Fittest Entrepreneur Again

Last Saturday I won my second consecutive Houston Fittest Entrepreneur Challenge! That turns out not to be very impressive as there weren't many entrepreneurs competing this year but I still took second among all male competitors and improved on my performance from last year so I feel very good about the results.

This year's event was much like last year's: it took place at the Houston Dynamo Sports Complex, the events were almost identical to last year's, and I had the same awesome team of my former Rice students cheering me on, plying me with water, etc. There were two main differences, though: 1. there were ~3x as many people competing this year and 2. there were many more corporate teams competing as opposed to individuals. This second factor probably accounts for the dearth of entrepreneur entrants and the glut of executive, professional, doctor, lawyer, and consultant competitors, most of whom were part of company teams.

After warmup, mobilization, and review of my race strategy with my "pit crew," I got after it:

Course 1

Event 1: 30 bodyweight inverted rows on a suspension trainer. I finished in 23 seconds, #5 overall. Last year my 28 seconds was good enough for #4 so already you can see that the competition was stiffer this year.

Event 2:  40 plyo box step-ups while carrying a 25-lb sandbell. Last year I finished in 1:14 (#9) and this year I swear my judge said 1:14 as well. However, in the final results I'm listed at 1:24 (#54, my worst place). I can't think of any reason that I would have dropped 10 seconds in this event since last year. Still, a 1:14 only would have bumped me up to #34, so this still would have been my worst event.

Event 3: 40 had-release push-ups (You have to rest fully on your chest and take your hands off the ground between reps.). Last year I finished the normal push-ups in 29 seconds (#4) but I found the hand-release push-ups much harder. I had to break up 40 into five sets of eight with a 4-5 second rest between sets otherwise my shoulders would get totally smoked. This strategy took me 56 seconds (#31). Given that I was near the top for push-ups last year and so far off this year (The top performers in this event were in the low 30s.) I think there was something I didn't understand about the optimal way to blast through this movement.

Event 4: 40 35-lb kettlebell swings. I finished in 48 seconds (#6) vs. 52 seconds (also #6) last year.

Event 5: 40 arms-behind-your-head to fingers-past-your-toes sit-ups. Last year this was my worst event, finishing in 1:18 (#12). This year I paced myself better and improved my time to 1:11 (but placed worse at #18).

Event 6: 20 burpees. I finished in 44 seconds (#5), pausing for two breaths at the halfway point, vs 45 seconds (#4) last year.

Event 7: two-minute plank hold. This was my undoing last year as I didn't even make it a full minute, tapping out at 52 seconds. This year I worked hard on my plank in an already exhausted state and it paid off: I completed the full two minutes to tie for #1. It's a good thing, too - last year 52 seconds was enough for #8 in the event; this year it would have only earned me #61!

Clearly the field was much more competitive this year: I had improved my performance in almost all of the events yet, instead of placing #8 overall for the first course as I had last year, I was down at #13! Even if my second event time was indeed incorrect, the correct time would only have boosted me to #10.

Course 2

After a rest and some coconut water, I hopped into Course 2. This was completed in pairs and I was fortunate to be paired with someone else who was very competitive. We both pushed each other through each of the four events, which I believe improved both of our scores.

Event 1: agility drills. Up and back through these speed ladders and hurdles took 29 seconds (#3) vs 1:23 (#4) on a longer version of the course last year.

Event 2: 10 15-lb sandbell tosses over a high barrier followed by suicide sprints. 50 seconds (#8) vs 60 seconds, (#9) last year. Already I could feel that I was doing better on this course than I had done last year - and my partner was helping to motivate me as he kept beating me by just a hair.

Event 3: 20 15-lb sandbell slams followed by a 100-yard out-and-back bear crawl. 43 seconds (#2!) vs 1:16 (#12) last year - a huge improvement. My partner was ahead of me heading out of the slams but I caught him at the turnaround of the bear crawl and never looked back.

Event 4: 100 yard out-and-back sprint while carrying a 10-ft, 40-lb sandrope followed by a 100 yard out-and-back sprint while carrying a 50-lb sandbell. 39 seconds (#3). Last year's event was just the second half of this one and I finished in 17 seconds (#4).

I improved my performance in every single event of this course and it showed as I completed this course #2 overall vs. #8 last year. My calf started cramping a bit in the final event so I rested and coconut watered up a bit before the 5k.

Course 3

Last year the course was a bit short, just 4.8k My km splits were:

4:39 (166 BPM heart rate)
4:42 (167)
4:39 (168)
4:36 (171)
3:18 (only 800m)

for a 21:54 (#3) finish.

Two weeks before this event I ran a 5k time trial in Oregon after an intense SHOP workout. My km splits were:

4:36 (163)
4:31 (165)
4:25 (170)
4:23 (172)
3:55 (184)

for a 21:55 finish. That was substantially faster than last year's competition since it was the same time for a full 5k vs just 4.8k. Given that performance in a training run, I was optimistic that I would do even better in a race situation.

This year the race course was a full 5k. Amped up on competition adrenaline I went out a little faster than intended and then had to rein it in a bit as the heat, humidity (very different weather than we had during my Oregon training run!), and exhaustion from the previous courses conspired to make my right calf threaten to cramp. I managed to stave off the cramp, though, and still beat last year's short course time on this longer course. My splits were:

4:27 (166)
4:25 (171)
4:27 (173)
4:27 (175)
4:04 (183)

for a 21:50 finish (#6) overall - much slower than my fresh 5k PR but a new "exhausted" 5k PR!

Overall

In the end I finished #13 on Course 1, #2 on Course 2, and #6 on Course 3 for a total score of 21, which was good enough for the top Entrepreneur spot and #2 among all male competitors. The #1 finisher earned #2, #4, and #4 on the respective courses for a total score of 10 so he was way ahead of me and even a correction to my plyobox step-ups event wouldn't have helped me make up much ground on him. Clearly I'll need to improve my performance in Course #1 substantially next year if I want to make a run at the overall title!

Once again this was a really fun event for which to train and in which to compete. I have to offer up huge shout outs to everyone who helped me out along the way:

The SHOP - my go-to source for all matters strength, conditioning, and nutrition
Paleo Runner - my running coach who is helping me improve my running with a less-is-more, smarter-not-harder approach
Unbound Body - my fascial stretching therapist who is helping me work through my mobility limitations
Chapel Hill Obstacle Run Conditioning Group - working out in this group has definitely improved my performance in things like the bear crawl.
Sid - my friend in Oregon who paced me during the 5k time trial
Matt - my Virginia friend who helped me train for courses 1 and 2 in Abingdon
Katie - my devoted wife who timed me on many training run-throughs and was so supportive of my efforts
Vivas and Veronica - my on-site pit crew was so incredibly helpful as I was nearing exhaustion in each event!

Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way! It was a blast and next year I'm thinking of putting together a team!

Fittest Entrepreneur

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fittest [entrepreneur] of them all . . . ? I am! At least according to the Houston Fittest Entrepreneur Challenge, which was organized by Fit Company, a nonprofit seeking to promote health among business professionals. There were several competitor categories: entrepreneurs, execs, doctors, lawyers, and company teams. All competitors descended on the Houston Dynamo practice facility Sunday, February 23, to compete for our respective category titles.

The competition consisted of three courses, with about 10 minutes of recovery time between each. The first course comprised individual strength exercises, the second course offered several obstacles to overcome, and the third course was a 5k run on the premises. The objective was to finish each event in each course as quickly as possible. Each competitor would then be given a ranking for each event and the best average ranking across all three courses would win the category.

