Edmond Chan

How fit can I get in a month? (Part 1)

Edmond Chan · Oct 3, 2020 · Leave a Comment

It’s time for another challenge and life experiment. They always seem to come back to fitness.

I’ve been running about 15 miles a week for a few months now but not really seeing a difference to the belly, so I started to think about trying a different approach. I was thinking about how fit is it possible to get in one month?

What do we mean by ‘fit’? A Google search led me to a few interesting articles. This post will feature three of these articles and pick out the tests and metrics I’ll focus on:

How fit are you? See how you measure up (Mayo Clinic)
10 Standards to Assess Your Fitness Level: Before you stamp yourself “in shape,” make sure you can pass these fitness tests (Men’s Health)
Six Ways To Test Your Overall Fitness (Coach Mag)

Mayo Clinic

Here’s the one from the Mayo Clinic: How fit are you? See how you measure up

This article talks about measuring yourself against these standards:

(BTW I’ve written “Do this” next to the measures I’m going to use in the experiment):

Resting heart rate (Do this)
Fastest time to run 1.5 miles (Do this)
Number of press-ups to fatigue (Do this)
Sit up test – max number in a minute (Do this)
Flexibility – sit and reach test (Do this)
Waist circumference (Do this)
BMI (Do this)

Men’s Health

Here’s the article from Men’s Health: 10 Standards to Assess Your Fitness Level: Before you stamp yourself “in shape,” make sure you can pass these fitness tests

The 10 standards of fitness MH lists are:

Bench pressing 1.5x your body weight. For me that’s 120kg which is tough. My PB is around 85kg, which the article says is ‘Ordinary’. I don’t have access to gym at the moment, so I will leave this test for now and focus on the similar test of maximum pushups.
Run 1.5 Miles in 10 Minutes. The article says 12mins and above is ‘Slow’, which is 8min/miles. I run around 9.30min/miles for a 4 mile run, so according to this metric and MH’s standard, I’m definietly slow! (Do this)
Touch the Rim. I’ll have to find a high thing to jump and touch. (Do this)
Leg-Press 2.25 Times Your Weight. My PB is 130kg so well short of this currently. Like with the bench press test above, I don’t have access to a gym at the moment, so I’ll focus on the similar bodyweight squat test below.
Swim 700 Yards in 12 Minutes. Unfortunately, the pools are closed around here because of COVID restrictions.
Do 40 Pushups. I think the maximum press-ups to fatigue in the Mayo article above is more interesting.
Measure Up. This is your waist circumference divided by your hip/butt measurement. (Do this)
Run 300 Yards Sub 1 Minute. Not sure where I’d find a flat 300 yard bit of track. That’s 275m. I’ll think about this one a bit more.
Touch Your Toes. Similar to the Sit and Reach in the Mayo Clinic article above. (Do this)
Toss a Basketball 75 Feet Kneeling. Not sure how to replicate this.

Coach Mag

And finally, here’s an article from Coach Mag: Six Ways To Test Your Overall Fitness

The 6 standards of fitness they recommend as a measure are:

Plank. More than 2min is Excellent (Do this)
Bodyweight Squat. 50 or more is Excellent (Do this)
Press-ups. 50 or more is Excellent (Do this)
1km run. 3min or less is Excellent (Do this)
500m row. 1min 30 sec or less is Excellent (Do this)
Pull-ups. 12 or more is Excellent (Do this)

So the tests I’m going to do and try to improve on are:

Resting heart rate (Do this)
Fastest time to run 1.5 miles (Do this)
Number of press-ups to fatigue (Do this)
Sit up test – max number in a minute (Do this)
Flexibility – sit and reach test (Do this)
Waist circumference (Do this)
BMI (Do this)
Run 1.5 Miles in 10 Minutes. The article says 12mins and above is ‘Slow’, which is 8min/miles. I run around 9.30min/miles for a 4 mile run, so according to this metric and MH’s standard, I’m definitely slow! (Do this)
Measure Up. This is your waist circumference divided by your hip/butt measurement. (Do this)
Touch the Rim. I’ll have to find a high thing to jump and touch. (Do this)
Touch Your Toes. Similar to the Sit and Reach in the Mayo Clinic article above. (Do this)
Plank. More than 2min is Excellent (Do this)
Bodyweight Squat. 50 or more is Excellent (Do this)
1km run. 3min or less is Excellent (Do this)
500m row. 1min 30 sec or less is Excellent (Do this)
Pull-ups. 12 or more is Excellent (Do this)

In the next post in this series, I’m going to measure where I am for each of the tests in the previous section above.

