There is no change in any of the below parameters this month.
Weight – 71 Kg (5 kg weight loss achieved )
Protein – 21 % (1 % increase from last month)
Muscle – 53.2 Kg (1.5 Kg muscle mass reduced)
Body fat – 21 % (3 % reduced compared to last month)
Visceral fat – 12 ( 1 point reduced)
Bone mass – 2.85 Kg (0.08 kg reduced compared to last month)
Water content – 54.5% (2.5 % increase )
Basal metabolism rate – 1448
My health improved drastically due to resuming cycling and running.
Cycling and Running
Cycling :1500 km
Running : 67 km
New Problems faced in Feb-2023
My MI 6 smartband strap broken
Stopped some journaling activities
Less sleep
I will keep writing monthly reviews for my self development. Also by chance if somebody reads this and can give better ideas and suggestions. Day by day in everyway I will strive to become better and better.
There is no change in any of the below parameters this month.
Weight – 76 Kg (1kg weight loss achieved )
Protein – 20 % (0.7 % increase from last month)
Muscle – 54.7 Kg (1.2 Kg muscle mass increased)
Body fat – 24 % (2.5 % reduced compared to last month)
Visceral fat – 13 (No change)
Bone mass – 2.93 Kg (0.6 kg increase compared to last month)
Water content – 52 % (1.5 % increase )
Basal metabolism rate – 1527
My health increased due to resuming cycling and running.
Sleep
Deep sleep – 16:00 hours
Light sleep – 70:50 hours
REM sleep – 26:50 hours
115 hours of sleep in February approximately 4.5 hours per day. Let me see if this increases with my upcoming activities in this month or remains the same.
Cycling and Running
No of days: 17 days
No of kms: 403 km
New Problems faced in Feb-2023
My MI 6 smartband failed to charge and so could not track my step count sleep and other parameters for a few days
Less sleep
I will keep writing monthly reviews for my self development. Also by chance if somebody reads this and can give better ideas and suggestions. Day by day in everyway I will strive to become better and better.
Today is fourth day after resuming ride and mutukadu is one of my favourite places to see the sunrise at beach. Today there were way too many birds in the lake. We could see many different species of water birds today morning. It was a splendid scene. Cormorants, pelicans, ibises and herons, and grebes were in maximum numbers.
I started cycling after six months of recovery and i am very happy about it. The first four months went really quick fast. The last two months lasted longer and longer. Initially i went for local grocery shop riding 1km up and 1 km down. Then went to the starting point for bird watching. Yesterday there was a cricket tournament among our cycling chapters.
We went as a group to cheer our cricket team players. I thought even i could not go fast eventually i can catch up with the riders at the ground. However to my surprise i was able to ride with the team despite a gap of six months. Day before yesterday Individual time trial within the chapter was conducted. I could not participate due to not starting. Now after yesterdays ride, again today went to celebrate the chapters second anniversary by cake cutting at besant nagar beach.
I have to give my road bike for service and hopefully by next week i will start riding my roadie. It is a new beginning for me after surgery. The distance i rode yesterday and today put together is 65 km. These small ride helped me gain confidence to go for further rides. Tomorrow we are going to ride uphill in pallavaram hills, one of my favourite spots in the city. I am looking up to it eagerly.
Cycling group from WCCG Madipakkam and WCCG Navalur chapters jointly organised for a bird watching walk at pallikaranai Eco park situated between the pallikaranai marsh land towards kaiveli and behind the garbage dump yard. The original pallikaranai marsh lands extended to several kilometres from Velachery to Sholinganallur during my childhood days.
The pallikaranai eco park opens at 6:30 am in the morning and closes at 6:30 in the evening. It is a very nice place for joggers and runners who can carry out the activities without disturbing the birds. The water inside the marsh lands had dried up within forty five days of monsoon activity in the region.
I am very happy that my ride activity resumed in this way. I also got to meet fellow birders who are also cyclists. I reached the park entrance 15 minutes before opening time and got to meet Mr Sudhakar, an avid bird photographer. We exchanged pleasantries and had a chat regarding birding in the area.
