Edmond Chan

Getting fit for fatherhood

chanman · Aug 11, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I’m 40 and just about to become a dad for the first time. I’m told that I need to work on my core and my lower back strength because there’s going to be a lot of lifting and a lot of bending over. I have a glass back these days so this prospect scares me a bit!

After poo-pooing it for a long time, I’ve signed up to my first pilates class at my local gym. I’m expecting to be terrible at it but hoping it gives me a much stronger core.

I’ve upped my speed work on the treadmills and trying to run faster instead of just steady-state 30 mins runs and I’m definitely feeling the benefits of extra lung capacity when I’m breathing in and out.

I’m still doing the same upper body workouts on the machines. 85kg on the chest press, 70kg on the pull-down, and 90kg on the seated row.

I’ve added in some hamstring exercises as I think my weak posterior chain (hams and glutes) is a major factor in my weak lower back. I need to add in some leg presses to strengthen my glutes as well.

Any recommendations for getting fit for fatherhood?

4 speeches to put fire in your belly and put hairs on your chest

chanman · Jul 2, 2019 · Leave a Comment

These speeches will make you stand a little taller, with your chin held up, with your chest puffed that bit further out. And put fire in your belly and hairs on your chest.

I watch these whenever I need inspiration and some courage. Hopefully, they give you some too!

Al Pacino’s speech in Scent of a Woman (1992)

If you haven’t seen this film yet, then watch it before this humdinger of an ending speech.

For a very useful transcipt of the Pacino’s barnstorming speech, see this link from American Rhetoric.

Arnie’s 6 Rules of Success

Arnie is the man. Plain and simple. Champion bodybuilder, self-made millionaire businessman, blockbuster A-list acting legend, Governor of California, all-round great guy. Listen to this.

Rocky’s speech to his son in Rocky Balboa (2006)

Every Rocky film (except Rocky V of course) has made me cry. Floods of tears. The final struggle of the training sessions. The punishment Rocky inevitably takes in the ring. And then the beyond-rousing comeback of pure heart that is Rocky. I’m left a sobbing mess of heaving tears.

This scene always gets me.

Here’s a useful transcript of the speech.

Al Pacino’s Game of Inches speech in Any Given Sunday (1999)

For raw aggression, and channelling that aggression into a common goal of victory, this speech has no rivals:

Here’s a very useful transcript of the speech as well.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Let me know what your favourite movie speeches are in the comments below!

How you can save money effortlessly using Monzo, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and Moneybox

chanman · Jul 1, 2019 · 1 Comment

I’m not a great saver. In general, I’m a spender. But I want to become a decent saver so that that I can invest it and make a good pile of money before I retire and hopefully live well before that. Given my spending nature, for me, it’s about creating systems that take out the need for willpower and that make it easy for me to spend less and save more. Monzo, Marcus, and Moneybox help me do that.

Monzo

Monzo is a new bank account that’s mobile-only and aimed at young people. It has a cool bright pink card that when you tap it or use it, sends an instant update to your phone. So I know immediately when I buy a coffee or lunch. It literally tells me as soon as I tap my card on the reader.

So how does Monzo help me save money? Two ways:

First, it is a load-on card. I have to have funds on it to use it. My main card is with a major bank (not Monzo), and my salary is paid into that. I then transfer £100 to my Monzo whenever my funds in Monzo runs low. Monzo is my spending card for everything. The fact that so little is on my account and I have to top up when I run out, means that I don’t mindlessly spend and tap on stuff I don’t even register I’m spending on. Recently, I bought a jumper for £90 but I had to transfer money from my main account to my Monzo (I don’t carry a card for my main account). This act of transferring made me stop to see if I consciously wanted to buy the jumper. (I did!). I’ve made Monzo my default Amazon card as well so that it makes me scrutinise how much I’m really sending on Amazon books (the answer is a lot).

Second, it has a round-up function on transactions, which takes a transaction (say £2.90), rounds it up to £3 (which is what is debited from your account), and puts the £0.10 into a separate saving pot in your Monzo account. Since I turned this feature on a few months ago, I’ve had 113 round ups (£0.47 average) for a total of £53.03. Not much, but better than nothing and I don’t even realise it’s happening. Effortless.