What tests would you do for yourself? How fit do you think you are right? Let me know in the comments below!

God I love Chip

Edmond Chan · Aug 14, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Chip is a savings app that helps you to save effortlessly. I’ve written about Moneybox before about how their app helps you save without feeling the pinch. Chip does something similar but with AI.

You connect the app to your bank account and it looks at your previous spending history and what you’re spending currently and then somehow calculates what you could save without feeling the pinch.

You choose how aggressive you want the AI to be. I opted for the medium level at the beginning and now I play with the higher settings just to see how much more aggressive they really are. So every now and again, I get a message from Chip saying that I could save say £30 today without feeling the pinch, and that this will be moved from my bank account to Chip at 3pm. You can choose not to move it but I always let it go.

I opened my Chip account on 19th June 2020 and as of 14th August 2020, I have £182.40 in my Chip account. Annualised, that’s would be around £1,100. Not bad at all.

What would have happened to that money if I hadn’t been using Chip? I’d probably have spent it on some stuff I didn’t really need. With it gone to Chip, it’s out of spending reach. These apps that focus on the ‘small change’ that you wouldn’t even notice help you save effortlessly. Give it a go!

This is the bot that tells you how much you could put aside

This is the accounts page. The 0.9% interest rate looks interesting on the other account I can’t yet get into.

The Fear Bubble by Ant Middleton

Edmond Chan · Jul 27, 2020 · Leave a Comment

This book charts the story of how Ant Middleton climbed Everest. It also details Middleton’s philosophy on fear and positivity. And he goes deep. It’s one of the most honest books I’ve read. He tells us about all the times he’s failed. His flaws. All the times he’s messed up. But it’s his upbeat philosophy and views on attacking life with positivity that really shines through.

It all stems from a realisation that he had whilst on operations. He used to feel almost overwhelming fear long before a mission and for a long time after it finished, and he realised that he couldn’t continue like this for the long term. He deconstructed where he should really feel fear and he realised it should be where it was justified: right before the bullets started flying until the time when he was out of immediate danger. This window of time, he called the “fear bubble”.

Over time, he began to look forward to stepping into fear bubbles and enjoying the satisfying ‘pop’ of exiting the fear bubble. His contention is that the opposite of fear is not courage but instead ‘growth’ or ‘personal growth’. Not doing something becuase it involves a fear bubble stops us from stepping through new doors of opportunity and impedes personal growth.

He identifies three types of fear:

Fear of suffering – manifested as the fight or flight response from deep in the amygdala. Solved by reframing the fear you feel in the pit of your stomach as your body as your body telling you to “Get Ready!”
Fear of failure – Middleton says this is the Ego getting in the way. Eg Bench who didn’t want to leave his current level as a sniper to go for Special Forces selection because he feared failing and having to go back to his unit having failed. Middleton calls this having ‘sticky boots’. This is driven by the Ego and not by the healthier driver of ‘pride’. Ego is for caring about what others think. Pride is about what you think internally; you want to impress yourself and not others.
Fear of conflict – “one of the greatest human fears of all is the fear of upsetting other people.” “If you fail to harness it, it will shrink you.” Middleton recommends practicing brutal honesty on yourself and your flaws and weaknesses. This will innoculate you against criticism. “There’s no way of smashing through those doors of opportunity without putting a few noses out of joint…Show me a person without enemies and I’ll show you a person whose boots are soaked in glue – a shrinking violet, a victim, a failing person, paralysed by fear“

Middleton contends that all of these fears can be boiled down to the fundamental fear: the fear of not being worthy or not being good enough. Deep AF. “I’m not good enough” is the deepest human fear. “The simple fact is you don’t know if you’re not good enough until you open that door” Keep smashing down those doors. Keep learning, keep growing.

Middleton’s leaves us with one final idea: that the opposite of fear isn’t courage; it’s growth, specifically personal growth. Carrying on down the path of popping fear bubbles, opening doors, learning will create a sense of ‘godlike’ personal responsibility, where “you’ll feel like the god of your own fate and treat everything that happens to you as if you caused it. And I do mean everything.” He gives the hypothetical example of being beaten up after a night out. Instead of looking for fault and blame (which he says is part of the ‘victim mindset’, take responsibility and respond to it as if you caused it. Think about how you can make sure it never happens again. Could you have fought back better? etc.

