Unfortunately, most people you’re going to encounter don’t have the depth or maturity to be good interviewers.
Some do though, and they know the truth. There is rarely a job in the world where everything is positive. If you can communicate the negatives in a way that I can understand, empathize with, and that demonstrates your ability to handle it with grace, maturity, and humility, I would probably value that more. At the same time, if you’re someone that harbours a grudge over it, like if someone decided against your advice and you’re bitter over it, I’ll take notice too.
Basically, you need to be a team player, but not an automaton. If we wanted that, we have AI now.
I have had a slow metabolism since I was a teenager. I don't think I've ever experienced a day in my life where I haven't thought about my weight, body composition, or felt guilty about eating food. And I'm not even that big. I've just never had the physique I wanted, and I always attributed it to having a slow metabolism.
I'm turning 40 in May, so since the start of February, I've finally pulled up my bootstraps and started taking my health seriously. I was likely 225 lbs at 5'10". Easily 32+% body fat.
The first thing I did was a deep extended fast, drinking only water, electrolytes, supplements, bone broth, and black coffee. I was able to shed a good amount of weight, fast. However, the longest I could fast for was 6 days; No matter what I tried, I could not figure out how to get good sleep. I tried once more for 4 days, and saw no improvement, so I stopped trying to fast. Mentally I could handle it, but without quality sleep, there was no way I could continue. This was mid-March, and I was at 204.5 lbs.
Also in mid-March, I did a VO2 max test, while fasted for 72 hours. It was very apparent that my metabolism was fat adapted. My VO2 max was very low at 33.8 ml/kg, which was to be expected. My RMR was found to be 1998 kcal/day, and my fat max HR was 161 bpm. Crossover to 100% carbs was at 179 bpm.
Since then, I've done a 180, and started eating about 1800-2000 kcal per day. My first goal is to ensure I eat 170-200g of protein per day, through as much whole food as possible, using whey or protein when needed. The rest of my diet is very clean, with no real restrictions on fats, and keeping carbs as low as possible. It's a fairly ketogenic diet, but I don't get worked up if my net carbs go to 50+g. Foods are usually Greek yogurt, flax, pumpkin seeds, nuts, eggs, berries, fish, poultry, and green vegetables/salads. If I ever add fat to anything, it's extra virgin olive oil first, then maybe butter/cream (i.e. in coffee). I take a number of supplements like Omega-3 fish oils, multivitamins, magnesium, and make my own electrolyte drink. Creatine as well.
I find that by the time I've done all of this, I have a very difficult time eating, and even trying to fit anything else in. I am never hungry, nor do I feel cravings for other foods. We just came back from Miami, and I had some ice cream with the kids, and some baked goods. I enjoyed them, but I was very excited to be back to my normal foods.
Since then, I've been running 3-4 times a week, focusing on Zone 2 training. I do 4 days a week of weightlifting, focusing on the big compound lifts. I have a 10K race on May 11, and a sprint distance triathlon on July 27 that I'm training for.
For this entire month, I have stayed at a constant 207.5 lbs +/- 0.5 lbs. I have been tracking other measurements like circumferences and body fat (using calibers and BIA scale), and it's apparent that I have gained strength, regained muscle mass, and improved my overall fitness. Running is still at a slow pace, but actually enjoyable now. My wearables estimate that my VO2 max is 37 ml/kg; they did show 33 ml/kg last month when I had the test, so they seem to be correlated.
I think the hardest part of the last month has been the sheer amount of work I've put in, only to watch the scale stay steady. I track my intake rigorously, weighing everything I can and using MyFitnessPal to track it all. How are people able to eat anything else? I couldn't add rice or grains to my diet even if I wanted to, I would easily hit 2500+ kcal per day.
People eat that much? Or rather, burn that much? I burn 2000 kcal per rest day, and maybe 2800-3200 kcal on workout days.
I will stick with this, since it is working to improve my health and fitness. It would just be nice to see the scale move without having to fast for multiple days. Cursed slow metabolism.
In terms of where carbs fit in, you're eating 200g of protein a day, which at a guess is 2x to 4x your lean body mass in kg. I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's probably very effective, but the average diet probably swaps that (historically very expensive) protein out for (historically very cheap) bread and rice.