I arrived in Houston Saturday after a business trip to Guatemala (more on that in a subsequent post), but I took things easy Saturday evening and was well rested for the contest Sunday morning. In a touching show of support, I was joined by an entourage of two of my former Rice entrepreneurship students and one of my best friends (who was a real trooper battling a significant hangover!). As I am much more of a team sport guy than an individual sport guy, I found these "teammates" to add a great deal to my motivation.

My students brought a sign to cheer me on. They didn't know whether to put #23 (my high school football number) or #42 (my Rice football number) on it, so they brought stick-on numbers for 4, 2, and 3 to cover both possibilities. When I picked up my race bib, I was astounded to see that I was competitor #423! As if I needed any more motivation, this was surely a harbinger of good things to come.

I ran in the last heat of the day, which started at 11:00 AM. This gave me the advantage of a little extra warmup time and more of a chance to plan for the courses now that I knew what they contained. When we finally got started, though, most of my planning went right out the window!

The first event was 30 bodyweight inverted rows on a suspension trainer. I finished in 28 seconds, #4 among men in that event. Some people finished closer to 20 seconds, which I don't understand unless they weren't fully extending their arms. The second event was 40 plyo box step-ups while carrying a 25-lb sandbell. I wasn't familiar with sandbells before this event, but they're pretty cool: vary malleable, much harder to deal with than a dumbbell of the same weight, but softer and less bouncy than a medicine ball. I tried to keep an even pace with the step-ups and finished in 1:14, #9 in that event.

The third event was 40 chest-to-the-ground push-ups, which I finished in 29 seconds, a tie for #4. The fourth event was 40 35-lb kettlebell swings, which I finished in 52 seconds, #6. The fifth event was 40 arms-behind-your-head to fingers-past-your-toes sit-ups. I slowed down a bit on this event, finishing in 1:18, #12. Individually none of the events were too taxing but stringing them all together with only 30 seconds of rest between each was taking its toll.

The sixth event was 20 burpees, which I finished in 45 seconds, #4. The seventh and final event of this course was a two-minute plank hold. I didn't even make it a full minute, tapping out at 52 seconds. I normally hold a plank easily but my hip flexors were so smoked from the sit-ups and burpees that I just couldn't keep it together. I thought at the time that I might have lost the contest right there but it turns out that other people struggled too and I finished #8 in that event.

Despite bombing the final event, I still finished the first course #8 overall and #1 among entrepreneurs. I wish I had known that then because I was seriously contemplating not finishing the competition. Although the temperature was only in the mid-70s F, the humidity was 90+% and it was becoming abundantly clear that I was no longer in Houston shape! Suddenly competing in the last heat of the day didn't seem like such a good idea . . . Fortunately my team got me water and helped me recover in time to begin the second course.

The first event of the second course was a sequence of agility drills: cones, ropes, ladders, hurdles, etc. Light-headed as I was, I took these pretty conservatively but still finished in 1:23, #4. The second event required me to toss a 15-lb sandbell back and forth over a high barrier 10 times before running suicide sprints. I finished in 60 seconds, #9.

The third event began with slamming a 15-lb sandbell into the ground 20 times before a long out-and-back bear crawl. Bear crawl always slows me down so I finished this event in 1:16, #12. The fourth event required me to start in a push-up position and then pull a 10-ft sandrope all the way under my body with one arm. And then pull it back again with the other arm. 10 times. Then drag the 30-lb rope a distance, pick up a 25-lb sandbell, and reverse toss it out the rest of the distance and back before finally dragging the sandrope back to the start. This was murder! Apparently it only took me 1:12 but it felt like much longer. #7.

The fifth and final event of the second course was a simple out-and-back sprint with a 50-lb sandbell over the shoulder. I finished in 17 seconds, #4. In the end I finished the second course #8 overall and #2 among entrepreneurs. Interestingly, I was starting to regain my energy, though, so I was feeling good heading into the final 5k.

Knowing that I was glycogen-depleted already, I decided to start off easy in the 5k and then speed up if it felt OK. One of my students actually hopped in and ran with me, which helped. My first km was 4:39 and, despite the high-in-the-sky sun, my heart rate was only 166, which is very safely manageable for me. My pacer and I were passing people and not being passed so it didn't seem like it would be necessary to press too much. That pace felt good and so I finished the second and third km at 4:42 and 4:39 respectively at the same steady heart rate.

As I was feeling good, I picked it up just a little bit in the fourth km, finishing in 4:36 at 171 heart rate - just on the other side of anaerobic. I still had plenty of gas in the tank for the final km, which I completed at a 4:28 pace before the final sprint. My final time was 21:54 - which would be very slow for me on a normal 5k but isn't so bad considering how exhausted I was - the #3 time of the day and first among entrepreneurs.

Combining my three course rankings (8, 8, and 3), I finished second overall and first among entrepreneurs. Huzzah! I was pleased with my balanced performance too. Looking at the results, it seems that most competitors were "specialists." Those who did really well on the first course did really poorly on the last course and vice versa. So, all in all, not bad for an old fart who's about to turn a year older in just a couple of days!

I'm really glad to have participated in this event. FitCompany's mission is a worthy one, as too many people sacrifice health for their professional lives. The two are not mutually exclusive and do not require tradeoffs. In fact, I find that the healthier I am, the higher performance I have in my professional life.

I'm also glad I participated in this event because this, combined with the Pump n' Run event earlier in February (I took second place at a 5k in which they subtracted 30 seconds for each rep of bench press bodyweight - it's probably the only chance I'll ever have at running a negative time!), has me hooked on multidisciplinary competitive events. I'm never going to run the world's fastest 5k, nor am I going to set a world record in weight lifting, but putting those types of competitions together tests a much more balanced type of fitness. I'm a fan.

Nutrition for Fat Loss

To follow up my last post on shedding body fat, I promised to share some details of my nutritional plan. I find that I do best when I have a few, simple rules to follow rather than making things too complex, so here they are in descending order of what I believe to be most impactful:

1. No sugar. What I really mean here is no added sugar. Natural sugars occur everywhere but my point is not to eat anything in which sugar has been added as a sweetener - in any form. No sugar. No high fructose corn syrup. No evaporated cane syrup. Nothing. I used to believe that synthetic processed sugars were bad for you because the body didn't know what to do with them so I ate natural, organic, etc. sugar as much as I wanted. Recently, though, I began to see evidence that any kind of sugar was bad for you. It's not something your body needs to function, so I decided just to eliminate it outright.

When you start reading labels and strictly adhere to a no-added-sugar policy, there are three side effects: A. Very quickly your taste buds adjust. We're so used to being inundated with added sugar that our taste buds have become desensitized to the stuff. Kick the habit and, before long, even a tiny bit of sweetness, e.g. that occurring in carrots or peanut butter, tastes wow sweet. B. That eliminates most processed foods which are usually chok full of added sugar. C. It also dramatically reduces your restaurant menu options as many sauces have added sugar. The net result is that you wind up eating more foods that you make yourselves, with fewer, better ingredients. It should come as no surprise, then, that you lose fat.

2. No grains or starches. Speaking of things your body doesn't need, I eliminated grains and starches too. No wheat, no rice, no potatoes. I found many claims that these types of foods could have adverse effects on blood sugar, insulin, and fat storage and even that they left you craving more, so I pulled the plug. This was a big change for me! So much of my diet used to consist of bread and stuff to put on bread. I thought it was fine as I was mostly eating sprouted whole grains. Eliminating bread and its cousins, though, seems to have had a huge effect on my body composition.