Once all the cyclists assembled we parked our cycles and locked together in a combined way to avoid theft. Few months ago during my UK visit I observed a lot of cycle parts and locks on the roadside. On enquiry it was informed that there is rampant cycle theft in UK. They remove the parts and take it with them leaving the lock along with the parts that cannot be removed. In that way India is far better. They steal the whole cycle or they leave it as it is. Things would be different If we have wings like our feathered friends. No vehicles, No pollution, No exploitation.
We were able to spot the following birds during the one hour walk.
Swamphen
Drongo
Medium Egret
Small egret
Little greb
Sandpiper
Prinia
Pond Heron
Stilt
Small king fisher
Bulbul
Kite
Ibis
Pitpit
White throated kingfisher
Cormorant
Common Myna
Coucal
All the pictures were taken by fellow bird watchers. I missed my camera very much. I just watched everyone taking pics of birds. I am eagerly waiting for the next bird watching activity with fellow cyclists.
I started writing to do list for new habit building and I could see the results straightaway. I wrote everyday on my notebook in this month.
I am updating my food habits and expenses everyday. I write date and time and each items I eat and an approximate qty in numbers and weight wherever possible. It was tough initially for a few days but past experience helped me. I tracked my food using an app in 2020 and there were lot of distractions while using phone, so I forget to record and I cannot remember later. But a separate notebook reminds me every time I see the notebook. I would like to continue to do this for the rest of my life.
I am playing online chess(only one game per day) everyday with a random player. I chose chess for rekindling my chess skills and mental well being. All my friends used to come to my house and we play carrom and chess a lot in childhood days. By the time we completed schooling only one another person could manage to play with me while the rest could not even stand with us for more than twenty moves. I continued playing chess with him till graduation. Afterwards work life has taken this habit away from me. Now it brings joy when I play chess everyday. I started getting addicted in the first few days and then decided to play only one game per day which I did for the whole of the month. I would like to continue to do this for the rest of my life.
I started meeting my friends at madipakkam lake post surgery. I will start my cycling activities by this weekend.
In an attempt to reduce my laptop screen time started buying Economic Times Wealth newspaper every Monday. I have reduced atleast two hours of screen time by this way.
Subscribed to Kukufm app and started listening to audio books periodically. However yet to take notes after listening as it is difficult to remember after a period of time.
Book reading:
At present I am reading hard copy of the book “ ALGORITHMS TO LIVE BY” written by Brian Christian. It is not a fast readable book. I enjoy reading the contents and could relate my life with some algorithms.
Movies watched
Gutta kusthi
Beast
Echarikkai
Everything, Everywhere all At once
Varalaru mukkiyam
Net series watched
Itaewon class – 16 episodes
Fight for my way – 16 episodes
K2 – 16 episodes
My liberation notes – 16 episodes
Misaeng: Incomplete life – 20 episodes
I am unable to decide whether I should reduce my time spent for movies and net series. Few more months of data after I start cycling and running will help me decide. I convinced myself that this is recovery time and you can do this for this period.
Health statistics
There is no change in any of the below parameters this month.
Weight – 77 Kg
Protein – 19.3 Kg
Muscle – 53.5 Kg
Body fat – 26.5 %
Visceral fat – 13
Bone mass – 2.87 Kg
Water content – 50.4 %
Basal metabolism rate – 1540
Now that I can go out and do cycling, running etc after six months. I have to plan activities and lifestyle so as to reduce my weight , Increase my body protein content and water content, Reduce Body fat and visceral fat.
I have started tracking my food habits to find if anything can be done for achieving the above objectives.
I am planning to use my MATLAB programming skills to study weight loss or gain on those days when I ate outside food.
Sleep
Deep sleep – 22:50 hours
Light sleep – 88:20 hours
REM sleep – 36:50 hours
150 hours of sleep in January approximately 5 hours per day. Let me see if this increases with my upcoming activities in this month or remains the same.