Get a Monzo account here:

Get one through this link and we’ll both get £5!

Just follow these instructions: https://join.monzo.com/r/argg9bi

Marcus by Goldman Sachs

Saving is easier when your savings account isn’t the same bank that you spend with. Say you’re with Barclays as a current account and a savings account. When you’re feeling the pinch at the end of the month, you might be tempted to transfer some savings into your spending account. When it’s a separate bank that you have to log into, then it’s a big effort to do so, and this effort is often enough to stop you doing it.

ING Direct used to fill this role for me. Its password alone was too difficult for me to remember, so I was able to set a regular monthly payment into it and not be able to touch it, as I had forgotten the password! It helped me save enough for my deposit on my flat.

Unfortunately, ING closed down in the UK. But Marcus is here to fill the void. It also has one of the highest savings interest rate out there (at time of writing it was 1.50%, which is still lame by historic standards!). But it’s a decent bank with a name that you can believe won’t go bust (touch wood).

(Update as at May 2020, regular savings of £100, then £150, and now £200 per month has amounted to a total of around £2,300 in my Marcus account)

Moneybox App iOS

This probably the most fun of these three services. In a nutshell, Moneybox rounds up your transactions to the nearest pound and invests the change into their Stocks and Shares ISA. You decide which risk appetite you want for the funds in which your ISA invests in. I chose ‘balanced’ below:

Then this is the asset allocation ‘balanced’ gives you:

This is what I’ve saved effortlessly on Moneybox in the past several months: (It’s not huge, but it’s something, and it’s invested. It’s good because it’s effortless and even fun when you ’round up’ your transaction. You get a rewarding noise when you round up, and it gives you the dopamine hit needed to reward you and keep you going.

(Update as at 26th May 2020, my Moneybox account has £722.50 in it invested. I’ve written a follow-up article to it here called How Moneybox helped me painlessly save and invest £722.50 in 15 months)

Conclusion

If you’re struggling to spend less and also struggling to save, then give these apps/accounts a go. Along with Yolt (to be covered in a later post), these make money fun to handle!

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker – key takeaways

chanman · May 21, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Why We Sleep is a ridiculously valuable book for anyone who doesn’t sleep much on a consistent basis. Whether that’s due to insomnia or to being a total badass who thinks that sleep is for the weak and lazy.

Matthew is someone we should listen to. He’s professor of of neuroscience and psychology at UCLA and before that he was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He also works as a sleep scientist at Google Life Sciences (Verily)

The main takeaways from Why We Sleep

Consistent sleep deprivation is really, really bad for you. By sleep deprivation, he means anything less than a solid 8 hours of sleep. Walker links consistent sleep deprivation to cancer, dementia, obesity depression, and anxiety. Also, the shorter you sleep, the shorter you live. All in all, really, really bad.
We have a chemical called adenosine that is continually produced from the moment we wake up. It builds and builds throughout the day until we can resist sleep no longer. This is called sleep pressure.
Caffeine blocks the receptors that register the adenosine build up and this is why coffee temporarily makes us feel more awake and alert. If caffeine is still in your system at bedtime, it will likely keep you from feeling tired.
Caffeine has an average half life of 5 to 7 hours. This means that 5 to 7 hours after your last coffee, half the caffeine is still left in your system. And in 10-14 after your last coffee, a quarter of that caffeine is still in your system.
Drink less caffeine! And definitely not too late i.e. not after 12pm

Professor Walker’s top 12 tips for getting a better night’s sleep

Stick to a sleep schedule. Get up and go to be at the same time every day. Walker highlights this as the most important of his sleep tips.
Exercise is great. At least 30 mins most days and not too close to bedtime.
Avoid caffeine and nicotine. They make it hard to get to sleep and can affect how deeply you do sleep.
Avoid alcohol before bed. It will stop you getting into REM sleep and you may wake up in the middle of the night when the effects have worn off.
Avoid large meals and drinks late at night. This can cause indigestion which interferes with sleep.
Avoid medicines that disrupt your sleep
No naps after 3pm.
Relax and unwind before bed like reading or listening to music
Take a hot bath before bed
Dark, cool, gadget-free bedroom
Get enough sunlight exposure. This helps regulate sleep patterns. At least 30 mins of natural sunlight each day and preferably in the morning. Turn down the lights before bedtime.
Don’t lie in bed awake.