How did I do it, though? I get desperate cravings for "bready" things, especially sweet bready things. My world changed when during a visit to The Shop I tasted carrot cake made with almond flour. It tasted bready but instead of wheat it used almonds. It tasted sweet but instead of sugar it used carrots (See above for how my sweetness sensitivity had been reset.). I soon discovered that basically anything sweet and bready that I liked could be baked in this way, without grains, starches, or added sugar. And I could eat as much of it as I wanted because eating the equivalent of lots of almonds is really filling!

Elana's Pantry became a great resource for me, although I cut out the sugar in her recipes. Check out my recipes for banana bread, carrot cake, and peanut butter chocolate chip cupcakes - all delicious and all pretty good for you! Again, I don't know whether to attribute the fat loss to the elimination of grains and starches per se or whether it was more a result of the fact that I was eating more foods that I had baked myself with good ingredients rather than prepared foods but the outcome is the same regardless.

3. Only local, sustainably procured fish and meat. This is for both nutritional and environmental reasons. I won't eat fish if I don't know where it came from (nearby) and how it was caught (or more likely farmed and treated with lots of chemicals) and I won't eat meat if  I don't know where it came from (nearby), what/how it ate (its natural habitat/foods), and whether or not it was pumped full of antibiotics and hormones.

In practice this makes me mostly vegetarian plus some fish (We have plenty of local, sustainably caught fish here in the Gulf Coast.) and even less meat. If a restaurant can't answer the above questions, I'll just assume the worst. So here again, by virtue of the hard rule I set, I wind up eating more nutrition-dense, low-calorie foods like fresh veggies. Fill up on those and you can't not lose fat!

4. Intermittent fasting. I heard about intermittent fasting through The Shop and was intrigued by what I read online. There were all kinds of alleged benefits (increased HGH production, etc.) without much consensus around them but the main point was . . . getting ripped! So I decided to try a 24-hour fast. Yes, for 24 hours I ingested only water. I liked the results so much that I made it a regular part of my routine.

The primary benefit of the fast for me is psychological. I'm the type of person who has traditionally eaten frenetically when hungry - even eating preventatively if I thought I might get hungry later (usually a sure bet!). The fast helped me change my relationship with hunger. I would get hungry, yes, but I wouldn't eat, and yet the world didn't come to an end. In fact my hunger subsided. When I finally broke my fast it wasn't voraciously as a malnourished human on the brink of death but rather as a calm, centered person more aware of his physical needs. This has been really helpful to me in taking control of my eating habits rather than letting them control me.

The other benefit of fasting is creating a caloric deficit. I burn ~3,300 calories per day on average. When I don't ingest any calories to compensate, that creates a caloric deficit that equates to nearly one pound of body fat. The challenge with this approach is that the human body generally adapts quite efficiently to calorie-restrictive diets. Lower your caloric intake and pretty quickly your body lowers its metabolic burn rate accordingly, resulting in plateaued fat loss. Therefore the "best practice" for the intermittent fasting routine I was trying was to conduct the fast at most once a week (to avoid adaptation) and on days with low exercise/energy needs.

Instead of fasting routinely, I've simply adopted a policy of fasting on airplane travel days. These are days when I have low caloric needs and poor access to good food anyway. They're also days that come irregularly and unpredictably such that my body can't adapt to some kind of schedule. That amounts to ~16 fasts conducted this year, on days when I'm burning ~2,600 calories.

Put all this together and you have the main culprits in my recent body composition change. My activity levels and exercise program have remained largely unchanged over the last six months so I really believe the answers are in here. Anyone who has eaten with me will know that there are some exceptions to the above. My wine habit doesn't really fit in, for example, and sometimes an airplane fast might be only 22 hours for scheduling reasons. But by and large I've been sticking with it - and loving the results.

Getting Ripped

This morning I had a BodPod body composition test that yielded my lowest body fat percentage ever. As someone seeking constant improvement in all areas of my life, both professional and personal, I've often been frustrated by my rate of change in this key health metric. Frustration no longer! After years of making modest progress (and sometimes progress in the wrong direction), my body fat has plummeted in the last five months.

Why? Nutrition. But first some history to show how I came to this conclusion.

I began seriously tracking my body composition more than 10 years ago. Since January 2000 I have measured my weight and body fat % every single morning immediately after waking up using a Tanita scale with bioelectric body fat estimation. This method of body fat can be very inaccurate so is not a good method of determining actual body composition. However, this method is consistent so it is still valid for generating insights into body composition trends.

Since 2007 I have visited a BodPod testing station to measure my true body composition once or twice each year. The BodPod is extremely accurate so it helps me understand how far "off" my scale's measurements are. Following is the complete series of 10.5 years of body composition using measurements from my Tanita scale that have been adjusted to match the more accurate measurements of the BodPod.

As you can see, there are several different "eras" identifiable in this data. Each corresponds to a different approach I was taking to health and fitness.

Pre-September 2004:
When I first began measuring I was 204 lbs (156 lean and 48 fat) with the goal of getting under 200 by reducing fat. After more than two and a half years, I was clearly heading in the wrong direction. As a former football player, all I really knew how to do was gain weight, not lose it. By this point I had beefed up to 218 lbs, gaining 10 lbs of lean weight (good) but also adding 4 lbs of fat (Boo!).

September 2004 - January 2005:
Over the course of the next several months I basically returned to my baseline weight and body composition, dropping 11 lbs of lean weight and 3 lbs of fat. This was probably due to playing more beach volleyball and devoting less time to strength training.

2005-2006:
In early 2005 I had a transformative meeting with Dan Riley, legendary strength coach of the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans. He helped me revise my strength training for more effectiveness and efficiency, the result of which was packing on 12 lbs of lean weight over the next two years - but adding 3 lbs of fat again too. In an effort to address this yo-yoing, I began detailed calorie tracking in 2006, estimating my caloric expenditure and calculating my actual caloric intake with a food journal.

2007:
After a year of calorie tracking, it was apparent that my "worst" days, those with the greatest caloric surpluses, were conspicuously associated with heavy drinking. I was attending lots of wine dinners and often bar hopping / clubbing late into the night. When you added up all of those drinks, alcohol accounted for fully 10% (!) of my caloric consumption! In 2007 I made a big change, reducing frequency and volume of alcohol consumption (not giving up wine dinners, though!). Alcohol accounted for < 5% of my caloric consumption in 2007 and the impact on my body composition was significant: while I did lose 4 lbs of lean weight, I also lost 11 lbs of fat! I was back to my 2002 starting weight of 204 lbs but with a much better body composition.

2008 - 2009
I spent the next two years in Switzerland, which made it easy to continue my fat loss trend. I was surrounded by fresh, wholesome foods (especially at the IMD restaurant!) and I had to walk (uphill!) everywhere. My strength training options were more limited than I had had in the US but I had shifted my focus by this point to a new phase in my life: it really wasn't important to me anymore to be able to bench press 400 lbs or squat 600. I dropped 6 lbs of lean weight but lost another 7 lbs of fat. I had finally made it down into the 190s and my lighter weight felt great, especially on the volleyball court where I was jumping higher and playing better than ever before.

