Why am I on a 1500cal diet?

You can call it whatever you want ... I am in the progress to eat healthy the way I have chosen. Currently I am following the 1500cal plan from Lite'n'Easy. This sounds really not a lot, but I was surprised. When you really "spread" your input through the whole day, let's say you eat something every 2 hours, you are not starving. And you don't feel stuffed either, which I think is an awful feeling as well. 

Another thing I have noticed already after 2 weeks, I am not tired anymore in the early afternoon. Before that, I was deadly tired and I didn't get anything done between 1 and 3pm. And it is not easy to find something to lay down in an office, hehe.

What this diet also allows me to do is having some kind of gratification once or twice a month. The pictures below show what I mean. I can eat that without feeling guilty afterward. Yes, I felt stuffed and it just reminded me that I don't need so much food. But I loved it.

I really enjoyed this desert in the Belgium Beer Cafe after a full pot of mussels.

And no, I haven't lost weight yet, but I am sure over time it will come. The next weeks I will be away from home and can't really follow the plan, but then I will be back on it again.

One thing I might change with the plan of Lite'n'Easy is that I swap lunch with dinner. I still have my believe that you should eat the smallest meal in the evening, and with Lite'n'Easy you get the main meal for dinner. When I can, I will swap, depending if I am home or not.

In general I am very happy with Lite'n'Easy. The delivery and the meal are just convenient for me as a person too busy (and lazy) to cook.

P.S. I am not an affiliate of Lite'n'Easy, so I don't get paid to publish this here. All this is my own personal opinion.

research in real

Being a research PhD student could be lot of fun. But research has a quite boring part as well. (I am not talking about the whole administration stuff here) Doing the research itself is lot of fun and I like the time puzzling around with some application and writing my own scripts, Perl, PHP , SQL etc.

But then there are these seminars you have to go to, although they are not in your field of interest. Yes, I do respect other researchers and I let them do what they like to do ... but why do I have to listen to it? I do respect the Beatles, but I don't have to listen to them.Yes, they could introduce new techniques you haven't thought about, but if it is really out of your field it won't be really relevant.

 

Photo courtesy by Markus Brosch

I am somehow permanently in such a situation, as I ended up in a group full of labrats, oops I mean cell biology scientists. And here I am, sitting 24/7 in front of a computer in my world of applications, code and visualisation.
Just imagine, having a group meeting with these guys ... plenty of fancy pictures on the wall, live imaging of cells, fluorescent tagged proteins  ... is amazing stuff. I am loving it. Then my presentation ... charts, tables and numbers and everyone starts to yawn.  Not that I didn't yawn at their presentation ;o) They are coming out with their ideas and how to improve the assays etc. It is not helping my work. But how can u get around it?

• chose the right research group straight at the beginning
• make clear with your supervisor what info you need and which seminars you really have to go to
• don't change the environment too often (I did move offices several times, with no real benefit at the end)
• have a goal and stick to it
• finish your PhD thesis as soon as possible
• avoid any procrastination ... it is just getting more painful

I am in the final stage of my PhD, so I won't change things anymore. But I learned a lot, no doubt about it. Maybe more about me instead of biology ;o)

So let's get this paper published and then we start the final part, a quick analysis.

Why are we so obsessed about food?

In a previous blog I have written about my attempt to be on 1500 cal daily. However, we know that an average human being should consume up to 2200 cal. This is plenty of energy to have a quite active day, including brain work.

Although I am a scientist, or maybe because I am a scientist, I don't see obesity as a disease. Unfortunately with the help of the media we start to call it like this. But why should it be? Isn't it logical that obese people just consume more energy than they actually need, for whatever reason I don't understand. Why are we so obsessed about food? Is it all about pleasure, addiction or are we just bored?

Just last week I saw a quite obese women with her similar obese daughter. They couldn't sit next to each other, as it would have been quite squeezy. (Yes, I support airlines charging obese people for two seats!) What is this woman doing to her daughter? Taking care of your own child doesn't mean making a child sick for the rest of its life. I don't want to go over all the cost obese people cost us in terms of environmental and health issues. I just don't understand how people can be so irresponsible. When you have a child, you have some duties. And I am sure it doesn't include to poison your own child.