Completed the following online courses
MATLAB onramp
MATLAB OOPS
MATLAB machine learning
Pre-Registered for PBP-1200 KM ride
Started organising my physical and digital documents. Converted all my pictures in HEIC format to the much usable JPG format. Changed the settings in iphone to save my files in JPG format. To free up my phone memory space started removing unnecessary videos received through whatsapp forwards. It has become quite cumbersome since the size is over 50 GB.
I have not travelled anywhere this month except to my medical checkup.
New Problems faced in Jan-2023
My laptop crashed due to a hacking attempt by unknown person. Also I am not able to use my laptop for GIS programming.
My wifi device problem was rectified by an expert within a day.
Have to find better methods for my progress tracking and email management.
I will keep writing monthly reviews for my self development. Also by chance if somebody reads this and can give better ideas and suggestions. Day by day in everyway I will strive to become better and better.
Step count information collected over a period of time can provide many insights about us through data visualisation by identifying patterns with colors.
I have collected my stepcount data from 2015 to 2022 and categorized it by year, month, day of week, date, hour and try finding patterns in the data and in turn they describe the insights about me such as sleep, how active i am through the day, When i am most active etc.,
If you see the heatmap above you can spot certain colors are together. Bluish black shows very low step count. Between 1:00 am and 6:00 am, and also after 10:00 pm , The colors indicate less activity because i am sleeping. The squares clearly show which year my sleep was more and when it was less. And for 2022 my sleep was very poor and this is captured well. I did plot this heatmap in various color scales and shown in the gallery below and confirming the repeatability of the pattern.
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With the color distinction it can be easily identified that i am active in the mornings between 4:00 am to 7:00 am and then in the evening 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. The rest of the day i am being a couch potato. Whether this pattern repeats on all the months of 2022 can be visualised from the next heatmap.
There is a distinct color pattern before and after the month of august. I had my surgery in sepetember this year and therefore was not active thereafter which is clearly understandable. And because of this, color patterns don’t clearly explain what happened before august about my stepcount.
There is a distinct color pattern before and after the month of august. I had my surgery in sepetember this year and therefore was not active thereafter which is clearly understandable. And because of this, color patterns don’t clearly explain what happened before august about my stepcount. For this the information can be compared with previous years data.
The year-wise heatmap clearly shows i was active till August-2022.
There is no identifiable pattern for day of week over the years. So i am fairly distributing work, rest etc evenly in all days which is a good thing.
From the above bar chart it is clear that despite surgery i have been fairly active in 2022.
January – The year began with lockdown and uncertainty due to the pandemic. The events scheduled for new year got cancelled or postponed without further dates. I was supposed to participate in a long cycle ride and it got postponed. I spent my time inside home as like lockdown in previous years.
I watched two Korean series with the help of English subtitles. The first one is ‘Its ok to not be okay’ and the second one is ‘Startup’. Both the series influenced me a lot in a positive way.
Every year on Pongal day and subsequent two days , we used to for 100 km rides with our cycling group. These events also got cancelled this year. But unlike previous years there was a hope that this will end soon in everybody’s mind and this positive thinking and other measures and experience of past years led to removal of lockdown by the end of the month. However by the end of the month I had clocked 1700 kms.
February– The event which got postponed in January was rescheduled for 14th of the february. Got my cycle serviced and booked train tickets to Bangalore and packed all things required for the event(Gates of Heaven – 1200 km cycle ride). Couldn’t finish on time but nevertheless completed climbing five hills. The event will take place again in 2024 and I am waiting for it. A short write up was posted recently.
I watched neither movies nor net series during February and all focus was only cycling. I rode around 2250 km in February.
March– It was again only cycling in march and I rode around 2300 km. I was preparing for a thousand km ride via Jog falls in April. Also a hope of compensating the late finish in February.
I watched the movie ‘Shyam singha Roy’.
April – A thousand kilometre ride which i quit at 450 km was a major disappointment. I did climbed and descended the kudremukh hills before quitting. After returning, I started running to participate in my first ‘Hell race’ which got postponed to the first of next month.
In April I watched the movies ‘ No time to die’ and ‘Hey Sinamika’.