2010 - 2011
When I moved back to the US I continued my focus on calories, assuming that all calories were equal and it only mattered how many I consumed, not which type they were. I began running more than I ever had before, both aerobically (long jogs) and anaerobically (interval sprints), but slowly/surely my weight was creeping back up. By the end of 2011 I was getting back up toward 200 lbs again - 159 lean and 37 fat.

2012
As you can see from the graph of my body fat weight below, 2012 has been a tale of two halves:

Motivated by several articles from The SHOP, I began the year with a new focus on what I ate rather than how much I ate. Initially I only adopted some of The SHOP's best nutrition practices and, after some brief improvements in the early part of the year (lost 1 lb lean weight but also 3 lbs fat), I stalled out. I was still eating lots of grains and starches because I couldn't really envision a life without bready foods.

Then, during a summer trip to Switzerland, my life changed when Katie and I tried baking with almond flour. An entirely new world opened up to me of food that adhered to "good" nutritional principles but still tasted delicious and satisfying. I'm now eating as much as I want of a specific subset of foods and the results over the last five months have been pretty convincing: I've gained back that 1 lb of lean weight and shed an additional 10 lbs of fat. This morning's BodPod test measured me at 182 lbs (early high school weight!), 159 lean and 23 fat - 12.8% body fat, my lowest by far since I've been measuring.

So, in almost 11 years I have dropped 30 lbs of body fat - but a very big chunk of that in the last several months. My strength is up, athletic performance is up, and finding clothes that fit is much, much easier than it ever has been before. In my next post, I'll address the specific activities I'm doing and nutritional rules I'm following that I believe have contributed to this recent improvement in body composition.

Successes and Failures

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks. For some time I have been intensely focused on the CleanTech Open, a nation-wide contest of startups that are working on the challenges of energy, water, and buildings. We were honored to have been selected as semifinalists for the South Central Region back in May. Finally in late September we competed against the other regional semifinalists at the Clean Energy Venture Summit in Austin. Each company presented a 10-minute pitch and answered questions for 5 minutes from a panel of VC judges.

Long story short: Smart Office Energy Solutions placed third. Anyone who knows how competitive I am will realize that anything short of first place will come as a sore disappointment to me. Still, third place is enough (barely!) to advance to the national finals in San Jose, so I am pleased that we will have another shot. Between now and then we will be focused on addressing the areas of our business and our presentation that prevented us from taking home the gold. Hopefully we'll perform better on the national stage in November!

In a similar vein, last week I returned to Third Coast Training to do another metabolic profile. The good news: my resting metabolic rate has increased by more than 200 calories per day! I attribute this to moving from a calorie restrictive diet to one in which I'm eating plenty - just better foods. Also, my aerobic and anaerobic threshold heart rates have moved up, meaning that I am running faster and at higher intensities with lower levels of effort. This is the result of my running training and other anaerobic fitness conditioning.

The bad news: just as I did last time, I quit the running test too early. I felt like I was completely tapped out but, based on the level of lactate in my bloodstream, I probably could have kept going for another several minutes at greater speeds. This comes as a shock to someone who has typically regarded himself as having a high tolerance for pain. I've spent most of my life in short bursts of intensity, though, so now I need to work on sustaining such levels of discomfort for longer durations.

So in both my professional and personal life I am both achieving successes and enduring failures. Clearly my goal is to learn from the failures to increase the magnitude and frequency of the successes. This can be a somewhat frustrating experience, but it sure helps having "secure bases," people who love and support me no matter what, all around.

Another weekend at The SHOP

Last weekend I underwent an epic 36 hours of working out at The SHOP in Dallas. As you might recall from my previous post about my first SHOP experience, it is not for the faint of heart. The SHOP is run by Drew Skaggs (S.H.O.P. stands for the Skaggs House Of Pain), a member of Rice's 2003 national championship baseball team. After graduating with degrees in Chemical Engineering and pursuing a career in commercial real estate, Drew finally stopped pursuing a "double life" (working to pay the bills and pursuing his interests in his offtime) and devoted his efforts fulltime to his passions: fitness, nutrition, strength, conditioning. He was already an incredible resource of information about the most cutting edge research in these areas but now that he is living and breathing it fulltime, The SHOP has become a mecca for elite athletes. Drew is more than academic, though; he practices what he preaches and leads by example.

To set the context, I'm in better shape than I was during my first SHOP visit in January. With Drew's help  I've added three pounds of muscle, shed four pounds of fat, taken a minute off of my 5k PR, and taken 80 seconds off of my 10k PR. I was only going to be in Dallas for about 36 hours but Drew promised that we could do plenty of damage in that amount of time. To add to the excitement, we were joined by a mutual acquaintance, a former professional athlete, who is quite a fitness enthusiast himself. He happened to be in Houston so it was easy for him just to drive up to Dallas with me.

We arrived around 8:30 PM Thursday evening, changed clothes and immediately hit The SHOP. As had happened last time, Drew took me way out of my comfort zone with many exercises and movements I had never done - or even heard of - before. We started with Turkish Get-Ups using a dumbbell or kettlebell. I have no idea why the Turks would ever want to get up that way but it was a really intense way to begin a workout! We followed this with heavy dumbbell Farmer's Walks superset with ab wheel rolls. At this point it was clear to me already how out of shape my forearms were because they were completely exhausted already!

We finished off the workout with anaerobic conditioning. Drew set up three stations: battle ropes, mountain climbers, and the airdyne bike. Each us was at one station performing 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise. Then we rotated stations and rested for 40 seconds. We completed a full circuit three times and I never thought 9 minutes could last so long! My heart rate peaked in the 190s and finally we were done. Drew made his famous SHOP recovery shakes and then we were off to bed for recuperation.

No rest for the weary, though, as we were up at 5 AM for pre-workout nutrition: omelets with plenty of fresh veggies. Some other SHOP regulars joined us at 6:30 for workout #2. We began with heavy deadlifts. I used a trap bar instead of a straight bar just because I'm less accustomed to it. Next up: single arm dumbbell bench press superset with kettlebell swings. Then we wrapped up with overhead press superset with single leg glute bridges. For post workout nutrition we had second breakfast at Company Cafe, where I had a deep bowl of sweet potatoes, eggs, and grass fed buffalo - Mmmmm!

My business meetings took me most of the day Friday, but I made it back to The SHOP in time for workout #3: Wrestlemania! Drew has been studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu so we rolled out the mats and he taught us a few moves. Then we had six two-minute rounds of one-on-one grappling, with one person sitting out to rest each round. The goal was to get the other person to submit without any intentional punching, kicking, or other strikes, just grappling. Just as I remembered from my days wrestling back in school, such an experience is absolutely exhausting. Maybe people with great technique are less exhausted by it but, for me, I basically end up with all muscles flexed all the time.

Because I didn't really know what I was doing, my approach can best be described as a "turtle" strategy. Each round I found myself pretty quickly with my face in the mat so most of my effort was focused on countering my opponent's attempts to manipulate me into a submission hold. While I was mostly "successful" with that - in that I managed to fend off such attempts until the end of the very last round, when I found myself in a choke hold - I wasn't "winning;" I was "not losing." Next time I'll need to take more risks to get more offensive practice. Still, it was a lot of fun and a heck of a workout.

Friday evening we grilled up steaks and salmon that Drew had caught in Alaska. Add some spinach with lots of garlic, tomatoes and avocado, Napa cab, and raw milk white russians (in honor of all the Big Lebowski references we had been making) and it was a heck of a meal. Then back to sleep before the final round.