I might sound a bit harsh. But as a human being you have a purpose here on earth. We are so lucky to be alive. The chance to live is smaller than winning in a lottery. The human body has much more to offer than we are actually aware of. Skills we knew thousands of years ago, but got lost because humankind got greedy over time. I just hope 2012 will bring a change and will open the eyes for all of us. Being a bit more grateful for what we have and not taking food for granted.

Photo Courtesy by Markus Brosch

 Just eat healthy and less! We don't need meat every day. Look at gorillas ... quite muscular species .. and vegetarian!

Abstract Thinking

One of the most wonderful skills a human can have is abstract thinking. I think it is a skill you can learn, however, some technical interest can be very helpful.

Having an idea and your brain starts immediately to break down the whole process into small pieces and steps. That can be scary and if you are lucky you will see that you can save a lot of time when you don’t go that way. For me it is cooking. All the steps necessary to get a nice eatable meal on the table, spoil the whole fun and therefore I prefer other sources to get food.

In business, we can have plenty of ideas about how to use email marketing, which emails to send out in which order and to who. I already see the flow of action set up, leading to a flow chart. This process would already include the setting for the Double Optin, the details about the OptOut feature, tags we will apply to customers, and which link we will make trackable. As you can see I don’t really care about the content. One part I have delegated.

One very useful language to express abstract thinking is UML, Unified Modeling Language. It can be very powerful. It helps me to trace every possible occurring case in a software application, let it be a website or just the email marketing followup sequences. Maybe you can even claim it to be the protocol of this application. It helps to understand the what if case.

I also like to see abstract thinking in the world of object oriented programming. This is almost seeing the world through different glasses. You work with classes, instances and getter and setter functions. At least that’s what I have done during my time with Java.

I am not saying that it makes the world easier, but I think it gives you a different (sometimes better) view of the world around you and it put actions and objects in a different relation to eachother. My bike is just another instance of the object bike, nothing more or less. What we human do with it doesn’t matter to world of objects.

I am definitely not the guru in abstract thinking. Just sometimes I discover myself dreaming in an abstract way .. or is it just my way? ;o)

It is all relative.

Your personal project management

The topic "Project Management" is mostly covered for companies and small teams. But what about managing your private project. How do you manage the projects/actions that were assigned and delegated to you. You are in charge of actions set up and you will be responsible for the results.

Studies often point to interpersonal and behavioral problems as root causes of project failure. The art of project management is all about getting work done through other people.

Personally I am following the strategy of GTD - Get Things Done. It might be a bit modified so it suits my circumstances. Everything is set up on paper. I would prefer to have my ToDo list on my computer, but I am switching too often between computers right now. The list of projects can be quite long, depending how detailed you are. I think having a project called "Do website" makes no sense, because this can be a never ending story. I am still struggling with this part ... but I am going there.

Then I have a list of things I want to do one day. Maybe I am bored one day, which I don't believe will happen ;o) Another list is about actions I have delegated and I am waiting for the feedback. I also have some kind of inbox where I put all my ideas, thoughts and other things that come to my mind. It is not a physical inbox. Mostly it contains notes of a meeting.

Photo Courtesy by Markus Brosch

My whole agenda is only A5 and I want to keep it like this. It is a bit more handy that carrying around a A4 binder. It also trains me to keep my notes short but still detailed.

Weekly I review all projects and all the other sections in my agenda. Just to keep things clean. It allows me to remove unwanted actions, plan the coming days and make me aware of the status of every single project. If no action was taken for a little I might consider to put the whole project on hold or even cancel it as it might not be important.

Currently I am not really well on track with that. Just bought a new binder as the old one starts to fall apart. As soon as things become routine I get bored of them ... looks like I need a new strategy soon.

Australian BusinessWomen Network ... Join Us

For more than a year now I am member of the Australian BusinessWomen Network. Just today we will have another webinar about Online Business Boosters. I like the webinar series ... awesome topics. Sometime you know stuff already, but then there is also information that are new to me. Every event can be also visited by non members.

I would love to be more involved and participate in more programs they are offering, but as mentioned before I have to manage my time properly. As soon as I will have finished my PhD I will get a bit more active.

I like the idea of the checking out their Mentoring Program HerMentor. My final goal is to actually mentor others in my area of expertise. A mentor can give your business and yourself a big boost. It can have an tremendous impact, and this is what I would like to experience. Hope they will provide a mentor who can "fight" with me ;o)

Suzi Dafnis, the founder of ABN, is also the "maker" of the inspirational website herBusiness. All the resources a women needs to run a successful business.

