I feel like masks will be a common sight going forward the same way that they are in east Asia.
The thought of going on a plane and wearing a mask to dodge getting a cold sounds like a no brainer to me.
NOTE: I am not a scientist.
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I have heard reports in the UK of people being hassled for mask-wearing, but these are tabloid reports so if they’re true it’ll only be by coincidence.
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We have all become scientists in the last two years.
Some more successfully than others.
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Enjoying my second Covid birthday today. Had some good times with our finally fully vaccinated extended family this weekend, and played some great games with my nieces and nephews. Also started on the actual coursework for the new M.Ed degree. All-in-all, it was another good "Now it’s getting back to normal." weekend.
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Driving home from work today. I hit what I will charitably call a “pothole”, though “mini-hellmouth” is probably more accurate. I could tell something was wrong immediately afterward, and a couple seconds later my “low tire pressure” alarm went off.
Pulled over and the front passenger side tire was completely flat. Just ahead in a business driveway, there was a man looking at his car tires and swearing. Turned out the same thing happened to him. He drove off back the way he had come, and I called AAA to get a tow.
The guy who drove off came back while I was on the phone in a different vehicle and offered to help me change my flat, but unfortunately I do not have a spare, though I really appreciated the gesture. It is nice when random strangers lookout for each other.
I was told by the operator that AAA was having a really busy day, so it would likely be 2 hours before a truck could get to me. So I walked to a post office a mile or so away to drop off a letter and got some teriyaki on the way back to my car. Ate and finished the book I was reading, and right about the 2 hour mark I got another call from AAA saying they were still backed up and it would be another 60-90 minutes.
Did I mention we had a sudden cold snap? Thirsty, I walked to a 7-11 to get a soda, and once I got back to my car, I ran the engine for a bit to warm up. Got a call that a truck was on the way soon after, and after about an hour from the previous call, the driver showed up.
Got towed to a tire shop, and then walked home in the now freezing temperature. I could probably have gotten a ride from the driver, but there were other people who needed help and I am sure the 5-10 minutes will be appreciated by somebody.
So about 4.25 hours after leaving work, I am finally home! Tomorrow I get to walk to the tire shop to get the tire replaced. Yay…
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I’m proud of myself for losing the weight I’d put on since I started working from home so much (getting less exercise and being near the kitchen all the time). As of this morning I’ve lost 5Kg from the day when I convinced myself to step onto the bathroom scales and find out the situation, and I think that’s more or less where I was at before the lockdowns began.
This is the first time I’ve ever “dieted” and I was expecting it to be harder, but it’s just been a routine and a bit of willpower. I’m eating good food; just a lot less of it than I used to habitually consume.
In his (excellent) book It’s Not Rocket Science, Ben Miller described the radical Miller Diet thus: “Whatever the diet – and I really don’t care what it is – if it works, it works by reducing the amount of calories your body gets. That’s it. Full stop. So here’s my diet: eat less food. Or to be more precise, use up more calories than you digest.”
There sure are a lot of weight-loss programs out there, and different things work for different people of course; but I can confirm that the Miller Diet works as advertised. As is so often the case with things I put off, the hardest part turned out to be making the decision to start.
I’m not yet where I want to be (I wasn’t there prior to lockdown), but I know now that’s just a matter of more time, and then I’ll switch my focus to gaining some weight back (in a good way) by working on my fitness. I’m feeling really good about all of this.
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Ah, you did the “Friss die Hälfte” diet (where Hälfte is of course an arbitrary amount less than you ate before not actually 50%). Exercising and putting on muscle mass will seemingly stall your progress, though. I find that weight is an okay measure but I also like to check on my waist-line 
Not the best idea right now but I’ve been getting back into moving every day for at least 20 minutes.
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It’s actually a lot more complicated than that because the body’s efficiency in extracting energy from food can vary hugely. Also what’s done with that energy. The popular science of diet has barely moved on from the days of setting fire to food to work out its energy content, because that lets you blame fat people for not having enough willpower and sell them diet books…
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Many of the studies I read indicate that exercise is simply not very good for weight loss - I recall a study (Scientific American, Hermann Pontzer, behind a paywall I’m afraid but I’m sure some of you will be able to track it down https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-paradox/) of a comparison between highly active members of the few hunter-gatherer tribes remaining, and compared the calories they burned compared to couch potatoes (I’m afraid I can’t remember the methodology either… I’m doing a very good scientific job here, aren’t I?) and disappointingly there was a only a very small (but statistically significant) difference between the two.
