2012

I’m a little late to the party in putting one of these out, but here goes anyway. 2012 turned out to be a fun year. In the grand scheme of things I didn’t do anything that’d blow anyone’s minds away, but I did a lot of small things that have made me a much happier person. Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I got done. Here’re the highlights:

Live close to work

The biggest change I made in mid 2012 was to move close to work. Living in San Francsisco was great, but the fact that I worked in Cupertino meant that I spent 3 hours a day on a bus. Unfortunately, I get motion sick when reading on a bus, so all I could do on the bus was sleep. This left me with very little time to do anything on the weekdays other than work, eat and sleep. This led me to give up my apartment in the city and move down to Cupertino. After a bit of apartment hunting, I moved into a little studio that’s five minutes away from the office on foot. This was by far the best decision I made in 2012.

Sleeping

I’ve always needed a lot of sleep (8 to 9 hours per day). But, when I came to college, I decided that getting homework done, and doing stupid things were more important than sleeping. I took to sleeping a lot less, and at weird hours. This was great while it lasted, but it was starting to take its toll on me. When I was told to try sleeping without alarms, I did, and was pleasantly surprised by how well it went. So when I moved down closer to work and took out the 3 hour commute, I decided to start sleeping without alarms. After a couple of weeks, I was sleeping 8 hours a day, at the same hours. I also made an effort to start waking up early (which turned out to be surprisingly easy). This let me get into the office early, get my work done early, and head out to exercise with the sun still up.

Weight loss

Early in 2012, I tried to play a soccer game and was left gasping for air in around 2 minutes. I hadn’t realized how fat and out of shape I’d gotten. Being unable to play more than 2 minutes of soccer was pure, unmitigated disaster. I came home, stepped on a weighing scale and realized that I’d bloated up to 220lbs (99.8kg). That served as a harsh wake up call, and I decided to get myself back into shape. I’d come across a link to The Hacker’s Diet not too long ago, so I decided to give it a read. It’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long, long time. If you’re considering losing weight, I highly recommend giving it a read.

What I learned: measure what you eat, measure what you expend, and eat less than you expend. It’s basic arithmetic. This I’m good at. I began to keep track of all this data, and I saw results instantly. I also decided to set myself a goal to ensure I was motivated. For no real reason, I decided 50 lbs was a good goal. At the end of 2012, I didn’t get to 50, but I did get to 35 (15.9 kg). For now, I’ll take it.

Exercise

Moving down to Cupertino gave me time to exercise everyday. I’ve never enjoyed going to the gym, so I was looking for some other way to burn calories. Chuck and Juan got me on a road bike. I hadn’t been on a bike in a long time, and I’d never biked seriously. On my first ride, I lasted all of 4 miles. I sat down on the side of the road in exhaustion, unable to breathe. Once again, total fail. Fortunately, I started to get better pretty quickly. I rode in my first organized ride: The Marin 50K. At the end of the season, I finished with 760 miles ridden over 42 rides, in 64 hours and 42 minutes, with an elevation gain of 38,471 feet. Here’s my best ride of the season.

When it got too cold to bike, I started playing badminton. This was another sport that I’d dabbled in as a kid, but never played seriously. Sudarshan got me re-acquainted with the sport, and I started playing it regularly. Badminton isn’t as challenging as biking physically, but it’s a ton of fun. I’ve always enjoyed playing ball sports ¹, so I needed little to no motivation to go to the court and swing my racket around. I’m still pretty terrible at it, but I’ve gotten a lot better since I started playing. I’m hoping to get a lot better next year :)

2013

My biggest screw up of 2012 was to slack off towards the end of the year. I intend to fix that right away and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Apart from that, I want to keep doing what I did in 2012. New goal for weight loss: 160 lbs. I want to finish a metric century on my bike. I also want to pick up one more sport/activity (probably running or hiking). Hopefully I get all the things I want to do done :)

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!