July 2020 Health Review
5 min read

July 2020 Health Review

July 2020 Health Review

This is the 7th 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 5th health post since we’ve been quarantined. While life is hugely different today than it was in February, it’s very similar to life 30 days ago, despite some reopening efforts (and now, reclosing efforts) that are underway in many parts of the country. 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 following 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

  • Record month! I don’t think I’ll be able to sustain these numbers though going forward.
  • Total kcal from all activity was 34,379, up considerably from 33,030 in May.
  • Average kcal/day increased to 1,109 from 1,101.
  • Average exercise minutes/day increased to 76 from 75.
  • I walked a lot and rarely did any rides under 60 minutes.

Time in Zones

Unfortunately, I have to scrap this section going forward until I look for a better solution. I’ve had too many issues trying to maintain this. I’ve had problems with Training Peaks at times (changing my Zone Ranges on me) and with HealthFit (breaking syncing to Training Peaks). It’s completely wrong in April, and it’s missing half of July.

Biking & Peloton

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 20 minutes (July: 1,337 vs. June: 1,317).
  • Kcal from the Peloton increased 362 (July: 18,434 vs. June: 18,072).
  • I hit 2 Personal Records this month.
  • 60 minute PR resulting in 652kj (previous 60min PR was 611kj).
  • 45 minute PR resulting in 568kj (previous 45min PR was 565kj)
  • +3 miles in July from June. I’ve definitely plateaued on distance. And I actually would have come in way under if I didn’t do a 30-mile ride on the last day of July. I wish I realized how close I was to May’s 399 because I would have done the extra 2 miles to hit 400.

Steps

I target an average of 4-5 miles of steps per day (~10,500). Anything much higher results in some knee pain. 11,400 is definitely higher than I usually target but they actually feel pretty good. 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

  • I continued my long 822+ day move, stand, and exercise streak. I’m really proud of this and am also really impressed with the Apple Watch. 822 days in a row with the same Watch. No problems. Pretty remarkable.
  • I completed my July Challenge, closing all 3 rings 31x.

Peloton

Heart Rate

I mainly care about Resting Heart Rate, which was down 1bpm to 47bpm from June. HRV increased from 57ms in May to 59ms in July. I don’t understand it or know if Apple’s measurement is accurate, but I track it anyway. Both went in the opposite direction than we’d like to see.

Sleep

Averaging 8 hours of sleep per night requires dedication and effort for me. As I said in my 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 7:46/night in June, up from 7:45/night in June.
  • Averaging 8:08/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 184 for the month.

  • Average weight decreased to 184lbs from 186lbs.

Blood Pressure

Interesting content

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.
    • Try to 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.

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