Increase the Dataset, Decrease the Pounds: Using science for weight loss

1 July 2016

"The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down" - Adam Savage

It’s been a full six months since the beginning of the year and I now weigh the same amount with my full Hadrian's Wall hiking pack (20 pounds) as I did completely naked on January 1! 

This began 33 pounds ago at the heaviest weight I've ever been. I’m a nerd when it comes to data – I record everything – and my new fitbit helped me finally get the last pieces of data and understanding I needed to really lose the weight. Technically, it was just diet and exercise, but there had always been something missing in the past. I would calculate my goal calorie consumption based on my Basal Metabolic Rate and record everything I ate and what exercises I had done but ended most days hungry or way over my target calories from giving in to the cravings. I found myself less happy and more tired and would eventually call it quits every time. I never stopped recording my weight (and periodically all the calories) because... well... scientist.

Happy doge :)

Turns out that missing piece was being able to figure out how many calories I was expending all throughout the day. With the addition of my fitbit and a good approximation of my caloric burn from my daily routine and my exercise routine, I finally had everything I needed to make it work. And here’s the story, as shown by the numbers, with a few before/after photos for fun. 

This figure certainly shows how I've gotten my new figure!
Graph showing three full years of my weight, as recorded every 
time I visited the gym (2-3x/week). (Click for full-size figure)

What worked for me?

To make a long story short: Fitbit, an injury-free period, and LOTS of walking. 

I’m the last person to jump on a bandwagon, but sometimes there’s a reason everyone's going crazy for a new fad. For me, fitbit has done a wonderful job accurately calculating the calories I’m expending in a day. It estimated that I should be losing ~1 pound per week if I kept to the diet plan (500 fewer calories each day isn’t that bad). I mostly kept to the diet plan and lost 0.8 pounds per week (0.13 pounds per day – yes, I fit a regression line to my dataset!). Part of my previous problem was actually not eating enough. Other diet plans had a fixed number of calories each day so I ended up eating too few calories on most days because I was more active than I realized - Edinburgh is built on seven hills! Now that I had the right data on expended calories, I could do a better job managing my food without getting frustrated and giving up.  And eating more vegetables never hurts…

The other major aspect of this was an injury-free period of time. Ever since I sprained my ankle in 2006, I’ve struggled with a chain of injuries that resulted in some way from that incident. Sprained ankle led to toe pain led to toe surgery led to knee problem led to hip problem led to back problem (you get the idea). It turns out that everything is connected. It also doesn’t help that the little bit of weight gained while injured is really hard to shed when you are never pain-free. For one of the first times in a decade, I’m feeling strong and capable and I’ve taken advantage of this to take back my physical self. 

Before and after: Kristin's wedding in July 2013 (my heaviest weight) compared to me in the same dress a couple of days ago - I had to hold the dress up so it didn't fall off! On the right, I'm holding my belt at the original notch I needed - now 6 notches away! My head shot from my first week at University of Edinburgh (June 2013) compared to a recent head shot from the Hadrian's Wall hike. Pictures really are worth a thousand words :) 

With the move to Scotland came a change in transportation: I. Walked. Everywhere. Even grocery shopping. My average day involves no less than 3 miles, with most days over 4 miles and 6 miles isn't unusual. Without even thinking about dieting (some would argue that Scotland has enough fried and sugary food to rival the US!), I lost a significant amount of weight right off the bat: about 17 pounds. I can’t stress the difference this has made in my life. However, I don’t know how I could have incorporated this change while I was still living in the US. So many cities are not built to be walking-friendly and a car is just required as part of daily life. I recognize the differences, but I'm sure I would struggle to incorporate my current regime if I had to move back.

What's next?

I’m seeing muscles reappear that have been hidden by fat for years. I’m feeling like I have more energy. My joints feel more solid. I feel like my ‘old’ athletic and outdoorsy self is emerging after hibernation (although I never let it stop me, there were also a lot of times where I had to push through the pain to see that part of myself). I've achieved my big goal and now I'm eyeing the last 6 pounds down to my college weight. At this point, however, I’m just going to keep eating healthy and doing the stuff that I love and see where that leads me!

(Almost) Total Eclipse

20  March 2015

I was a little late for work, but getting to see the eclipse was worth it! Nico and I watched from the top garden terrace of Waverley Gate (where he works). The 93% total eclipse wasn't enough for complete darkness, but certainly enough to see a difference. It was a bit cloudy, but it meant that we didn't need to use a filter/special glasses for most of it. Here are some photos from Edinburgh and some from Svalbard (Thanks, Penny!) for comparison. Enjoy!

The beginning of the eclipse.

Through my fancy camera filter (I held the eclipse glasses up in front of my camera).

Can you hear the music? It's not quite a total eclipse, but close enough!

Peak eclipse - a twilight feel.

Looking over to the busy Calton Hill. 

The other side of the eclipse.

Eclipse over Arthur's Seat.

Series of photos showing the progressing eclipse in Svalbard. No post-processing or special camera equipment.
(Photos by Penelope How)

First Update From the Field

17 Jan 2014

We have been having email problems, but hopefully they have been resolved so I will be able to keep you updated more regularly during the last half of our field season.

We arrived 10 days ago and had an interesting time setting up camp – digging out the depot from last year took hours of shoveling! Getting the tents set up, dinner cooked, and beds ready took the rest of the evening and it was almost 2am when we finally got to sleep. Luckily, the sun is up all day so we never have to worry about running out of daylight!