The take-home message from multiple studies, as far as I can see, is that exercise, whilst being extremely good for you for all sorts of other reasons, will not help you lose weight. You should exercise, definitely, but don’t expect it to have an effect on weight loss.
(Similarly… don’t drink 6 litres of water a day. You have kidneys. They know what’s best for you. At best, you’ll pee a lot. At worst, you’ll get medullary washout or water poisoning).
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I am part of the not small group of people who put on weight seemingly by just looking at a piece of chocolate (not true of course, I also eat the chocolate). Looking down the family tree, I see that I inherited either the genes or the bad behaviors of previous generations. Both is my guess.
In all my years of trying–sometimes succeeding–to reign in my ever expanding waistline, I also found that exercise will only ever play a supporting role–it helps but if I do not also change the way I eat… I never get anywhere.
Right now though exercise is more important for me than losing weight for other health reasons. Exercise helps me build the base discipline I need to feel well enough to eat better. But as @RogerBW said, it’s complicated and everyone reacts a little different to certain foods, combinations and movement or lack thereof–sadly while being worked on the science that just tells us what to do is not yet there.
So the best diet I found is: eat well, not too much and not all the time.
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One summer in college, I had a job working in a software warehouse. An actual warehouse, filled with software, and their manuals…
I hauled boxes of software off of trucks, stacked and sorted them, and then put them on shelves. I gained about 20 lbs, and all my clothes were too big.
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Re: diet, it’s really different for everyone. Western diet studies tend to focus on western bodies. And even then they can’t seem to agree. Similarly, medical studies tend to bias toward men because our bodies don’t go through the same monthly variations and the results are, therefore, more consistent and comparable.
These “convenience” steps in studies leave us with narrow insights which sometimes, but not always, translate to the global population.
In my family, we’ve become pretty convinced that diet is an adaptation. One dietician recommended we go on a low sugar diet which did great for me. My wife’s hair began falling out and she went into a deep depression. More sugar in the diet reversed the results.
We’ve found that she does best with carbohydrates and simple proteins. Her ancestors hail from a subtropical island with lots of white rice, fish, and fruit. Coincidence? I, on the other hand, thrive on no sugar, dense protein, and high fat. And, despite the general sugar restriction, potatoes put me into a kind of euphoria. My stock is Irish. So… yeah. I think we as a society adapt to what we have and learn to live with it. Bottom line is no diet works for everyone, find your own. And best starting point is to look to your ancestry and figure out what they had to eat.
Apart from diet, yeah, cardio is great for your health but really hard to burn off weight. Weight training and muscle building is waaay more bang for your buck. Given that we’re in a pandemic and gyms aren’t necessarily great, I’d recommend looking up some calisthenics / home bodyweight workouts and give it about three weeks. You may be surprised by how much fat a little muscle building will eat up. And, once the muscles are there, they keep eating at the fat every day.
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Yeah, I canceled my gym a while ago. Haven’t been in 2 years -.- But gym was definitely the most effective way to get both the cardio and the muscle building done. And I had a really good gym where there was always a physical therapist on the floor making sure I did the exercises right and answering questions. I miss the place but it was too expensive to keep the subscription going without using it.
These days I am doing a combination of yoga, strength exercises, indoor-rowing, bicycling everywhere. I track stuff with my watch. Tracking helps me. Because it’s like a little bit of a reward just knowing I am doing something that gets “on the app”.
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Oof. This talk reminds me that I havent lost the 9kg weight gained I got since COVID. 70kgs is not the end of the world, but eh. Not happy with it.
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Sorry to be the one to bring the world up, but it’s shit at the moment isn’t it?
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Not saying it’s correlated but I was on leave for three days…
Yeah, and the international response is weak currently
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Yes. Yes it is.
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Don’t scroll reddit. Too depressing.
Two years ago I thought we would get a handle on the pandemic that we were too advanced to let things get out of control. Then everyone hoarded toilet paper.
My friend posted a pic today how she bought toilet paper.
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First time in a long while that I actually look up the news - which I dont do. As someone who grew up experiencing insurgencies and coup detats, it’s sad but nothing out of the ordinary
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Particularly difficult day/week.
Everyone else in my role is on holiday. Had to send one of the admin team home for turning up far too Ill to work, another has a friend dealing with a serious mental health issue.
A lack of proper procedures meant I spent the day dealing with issues that weren’t my job and should have sorted months ago.
Not a lot of brain space for on here, so expect me to be increasingly in and out.
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