Doug-at-large

This one is pretty cute I think.

doug

Hao-chan’s curiosity is really insatiable. But she ultimately always ends up at the same place - flying towards my cell phone. I need to get her her own account.

doug

It’s sometimes hard to work with Hao-chan outside the cage because if I try to use the computer she is all over my hands and attacking the cursor when it moves.

doug

Here Hao-chan is helping Hirokazu choose a location for his new condo.

doug

Kojima, the “big” pet store in my neighborhood, is closing after all these years. I used to get pet food for Tao there, and the kennel he never used. And his dog house, that he only used the first year or so until it became a storage shed. And Hao-chan!

They are going to knock it down and build condos. <sigh>

doug

Things seem to be going well the last couple of weeks. I’ve dropped about a lb a week each week. I’m still at 83.6 kg, which is higher than my all-time low of 79.8 kg, and I would really, really like to lose another 10 kg, but things are under control. And the most important thing is that I’ve managed to stay on the diet so far for 690 days without going off program even once. And I’m down a net of 42.4 kg = 93 lb since starting.

Anyway, what I wanted to mention here was my new way of counting “walking exercise calories”.

My previous method used calories per minute and speed. For example, at my current weight, the charts show that at my “power walk” speed I burn 8.1 calories/minute.

On the other hand, for “slow walking and shopping” the same charts show 3 calories/minute.

What’s always bothered me about these numbers is that I often do something in-between, so I am never sure if I am calculating fairly.

For example, if I am shopping but spending more than half my time walking at power-walk speeds from store to store it seems like I am not crediting enough exercise calories used.

On the other hand, if I’m out for a few hours shopping but have spent half that time slowly gazing at large panel TV sets it seems that I’m not really using 3 calories/minute doing that, so I am crediting myself too much.

Plus, while on exercise walks I would like to be able to stop from time to time and chat with neighbors and play with their dogs, etc.

So what I did was this:

My sister sent me a pedometer some time ago, which I hadn’t used. I started using it!

I “calibrated” it first by doing a 15 minute walk non-stop at my known “power walk” speed. Thus I had a very good idea of how many calories I used for the steps recorded on the pedometer. This comes to a little more than 0.075 calories per step.

So lately when I go out I always clip on the pedometer and when I get back record the steps. It makes going out on walking errands more fun! (Note: I admire people who can do 10,000 steps a day. I think that would be very very time-consuming!)

I have compared the “time method” with the “steps method” and have found a very close correlation with the 8.1/3 figures above for when I am constantly moving around at high speed or deliberately going at “shopping speed”. So this new way of calculating helps me take into account the more usual kinds of outdoor walking excursions, which is a mix of speeds, plus start and stopping.

doug

Look - Hao-chan has started a Chinese language school in Shinjuku!

I was able to compress my Tao movie (from when he was a puppy until his last day…) so that it is possible to watch it over the web now:

http://lerner.net/doug/Tao1992-2006

doug

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