In every bigger city ABN runs some MeetUps .. so far Brisbane is a bit behind. But hopefully we get this up and running asap. I am already in contact with some other members. Although, I am the skill to be quite anti-social, meeting up with like-minded people is very important to me.

You can look up the ABN website for business resources and free article about any area of interest regarding your business. Social marketing is big for ABN as well, you can find us on facebook, LinkedIn and twitter.

What I can say ... all information is out there, you just have to know where it is. ABN is a wonderful tool for your business to stay focused, motivated and have the right people around you.

How to manage time

We have learned that time is meant to be the fourth dimension. However, it doesn’t seem to behave like the first three dimension. We can move forward and backward, left and right, up and down to discover space. But what about time? It seems to let us go only in one direction, no chance to go back to the past. Is that true? We can remember the past, but we can’t foresee the future. We can’t be 100% sure where we will be the next day.

That’s one reason why we don’t have subjects like space management. But there is a subject like time management. Space is unlimited (my believe, it doesn’t need to be true), but time is limited. Everyone has 24 hours 365 days in every year of his/her life, which is limited. There is an end. I believe that it should be taught at school, how to invest your time and not to spend it. It is well described in the book 'Wink' from Roger Hamilton. You can invest your money and get back more. The same is valid for time. Invest your time wisely and you will win time at the end. You will gain time for the things you love to spend time with, might it be family, hobby or traveling ... anything you wish.

Time flies ... (Photo Courtesy by Markus Brosch)

Back to the management of time. Are you spending your time or investing it? In a job you are exchanging your time for money .. so you spend time. You even lose time which you could spend with your family. As a business owner and entrepreneur, I have to chose wisely where I will spend or invest my time. I prefer to invest my time into my business. Smartly done, this will end up in systems that work for themselves and make money ... like any business should do.

Another way to invest time is exercising and eating healthy. You might gain some time to live longer. These years you can spend with traveling, grandchildren and great grandchildren. You don’t want to miss that!

I am currently sitting in the train going from my partner’s place to my place as I do it every week. Could be a quite time wasting exercise. Instead, I am writing my blogs, review emails or listen to educational audio books from Anthony Robbins or Dr John Demartini. I am learning and therefore investing my time. That’s the advantage of using a train instead of a car.

The time I spend on my bike every day going to Uni I see as a time waster. These are 40min I spend on the street without doing anything valuable. Yes, you can say I am doing some exercise ... but I am riding my bike for more than 20 years now .. and I actual don’t like it. Time waster. (Yes, I could make it more fun.)

But even I have times where can’t stand getting more input. Then I can do some exercise like running or gym or ... yes, I lost a bit the social part in me. I am getting used to watching movies at least once a week, but that is already challenging. Not really my thing. Might need to re-discover my hobbies ... I just love to spend my time in a smart way :o)

Customer Relationship Management

It was this year that I have started to look into the area of Marketing. If you told me this 5 years ago, I would have said “No way”. Yeah, things change ;o) The main challenge I see is to automatize the whole procedure. I am not a copywriter, therefore I am delegating this part. Someone else can find the words for me.

When you look in different areas longer and in more details, you mostly find out that there is a lot to learn if you want to become an expert in this area. A bit frustrating for people like me, who are interested in too many things.

The most exciting thing I found out so far is email marketing. Auto-responder and follow-up email sequences are so power full tools. You write these emails once and they can go to thousands of people in your target market. There are plenty of web services who offer this kind of automatization. BigResponse, iVertical or aweber ... all well known and respected tools. The prices are reasonable, taking into account that once the email sequences are set up it all runs by itself.

But then we came along InfusionSoft. It is a monster tool and I mean it. At first it looks quite overwhelming, but as soon as you set up one feature, you want to use all of them. You can run a normal business with it. It is a complete customer relationship management including shopping cart, email client, sales management and affiliate program and so on. For our friends of Outlook, you can integrate InfusionSoft here as well.
The main reason, why I like InfusionSoft is the simple feature of tagging. As simple as it sounds, none of the other email marketing tools provide this feature. And tagging, just labeling things, is so powerful. You want to send an email to everyone who is in Australia, older than 18 and interested in red wine. When you have this information on your customers, you can filter them according their tags and you go ... It reminds me of the settings for an Ad in facebook, similar process.