This is a great book. It’s full of wisdom about harnessing fear for our own growth as well as giving us a deeper understanding of what fear really is. Highly recommended.

21 days of veganism – am I iron and B12 deficient?

Edmond Chan · Jul 9, 2020 · Leave a Comment

I woke up the other morning and I felt knackered. I just wanted to stay in bed. I didn’t know why I felt like this as in the previous few weeks, I’d had quite a lot of energy. Enough to do a half-marathon.

Was it something to do with veganism. I checked Rich Roll’s book and yes he does mention that vegans can be iron deficient and vitamin B12 deficient if not monitored. Doh! I quickly did some more research:

Iron deficiency

From this article by the Mayo Clinic:

Initially, iron deficiency anemia can be so mild that it goes unnoticed. But as the body becomes more deficient in iron and anemia worsens, the signs and symptoms intensify. Iron deficiency anemia signs and symptoms may include: Extreme fatigue Weakness Pale skin Chest pain, fast heartbeat or shortness of breath Headache, dizziness or lightheadedness Cold hands and feet Inflammation or soreness of your tongue Brittle nails Unusual cravings for non-nutritive substances, such as ice, dirt or starch Poor appetite, especially in infants and children with iron deficiency anemia

I didn’t know that iron comes in two forms: heme and non-heme. Heme is from animal products and is easily absorbed by the body. Non-heme is from plant-based products and isn’t easily absorbed by the body. You need to 18mg of iron a day and getting that from plants alone isn’t straightforward and it’s another thing too to get that iron absorbed. Certain foodstuffs such as tea and coffee actually inhibit the absorption of iron. Other foods such as those rich in vitamin C actually help iron absorption.

B12 deficiency

Apparently a key vitamin doesn’t appear in the plant kingdom. B12 only appears in the animal foods such as meats, fish, poultry and eggs. From this Healthline article:

It plays an essential role in the production of your red blood cells and DNA, as well as the proper functioning of your nervous system.

From this WebMD article:

If you have vitamin B12 deficiency, you could become anemic. A mild deficiency may cause no symptoms. But if untreated, it may lead to symptoms such as:

Weakness, tiredness, or lightheadedness
Heart palpitations and shortness of breath
Pale skin
A smooth tongue
Constipation, diarrhea, loss of appetite, or gas
Nerve problems like numbness or tingling, muscle weakness, and problems walking
Vision loss
Mental problems like depression, memory loss, or behavioural changes

The same article also had this to say about mothers who are breastfeeding whilst on a vegan diet:

Are you a pregnant woman on a vegan or vegetarian diet, and plan to only breastfeed your baby? You should talk to your doctor before you have your baby, so that you have a plan in place for how you’ll get enough vitamin B12 to keep your baby healthy. Without enough vitamin B12, your baby could have developmental delays and not thrive and grow like he should.

Vegans and vegetarians can get their B12 through a supplement tablet or through food such as nutritional yeast (I bought some and it’s very much like fish food flakes!)

From this article from WebMD:

To increase the amount of vitamin B12 in your diet, eat more of foods that contain it, such as: Beef, liver, and chicken. Fish and shellfish such as trout, salmon, tuna fish, and clams. Fortified breakfast cereal. Low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese. Eggs.

So I’m going pause the vegan experiment and modify it

It takes a while for your iron stores to become depleted and it takes time to build it up again. So for my own health and Angelique’s health, we’re going to load up on meat and eggs for the next couple of weeks to get our iron and B12 levels back to normal. I’m going to eat much the same meals as on the vegan diet (lots of veg, lentils, rice, fruit, mung beans, tempeh etc) but also add in regular lean red meat like liver and steak, as well as eggs and increase my vitamin C intake. I’m also going to start drinking cow’s milk again so that I don’t get a calcium deficiency. I realise that means that I’m no longer vegan but it’s helped me be more intentiaonl about the meats and foodstuffs that I eat. I’m still leaning to a ‘5 days vegan/2 days not’ balance.

Update

In the 10 days since pausing the vegan diet, I’ve been loading up on liver (high in iron and B12). I’ve had this three times. Plus a couple of steaks, some eggs, some oily and non-oily fish, plus some B12 tablets with 25 micrograms of B12 (not even close to the highest strength ones you can get on Amazon). I feel a lot better, with a lot more pep and energy.