Saturday morning we woke up early again for sprouted grain english muffins with peanut butter then began workout #4. As most of our muscles were pretty decimated by this point, more crazy lifting would have just led to overtraining. Accordingly we focused on mobility first with lots of PNF stretching. We then superset forearm captains of crush with reverse situps on the incline bench. My torso was already so sore from all of the stability work that I wasn't able to do much on the situps.

We then changed location to a hill near The SHOP. I don't know exactly how long the hill path was (estimate: 200 meters) or how steep (estimate: 10% grade) but we sprinted up it three times and then recovered with SHOP shakes. As we returned to The SHOP it had been almost exactly 36 hours since we had arrived and we had completed four killer workouts.

Looking back, two insights stand out to me:

1. We really didn't do that much. The volume of our work was pretty significant for a 36-hour stretch, but nothing exceptional for four separate workouts. However, the quality of what we did was through the roof: difficult exercises conducted with 100% focus and maximum intensity. This corresponds with my desire to work out smarter, not longer, and it's an aspect of The SHOP that I love: a commitment to results, not simply to tiring you out.

2. Most of what we did was new/different (to me, at least). No matter how optimally you train, there is always benefit to mixing it up and shocking your body out of its adaptation. This is another aspect I love about The SHOP: because Drew is so committed to staying abreast of - and even innovating beyond - the cutting edge of fitness research, I can always count on it for a shock.

I'm back in Houston now and I still hurt. My neck especially (the muscles, not the spine) is reeling from the wrestling. There was a time when I had a 19" neck that would have been ready for it. While my narrower current neck is certainly more practical for finding bow ties that fit, I could have used the extra bulk during Wrestlemania! I am thoroughly convinced that it is no coincidence that "SHOP" has the same number of letters as "EPIC" because that's the only way to describe the 36 hours and 4 workouts we undertook. Now I'm pumped and ready for more - but maybe after a little R&R . . .

Intense Workout at The SHOP

This morning I had one of my most intense workouts in recent memory, courtesy of The SHOP. The SHOP is an awesome gym in Dallas. It is a no-frills, high-intensity gym with lots of heavy equipment - it's basically what Rocky's gym would be like. It is owned and run by a good friend of mine, Drew, who also blogs about fitness / nutrition.

Although I have referenced The SHOP several times in my blog, this was my first time actually visiting. I was in Dallas to pitch Smart Office Energy Solutions to the newly formed Dallas Angel Network last evening so I stayed the night and scheduled a workout before driving back to Houston.

This morning began early with a 4:55 AM alarm. After a brief pre-training breakfast (just a grapefruit for me; a yogurty / oatmealy / fruity concoction for Drew), we were in The SHOP warming up. Warming up was necessary because The SHOP is in a non-temperature-controlled garage environment (coherent with the raw, hardcore workout philosophy) and the temperature this morning was in the low 30s Fahrenheit.

We were joined about 5:30 by one of The SHOP's regulars, a professional athlete who also happens to be a Rice alum. Drew played on Rice's national championship-winning baseball team that sent many players to the pros and it is partially through that network that he winds up coaching so many professional athletes. I suspect that they like the same things in his methodology that I do: a highly analytical approach (What else would you expect from someone who double majored in Chemical and Environmental Engineering?) and a commitment to research / results, not fads.

I made my requisite excuses about taking it easy because it was my first time (and I had a long drive ahead of me that wouldn't be too comfortable with a traumatic muscle strain / pull / tear); then at 5:45 we had "wheels up" and began the workout in earnest. We started with box jumps and sledge hammers. I was barely able to jump up onto the first level of boxes; when they added three more levels I had to swallow my pride (and resolve to improve!) and stick to the first. I had never used a sledge hammer before, but there was something immensely satisfying about slamming it into a huge tractor tire with all my force. It took me awhile to get the technique down (and I still have room to improve) but it was fun.

Next up were dead lifts. It has been a long time since I have dead lifted and this time I chose to use a trap bar instead of straight bar just because I had never done it before. I kept the weight pretty low but it felt good and I'm sure my glutes are going to be sore tomorrow.

This was followed by push press and glute ham raises. Push press (standing military press with a little help from the hips) felt good but my form had me catching the weight too much with my back. I did half my sets and then switched to incline dumbbell press for the other half. Glute ham raises were a joy - by which I mean basically the opposite of joy, but the severe pain they caused brought about joy that they were accomplishing their objective.

The next round featured ring pushups and single leg hip thrusts. Ring pushups are done with hands grasping gymnastics rings (for additional stability work) and feet elevated. Because that's not hard enough we also wore weight vests - 20 lbs for my first two sets and then 90 lbs for the last one. The last set took me to total failure and I only managed to squeeze out that last rep with an epic grunt.

The grand finale comprised two circuits of heavy rope drills. Each circuit had 3 20-second variations: short alternating arms, long alternating arms, and two-arm power slams. I had never done heavy rope drills before and I was really impressed with just how much of a workout 20 seconds of super anaerobic activity could provide. When we arrived at the last variation (the power slams) of the first set, I challenged everyone to go shirt-off (which was humbling since these guys were way more ripped than I . . . for now!) - it was freezing cold but our internal furnaces were going full bore.

I mistakenly thought we were only doing one circuit so I really sold out on the power slams, completing a couple extra reps after my 20 seconds were over - I didn't want to leave anything out there. Much to my chagrin, Drew informed us that we were only halfway there. After the first two variations of the second circuit, I was totally spent. Again I had to swallow my pride as I wussed out of the final variation. My heart rate was through the roof and I was feeling faint / nauseous. I was bumping up against my limit and the last set would surely have pushed me over - not something I needed right before hopping on the road for four hours.

Afterward we refueled with pumpkin-berry-banana-yogurt-oatmeal-flax seed-protein shakes which, after a few minutes of deep breathing / recovery, I was able to handle. Wow, what an intense experience - lots of new (for me) movements and nothing left by the end. This inspired me in a few ways:

1. I had forgotten how much I loved morning workouts. Despite the exhaustion level I achieved, I remained pumped and energized all day. It also feels great not to have the "I need to find some time to squeeze in a workout" monkey on my back all day.

2. The caveat here is that I clearly need to do a better job of fueling up before morning workouts so as to avoid the depletion at the end. In the last year I've reached that about-to-faint level four times and actually thrown up on one of those occasions. Each time it was a morning workout after not consuming much nutrition.

2. Anaerobic activity is awesome. In recent years I've tended to think of aerobic activity as my main weapon in my fight against body fat but this morning's workout showed how effective anaerobic activity can be as well. By the time I left Dallas at 10 AM, I had already burned more than 1900 calories - the most I've burned before 10 AM as long as I've been measuring! Without doing much else all day (spending a great deal of the time stationary in the car) I finished the day having burned 3800 calories - 550 more than my daily goal.

I was very excited about my first ever The SHOP experience and it didn't let me down. Now I need some rest as the soreness is already starting to set in.

Official The SHOP post including limited video of this workout: here.

Swiss Productivity

Now that I am settling into my routine here in Switzerland, I'm becoming very productive! When not meeting with previous connections or networking with new connections, I've been spending most of my time powering through major objectives at the Smart Office Energy Solutions EMEA HQ. Sometimes this is by myself but I have also had the fortune to work with some local experts on designing some revolutionary new product features. As I am very extroverted, working with others like this makes me even more energized and productive.

