My weight loss continues! I'm almost 35 lbs below my heaviest weight that occured during my final Step 1 studying days. Since then I've been on a calorie restriction diet that alternates (depending on what my body tells me) between i) having 3 light meals each day ii) skipping one meal but having 2 full meals. This has been averaging out to a loss of 2.3 lbs/week. I used an app called MyFitnessPal religiously for a few weeks to estimate my daily calorie intake, until I had a better sense of which of my meals were too high-cal. While I occasionally use that function these days, I mostly just use the app to keep track of my daily weight. I measure at roughly the same time every morning for consistency.
As of ~2 weeks ago, I am no longer in the overweight BMI category. As of today, I have reached my average weight in high school (which, I realize in retrospect, still had lots of love handles).
The two biggest obstables I have faced have been i) the 3 day drive down to Miami ii) my first on-call patient at 2am. Between the fatigue and the irregular hormone levels associated with staying up all night, I ended up breathing in 2 or 3 muffins and a few other complimentary bagels because damn, I felt like I was starving. A rage-ful hunger, if you will. Ended up gaining a consistent 4 lbs in that one night, which took a few days to gradually wear away. But yeah, just remember that there are always small setbacks, but don't forget that gradual calorie restriction works, and that its the goal in the long run that matters. Also...skipping breakfast (and substituting with coffee) is much easier, but having an early and light dinner seems to be more effective as far as hitting the scales goes.
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On-call: So, my attending doctor is on call about half the month, which means I'm on call about half the month. He gets alerted via beeper whenever there is a case, and then he text messages me to come join him. This works well except while I'm sleeping, because text message beeps on android phones (Nexus 5 in my case) are not exactly loud. I slept through the first message, but thankfully my colleague was awake when he received the same message and called me up.
I ended up installing SMS Alarm from the google play store. Its not the most full featured program out there, but its free, and doesn't require learning German, so it'll do the job for now. Namely, sounding a loud alarm whenever my attending sends me a text message.
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On to the next topic: the success of my sleep adjustments after utilizing the electronic timer switch.
Or rather, a lack of adequate data points.
My first night, I got a call at 2AM, and worked till 1PM. Then I had to start working on a powerpoint presentation. Slept soundly this night.
The next night, I had to work well into the night to continue improving a powerpoint presentation that was having some unfortunate software problems (damnit Libreoffice, convert to .PPT more smoothly!).
The night after that, I was sleeping soundly until 4AM, when Google alerted me at via my phone that a hacker in Nigeria was trying to get into my e-mail account. Password changed, all active sessions were ended, re-enabled 2-step verification, and reviewed my password recovery options. Sleep adequately screwed up.
And finally, this morning, my neighbour's retarded dogs feel the need to bark in the mornings. And they're still barking. Just shut up dog. Such loud. So wow.
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Oh, turns out TD rejected my visa card application. Apparently I need an income, which is a valid reason, but you would think someone would have explained that in the hour it took me to get through the application.
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