For me, the caffeine control has been incredible in helping me get more sleep.

Walker describes sleep deprivation as:

the greatest public health challenge we face in the 21st century in developed nations. If we wish to avoid the suffocating noose of sleep neglect, the premature death it inflicts, and the sickening health it invites, a radical shift in our personal, cultural, professional, and societal appreciation of sleep must occur.

I believe it is time for us to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep, without embarrassment or the damaging stigma of laziness. In doing so, we can be reunited with that most powerful elixir of wellness and vitality, dispensed through every conceivable biological pathway. then we may remember what it feels like to be truly awake during the day, infused with the very deepest plentitude of being.

Pick up a copy of Why We Sleep here.

Get more sleep!

What does it mean to eat well?

chanman · Apr 28, 2019 · Leave a Comment

For lots of people, eating is something to get done. For these people, food is fuel.

But what if we ask the question: “What is the best that eating can do for us?” the idea that ‘food is fuel’ becomes a deprived way of looking at eating. (Pint of Huel anyone??)

At its very best, food nourishes the body and nourishes the soul too.

Body. At the very least, what you eat should be nourishing for the body. It should be nutrient-dense, packed full of vitamins and things that help your body function at its best. It should give you energy, help your muscles repair and help your body’s complex chemical make-up be at its optimum.

Soul. It should delight the senses. From what goes into your eyes, to what it smells like, to what it tastes like, to the texture of your food as you eat it. Some of the best food experiences are those that remind of us of what our mum cooked for us when we were kids. For me, that was freshly cooked, deep-fried samosas with chili sauce, or crispy noodles, or scaldingly hot spring rolls.

Think about where the term soul food originates from. It’s food that nourishes and feeds the soul.

What should we eat?

We should be eating as good quality food as we can afford. We wouldn’t put crap oil into a Ferrari would we? No. So why would we do the same to our bodies?

Imagine we just ate things that were terrible for us? Say bad pizza, sugary cereals, solid junk food, for a month. I guarantee you’d feel terrible.

Imagine on the other hand that we ate things that were great for us? Look to the Greeks or the Japanese who routinely live long, active lives. Their diets contain:

Fish that are rich in protein and Omega oils
Dark green leafy greens
Fruit and veg

How should we eat?

“Before you eat or drink anything, consider carefully who you eat or drink with rather than what you are to eat or drink: for feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf.”Epicurus

(sourced here)

We can surely do better than eating in front of the TV with our plates on our laps. Think about past mealtimes that you cherish. It might be family roast dinners, long brunches with friends, BBQs with friends and families, weddings with long tables of people you know and people you’re getting to know. It might be nostalgic school dinners or in the mess hall with your peers. Whatever it is, it’s likely that eating with other people is more optimal for your enjoyment and well-being than eating alone.

Does eating well need to cost a lot?

Not really. Okay free range chickens might be beyond the budgets of some people, but fresh food is available to everyone. Real markets sell fresh fruit and veg. You can get great food in tins as well. Tinned tomatoes are very often better than any fresh ones you can get (like for a puttanesca sauce).

You don’t need caviar, abalone, lobster, wagyu beef to eat well. You just need some knowledge and a will to do so. Check out this article about Jack Monroe from Lifehacker and then check out her site as well.

Does eating well require elaborate recipes?

Definitely not. Lots of great dishes require less than 5 ingredients.Cacio e Pepe has 5 or 6 depending if you put butter and oil in it, and why wouldn’t you?!

It’s mostly about timings, keeping flavours intense, putting interesting things together.

How about this for a nice meal:

Greek salad (cucumber, ripened on the vine tomatoes, red onion, feta, kalamata olives, capers, olive oil, cider vinegar, dried oregano)
Pan-fried salmon, with crispy skin
Sourdough bread with salted butter
Glass of wine of your choice

Add in a few people to eat with, some music and some laughter, maybe at a long table outside in the sun and you’re eating very well!

What does eating well mean to you? Let me know in the comments!