It made me think that lots of people could be wandering around with a mild (or serious) mineral deficiency and that this could impact their daily energy levels, their moods, their ability to concentrate etc. How much could change with a nutrient-rich diet as well as the right supplements to complement that?

Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional and I have self-diagnosed myself using the internet. Please seek medical advice from a qualified professional before starting any major dietary changes. Thanks!

James Altucher’s Ideas Machine for 7 days. Here’s 55 ideas!

Edmond Chan · Jul 1, 2020 · Leave a Comment

In his book Choose Yourself, James Altucher suggests that you become an Ideas Machine. Here’s an article by Inc magazine that outlines the process: How to Become an Idea Machine.

It’s supposed to be 10 ideas a day but this is hard! Over 7 days, I should have generated 70 ideas but here’s 55 ideas:

Monday

Pret needs to update itself to stay on top in 5 years time. It could easily go the way of Costa and Cafe Nero’s. I think it needs to freshen up its visual brand assets, and increase the range of vegan food offerings. Its coffee also needs to improve. There’s so many artisanal coffee shops out there now serving up delicious next-level single origin-based coffee.
Veganism is a fast-growing trend. Start a local vegan cafe serving only vegan coffees and food.
Can we live on a much-reduced food budget? eg £50 a week. Look at Jack Monroe’s site for ideas.
Could mentorship be one of the solutions to reduced social mobility? Could the right mentors help and guide kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and circumstances to fulfil their potential? What if I started a website with videos of mentors advising, coaching?
Just watched a few episodes of the new Queer Eye series. I LOVE this show. The transformation they go through is incredible. How would the Fab 5 transform our lives? Could we recreate it in our own lives?
Crossfit gyms are super expensive eg £200 per month. What is it about Crossfit that makes it so expensive. Could someone recreate the experience for less money?

Tuesday

I’ve started using the app Chip, which claims to use AI to analyse your bank account transactions to see what you can actually afford to additionally save and tuck that away. I’ve been using it for 4 days now and it’s saved and taken £6.79. As a user, I’d like to know what the £6.79 was based on ie how it was calculated? Where is the £6.79 held once it’s left my bank account? Are my deposits protected by FSCS? Maybe these should be communicated better to the user.
Pubs will sell fewer drinks as due to social distancing, fewer patrons will be able to enter their pubs. This will hit overall revenue. To make this up, pubs can’t really raise their prices to compensate as people’s spending power will be smaller overall. So how about in busy times, the pub offers a smaller menu of drinks? This would mean that drinks could be poured in bulk and stored up for a line of waiting customers, and there would be a time-saving in serving each customer, meaning that more customers could be served.
What if Apple had an inbuilt feature that meant photos could be easily exported and the photos were then printed and sent to your house? (Angelique said this already exists!) Looking at the App Store, there’s quite a few apps that do this. One that stands out is Photobox’s free printing service – apparently you get 50 free prints a month – you just pay for delivery. Pretty good deal! I’ll check it out and report back.
Sonos is a pretty good product. The app could be better for searching for and discovering new music but one thing I’d love it to do is play from my phone via bluetooth. Add bluetooth please Sonos!
Apple photo file formats are now in HEIC which makes it hard to upload to apps like Moonpig which only accept JPGs and PNGs. Couldn’t Apple just give an option to save/export photo files as JPGs or PNGs? (Joint idea with Angelique)
Pulses and grains tend to come in plastic that you have to tear. How about putting them in a tetra pack so that you don’t spill grains out every time you open and then reseal them.
What about having food labeling that as well as highlighted calories and nutritional make-up such as protein, carbs and fats, we also could see how nutritious and good for us (or not) that this food item was?
What about some kind of organisation designed to tackle loneliness in the UK, especially the elderly who live on their own? Our local nursery organises trips to local care homes for the kids to spend time with the residents.
If vitamin D is beneficial in Northern European countries, then could we put it in the water similar to how we put fluoride in water to help protect teeth?
Why can’t we provide laptops for all kids whose families can’t afford them? Say there’s a million kids this affects, then couldn’t the public and private sector join together to fill this need? Chromebooks can retail for around £200 each. Even at this RRP, that’s £200m to equip kids with a necessity.
Could utility companies be persuaded to give free fast internet to the most disadvantaged homes? Could they give free internet to libraries?

