Health and Wellness

Sleep

Sleep hygiene has improved significantly overall. However, this week I wasn’t consistent with my usual 9:30 PM “shutdown” routine, which definitely affected my sleep quality. I’ve noticed that my sleep latency increases dramatically when I try to go to bed right after using the computer—a reminder that the blue light warnings are real.

Diet

My diet has been dialed in. I’m following my macros precisely using the Macrofactor app and feeling great. Weight is coming down consistently—currently sitting at 180.4 lbs.

I’ve observed a few factors that cause my weight to fluctuate by ±3 lbs. First, activity level makes a huge difference. This week, in addition to Muay Thai and lifting, I went on two 3-mile walks. I also tend to weigh more during deload weeks due to reduced activity, which makes sense. Second, the timing of my last meal, sleep quality, and how well my morning “bathroom session” goes can cause ±2 lb fluctuations on the scale.

The biggest change to my dieting approach has been emphasizing more carbs and less fat. The carbs give me the energy I need to train hard and feel good. I also realized how detrimental big cheat days are—if I maintain a 300-calorie deficit all week but have a cheat meal on Sunday that adds 1,800 calories, I basically wipe out all the fat and weight loss for the week. I know this from painful personal experience.

Exercise

Overall, this was a very good training week. I continue to improve my Muay Thai technique and footwork. Areas for improvement:

  • Keeping hands up when throwing punches
  • Taking smaller steps when doing a switch kick

My left hook finally feels better—I’m starting to understand the concept of “swinging” my arm rather than just pushing it forward. Excited to develop this further.

On the weightlifting side, I continue to lift 5x per week and am on week 3 of a 4-week cycle. Numbers are going up slowly, and I’m maintaining most of my strength despite the bodyweight loss. I did skip leg day a few times, mostly due to laziness and exhaustion. To combat this, I’ll take a short nap on Fridays to restore energy for leg day.

While lifting 5x per week is great for building muscle, it’s also taxing on the body and joints. For the next cycle, I’ll reduce lifting to 3x per week and add running. I’m not the biggest fan of running, but I want to experiment with it for a month to see if it improves my fitness for Muay Thai and helps me get leaner. Stay tuned for results.

What I’m Learning/Building

I continue working through Andrew Ng’s machine learning specialization. I finished the second module of the first course and now have a solid grasp of linear regression, gradient descent, derivatives, partial derivatives, directional derivatives (I took a huge math detour to understand what all the math means and why it works), feature scaling, and feature engineering. I’m almost done with module 3, which covers classification and logistic regression.

My productivity this week wasn’t great. Between a busy work week at my day job and major procrastination, I only managed to study for 1 hour each day.

In terms of building, I haven’t done much recently since I’ve been spending most of my free time on ML courses. Something interesting happened though—two random users found my pricepulse.me project and signed up. One didn’t add any items to track and was annoyed by the email notifications from the dummy item I add by default. They reached out asking to remove their account. The other person actually added an Amazon item to track, but the scraper doesn’t work on Amazon at the moment.

I realized I never officially launched the project. I sent the link to a few friends for feedback but didn’t go through the exercise of actually launching it. Instead, I procrastinated and started working on another side project. It feels productive but is still a form of procrastination.

Even if the project doesn’t succeed, I need to force myself to go through the motions of launching and promoting it. I want to build software and tools that provide value, but the greatest product is useless if nobody knows about it. I need solid criteria for what “done” means and stick to it. I can’t shy away from launching, promoting, and marketing just because I suck at it and dread it. If I’m serious about making a living running my own business, I need to get serious about distribution. Marketing, copy, and sales should be priorities, not afterthoughts.

A big reason I’m publishing these recaps is to practice distribution. No clue where this journey will lead, but I’m excited to find out.

Personal

I don’t know if it’s a good idea to share what’s going on in my personal life—I’m naturally a private person—but I figured why not try something new and step out of my comfort zone?

On that note, I went on two dates this week and realized how important it is to screen for the feeling of comfort and connectedness when you meet someone. It’s distinct from chemistry. It’s truly feeling like you can be yourself around this person—that you could see yourself becoming best friends with them. I got that feeling with girl #1 but not girl #2. It might not work out with girl #1 for various reasons, but the feeling of connectedness and calmness around her was exciting.

A good friend of mine is contemplating quitting his finance day job to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot. Naturally, he’s scared and the fear is getting in his way. I was reminded of Tim Ferriss’s fear setting exercise and sent it his way. I watched the accompanying TED talk, and what stuck with me was the portion about the opportunity cost of not doing the thing that scares you. It made me reflect on the regrets I’ll have if I don’t pursue the things that truly excite me.

This wraps up my updates for the week. I feel surprisingly good after typing these thoughts—almost like I’m freeing up space in my brain. Excited to do more of these.