I’ve always thought that the best place to get protein from is meat: steak, lamb, chicken, eggs, fish. And I’ve always wondered where vegans get their protein from and especially vegan athletes. I found this article on the net which shows how much protein there is per 100g of food stuffs. Here’s a screenshot from the article: Credit for screenshots: It’s very clear from the above that plant protein as a category has a lot less protein per 100g than meat and dairy does as a category. How much protein does a person need? From articles I found, a sedentary man needs around 54g per day and a runner might need around 75g. A weights guy might need 120g a day. From the table above, you might get all you need to get for running from 200g of steak (smaller than a normal steak of around 285g). To compare that …[Read More]
I took cold showers for 7 days. Here’s what I found
I’ve heard about a lot of benefits to taking regular cold showers and ice bath therapy. Sportspeople swear by ice baths to speed up recovery after intense workouts. Wim Hof has popularised cold therapy with incredible feats of swimming in ice and climbing mountains like Kilimanjaro without a top on. Purported benefits of cold showers include: Improved discipline and mental toughness Boost to immune system Boost to mental state and positivity Invigorating wakeup and start to the day It’s amazing that something so simple has the power to give immense benefits like these. So let’s give it a go! Day 1 I always take a shower first thing and this morning, I hopped in and had a nice hot shower. It wasn’t until about a minute in that I realised that I was supposed to start the cold showers today! Doh. So I decided to do what programmes recommend which …[Read More]
Getting a Covid-19 antibody test
Even though I was pretty sure that I had coronavirus back in March, I still wanted confirmation of that by test. Up until now, the tests for antibodies have had some bad press for not being too accurate, but there is a test centre in Hammersmith which uses South Korean tests which have high specificity and high sensitivity, as opposed to tests that have high specificity but low sensitivity. Here’s a screenshot of the test compared to other tests (taken from the Corona Test Centre’s website): The antibodies they are looking out for are IgM and IgG. IgM are produced around the time of the infection and during recovery, but tail off some time after the event. IgG are also produced around the time of infection and they stay around quite a lot longer than IgM after the event. Here’s a screenshot from the Corona Test Centre website of the …[Read More]
How did the David Swenson allocation do during the Covid-19 market tumult?
Now I know that it’s not over yet and there’s big questions over the shape of the recovery post-Corona, but it’s worth a look at how the David Swenson allocation that I use performed during this crisis. There were some huge moves across almost all asset classes. At one point, the UK 100 index was down around 30% from its highs in Jan 2020. The idea behind diversified asset allocations such as Swenson’s is that you should be protected from the big moves like this. If you were 100% invested in equities, then you would track the 30% fall yourself. If you had a proportion of your portfolio in bonds, then in theory, you should see some insulation from this this 30% move because bonds are supposed to move roughly in the opposite direction. My asset allocation definitely didn’t see complete insulation. At the lowest point, my portfolio was down …[Read More]
Key learnings from Google Digital Garage’s free course: Fundamentals of Digital Marketing
It’s a good time to be skilling up and there are loads of great courses out there online and many of them are free, and the ones that are paid aren’t that expensive (around £30 say – check out Udemy, Coursera etc). Google Digital Garage has lots of free courses and the one that caught my eye was the only one that came with a certificate. Of course, that made it more attractive. That course was Fundamentals of Digital Marketing. It’s listed at taking around 40 hours to complete and it has 26 modules. These encompass Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media, Local Advertising, Display Ads, Retargeting and Email Marketing. To get a certificate, you had to pass an exam at the end with 80% or more. What did I like about the course? It’s very well organised in terms of curriculum, and the videos were …[Read More]