15.5lbs or 7.1 kgs of books

It’s hard for me to think that I carried that weight unnecessarily around with me every day. These 6 books represent what I’ve lost in the last 25 weeks by being a little bit healthier and a lot more active. Visualising weight accurately is harder than you think. Like how many laptops do you weight ? How many books does your chair weigh ? How many chairs would weight the same as a table. It’s interesting to do these conversions as it helps us understand these numbers in more tangible everyday terms.

The next challenge ? Is to do the Munich Stadtlauf 10km in under an hour, it’s on June 24th.

Of course it’s not just all about weight loss, as I’ve started to do some weights sessions instead of just running, swimming & cycling. So there should be a increase in muscle, I hope. Just looking at weight loss alone is like having a 1-D view of things. Other metrics of progress can be the TI (total inches), energy levels, which in my case are also noticeably better.

Making it fun

I’ve started to like these mini training sessions, where I just take 1/2 an hour to do something. I just do enough to break out a sweat, and to sustain that for 10-15 minutes. The barrier to doing a session, from the time limit aspect, is reduced. Some days I can even get to do two of these. These I find better, and they fly by, especially when I listen to a favourite Mac podcast or take a phone call. It’s human nature to shy away from things that aren’t fun. By having this relatively low barrier to do something doesn’t give me much of an excuse not to do a session. We all have 30 minutes in the day to do something right ?

The Stats

February 2012

March 2012

The BOI phishing email :

Dear Customer,

Your account has been temporarily limited.
To remove the limitation from your account
please confirm your credit card details on file.

For confirmation, please click the link below:

Sign In to 365online account (link removed).

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Thank you.

© Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland in Ireland.

Banks generally don’t email their customers, they tend to send letters via the post. So do be suspicious about any emails you get from banks ! This email seems to be sent to email addresses associated with Irish domain names. So we guess they’ve checked the WHOIS data for Irish domain names, and emailed those addresses linked with the domain name registration.

Checking that SSL is used

Before you submit any personal, sensitive, login data over the internet to your bank, or similar website, you should check that the connect is secure, and it’s connecting to where it says it is. For this reason you should check that SSL is being used, you will see HTTPS instead of HTTP in the URL address bar. Also companies will use a SSL certificate that will verify that the webpage is on the server it says it’s coming from.

They seem to be targetting Irish email addresses, i.e. ones with a .ie  at the end.

Here is one we got today ‘from’ Permanent TSB, the from email address was : “Permanent TSB”<info@permanenttsb.ie> :

Dear Customer:

Permanent TSB is constantly striving to provide you with more convenience, control, and security to assist in managing your finances.

As part of our ongoing efforts to make it easier for you to use our online services, we have revised the Permanent TSB E-Sign Consent
and Online Access Agreement that you reviewed and accepted when you began to use Permanent TSB Online? or Permanent TSB Business Online? Banking service(s).

To review the changes, click on the links below:

• E- Sign Consent (link removed)
• Online Access Agreement (link removed)

Our Support Unit is carrying out a scheduled software update By following
the link Above you will start the procedure of the client login Reinstate.

These instructions are to be mailed and followed by all clients of the Permanent TSB.
Permanent TSB Service does apologize for the inconveniences caused to you, and is very appreciative for your cooperation.

If you are not customer of Permanent TSB Plc Service please ignore this notification!

***** This is an automated message, please do not respond *****? 2012 Permanent TSB. All Rights Reserve

EDIT: 1 further phishing email format, this time from Poland…

You have 1 important mail alert!

We strongly advise you should update your account and resolve the problem.

Click here to proceed

Failure to do this will lead to your account been suspended or de-activated.

Thanks for your co-operation.

Yours Sincerely

Permanent TSB Online Banking

Measuring Progress

How do you measure that you are getting fitter ? Tim Ferris, in the 4 Hour Work Body, talks about TI, or total inches, which is possibly a better way to see if you are getting fit and in shape. Basically you measure your arms, legs, waist & chest, and sum up all the numbers to get your TI number. Nonetheless tracking your weight will also show you your level of progress to a certain level of accuracy. There is of course a lower limit that this will approach, so you should also check out the chart for your ideal weight for your height. BMI is another metric that’s often thrown out, where anything under 25 is considered ‘healthy’. It’s calculated by the following forumla

BMI = ( Weight in Kilograms / ( Height in Meters x Height in Meters ) )

My January chart is displayed below, and as you can see I’m just on the tip of the overweight / ideal weight border.

Overall I’m happy with the progress, but I don’t track my progress just by my weight. Other aspects like energy levels or time for a 5km run are other ways of seeing how you are progress.

So once again I will say that this is the year that I get fit. Who knows I might even push myself into doing a 10km run somewhere in the summer.

A look at 2011

Below is my weight chart from last year, and as you can see that when last July I posted my progess, I was on track to hitting the 75kg mark in September. But as you can see here, that really didn’t happen.

2011 Weight chart

The gray dots are some of the measured points, and the blue line is the average weight and predicted time I shall hit my goal.

You can see a lot of improvement in the early days & weeks, but after a while it started to slow down. The challenge here for me was to keep motivated and to push on, especially when I was starting to see some real results. You can see here that towards the end of the summer the weight started to creep up. It probably wasn’t helped with being at the Oktoberfest 8 times either

Also throw in the mix in November was a new scales, which miraculously added 2kgs to me. I updated from a mechanical scales to an electronic one, that also does body fat measurements & water weight.

While this result is a bit saddening, it’s also important to note that people’s weights do change in the seasons. It’s the same for athletes, they go through different cycles of building muscle and loosing fat and then recuperating. Now I’m not saying this is what I’ve done, but maybe some of the re-weight gain was due to this natural body craving to store up some fat for the winter.

