than frequent and incremental updates on wordpress! WordPress is not designed for frequent updates.
Still when I have dual-monitor set-up, then /live wordpress blogging/ can still be more productive, but that’s a rare luxury. When I don’t have this luxury, I face no temptation. When I have this luxury I tend to get tempted into a lengthy “reorganization” of some “framework”. When I choose live blogging instead of git-blogging, every minor (even trivial, even temp orary) update would prompt me to start a lengthy process — search for the “best” blogpost, read it, read other related blogposts, then add the update at the right spot. This is the update process for a public website. For my minor changes this is low ROTI, too slow too heavy too painstaking too perfectionist. (In fact, a lot of these blogpost get relegated .. eventually removed.)
— smemo remains the most convenient (esp. cf 0.txt printout). I don’t have to but I could transcribe to git blog (better than wordpress)
— smart phone + fake finger is a 3rd option