I have also been pursuing a new type of workout regimen: one with no gym whatsoever! This is a first for me so I enlisted the help of noted expert Drew Skaggs in putting together a program that would continue to meet my fitness goals without requiring specialized equipment. You can see the initial results at Drew's THE SHOP blog. This first week won't be quite complete due to scheduling constraints but, as of next week, I should be into the routine.

My time here hasn't been all diligent work and working out, though; there has been plenty of time to play as well! On Tuesday I attended a concert at the famed Montreux Jazz Festival for the first time. Buddy Guy was in town and I just couldn't resist the opportunity to see him. The event was fantastic: a bunch of people packed into a small venue and Buddy playing to the crowd. The concert was basically a nonstop medley of his original songs mixed in with blues standards ("Hoochie Coochie Man," "I Just Want to Make Love to You," "Five Long Years," "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," "Strange Brew," and "Sunshine of Your Love," to name a few). He adopted a "point-counter point" style, singing softly and slowly then answering with blistering electric guitar riffs. As is his trademark, he used a wireless pickup and came out into the audience to play a couple of songs. I was 20-40 feet away from him all night; it was a grand experience!

The following night a French classmate and his family hosted a party for Bastille Day! There were 15 of us in all (including a family from a different IMD class year) so this was my best chance to date to catch up with those whom I haven't seen in awhile. Even though I had to get up very early this morning to check everything off before departing for Turkey, I stayed at the party very late because it was so, so nice.

And on that note, I had better get moving in order to make it to the airport on time!

Returning to Normalcy

After my first week back in Switzerland I'm starting to feel plugged back in to a "normal life." Although it's not routine per se, it is beginning to feel just like business as usual--a good thing.

Even though I have a car at my disposal here it is amazing how much more active I am just from walking/taking public transportation everywhere! Since my arrival, I've burned an average of 3,415 calories per day vs. an average of 3,054 per day in Houston. The fact that much of the walking is uphill probably contributes as well!

Friday night I attended an apartment party for a former Poken coworker who is leaving to join the staff of . . . IMD! I know from personal experience that it can be hard to make the decision to depart from Poken but I am very, very excited for her new opportunity--and for IMD's great new team member!. The party was a lot of fun and ridiculously international--exactly what I remember about my Swiss social life.

Saturday one of my best friends from IMD and his family came to visit so we organized a small dinner gathering with other local classmates. It was so nice to see everyone and impressive how easily and naturally we fell back into catch-up discourse. IMD is more than a name on our diplomas; it is a unique, trying, wonderful experience that binds us all together and--I suspect--always will.

Sunday was the finals of the World Cup. As I did Tuesday night for the semifinals, I attended a major outdoor viewing party in Ouchy with an enormous screen. The place was packed to the hilt with fans for Spain but we were cheering for Holland (supporting Margot, one of my French classmates's Dutch wife, who organized the get-together). It was a tough, close match but, in the end, Spain won and we had to sneak out before the mob turned on us.

Soccer really frustrates me to watch. It does have potential and I can see why so many people worldwide get excited about it whenever there's a run toward goal that makes you hold your breath. However, more of it seems to be about baiting the ref for some wimpy foul instead of just playing the game and that just totally ruins it for me. Still, it was fun to be amidst a throng of people who were very, very excited about the game.

This will be a short week as I have much to do before heading to Turkey for an IMD class mini-reunion!

2010 Goal Progress

2010 has been very different than 2009 so far! For example, by this point last year I had been back and forth across the Atlantic several times already; this year I have yet to board a plane! 2010 is 25% complete now so it is time to check up on my goal progress:

Relationships

So far I have been meeting my goals for maintaining personal relationships: spending time with friends and loved ones in person and keeping long distance relationships alive with calls and chats.

Health

While my caloric intake and expenditure are usually within my goal ranges, my % of calories from fat is still too high. Body composition has remained relatively unchanged.

My sports and fitness goals have come along very well. I've already achieved my running and swimming goals for the year but I intend to keep improving. Beach volleyball has just started so I hope to show goal progress there soon.

Professional

Smart Office Energy Solutions is moving along quickly! We closed our seed investment round on time and exceeded our fundraising goals by 50%! I'm particularly encouraged by this result in this financial climate. We also have resellers and paying clients now--right on schedule and ready to grow! I'll post about fundraising in greater detail separately.

Outside of Smart OES I've also been making progress. I have been mentoring three budding entrepreneurs and connecting regularly with my own mentors. My professional brand has been increasing its reach online via twitter (200 followers now and klout in the mid-20s) and LinkedIn (5+ daily profile views). My blog popularity was increasing for awhile but now has leveled out. This is probably the result of decreased blog post frequency and increasing focus on personal issues rather than professional ones.

Overall things are going well but the year is young. I've got to capitalize on this early momentum and keep pushing forward!

New Year's Resolutions Progress

The first full week of 2010 has come and gone so . . . how did I do in meeting the goals I set forth in my New Year's Resolutions? Not too poorly so far. Of my daily/weekly goals, I met all of them except for keeping my fat consumption below 25% of my overall calories. Instead I was up around 38%! This isn't a quantity issue (I averaged 2,781 calories in each day, far below my goal of 3,250!); it's about choices. With our trip to the farmer's market yesterday, I believe I'm better armed to make better choices this week.

It was a great week for Smart Office Energy Solutions too as we hit another major milestone. We finalized and sent out investment packages to our first few committed investors. They now have everything they need to send us money and receive shares in return--exciting! While I was skyping with one of my mentors (Recall that one of my 2010 goals is to engage at least one mentor each week.), we talked a bit about this new venture and he decided to invest himself! Any money is good at this early stage but it feels especially validating to receive the vote of confidence (someone literally putting his money where his mouth is) of someone whom I hold in such high esteem!

We have also fully outfitted our office's power sockets with our smart power management solution and the data is extremely compelling. Saturday, for example, our office power sockets consumed 6 kWh of electricity--and there wasn't even anyone in the office! That's three offices, a reception area, and a common kitchen/printer area just sucking power uselessly. By automatically shutting off power to these devices nights and weekends, we could save over 1,100 kWh per year with no adverse impact to our business. This coming week we will begin tracking the other two thirds of office energy consumption that comes from lighting and HVAC.

Personally it was a great week, culminating in a weekend of Indian fusion cuisine. Friday night Katie and I had a hot, spicy date night at The Bombay Pizza Company, which just opened in downtown Houston. Take something I already love, like pizza, and add something else I love, like Indian food, and BAM--winner! We started with veggie masala sliders with sweet potato fries, which were delicious. The piece de resistance, though, was the saag paneer pizza, which I have been waiting for my whole life. So, so, SO GOOD!

Saturday Nick arrived in town and we entertained his son all evening, including dinner. Nick was so enthralled by the idea of Indian-Italian-American fusion that we ordered a couple more pizzas from the Bombay Pizza Company--this time picking them up at the curb right in front of the restaurant and taking them back home. We tried the Munshi, which was full of fresh vegetables, and the Berry Bombay, which had a spicy strawberry sauce--totally unorthodox and totally delicious!

This morning Nick and I had our first lift of the new year. I won't go into details, but I will tell you that, by the time we were finished, both of us had a hard time walking and I could barely get my watch on, such was the extent of our muscular exhaustion. I love High-Intensity Training and it's never better than when I'm with my original lifting partner, my brother.

After such a session we clearly needed sustenance so we and Katie headed to Indika for even more Indian fusion. Their Sunday brunches are spectacular--all you can eat, which is a real challenge for someone who set portion control as one of his 2010 goals! The drinks and food were delicious, though, so we all overindulged a bit--ok, a lot. The upside is that I haven't been hungry all day since!