Which we now know is suboptimal. Humans need more protein than we’ve been eating on the SAD. This is especially true as you age and you start losing muscle mass.
I aim for 1g per lbs of weight. There’s so many numbers out there for what’s the right amount, based on lean mass vs total mass, so I figure my number is close enough.
You aren't cursed with a slow metabolism, you have just been having too many calories. If you are truly never hungry but still not losing weight, then why not reduce your calories by 200-300 a day?
I’ve thought the same, but then my food intake would truly be just plain chicken breast, fish, protein shakes, and green veggies. Which is basically what it is now, but I’d have to cut out the Greek yogurt, berries, and handful of nuts, and maybe the eggs. Remember, I weigh everything.
I can find the calories to cut, it just makes it difficult to sustain for longer than 2 weeks due to the mental load. Plus, I would bet my lifts in the gym would suffer after a while too.
Frankly, it’s probably easier to just go for an extra 20 minutes run.
How's your light environment/sunlight exposure? What's your waking body temperature (under arm for 10 minutes)? Have you had a thyroid panel done? (TSH, Free T3, Free T4, Reverse T3)
Nice. Mexico and Miami are great for the sun. Catch at least 20m at sunrise and sunset (sunrise is most important). Also midday sun for as much as you can tolerate without burning and your schedule allows. As much skin exposed as possible and never with sunglasses.
Your waking body temperature should be around >= 97.8 and raise to 98.6 or higher by midday. Low waking body temperature can be indicative of low thyroid function even with normal labs.
TSH range is too high, you want it under 2. T4 is converted to either T3 or rT3. You want the majority going to T3. So if you have low normal T3 and high normal rT3, your thyroid is not working well. Low T4 means less to convert to T3.
This was really good. The Hassan version was “better.” It picked up the background behind me and commented about how cool my models looked on the wall, and mentioned how great they looked to spruce up my workshop. We had a conversation about how they were actually LEGO, and we went on to talk about how cool some of the sets were.
Glad you had a good conversation :) The Hassaan version has a lot more background filled in- actually my entire website is it's context, so he has more interesting things to say!
I believe they want a minimum order of $1000 and only allow me to print it in a single color. Honestly, providing a physical good is a whole other set of issues with which I have no experience at all.
Completely agree. I can't imagine being lead on a wild goose chase looking for a loved one only to be told by police that said party lied to me. I guess there's a lesson here: talk with nurses. I'm sure some would toe the line but if something smells fishy, I'm sure someone will crack. Then again, maybe only one nurse would know the truth so it's may not be easy.
It's worse than that, it's like burying a double or even triple lede:
- it's not just that the hospital told her family totally the wrong thing for a day or a year...
- or even negligently cremated or buried her in a pauper's grave...
- but they also mishandled the corpse, which IIUC is a misdemeanor (corpse desecration, which is a felony, might not apply), by shipping her decomposing body to an off-site warehouse morgue.
- and failing to timely issue a death certificate or do an autopsy prevents determining whether there had been medical malpractice associated with her death.
I hire crypto bros all the time. One of my partners advises porn companies.
Who you are and whether you can do the job, matters more. If you’re sleazy, I probably wouldn’t hire you, but that is a personality trait rather than your employment history.
I have a unique unpronounceable first name. I got passed over for interviews all the time. I took it as “if they’re that type of person, I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.”
Are you saying your first name is actually unpronounceable(I’m thinking similar to Elon Musk’s child’s name) or merely hard for most people in whatever area you’re in to pronounce?
I get that this stings, but honestly, outside of the brief outages when I'm trying to deploy for the millionth time, it's been a dream to run on Fly, with instances close to my users.
It's too bad the closest region to Dubai is Romania, and Africa/SE Asia are a bit uncovered, but that's ok for now. I'm really enjoying using LiteFS and globally distributed instances for each customer, making it really easy, fast, and scalable. As the sole dev on the team right now, this is fantastic.
I wish Upstash Kafka was a bit more baked, but I ended up just signing up with them directly. I had trouble using the built-in-to-Fly version, but that's fine.
Because I’m in Toronto, grew up here, have lived in SF/Bay, back when Fry’s was around.
Sayal in Toronto was my go to electronics store. I didn’t realize they were in the US? Unless it’s a different one.