The Four Hour Body: Another update

Hi there,

Some time ago I posted on The Four Hour Body book by Tim Ferriss. Apart from reviewing the book itself, I reported losing a few kg in the first month after starting his Slow Carb diet.

I can now report that I have managed to keep losing weight, and am presently 12 kg lighter than when I first started the diet a little over 4 months ago now. The most rapid weight loss was certainly over the first few weeks, but even though the measured weight loss slowed down after that, my measurements continued to change, so that clothes I had "grown out of" are now fitting again. I am so grateful that I didn't throw out some of my business shirts that had become too tight for me! My newish suit however is starting to look a little baggy.

Apart from the way the diet works, I think the weight loss has also slowed down due to the fact that I am now doing some weight training with a kettle bell, which is resulting in me gaining body weight through muscle mass while I am still losing on my waist line. The key areas of improvement for me have been a substantial reduction in the spare tire around my waist, much less prominent man boobs (thank goodness) and the puffiness that was developing around my neck and face are gone.

What's even better though are the great comments I get from people at work and amongst my friends. Nothing like some positive feedback to keep you on your path to better fitness.

I really can't rave about the diet enough. For someone like me who has been used to a lower carb diet generally, it isn't that hard, and the one day off a week to go completely nuts on the things you can't have but still crave, makes it easy to stay on track the rest of the time.

I took a break from the diet over Easter as we were away with friends surrounded by good food, wine and beer down in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. Shock horror, I put on just under 2 kg in about 5 days. Within less than a week of being back on the diet at home? It's gone again.

I suspect I will also sometimes gain a little when I travel on business, because it is harder to maintain control over what you are eating, particularly when clients insist on taking you out overseas to try their local cuisine. I am confident though that I will be able to claw this back when I return home each time, based on the recent Easter experience.

There is still technically another 5 kg for me to lose before I am at the upper end of my ideal weight according to the standard BMI tables. As Tim Ferriss says though, the BMI tables are flawed because they don't allow for muscle mass, and while I am not overly muscular at the moment, everyone I talk to doesn't think I have another 5 kg I want to lose, unless I wish to start looking too gaunt.

Let's see how it goes. I must say though, I am very comfortable with how I am looking now compared to late last year!

Later.

Mint Linux on my netbook: Xfce!

Hi,

I just thought I'd post a little update on how Mint Linux has been going on my Lenovo netbook. It's been going pretty well actually. I've had very few issues with getting it running how I want it, and have not experienced any of the quirks I used to come across with Linux in the past, such as some feature suddenly not working because something had changed I couldn't track down what it was etc.

There was was only thing that kept getting in the way. Clearly my little netbook was a little underpowered, so I would sometimes have some very "pregnant pauses" while the system would catch up with what I was trying to do. My user experience within a single application, like Thunderbird or Chrome was generally fine, but switching applications, or moving files around in folders etc was at times, a little painful.

This was all in Gnome, which was the default desktop environment installed. I was just putting up with it, but then I realised that there are alternatives in Linux, so hey, I may as well check them out.

A quick Google pointed out my options. It became apparent that as you go down in memory footprint and system requirements, the user experience is pared down as well. I was prepared to have a less sophisticated interface, but I still wanted it to be reasonably user friendly and at least support the basic window based operations that I've been used to since my Amiga and then Windows 3.1. I had tried some of the really basic windows managers/desktops for Linux in the past and came away very frustrated with their lack of even basic features or clunkiness to do simple tasks.

I ended up trying Xfce. In Mint, this was super simple. I simply typed in xfce in the search box off the bottom menu, selected the xfce meta package that came up and waited while it all installed and configured by itself.

I then logged out and logged back in, remembering to change the option at the bottom of the the log in screen from Gnome to Xfce. After that, no surprises, everything just works, even the Gnome apps that I had become used to using. I'm still checking everything out, but it seems there is a substantial amount of cross compatibility between the two systems, but with Xfce appearing to be much easier for my netbook to deal with.

The overall user interface is very similar in terms of "slickness" etc, especially if you take some time to customise it away from the default wall paper etc. I haven't found the same degree of theme support yet, but to be honest I can more than live without that if it means a smoother experience on this low end hardware.

Which it does...

So it looks like Xfce for me now, and so far so good.

Later.