April 2020 Health Review

This is the 4th post of my monthly series focused on monitoring what I’ve identified as being critical components to a healthy lifestyle. If you haven’t read the 1st post yet, check it out to understand why I’m doing this.

How’d I do?

• This is my 2nd health post since we’ve been quarantined. While life is hugely different today than just 2 months ago, it’s very similar to life 30 days ago. If you stay healthy and employed, then quarantine life doesn’t change much from week to week. By the way, if you’re interested in the financial crisis, I’m logging each day on this living page from the lens of a retail investor.
• I’m still not riding my real bike. It turns out I’m a little shook from my early March fall, and I still don’t want to do anything risky given the health crisis.

Activity

Kcal & Workout Duration

• Total kcal from all activity was 31,470, down from 34,069 in March.
• Average kcal/day decreased to 1,049 from 1,099.
• Average exercise minutes/day increased to 71 from 70.

Time in Zones

I didn’t focus on any particular zone this month (unlike February’s focus on Zone 2). I’m going to go back to placing more of a focus on Zone 2 in May. I noticed that Training Peaks automatically modified my Zone settings in the middle of the month for some reason. I tried to fix it but don’t trust it enough to look at it, so I just put a big X through this chart. I’ll have to pay closer attention to it throughout May, so this doesn’t happen again. Pretty annoying…

Biking & Peloton

I didn’t necessarily have a ride type focus this month, but I did find myself alternating a lot between ~75 minute ride days and rest days. As mentioned, I didn’t ride my real bike outside this month, and I don’t foresee myself riding it again for a while.

• My Peloton time increased by 13 minutes (April: 1,303 vs. March: 1,290).
• Kcal from the Peloton increased 1,660 (April: 18,610 vs. March: 16,950).

• I had 1 Personal Record this month. My highest output ride in April was a 75 minute resulting in 649kj. I did a lot of other 75min rides too, but they were comprised of a 30 + a 45 where the combined kj could have been higher than 649. To be consistent, I’ll stick with actual single ride PRs for this section.

Steps

I target an average of 4-5 miles of steps per day (~10,500), so I’m OK with 9,765 for April. Anything much higher results in some knee pain. The keys to the game are life span & healthspan. I’m learning where I can give, take, and where I need to maintain. I need to maintain when it comes to step count.

Awards

Apple Watch

• Continued my long move, stand, and exercise streak.
• I didn’t complete my April Challenge to walk 149 miles.

Peloton

Heart Rate

I mainly care about Resting Heart Rate, which was flat at 48bpm from March and my 2019 average. HRV increased from 58ms in March to 61ms in April. I don’t understand it or know if Apple’s measurement is accurate, but I track it anyway.

Sleep

Averaging 8 hours of sleep per night requires dedication and effort for me. As I said in the 1st post, getting good sleep is the result of everything I focus on… being active, eating OK, getting outside, feeling financially secure, cutting out booze, and the security that comes with knowing I’m living a healthy lifestyle.

• Averaged 8:12/night in April, up from 7:45/night in March.
• Averaging 8:01/night in 2020 (compared to an averaged of 7:44/night in 2019).

Weight

My short term weight management goal is to stay below 190lbs, so I’m right on target at an average of 183.3 for the month. I dropped a lot in March (probably due to not eating out at all because of Coronavirus and increased stress), but I started to gain some of it back in April.

• Average weight flat at 183.3lbs from 183.6lbs in March.

Blood Pressure

Interesting content

• My living page from the lens of a retail investor in the US.

Next steps

• Upcoming:
  • Continue playing my part to destress the healthcare system. Being super risk averse with all of my actions, and continuing to preach to others why they should do the same. Not riding my bike.
  • Maintain activity numbers.
• Eventually:
  • Dig into Mark Koester’s open-sourced Quantified Self project which is a collection of Python scripts to help collect, process, and aggregate data from various services like Apple Health. My end goal is to be able to do this with my wife’s Dexcom data (she’s t1d) as an additional source so she can better understand how different types of workouts impact her blood sugar. There’s currently more inconsistency than desired which is very frustrating so I want to help her figure it out. Might also re-familiarize myself with Rapid Miner to see if we can better predict blood sugar changes.
• Further down the line:
  • Introduce consistent swimming.
  • Get a CGM for myself (probably an older G5 on Amazon or eBay).

Key tools

• iPhone 11
• Apple Watch 3
• WordPress + AWS Lightsail (this blog)
• Google Sheets
• Apple Keynote
• Peloton spin bike (referral code: 3TWTMH)
• Canyon Endurace
• Strava
• Training Peaks
• Health app
• HealthFit app
• Zones app
• AutoSleep app
• Gyroscope app
• HeartWatch app
• Withings Body+ scale
• Withings Blood Pressure Monitor