May – In a 65 km trail running in Darjeeling, managed to complete 50 km and then had to force quit due to weather and late coming. For more about this read here. I am participating again in 2023.
A cycling competition between cities as to who will clock more mileage among a selected list of participants. This event was conceptualised by crooze app and the first edition was conducted. Our team Chennai cheetahs won the first place.
I Watched ‘Dr Strange: Multiverse of madness’ in Imax3D. It was a big disappointment in the storyline for me.
Applied online for UK visa to participate in LEL-2022. Ordered online for cycling accessories and a friend of mine carried it from UK.
June –As part of training went to SL-7 High altitude training centre at ooty and had a wonderful experience. Participated in the first edition of Spartan-600 BRM conducted by Madurai Randonneurs, had to climb four hills and successfully completed on time.
I reapplied for my visa in priority basis and got it on time.
July– The entire month was spent on preparation for LEL, packing for a long international trip. Apart from that I watched four movies in July. ‘CBI the brain’, ‘ Love and leashes’, ‘Thor: Love and thunder’ and ‘Dear Friend’.
I watched ‘Man vs bee’ and it was a disappointment for me. And then watched a Korean series ‘Crash landing on you’.
August – First ever visit to UK. LEL experience. I am yet to post my experiences in UK and the LEL ride. However I have posted about the incident that happened in UK.
While returning back in flight I watched three movies and two more movies on reaching home.
September – First ever surgery on my body. Not a proud thing to brag at. Post surgery I received Memento from WCCG for my attempt at LEL.
I watched ‘I am not a robot’ and ‘Hometown cha cha cha’.
October – Reading books, Watching net series, Movies. I watched ‘Run on’ and ‘Twenty five Twenty one’.
November – Reading books, Watching net series, Movies. I watched a small series ‘ Remarriage and Desires’.
I started tracking my food daily and writing it in a notebook and by the end of the week entering into excel.
December – Reading books, Watching net series, Movies. I watched ‘Doctors’ in December.
A review of this year for may look like- Watch movies and Net series, Cycle, Sleep and then Repeat. But it was not so. I learnt a lot more things which I forgot to record and hence unable to quantify.
Movies – 34
Web series – 145 episodes
Cycling – 15000 km
Running – 650 Km
Reading – 5 books
I haven’t quantified how much time I spend working, sleeping, trying new foods at new restaurants, hiking, and other things I do in life. I should try to add these things in next year in case I succeed in quantifying.
After watching ‘Avatar-2 way of water’ , my deeply buried wishes over time surfaced again. I liked the visual effects and in particular the portions that were shot under water. Only people who had dived and did take some underwater photos or videos can truly understand and appreciate the efforts. Watching this film has rekindled my interest in scuba diving and i intend to go this year.
I did my first ‘discover scuba diving’ at Netrani islands in karnataka in 2013. At that point of time i did not know swimming. However when i took my cousins for diving in pondicherry in 2017, i had learnt a bit of swimming. In 2015 i did my first free dive at kakaban islands. My work life took a toll and i left swimming altogether for quite a few years. Again after watching this movie, water is pulling me towards it.
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I may have to start from scratch because of my current pedicament after my collar bone fracture. I am still in recovery phase. We can endure finite disappointments but never lose infinite hope, can we?
Three years ago, both my underwater cameras have been vandalised by some unknown men who entered my house when i was away on official trip. And then the coronavirus thing happened and all swimming pools have been closed. After the lockdown my focus was fully on cycling. And now the recover phase and the avatar movie combination is providing another oppurtunity to fulfill the long lost wishes.
Just before the pandemic, when i tried to swim in the pool water, i couldnt even properly swim. I took membership and lockdown was put up from the very next day. My dreams of triathlon participation, open water certification etc., crashed that day.
I have done river rafting at Madikeri, Dandeli and Bali. I missed river rafting experience at rishikesh due to lack of company.
Now in my recovery phase i can make a plan for these activities combined with cycling and before that have to improve in swimming. Thanks to Avatar movie for rekindling my interests in water bases activities.
