1st down! (or, week 5, new goals)

As mentioned in a previous post, weight loss can be very easily related to American football.

For those unfamiliar with American football- there is a clock, like in soccer (football everywhere else!) In soccer (if I understand the game correctly, there are two 45-minute halves, with no real time outs, and time can be added by the officials at the end of the half (or maybe just the final half). American football is also divided into halves, but each half is 30 minutes long, and further divided into quarters of 15 minutes each. It is fairly unusual for much time, if any, to be added back on to the clock.

After my first successful round of weight loss, I've decided that this is a pretty manageable way of doing things, and have set a goal for the next four weeks. The weight loss goal of the first four weeks was a total of ten pounds; through diet, exercise, a pedometer and an Excel spreadsheet I managed to drop seventeen pounds.

I need to explain "downs" to those unacquainted with American football. In stark contrast to soccer, which is similar to ballet in that there is near constant motion, American football is more like a chess match, with one huge difference. In chess, opponents take turns attempting to place their opponent into check and ultimately mate. In football, a team has four opportunities to run plays and attempt to score- or, at least get another set of downs. An American football field is 100 yards long (meters/metres and yards are fairly close in length; one inch== 2.54cm, a yard ==36 inches, and a meter==39.36 inches [yes, I know these things by heart]). To get a "first down", a team needs to move the ball 10 yards from where they originally possessed it. When they move the ball 10 yards or more, they get a new set of downs.

So, I successfully completed my first four week challenge- I lost 17 pounds. In football parlance, I gained 17 yards, maybe. I now have a new set of downs.

I truly, truly hope all of the soccer fans out there are able to follow this analogy, because I think it works pretty well. Pressing on...

I've moved up the field, farther than I'd expected when I first started. I have a new set of four weeks to work with. Initially, I thought about increasing my goal just a bit, say to 12 pounds for the period. However, I added some simple analytics to my spreadsheet, and decided that instead of shooting for a weight goal for the next four weeks, I'd shoot for something a bit more significant in terms of health. 12 pounds is good, but 14 pounds will drop my BMI into a lower category, so it's a goal worth shooting for.

I've said this before on twitter: I'm not a data scientist nor do I pretend to be one. However, most of us can do some common sense analytics and improve or fine tune our goals. The answers (or very clear directions to the answers) are often right in front of us. We just need to know how to ask the right questions (or to be brave or honest enough to ask them).

My wake up call started with a reflection in a mirror. What's yours?

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Training, Interrupted

One of my greatest fears when I began blogging was what might be called "churn factor," or writer's block. I've written things on and off for some time. In high school, I wanted to write a Great Space Opera- a grand, expansive science fiction tour de force. I started countless stories, first with a ballpoint pen, then typewriter and finally computer, but for any number of reasons I never managed to write more than a chapter or two. As recently as 2012 I started one (that one has a bit of a chance of getting finished).

But here I sit, more than slightly astonished that my count of entries is over one hundred, and just last week launched a second blog (about my new adventures in digital photography) at http://hochspeyer.wordpress.com/.

I started this on Monday, May the 12th. This particular title owes its inspiration to our failed attempt to hit the gym. In weightlifting circles, its pretty much a given that when one is training, one is lifting. The converse does not seem to hold true, though- just because you're lifting, it doesn't mean that you're training.

I won't belabor all of the nuances.

The reason we didn't go to the gym was really quite simple: a massive rain storm had rolled through the area. Hail, reduced visibility, high winds, and lots of rain... the rain was so heavy....

How heavy was it?

The rain was so heavy, there were bubbles coming out from under our street. Which, when one considers it, is fairly odd. After all, one does not walk out to the street and to see it bubbling and hear it gurgling.

The rains came in two or three waves. The first wave featured hail and torrents. When the first wave had mostly abated, I picked up our older son from work, and then I went to work. During lulls at the office, I watched the storms roll through on the computer, and occasionally heard thunder above the noise of the plant and saw some lightning through the window, but the worst of it seems to have been the first wave.

No real news on the data front. Well, not entirely true. I recently downloaded Omron's pedometer software (astute followers of my Adventures in the Secret Underground Lair [SUL] will recall that I had previously posted a blog describing a catastrophic HDD failure which resulted in the loss of over a year's pedometer data [One simply does not RAID the SUL]). This time I plan to beef up my data security a bit- by actually backing it up!

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Please try the other flavor of hochspeyer- digital photography! http://hochspeyer.wordpress.com/