Wednesday

Why does painting walls need an undercoat? Can’t they just make the paint thick enough?!
Is there a way to make baby food purees that are 100% nutritious, in recyclable jars, and that are cheap?
Why does toothpaste come in such small containers? Surely bigger sizes of package would be better in terms of packaging waste?
Could Apple give old phones that still work well to developing nations? This would connect millions of people (assuming the internet is good) and would also mean that Apple has lots more people in its ecosystem?

Thursday

Watching Inside Bill’s Brain, a Netflix documentary on Bill Gates, and he needed $6bn to try and eradicate polio. Why wouldn’t governments give him that? That’s a drop in the ocean compared to what we spend for bailouts. For such a momentous goal, shouldn’t governments have lined up to give him that?
In the current Covid social-distancing world, there are queues to get into places. You never know when there’ll be a queue outside the supermarket. You’ve just got to turn up and hope that there isn’t one when you get there. What if the Google Map entry for the supermarket had a current status of how big the queue is?
To grow your email list, do it one by one. Ask people to share it.
What if there was a question that you could ask and be asked when meeting someone for the first time that would accelerate the building of rapport?
What if we built hostels for homeless people and they didn’t have to pay anything to access them? The hostels could help them with health, education/training, being on the system with bank accounts and an address. Come to think of it, why doesn’t the government underwrite funded bank accounts for the unbanked?
Is it possible to make pans with non-stick that never comes off?
Can tissues come in smaller sizes as generally one blow of the nose doesn’t fill it, and throwing it away is a real waste?
Bill Gates has a week called Think Week where he goes off and just reads and thinks. What if we implemented something similar in our own lives?
What if aggression isn’t a bad thing? What if we taught healthy, channelled aggression to kids?
What if we made opera and ballet free in the same way that art galleries are generally free? You’d get much more exposure to what is a public good?
What if we made a week of social work mandatory for schoolkids in the same way that they have to do work experience. It might reduce loneliness and also increase kids’ awareness of the lives of others in the community.

Friday

I forgot!

Saturday

Instead of a tweed suit, how about a hemp suit? Sustainable?
What about a legal version of Money Saving Expert, a resource aimed at the normal person in the street? Written by lawyers. Questions such as Do I need a will? What makes a will legal?
What about an easy way of buying and holding other currencies such as CHF, HKD, AUD which might appreciate against GBP?
Can we double the number of trees in inner cities to reduce pollution and increase residents’ well-being?
What about a National Poetry Day? (Doh it exists!) National Poetry Competitions?
What about bring Spelling Bees to the UK?
Public speaking for 6 year olds?
What about opening up a lot more space for allotments so that town people can grow more food?
More urban farms to bring nature to the cities?
Outdoor Film Festivals during summer in London parks
Opera Festival during summer in London parks

Sunday

What about sofas and chairs made for short people? So that we can put our feet firmly square on the ground!
There’s a shop for big and tall – what about a shop for small and short?
What about some kind of tag put in each of a pair of socks so that neither would get lost?
What about a free or subsidised compost maker for every household?
What if meditation was taught in schools at an early age?
What if we fully funded fact-checking charities to help deal with fake news and questionable statements in the public domain?
What if it became government advice to walk 10,000 steps a day, in much the same way as 5-a-day fruit/veg advice?
What if we found a good value way to offer people solar panels to put on their roofs to reduce reliance on normal electricity?
If companies are the biggest emittors of greenhouse gases, what if we offered tax credits to those companies who hit certain green targets?
What if cows wore something on their backsides to capture the methane and stop it going into the atmosphere?

Things I’ve found

Sometimes the ideas flow, other times they’re hard to come by. Sitting at my laptop and trying to think of ideas isn’t always easy. It really is like a muscle. You’ve got to strain and flex and keep going when it’s uncomfortable, just like doing weights.

You feel really ‘on it’ once you’ve done 10 mins of thinking and idea-generating. When you’re making connections, it’s like you’re fitting a idea onto other potential candidates. For example, with the toothpaste coming in bigger packages, that was because of a gadget I saw which was an ice cube mould that made big icecubes. I’d never seen that before and I immediatlely wondered why they weren’t the gold standard of icecube moulds! Easier to balance in a home freezer and they last longer. What else could this idea fit? Toothpaste packaging? Shower gel packaging?

Got any other ideas?! Let me know in the comments below!