Life Changes

Besides going to the gym, I’ve started to take a closer look at what I eat, and how much I eat. Portion control is key, and it comes back to the title, calorie accountancy. There is a simple formula to loosing weight, basically you need to use / expel more calories every day than you’ve consumed. If you can manage that, you will loose weight. There’s no magic secret to getting fit / loosing weight, it’s just you have to do it.

Useful Tools

In 2011 I started using the fantastic Weightbot app by Tapbots to record my weight. Generally I try to record at least 3 weights each week, with at least one at the weekend. During the year I picked up, and am still going through, Tim Ferris’ book the Four Hour Body on this recommendation.

I’ve also been inspired by some other people doing the same, reading Pat, Michele, Paul & James on twitter and their blogs has helped me to stay focussed, and has reminded me that there are indeed other people working hard to get fit out there, that I’m not the only one.

Back to the grinding stone

This year I’ve been hitting the gym a lot more often. For the past 3 weeks I’ve been going 4-5 times a week. The results have been good, I’ve lost 3kgs enough so far, but again it’s not the quick fixes that are needed. 74kgs is a more long term goal I know.

This year's progress

The plan for this year is to do at least a small update on my progress every 3 months. So see you in March !

Myself, Michele & James, over an online discussion thought it would be a good idea to have a website to bring attention to the increasing trend of companies requesting people to do, what seems on paper at least, a job you would expect someone of experience/skill to perform. These jobs are often pitched as an opportunity to get experience or a start in an industry, but the employer is not willing to pay these people for their time.

Some employers even say that they’ve hired many people after these types of intern postions. But this carrot dangling really doesn’t justify someone receiving at least €8.65 per hour, the current minimum wage in Ireland. If you perform a task, that potentially someone else is paying for, i.e. a client of your employer , and you just get ‘experience’, there does seem to be some level of exploitation here.

Collins Dictionary, via thefreedictionary.com, defines the word slave as

slave [sleɪv]
n
1. (Law) a person legally owned by another and having no freedom of action or right to property
2. (Business / Industrial Relations & HR Terms) a person who is forced to work for another against his will
3. a person under the domination of another person or some habit or influence a slave to television
4. (Business / Industrial Relations & HR Terms) a person who works in harsh conditions for low pay
5. (Engineering / Mechanical Engineering)
a. a device that is controlled by or that duplicates the action of another similar device (the master device)
b. (as modifier) slave cylinder

Because of #4 I feel that the word slave is an appropriate word to use. The harsh condition being the fact that you don’t receive any wages for the work performed.

There has been some debate over the last 3 days about this topic, it even trended on twitter at one stage. It’s great to see that in some way slaves.ie has aided this debate. Some people were offended by word slave, to that I am sorry, that was not the intention. Others seem to have used it to pull some punches at companies, this was also not the intention of the website.

Irish Unemployment

With the rate of Irish unemployment hitting 14%, there are lots of capable people out there looking for work. It’s sad to see that people feel like they have to take these positions, as that’s what it’s now come down to.

Recently the Irish government launched an initiative to get people on the dole, into jobs. JobBridge allows employers to advertise these internship positions. The employers only have to pay their workers €50 per week, but they will continue to receive their unemployment benefit. People seem to be happy to apply for these positions, and I think it can be a win-win situation for both the intern and the employer. Where things could get dodgy is when these intern positions should in fact be full time positions. JobBridge define an internship as :

The aim of the National Internship Scheme is to assist in breaking the cycle where jobseekers are unable to get a job without experience, either as new entrants to the labour market after education or training or as unemployed workers wishing to learn new skills.

I hope they don’t have too hard of a time policing these jobs. JobBridge is a great idea, and I would love to see it succeed.

Internships are great

Personally I’ve only good things to say about my experience with internships. But they were all paid, I was able to learn and earn at the same time. It showed me that the employer valued an intern enough to give them a wage. I was given responsibility, but I was also given the opportunity to learn something new. If I wasn’t paid I don’t think I would have been able to do one for 5 months while living in Germany for example.

I do wonder about these employers who don’t offer wages in return for work, I mean we all have to survive, pay rent, bills and eat every now and again. Expecting someone to work for free won’t help them in any of these tasks. Some even say they are creating jobs, but without an employers PRSI contribution I don’t think this qualifies as ‘a job’.

Both Michele & James have also expanded on their thoughts on this and are worth reading.

This morning I was greeted with another one, from Sam who was looking for his father. What’s interesting is that Sam sent the invite to gmail to a gmail address, wft ? Either way, Sam I’m not your father….

Detoxing

Before starting with the exercise myself & lauren did a 3 week detox. This was pretty hardcore, no coffee, no alcohol, certain fruits that were high in sugar (like bananas) and lots of organic vegetables & chicken. This was particularly good for removing that extra water weight, as diet low in salt and other foods that people can have allergic reactions to. If you are interested in reading the plan drop me an email.

2011 Results

The gray dots are some of the measured points, and the blue line is the average weight and predicted time I shall hit my goal. My current goal is 75kgs, which I should hit in the next few months. Right now I’ve lost a total of 7.78% of my initial body weight.

The other day I carried a 5kg bag of coins that I was hoping to bring to the bank, and I was amazed after caring just how heavy an extra 5kg’s was. Try it yourself ! I was able to clearly imagine the extra stress and strain a few Kgs can put on your joints.

Some motivation

This post isn’t meant for me to say how great I am, rather to be more of a motivational post. The hardest part of anything is starting. Once you get going, and start to see the results, you’ll find that your body will start to crave the adrenaline rush that you get from a tough workout. You just have to stick with it enough to create the habit.

For more motivation I suggest you have a look at this video about a kid learning to cycle a bike for the first time.

Hat tip to one other great lad who’s progress I’ve been tracking this year.