Pics of all meals are in my facebook album.

So, a great week indeed and I'm looking forward to building on its success in week 2. This has some natural highlights: date night at Antica Osteria and traveling to Austin with my mom next weekend! In the meantime there is much to do at work and only so many hours in the day--ah the sweet life of the entrepreneur!

2009

Katie and I spent New Year's Eve with friends at two separate house parties, both of which were a lot of fun. There was a "black" theme at one of the parties to represent the "laying to rest" of 2009. Not one to settle for just black tie, I also donned a head band and katana to be a black tie ninja. Not exactly funeral attire, but much more fun!

At both parties many people seemed very excited for 2009 to be over; it wasn't a great year for most. For me, though, it was pretty awesome. In this post I'll take a look at my journey through this roller coaster of a year.

Of course the story of the first half of 2009 for me was Poken. I came on board five days before product launch as employee #7 and manager #2, originally in charge of Product. As our first product took off, it became apparent that our major challenges weren't in product--they were in delivery. So I shifted in March to become Head of Global Operations, tasked with building the team, systems, and processes to enable our little company (headcount 11 by that point) to grow to the next level. By July we had sold hundreds of thousands of pokens in 30 countries, grown to a staff of 20 in two locations, won major awards, introduced a second product, and my Poken-related travels had taken me across three continents. What a whirlwind! The best thing that came out of it by far, though, was working with such a great team--talented, passionate, and of high integrity.

This made it very difficult for me to decide to leave Poken at the end of August. Everything was going so well and, moreover, I was loving living in Switzerland. However, as most readers know, I am committed to working toward a better energy future and Poken simply didn't match up with that goal. What's more, living so far from Katie was great for our frequent flier miles, but not so great for our goals of being together (She's sitting here next to me on the couch as I type and this is exactly what we were missing.).

So, I made a decision for my career, my relationship, and my ethic of what is right--and I made this decision with my heart instead of with my head, which is something on which I worked a great deal in . . . business school, of all places. But then IMD was hardly a typical business school!

After taking September off to travel around Europe visiting fantastic wineries and even more fantastic friends, I returned to my home in Houston and began work on the next chapter. For the last quarter of 2009 I divided my time between getting settled back into American life and laying the foundation for pursuit of my career dream in 2010.

My quest to find something that marries my skills in leadership, experience in IT entrepreneurship, and passion for green energy culminated by the end of the year in being given the opportunity to join the senior management team of a UK-based cleantech company to help them scale up globally--with particular focus on the American market.

It took us a while to structure the deal and, as expected, the real work to getting the deal done wasn't financial or strategic; it was rooted in personal dynamics. Again, I felt the benefit of IMD preparation throughout the process. Now at the cusp of 2010, we have created a subsidiary company in the US (Smart Office Energy Solutions), raised a modicum of seed capital, imported products from the UK, begun the electrical certification process, and secured our first clients and resellers. There is still a long, long way to go before we've empowered businesses worldwide to reduce their office energy consumption 30%, but the momentum is so exciting!

As many readers also know, fitness is a major part of my life and the end of the year offers a good time to pause, reflect, evaluate how things went, and adjust the future course. In terms of meeting fitness goals, 2009 was really a Tale of Two Halves. In the first six months of the year I shed ~5 lbs of bodyfat while adding 4 of lean muscle mass--both good trends! But, here at the end of the year, I'm only ~2 lbs of bodyfat down with no real change in lean muscle mass. Most men in their 30s add fat and lose muscle each year, so I can't really complain about staying relatively even. However, this is a major disappointment to someone who seeks constant improvement--especially given how well the year began. The second half of the year was filled with travel, change, and adaptation to a new fitness regime back in the States. As I look toward 2010, I believe I have a solid base under me on which to get back on track.

Well there you have it: 2009, not a bad year all-in-all and one filled with great opportunities to be realized in 2010. In my next post I'll discuss plans for 2010 and . . . new year's resolutions!

GoWear fit

Having completed one week with the GoWear fit on my arm nearly 24 hours/day, I now have enough data to begin drawing conclusions about its usefulness. I'll break down my review into nutrition, exercise energy expenditure, non-exercise energy expenditure, and sleep.

Nutrition

GoWear Fit's nutrition functionality is hardly unique. It provides a web-based mechanism for tracking your daily nutritional intake, just like myriad other products and sites. Its UI is probably in the 70th percentile for online food logs, which makes it a mediocre food log but a great addition to a comprehensive calorie management system.

In 2005 I logged every single food/drink item that entered my body into a spreadsheet for the entire year. It was quite a chore, but the take-aways were invaluable. It was readily apparent from the data that the #1 contributing factor to my inability to reduce body fat was consumption of empty calories from alcohol. More specifically, the few evenings of heavy binge drinking (wine dinners a the Petroleum Club or late nights clubbing/bar hopping) would create massive calorie surplusses (2,000+) that would wipe out weeks of modest calorie deficits. I modified my behavior to drink more in moderation and the following year shed 10 pounds of body fat with no other modifications to my fitness or diet plans.

Online tools make the food logging process much easier than entering everything manually into a spreadsheet so I was eager to give this one a whirl. Although I constantly had to battle error messages telling me that I had been logged off, I was ultimately able to enter each food item I consumed each day, drawing from a large database of pre-existing entries, and get a great breakdown of caloric and nutritional content. The task of food logging itself is quite onerous so I will now use averages from the last week to estimate future intake. Here are a few take-aways from my end-of-week analysis:

1. Food logging is absolutely invaluable and should be done, if not constantly, regularly. It's amazing to see what we put into our bodies and how it differs from what we think we're putting into our bodies. Furthermore, the simple act of measuring caloric intake induces behavioral change, causing food loggers to forego that late night snack because they know they'll have to log it.

2. This actually has an unintended negative side effect: I found myself going back to the same foods over and over again to avoid having to enter new custom foods into the food log. This results in lower dietary variety and I'm a big believer in the positive nutritional benefits of dietary variety. Still, I believe the net effects of food logging are quite positive.

3. I consume ~120 calories per day more than I estimate in my spreadsheet.

4. I consume ~1/2 the Recommended Daily Intake of cholesterol for my 3500 calorie/day diet--that's more or less a good thing!

5. However, I also consume ~2x my RDI of sodium and only ~2/3 my RDI of potassium and calcium. Clearly there is room for improvement here. The vast majority of that sodium is coming from dining out so I need to have heightened awareness when making my choices at restaurants.

6. I consume ~10% protein, ~50% carbs, and ~40% fat. Much of the fat and the sodium come from my cheese addiction (Allez Suisse!), so I need to reign that in a bit. My target will be 15% protein, 60% carbs (good, whole ones of course), and 25% fat.

My nutrition clearly needs some work so I'll do another food log soon to show improvements.

Exercise

I remove the GoWear fit for swimming (It isn't water proof.) and beach volleyball (I doubt it's sand proof, given how insidious sand from the courts tends to be!) but I leave it on for strength training, running, cardio machines, etc.

For activities such as running and walking, the GoWear fit estimates caloric expenditure that is pretty close to the estimates provided by my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS/heartrate monitor. That is encouraging for accuracy (of both devices) but by itself it doesn't add much usefulness for the GoWear fit.

