2023 was a big year. I built and launched an app, continued focus on a healthy diet, kept up with running 3 times a week, started a new job, learned a lot, traveled a lot, met lots of great people, old and new friends… a great year all in all! Here are some highlights, mainly for me to reminisce and remember. 1. Maintain focus on health Having totally changed my diet in 2022 and lost...
1500cals is now in the iOS App Store! Quick Announcement: I’m thrilled to announce that just in time for those New Years resolutions, 1500cals passed certification with Apple first time, and is now available to all for FREE in the iOS App Store! Check it our and download it here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1500cals/id6470238113 I started building this just for myself to solve the annoyances I had with other calorie counting weight loss apps on my journey to...
New iOS App Very excited to announce 1500cals for iOS is now available via Test Flight! I previously wrote about my journey to lose 50kg (110lbs) last year, the tools I used and then about the new app I was building to help plan meals and track exercise. I built this app for myself as I really wanted to use all the great features in Rails 7, Stimulus and Hotwire. The other key piece in...
What’s New? I’ve written before about my weight loss journey last year where I lost 50kg through mostly watching what I ate and starting to exercise. The main “trick” I uncovered is simply to plan meals ahead. It sounds boring, it sounds annoying, but really its such a tiny effort for such outsized and life changing rewards that it should be a no-brainer. The existing tools I found were more focused on tracking after eating...
Commitments vs Goals Recently a friend shared a blog post with me that resonated so strongly I wanted to highlight it here. The article focuses on the “words” we use and how they shape behaviour. This really fits how I’ve been thinking and achieving my goals on my weight loss and health journey over the last 18 months. When we say “my goal is to lose 20 kilos” or whatever it may be, it really...
First an important caveat: I’m obviously not a doctor, so before you make any drastic changes to diet or exercise, talk to yours. It all started with the results of a health check. I was really overweight after years of sitting behind my computer every day, not exercising, eating biscuits. I learned I was “pre-diabetic” with an HbA1c of 43 mmol/mol but I could turn this around completely if I lost a lot of weight....
I’d seen the Couch to 5k program recommended a few times while working on improving my diet, and got as far as downloading the app (iOS/ Android) more than once. It took a couple of weeks to actually try it, and I have to admit, the first week or two were gruelling. It really seemed impossible that I would ever be able to run 5k, given how I felt after the 60 second runs of...