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Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

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11–20 of 90 posts

Re: Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

#11
A few things:

I started eating 2 hard boiled eggs (aka arse fruit) each morning. I now don't have a hunger craving at 10am like I used to have and can easily work through to lunch time and have a moderate lunch.

I joined a choir and it helps take my mind off the 9 hours of coding I do every day. It also gives me an outlet for my limited artistic side.

You say besides exercise, but I have to add that I started boxing. We have clubs that specialise in white-collar boxing, which has a lower barrier to entry than normal amateur boxing. I'm not good, but the club is inviting of all levels of talent and it's the best exercise I've ever done. Had my first public fight in March 2016, which was a big psychological hurdle. Nailed it.

Re: Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

#12
post #9

I started dancing Zouk. Besides the fact that dancing is fun and good for your soul it greatly improved my posture.

Longtime WCS dancer here, recently tried Zouk for the first time. It's fun, I really like the flow of the dance!

Re: Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

#14
Did about 8k on the bike and got back on a rowing machine, but somehow ended the year still overweight. So in terms of health my year will hopefully be 2017, I will get on a LCHF diet. Because I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, I did a little experiment 5 months ago, I stayed gluten free for 3 months (because I read somewhere that gluten could be the culprit) and my digestion and overall being improved. So I need to get back on diet and also cut out all the sugars. The biggest impact on my health has been impulsive overeating of candy. I even got a little worried about possible diabetes and bought a glucose meter, had an elevated blood sugar only two times in the morning, from 10 day tests. So I might not have diabetes...yet. But if I keep this up, I'm on a good path. I look unfit now, I weigh 110kg, I almost came to 100kg this year, but now I bounced back, especially in December, go figure why :P But I am not out of shape in terms of performance, I did a lot of weight lifting this year also, I can squat 150kg and deadlift 210kg with np, I did some really heavy climbs on my bike with 400 avg watts for 30 mins, so I am a lot better than average overweight guy. 12 years of rowing in the past, also helps. I just need to figure out why I constantly crave for short term satisfactions.

Re: Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

#15
No real habits to report, but for anyone interested in sit to stand desks, I found a site that sells them for relatively cheap. I can't personally vouch for the quality of these desks, but as far as I can tell, they are the same sort of thing that office furniture companies sell, only 300-400 bucks instead of 1000-1500. Not necessarily high quality, but functional enough.

You do have to assemble it yourself, but anyone with a cordless drill and a bit of sense should be able to manage. There are a couple things that can go wrong, but they are easy to avoid and/or fix. The desk surfaces that come with these are probably a crappy laminate, like sub MDF quality fiberboard. That means that you have to be careful when screwing the legs into the surface, because if your drill's torque/clutch setting is too high, the screw will just spin and blow out the hole instead of fastening tightly. This is easy to avoid though, just set the drill to one of the lowest torque settings, say 1-3, and work your way up if the screw doesn't go in all the way. Also, there are usually plenty of holes on the legs, so if you blow 1 or 2 out, it's not the end of the world.

The only other thing to look out for is bad leg motors and/or bad control boxes, which are surprisingly common. No worries though, these things are easy to troubleshoot, and I'm sure the company will get you a replacement in no time if anything is DOA, as it's pretty common.

Anyways, my point is, if you don't mind spending around 4 hours of your time to read a manual and put one of these things together, you can save a substantial amount of money.

Also, if you don't want a crappy surface, you can just order the legs and add your own surface, although make sure to check that the legs can support the weight.

woops, here's the link https://www.autonomous.ai/smartdesk-sit-to-stand-height-adju...

also, if you're really a cheapskate, you could probably find all this shit on alibaba or something, and save even more money.

Re: Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

#17
I have made a consistent effort to be honest. Being honest about my feelings, thoughts and situations to everyone in my life; friends, family, and complete strangers. It's been incredibly benificial to my relationships and emotional well being, and I've been shocked at the level of compassion, motivation and honesty I've recieved in return, including deepening of relationships and emotional connection with friends/family/coworkers/acquaintances I've known for decades, and people I've just met. My fears and pessimistic worries about exposing vulnerabilities through brutal honesty have been overwhelmingly met with love, compssion, understanding, support and opportunity. This including the opportunity to offer the same to people whom I would have otherwise been blind to their similar struggles, thoughts and situations. <--- I typed this and almost diddn't post it because (insert misanthropic adjective here)

Re: Ask HN: The habit adopted in 2016 that had the greatest impact on your health?

#19
post #16

I stopped running and started working more. My health has never been worse. I regurlarly deal with back problems and I have gained a lot of weight. Used to be thin, now I am somewhat chubby. I want to start running again.

Good luck with your startup.
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