The real advantage comes when engaging in activities for which I don't use the GPS/heartate monitor, such as playing Wii or ping pong. For these types of activities I've traditionally gone to my favorite online calorie calculator and estimated my expenditure based on my weight and the nearest activity I can find. I strongly prefer the GoWear fit for this type of measurement, though, as it measures your actual exertion, which may vary a great deal during any such activity. I'll still have to use calculated estimates for swimming and beach volleyball, but I now have much greater confidence in my data for all other activities.

Non-exercise

Although the GoWear fit and my spreadsheet of estimates largely agreed on my caloric expenditure during intense exercise, they disagreed vehemently on my total burn each day. On average the GoWear fit estimated that I burned ~550 fewer calories than I had estimated. That's a big difference! Over a week, that amounts to a full pound of body fat of difference!

So which is right? I'm inclined to believe the GoWear fit because it calculates net expenditure at a much finer granularity. It knows, for example, whether or not I've slept less and, hence, burned more calories than a day during which I've slept more (all other things being equal). It knows whether or not I've gotten up only five times from my desk all day and, hence, burned fewer calories than I would have if I'd been up 20 times. It knows if I've been on my feet all evening at an event and, hence, burned more calories than I would have if I'd been sitting on my couch watching Harry Potter movies.

However, the data is kind of damning. According to GoWear fit, I finished the week with a surplus of ~1900 calories, which would account for the addition of ~1/2 pound of fat. According to my spreadsheet of estimates, I finished the week with a deficit of ~3000 calories, or almost one pound of fat lost. Using a three-day moving average of my body fat (as tested on my Tanita scale/body composition monitor and adjusted based on periodic measurements with a Bod Pod), I indeed lost about a pound of fat during the week.

A week is a pretty small sample set for something like body composition, which can vary wildly with, among other things, hydration. Accordingly I'll keep these two systems running in parallel for the rest of the year to see how it plays out. Either way, I'd rather have a calorie tracking system that underestimates my expenditure rather than overestimating it.

An awesome feature for the GoWear fit would be a system that adapts its estimates of your expenditure based on your actual body fat changes over time. That's what I've done with my spreadsheet and, as shown here, it's pretty accurate.

Also a serious shortcoming in the GoWear fit is the fact that it really just tracks weight which, as we all know, is a poor metric of fitness. BMI isn't really any better. I know most people don't have body composition scales at home but it would be great if GoWear fit let those of us who do enter those figures in addition to weight. Until then I will always have to maintain a separate spreadsheet.

Sleep

I am pleasantly surprised with the GoWear fit's sleep tracking function. I tend to hydrate a lot at night (maybe because of all that sodium I'm taking in during the day!) so sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. This week I noted the times that this happened and compared them with the data from the GoWear fit. Sure enough, it recognized easily that I was not sleeping during those times and counted it against my sleep efficiency measurement.

I'm not sure how useful this feature is per se but I think it's cool and I think it's accurate. I'm getting a little over 6 hours of sleep each night with a 91% sleep efficiency. Not bad, I think that's enough--but I could always use more!

Sound Body, Sound Mind

This was a busy, but exciting week at Enistic Inc! We secured our first client--an office building owner here in Houston--and now we're ready to raise some money to get started. This will be my first time leading a capital raise as my previous companies were either bootstrapped or had other officers in charge of investment. Houston has a robust community of angel investors in front of whom we will pitch in January. However, if we can raise some quick cash ($90k) from FFF, it will help us expedite American electrical certification and rollout with our first clients. Therefore I'll be in fundraising mode for the immediate future--look out!

We know we're onto something here and this was validated by a recent conversation I had with my contacts at Google. We're talking with them about being the first business solution that uses Google PowerMeter and they confirmed that, even in their own offices, myriad high-power monitors are left on all the time with useless screen savers. This is Google, arguably one of the most forward thinking (regarding IT power consumption) companies in the world and even they would benefit tremendously from our product. We've got to succeed with this company--it would be irresponsible not to!

I've also been asked to speak at the American Astronautical Society's imagine 09 conference this December. Many of the other speakers are quite high profile so I consider it a real honor to be included among them. As many of you will know, I have grown up in the shadow of the space industry and I have always been extremely compelled by it. For a long time, in fact, I planned to pursue a career in astrophysics before I fell in love with computer science in high school. So this presentation is of special significance to me: an opportunity to share something about which I am very passionate (inducing human behavioral change by supplying well timed information) with a community I love. There isn't much time to put together the presentation, but I'm sure hard work will produce something good.

As always I believe strongly in a balanced lifestyle. Hard work must be balanced out by adequate rest and physical activity to produce optimal performance. As many of you know, I'm a very, very data-driven manager and I manage my own life the same way. This includes measuring my body composition every morning and calculating my daily energy intake and expenditure every evening. As a result I have a massive spreadsheet of every day's net weight gain/loss for the last 8 years.

One problem, though, is that most of these calculations are based on estimates: calorie intake based on historical averages +/- any special daily consideration, estimated resting calorie expenditure based on body composition and activity level, estimated exercise calorie expenditure based on GPS/heart rate monitor, etc. This motivated me to try out a relatively new tool for calorie tracking: the GoWear Fit. You wear it on your arm all day and, based on the movement it detects and your skin temperature, it calculates an [allegedly] much more accurate estimate of your caloric expenditure each day.

I've only been using it for a week but so far I like it. There is definitely a marked difference between the days that I spend in front of a computer and those during which I am active with meetings. This helps me know when to take my evening cardio up a notch to compensate for a sedentary workday. One side benefit too is that it calculates how well you've slept if you wear it at night.

My strength training tools have also been upgraded. I used to print out my workout before I headed to the gym, write down my actual accomplishments as they occurred, and then enter them on my spreadsheet once I returned home. Now I have uploaded my spreadsheet to Google Docs so I can access it from anywhere over the Web. This gives me the ability to enter workout data directly into my phone while I'm at the gym, saving paper and time.

More than just measuring my fitness, though, I actually have to eat right and exercise to change those measurements in a positive direction. As part of my move back, I have added some new areas to my exercise regime. One is the Nintendo Wii. The Wii's sports and fitness programs get me moving around a lot in a fun way that motivates me to keep going. So far I've been doing Wii Fit. We also have Wii Fitness Coach, which I'll start on once Fit becomes tired. Wii Sports can also induce a sweat, as can DDR.

Katie and I have also been swimming Saturday mornings before our weekly trips to the farmer's market. I like swimming because it is low-impact, uses muscles that I didn't even know I had, and is a great cardio workout. However, swimming doesn't like me! I still sink like a rock and it's not uncommon for me to take at least one big gulp of pool water each day! Oh well, no pain no gain!

And speaking of pain, both Rice and the Redskins came back from their bye weeks with losses. Sigh.

A Bad Week for the NFL

This was a terrible, terrible week for the NFL! It started when Peyton Manning was knocked out of the playoffs. With no Peyton, no Favre, and no Redskins, what possible interest do I have in the postseason? And speaking of the Redskins, they had major layoffs this week and my favorite employee of theirs was among the casualties. Boooooooo! To top it all off, the Texans fired legendary strength coach, Dan Riley. 

Dan was essentially the originator of modern strength training in the NFL. He supported the Redskins through three Superbowl victories and I first met him at Art Monk Football Camp back in the early 90's. Even then he was way ahead of his time, constantly using science to produce better and more effective strength programs. His goal wasn't to make his players stronger; it was to help them reach the maximum strength allowable by their genetic potential--and time and time again he achieved his goal.

He is simply the best and another team's gain will be the Texans' loss.