Z’s

I admit it: I’m both lazy and forgetful.

So while I sometimes manage to track useful health markers (like, for example, heart-rate variability each morning with the excellent HRV4Training app, to monitor over-training), I also often end up going for days and weeks ignoring them completely.

That’s why I’m particularly enthused about any app that works regardless of whether my brain is engaged, like AutoSleep for Apple Watch and iPhone.

Unlike other Apple Watch sleep trackers, this one doesn’t require me to actively tell it when I go to sleep and wake up, yet it’s surprisingly accurate nonetheless. Even better, as I only wear my watch to bed some nights, it still works even when the watch is on the charger. Sure, those nights don’t include sleep quality (which the app derives from heart rate and restlessness data from the watch), but it still accurately clocks start and stop times from when I plug in and unlock my phone (something that, shamefully enough, tends to be my last and first actions of the day). And it even correctly subtracts time for early morning pee breaks, as I (like, I think, most people) briefly turn on the screen of my phone when I get up in the middle of the night to see what time it is.

If my trailing average sleep duration closes in on eight hours nightly, I’m well-poised to hit PRs; whereas, if I’m averaging under seven hours (or, worse, six), I’m lucky to get through my workouts at all (and, frankly, equally lucky to just get through the day). When I keep track of that number in my head, I find I overly weight the prior night (or two), and can barely remember how much I slept on any nights even a day or two further back. AutoSleep’s home page serves as a far more reliable reference.

Knowing when to push myself – and when not to – has been key to keeping me training productively and injury-free for long stretches. If you think it might be for you, too, download AutoSleep; it’s well worth the $2.99 cost.

April 21, 2017

Rockin’ Out

Went with Jess this past weekend to hike the Great Stairs / Peanut Leap Cascade loop in Palisades Park, arguably the most challenging hike in New Jersey. It’s relatively short – only about three miles – but with very steep descents and ascents, and a whole lot of scrambling. Highly recommended.

April 20, 2017

Slice ‘em and Weep

Five or six years back, I was discussing cooking with Naval Ravikant, who observed that a surprising majority of the entrepreneurs he knew seemed to love to cook. I’d noticed the same thing, though it made a lot of sense to me: both are about creating something from scratch, then sharing it with others. But while a startup requires years of slow slogging, a meal is something you can put together, enjoy with others, and receive course-correcting feedback on within the span of a single evening. Cooking fills your evening with a sense of success, of completion, that’s far more elusive in a company-building day job.

In the years since, I’ve watched the habits of chef-ing entrepreneurs, and it’s clear most of them bring the same science-loving nerdiness, and the same analytical approach, to both pursuits. Which is why so many of them also seem to be fans of Serious Eats, where Cook’s Illustrated alum J. Kenji López-Alt perfects recipes with a modern foodie spin on America’s Test Kitchen rigor.

Jess bought me a copy of López-Alt’s excellent The Food Lab earlier this year, and (though it’s a bit of a doorstop at 900+ pages) I’ve since read it cover to cover. Among the many takeaways was a small and surprising point I thought about this morning, as I was making salads to pack for lunch: how you slice an onion has a significant impact on how those slices taste.

You can read a full discussion of the difference here, but in summary:

Most people slice onions by cutting them in half, turning the stem to the right or left side, then slicing into half moons, like so:

The problem is, that ruptures a lot of cells in the onion, releasing lachrymators, the chemical compounds that make your eyes water and that sometimes give raw onions an off-puttingly overpowering taste.

To minimize that, simply rotate the onion ninety degrees, and instead slice it pole-to-pole, like this:

You can test this side-by-side, cutting the two halves of an onion different ways. Even better, store the two batches in separate containers for ten minutes, then open and sniff them. As López-Alt puts it, “there's no doubt that the orbitally sliced onion is stronger, giving off a powerful stench of White Castle dumpsters and bad dates.” I’ve tried it myself, and he’s most certainly right.

So, if nothing else, start slicing your onion the better way. But also consider buying and reading The Food Lab, so you can put similar insights to work across the board. If you’re a results-minded home (or even pro) chef, it’s definitely worth the time.

April 19, 2017

Histamined

Eight years ago, I blogged about having terrible spring allergies in NYC, and about how, because I never had them in my California youth (I suspect due to arboreal differences between the coasts), I got caught off guard each year when allergy season hit.

Now a full twenty years into East Coast life, I still completely forget about my spring allergies, and it still takes me a few days of sniffling, sneezing, and eye-itching to remember, oh wait, I’m not dying, I’m just allergic to the world.

This time, however, at least I was ready, having socked away meds last spring in preparation. And while Zyrtec is somewhat effective for me, Nasonex is basically a miracle. So good, in fact, that I can completely forget I even have allergies, as long as I’m using the two together.

Which, I suppose, is just going to perpetuate my longer-term forgetfulness. Perhaps I need to put a note in my calendar for March 20th, 2018: SPRING IS HERE, YOU MORON, AND YOU’RE ALLERGIC TO IT.

PSA: Stop Flip-Flopping

With summer weather upon us, a lot of people are breaking their flip-flops out from the closet.

My advice is: don’t.

First, if you’re not currently a member of a fraternity, it’s probably not helping your look.

But second, and more importantly, flip-flops are a biomechanical disaster.

Your feet are a beautiful system, designed over thousands of generations of evolution to withstand pounding by forces several times your bodyweight, thousands of times each day. Fundamentally, your foot is a mechanical arch (cf., the arch of your foot), leveraging physics to accept and then dissipate force with ease.

Or, at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

To illustrate, try this: lift your big toe. You’ll notice that, when you do, the arch of your foot pulls taught. The same thing happens when you keep your toe planted, but lift your heel – the way your back foot moves on each step as you walk. That pulling taught is called the Windlass Effect, and it allows you to support your weight using the strength of your fascia, tough connective tissue that surrounds your muscles. The Windlass action tightens up the fascia in your arch (the plantar fascia), as well as fascia in your calves and upper legs, like the IT band. And that fascia is super strong. In fact, you could literally hang a car from your IT band.

But if you’re wearing flip-flops, your big toe does something different: it scrunches in on every step, holding your shoe in place. That prevents the Windlass effect, so instead of pounding your strong fascia, you instead mash the tendons and soft-tissue of your feet, the cartilage and meniscus in your knees, etc., none of which were designed for that job.

So, in short, if you want to avoid plantar fasciitis, knee replacements, etc., stop wearing flip-flops. Sure, you can wear them on the beach / at the pool. But if you’re just walking around in warm weather, try something like a Vans slip-on (timelessly surfer chic), a strappy sandal, or anything else that holds on to your foot without your active effort.

You’ll look better. And you’ll make it to fall with a healthy leg up.

April 17, 2017