Like probably millions of Americans, I decided that one of my New Year's resolutions was to lose weight. However, I also want to exercise my mind as well as my body. Although I've been somewhat ok in the getting the body in better shape part, I have (in my opinion) neglected my mind.
On Thursday, I decided to do a "sugar detox". For at least one week, and I will attempt two, I will have no refined or processed sugars whatsoever. No desserts, no sodas (gasp!), not even putting jam on muffins, or sugar in my oatmeal. The only sugar I will allow myself will be from fruits or fruit juices (and even with fruit juices, I will dilute it with water 50/50). I am also not going to drink any diet soft drinks, as I don't think these are good for your health. I will be taking some fitness supplements, a whey protein isolate, a branched chain amino acid intra workout drink, and SuperPump 250, a proprietary blend of several things which is meant as a 'pre-workout' energizer. Most of these have sucralose to make them palatable. So the fruits, fruit juices and "fake" sugar in the supplements are the only sweets I will be having for the next two weeks.
This is my third day without any sugar, and so far I feel pretty good. No real cravings or sugar pangs yet. I even did some grocery shopping the other day, and none of the desserts enticed me, which is very surprising. Generally, I buy my food day-to-day. The reason for this is that I often forget to defrost my food, which means I'd have to buy some fast food anyway. So almost every day or every other day, I go to the supermarket to get my food. The benefit to this is that my food is fresh. The downside to this is that I am always tempted to buy bad things (and lord help me....Cadbury Creme eggs are already on sale). So I was surprised that I didn't really linger in the bakery department, and neither did the aisle containing the Cadbury Creme Eggs.
Having been reasonably fit before I injured my knee, I do know how to lose weight. The hard part is the discipline, preparation, and energy. For me, it takes 6 weeks of working out a minimum of 4 days a week to force exercise as a habit. My body tends to lose fat more quickly with weight workouts than cardio, but cardio is necessary for my body at least 3 days a week. Preparation is another overlooked part of losing weight. Trying to eat 5-6 times a day mandates planning your meals. If you don't prepare your meals in advance, you WILL cheat. And the last part, having enough energy is also difficult to do. Having enough energy means that you get 8hrs of solid sleep, eat breakfast, and don't crash on sugar. Sounds simple, but in practice, it's harder for me than it sounds.
The same rules that apply to training the body apply to training the mind. It takes discipline, preparation, and energy. The discipline means that I have to follow through on what I want. Wanting is not enough. Just reading or practicing some homework isn't enough. Preparation means setting aside time for studying, and sticking to it. If I just try and find free time, usually there isn't any. And if I don't force myself to study at a given time, I will procrastinate and find something less strenuous to do. Having energy means having the mental focus to study. Just like a muscle, if your mind is not clear and focused, you won't get a lot of mental benefit.
In order to help me out in both body and mind, I have decided to create a game plan. For my physical training, I am going to get back onto BodySpace and report my progress there. I intend to do the following:
Sat: Cardio
Sun: Cardio
Mon: Upper Body
Tue: Rest
Wed: Lower Body, Cardio
Thu: Arms, Abs
Fri: Rest
Nutrition will be a bit tricky. I'm going to try the grab bag approach, where I pick a protein source, a carb source, and a fruit/veggie source for each meal. I also bought some food containers that should help portion out the meal. Some fitness gurus advocate the "portion size" method, and some say that you must actually count calories, as "eyeballing" it can lead to over or under estimations of caloric food intake. For now, I'm going to go with the "eyeball" approach, and have about a palm sized portion of protein, a palm sized portion of carbs, and a fist sized portion of fruit or veggies (since I'm not a huge veggie person, I'll probably be eating more fruit than veggies...and no, carrots and potatoes don't count as veggies...but broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, most greens, and legumes do count).
For the mental training, I am going to devote an hour a day every weekday to academic training. In the beginning, this is mostly going to consist of relearning a lot of my math. I've always been fascinated by math, but my weakness in the basics always hampered me. To be honest, I usually only did some of my math homework in school, just enough to understand the concept, but not enough to reinforce it as 2nd nature. I also want to get much better at linear and abstract algebra. And of course, I need to get back to basics with my calculus. Once I feel good with my algebras, I need to get better at stochastics, because a lot of interesting problems are random in nature (really, Quantum Mechanics is all about probabilities). And finally, I want to study Number Theory and Numerical Analysis, as I never did those in college.
Some may wonder why I want to study math, and not more computer science-y things. Afterall, I've heard several people tell me that you don't really need or use that much math in real world programming. I think that's a bunch of hooey. I don't want to be good at "real world" programming...I want to understand computer SCIENCE, not software engineering. Furthermore, the truly hard problems to solve require a good background in math. And finally, being better at math will, I think, make me better at programming in general.
I used to tell people who were interested in going into Computer Science if they were good at math. It surprised me how many people said that either A) they weren't good at math, or B) weren't interested in math. I never asked, but I always wondered if these people, like so many, got their interest in programming because they wanted to make computer games. Well, if you want to make computer games, you better be good at math. 3D programming? You better know matrix multiplication and therefore linear algebra. Want to make some cool AI stuff? You better know bayes theorem for some of the more interesting AI techniques. For a good network server, understanding queuing theory and the stochastic nature of processes will come in handy.
Just learning how to program isn't THAT hard. Yes, a good engineer is more than just a programmer (what I mean by this is that a good software engineer understands things like lifecycle design, revision control, documentation, release engineering, unit testing, etc etc. And I think being good at math is what can separate a good engineer from a great one. One of the best quotes I ever heard about the difference between a scientist and an engineer is this:
"Engineers learn in order to build. Scientists build in order to learn"
By that definition, I consider myself a scientist. Building things just to build them or make money off them does not interest me. I build things in order to learn. Right now, most of my learning has simply been to put a new technology in my pocket (which hopefully will look better on my resume). I really only learned the fundamentals of databases for a project at work, and the same for eclipse. I will be learning 3d programming (OpenGL) for my clojure game, and I learned clojure because....well, I like learning languages.
But for me, math isn't just about putting something in my pocket that will make me more attractive to employers. In fact, it's probably something of a detriment. But math is the language of the universe. And just as I like learning programming languages, I want to get better at this universal language called math.
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