I have written about customer service before, so I think InfusionSoft is one of the companies that “walk the talk”. I know there is other information in the net as well, but I speak here just for me. The information material is just awesome: nice brochures, manuals, webinars and help desk. Just recently I used Twitter to contact them ... got my DM in 2 minutes. We had a couple of telephone conferences in which we could ask questions and with go2meeting we could share a screen, so we could see things live. It was a one-on-one conversation. Very helpful.

For who is InfusionSoft? Although this tool looks professional and huge, I can recommend it to small businesses. Just for the reason, you will grow. They even guarantee it. If you are in business to make profit and keep a good relationship with your customers, InfusionSoft is the tool to use.

However, InfusionSoft didn’t start perfect and keeps growing and learning as well. I have read in some forums the critics on their API. There is not much I can say, as I haven’t used it yet. And yes, obviously the customer service seems to be not perfect either. I had only good experiences so far. And yes, you can’t use InfusionSoft in Safari, what a pain ;o) The world is turning to Mac anyway, so no real reason to worry about, hehe.

As I said, if you are serious about your business, I recommend you InfusionSoft. The investment in money and time is absolutely worth it.

How much are 1500kcal?

It is one of my goals to reduce my weight by around 8-10kg. I wouldn't call myself obese, but there are bits and pieces I would love to disappear. I am approaching different strategies, of course the combination of all would be ideal.

• exercise: I am following a strict plan to exercise every second day for at least an hour. That can be in the gym or I go for a run. Looks like the I tend to build up muscles quite easily, so I prefer running to gym and have reduced the gym to once a week. It is not my goal to look like a female Arnold Schwarzenegger. I also think I would love the running if I would some some improvement one day ... but still after month and years ... I am still getting out of breath easily. I am applying now different strategies, like long and easy run OR alternating the speed. Will see how I go.

Photo Courtesy by Markus Brosch

• nutrition: As a German, I have my issues with some food here in Australia. I did put myself on a 1500kcal diet right now. According to the standards, this is a medium level ... but I am starving during the day. I am following the plan of a company who provides the food as well. So far ... my compliment ... very nice food. Much, much better then most suppliers on the UQ campus ;o) However, I believe the amount of breakfast (with a late morning) snack is not enough. For dinner they provide the main meal. Ok, change of attitude ... I love the dinners. I think it is ok, when you have dinner before 6pm. I am an early morning person ... so I have my breakfast at 5am ... then a snack between 8-9am ... and I start to starve for lunch around 11. I might increase my input to 1800kcal next week and we will see how I go. I haven't lost any kilo yet.
• is there anything else I can do? ...
  

Did you blog today?

Writing a blog can be soooo difficult. I have a list of things I would like to write about. And yes, I would like to write with at least a bit of quality, so people might like it and come back. To reach this I have several choices:

1. Keep writing until it gets easier and better. OR
2. Write content in advance and leave it at least overnight, re-read and improve and publish the next day.
3. ...
   

You are right when you think ... she must use choice 1 right now ;o) Yes, because I made a commitment to write every second day. And no content is prepared and nothing is in my head right now. But I am committed.

Seriously, if I want to become a good writer I need to follow at least some kind of strategy. I know that I am not the Creator type ... but I still would like to spread my knowledge. At least the knowledge I cannot monetize yet ;o)

From time to time I have a look at the WriteToDone blog from Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch. Some small tips worth putting into practise. Another hint that strategy is needed. So, what's the plan?

Photo Courtesy by Markus Brosch

• List all the topics I would like to write about. That can be a list of 3 things or a list of 50 things. I tend to list a lot of things as I call myself "multi-interested". Normally blogger say you should blog only about one topic. I just don't want to maintain several blogs ... so I will give it a try with one blog.
  
• Stick to your writing schedule of twice or three times a week. The longer your blogs the less frequent you write. I find it hard to follow regularly other blogs. I have up to 15 blogs I am following rss-ed in my Mail application. But I am definitely not up-to-date.
  
• Plan the month ahead in your calendar. Put down the topic with maybe already some notes. That sounds like a good idea, at least to me. I might give it a try.
• Try to provide at least one image per blog ... humans remember pictures more than words.
• I have read several times that you should comment on other blogs to put your word out there, but also to get some kind of interaction. I don't think it is worth to comment on old blogs ... let me know when I am wrong.
• Create the title of blog when you have finished. You will be surprised how the content can change when you are in your flow ;o)

Ok, let's make it happen. I will sit down and schedule my topics for September.