Health on Søren's Blog

50th Blood Donation

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Last week I was donating blood. At the check-in I was greeted with additional piece of paper to fill out. I may have looked a bit puzzled, because I was told that this is good news. I will get rewarded¹, because this is my 50th Blood Donation with the Red Cross.

50 Blood Donations …

🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Since both my father and my grandfather achieved more than 100 donations, there was a bit of pressure 🙂

Thus, over the past 18 years I was donating blood more or less regularly. Frequency highly depending on the availability of possibilities to donate. In the city I lived when I was 18, there was a university clinic and you could come by donating blood any day of the week. I donated a lot back then. When I moved to Bamberg to study, the Red Cross only came by once per month with a mobile donation station. If I already had plans for this day, I needed to wait for another month for the next possibility. My donation frequency dropped.

In the city I live today, mobile donation units come by on a more regular basis. I need to check their schedule and plan ahead, but at least I have more than one chance per month.

As a male adult, I am allowed to donate up to six times per year. This was my fourth donation this year and I think that I’ll make at least one more. Keeping this frequency (~5/y), I will need another 10 years to come up with 100. Fingers crossed 🤞

If it has been some time since you donated blood the last time - and your health allows it - please check out if there is a possibility near by. We may all need it at some point and it’s a very easy way to give something back to society.

With the Red Cross, reward seldom has a financial benefit. Most likely, there will be a piece of paper stating that I donated 50 times. ↩︎

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Fat Boy Update

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 20:00:00 +0100

Beginning of the year, I wrote my first type about the “Fat Boy at 40 challenge”. If this is the first time you’re hearing about this, start reading there - or head directly over to Kev’s original one.

I am six months back at work after parental leave and I think this is a good opportunity to give an update.

Status Quo

Weight Loss

During the last twelve months, I lost 10kg. It was quicker at the beginning and flattened in the past months. I still count this a big win. I was not expecting it.

Intermediate Fasting

Beginning of the year, I changed my fasting schedule to 16:8. This didn’t last long. 14:10 (still?) feels more natural to me. Removing one meal per day completely - hm - not as easy as I thought.

I changed the tracking app. Instead of Fastic, I use Fasty. Fastic is still great, but I didn’t use most of its features and thus didn’t see a benefit in renewing my subscription.

Walking

In the second half of 2023, I was on parental leave and went for long walks with the stroller. It was easy to average above 10.000 steps per day. Being back at work made this more difficult. I also spend more time in the car.

I don’t want to look for excuses, but want to mention that I ditched the smart watch in December and only rely on my phone to count my steps. As I don’t carry the phone everywhere I go (e.g. when I grab another coffee from the kitchen), I was expecting less steps in the data - even without walking less.

Food Tracking

I still don’t track what I eat. I didn’t find an app that makes this easy for me. We cook more, and try to do this in a healthier way, but it’s still “carby”. Good news is, I overeat less often.

Plans for the next six months

Although I recently read an article that was a bit sceptic about intermediate fasting, I am still convinced that this is working very good for me. Nevertheless, I plan for some changes in the next six months.

More Sports: The article mentioned that one part of the weight loss caused by fasting is the loss muscle mass. Not good. Fasting, thus, shall be accompanied with sports. Currently, I go for bike rides, but nothing regular. Beginning of the year my plan was to get up earlier to do sports. This didn’t work out. This time, I will try Thomas’ approach.

Longer Fasting Periods: I was thinking about doing a whole week of fasting. Feedback from friends who did this was, that it’s not fun. Thus, I will park this idea for next year. Nevertheless, I want to try longer fasting periods. My goal is to have at least two: 5:2 fasting schedules (five days normal eating, two days fasting) until the end of the year.

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🍔 Fat Boy at 40

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:00:00 +0100

In August last year, Kev announced that he doesn’t want to be a “fat boy at 40” and I decided to accept his invitation and be accountable together.

A few days ago, he wrote his Christmas update and I would like to use this opportunity to finally write something myself on this topic.

Situation

I am 36 years old and have some time left to come into shape until my 40th birthday, but I am having the same goal as Kev - to be fitter this summer.

I was never the sportiest guy and I always carried a few pounds too much, but managed to be ok with it. Last summer, I went to the doctor for a regular check up and was diagnosed with first symptoms of a (non-alcoholic) fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This is common in the Western world. We sit too much, move to little and eat too many carbs. Depending on the statics you’re looking at, roughly 30-40% male Westerners are effected. The dangerous part is that NAFLD often comes without any symptoms, thus is not treated, but can cause type 2 diabetes. Not desirable. Change was needed.

Changes in 2023

Intermediate Fasting: Someone on the “Accountable Together” mailing list suggested intermediate fasting. I heard about the idea a couple of years ago, but didn’t had it on the radar. The idea is that you separate the day into a “fasting” and an “eating” period. During the fasting period, you’re allowed to drink water, black coffee or not sweetened tea. The longer this period is, the less you eat, the easier it is to reduce weight. 16:8 is common, meaning you’re fasting for 16 hours per day and are allowed to eat during the remaining 8 hours. In other words, you eat dinner until 20:00 and the next thing you’ll eat is lunch on the next day (12:00) - skipping breakfast.

Leaving one meal out sounded hard. Thus, I started with the 14:10 variant, where I can eat until 19:00 and have a late breakfast at 09:00 the next morning. I downloaded Fastic to track my progress and subscribed to their premium service for one year when it was offered at a special price. You can see from the screenshot below, that I average on 13h and 50-something minutes. The app offers guidance on fasting in general and tries to create habits, but I mainly use it to have the progress visualised and to create a bad conscience when I eat after 7pm. It works surprisingly good for me.

Walking: I walk more. Lucky me, the diagnoses came when I started parental leave giving me more freedom to shape the days. No meetings at certain time slots, no super critical deadlines, just the babies needs. And one of those needs is sleeping, which she likes to do in the stroller. A good excuse to go for a longer walk on a daily basis. Recently, roughly two hours per day and thus, way more than I walked before.

That’s it. I didn’t have the energy to change more. We wanted to eat healthier, but I am not tracking it and my gut feeling tells me that it only worked partly.

Nevertheless, I reached something. Since August, I lost 6kg which I didn’t expect and which makes me very positive for 2024.

Plans for 2024

I want to continue fasting. I want to increase it to the 16:8 variant and even try several days without eating (classic fasting). I see this as an interesting challenge, and good for my health (because the ketosis will clean up).

I subscribed to Apple Fitness+ (again). Apple included nice new features like individual training plans, removing the hassle to select a video manually. The idea is that I will set the alarm half an hour earlier and start the day with a little sport program. Let’s see how that goes …

Finally, eating is something where I want to be more mindful this year. A first step would probably be to track what I eat currently. Does anyone have a recommendation for this? I can tell that it needs to be super-simple. If it requires me to weight individual ingredients of my meals I wont do it (for long). Any recommendation is appreciated 🙂

If you read this and want to join the party, read Kev’s articles, join the mailing list and write your story. We’re looking forward to hear it and support you wherever we can 🙂

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