The science has been going well so far, but not every day has been beautiful weather. On our bad weather days, we have been spending our time catching up on sleep in our individual tents, taking care of any maintenance that needs to be done, organizing our research notes, and eating very well. It may be a bad day for field work, but all the fresh snow was perfect for making ice cream! Our field assistants are quite talented chefs, taking the regular dehydrated food provided in the man-food box (one point to the first person to explain why it’s called man-food) and turning it into something reasonably good! With only a few extra ingredients, the typical meals can turn into gourmet-feeling dishes (well, in comparison anyway). It’s amazing how good a homemade cheese sauce on pasta with a bit of spam can taste after eating only dehydrated food for a while.

On our good weather days, we all meet in the tent for the sched (scheduled check-in with base) at 10:15am.  Then we have another cup of tea (it is a UK field party, after all!), pack our bags, and get ready to go. We pack up the skidoos and the sledges (which haven’t changed much since the original sledges used in the early field expeditions!) and head out to the appropriate mountain range for the day. The work varies depending on the weather and the day. We have a list of our priorities and we’re working our way through. 

We’ve been in the field for at least part of 7 days, had three bad weather days, and used one day to initially get camp set up. It’s been productive so far, but we need another 4-5 good weather days to finish all that we had hoped to do. The chances are good that we will get most of that done, but we could be looking at leaving the field as early as Jan 25, so potentially only another week here - we will just have to make every day count! Of course, given weather and plane availability, it’s also possible we could be here for another 3 weeks, so we will just have to see how it goes…

From the Australian Museum Victoria, one of the original sledges used by
Ernest Shackleton while exploring Antarctica in 1907

I had planned to incorporate more science into this post, but I want to be able to send this off without slowing down the system too much, so more on the science and other details in future posts. Thanks for all the support while we’re down here!

10 Things You Should Know About Antarctica

[Note: Due to my Antarctic outreach project, I will now have two types of questions. Feel free to answer them unless they are specifically labeled "student" questions. In those cases, I'm hoping one of the students in the groups that I'm working with will answer. There will be fun prizes to the student(s) or group with the most points when I return!]

I'm just starting to pack for Antarctica, so I've been doing some research about my destination. I'm already learning a lot!

Top 10 things you should know about Antarctica (and my trip)

1) Polar bears don't live in the Antarctic! On a similar note, polar bears and penguins can't meet because penguins don't live in the Arctic. Children's books that show polar bears talking to penguins are complete fiction ;)

Beautiful ice towers. Photo by Dave Parmelee.

2) Only ~2% of Antarctica is ice-free. We'll be camping on ice but working on mountains. There's a LOT more ice than there are bare mountains! We also won't be too far away from Mt. Vinson (Highest mountain in Antarctica at 4892 m). We'll only be some 200+ km away, but it's a little too far to travel. I think we're going to have enough of our own peaks to climb in the Patriot Hills, Marble Hills, and Independence Hills where we'll be working.

3) Antarctica is big. But is it bigger than the US? Is it bigger than Europe? NASA has a nice figure showing how the US and Antarctica would look if we overlapped the maps at the same scale. There's no comparable high-quality image of Europe superimposed on Antarctica, but it's about the same size as the USA.

Comparison of contiguous United States and Antarctica.
It doesn't look this way on many other maps because of the
projection (the way it's drawn).  Image source: NASA.

Helicopter on Mt. Erebus (background).
Photo by Dave Parmelee

Lava lake, Mt Erebus, Antarctica

4) There are volcanoes in Antarctica. There is some amazing research being done on Mt. Erebus, which is especially unique because of the persistent lava lake inside the volcano. Of course, this particular volcano (and my friends doing research over there) is on the other side of the continent from where I'll be (2049 km away). Check out this link for information on the volcano (the 'live imagery' page has live images of the lava lake) or check out this link for a cool dating project that I helped a friend with.


5) It gets cold in Antarctica. Of course it gets cold, but how cold is "cold"? It will be summer while we're there, so at least it will  be light and the warmest it gets all year. At Rothera, the summer temperatures can be quite pleasant, hovering around 0 degrees C. However, at our camp (away from the ocean), we expect much colder temperatures (last year, days were around -10 or -20 deg C, but it could be much colder).  However, this is nothing compared to the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth: -94 degrees Celsius! You can use the converter on my blog (to the right) to see what that would be in Fahrenheit. This is a recent record (2010) from scientists using remote sensing at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
For a point: what were the researchers studying when they discovered the record-setting temperatures?
For a student point: What is the new coldest temperature on earth in degrees Fahrenheit?

6) Antarctica is not a country and has no independent government. Many countries signed a treaty and its additional protocols, making Antarctica a 'natural reserve devoted to peace and science.' Although Antarctica may have reserves of minerals, oil, or diamonds, the agreement bans mining and preserves the natural environment. Military is also not allowed unless it is to support a scientific project or other peaceful mission. This is a very successful treaty and shows that nations can cooperate with one another. In Antarctica, the harsh environment helps to encourage this cooperation. When someone needs help, everyone works together, regardless of nationality.

7) Antarctica is a desert. Despite the thick ice sheet (which averages about a mile thick), the continent really doesn't receive much precipitation (water as either rain or snow).The average for the whole continent is a very small amount: only 6.5 inches of precipitation per year. However, in the center of the continent, it can be as small as 2 inches per year! Any area that receives <10 inches of rain is classified as a desert, so Antarctica surely counts. For comparison, New York gets an average of 36 inches of precipitation per year (3 feet) and Florida gets ~85 inches (7 feet!).

Camp on the flanks of Mt. Erebus. Photo by Dave Parmelee

8) We only get 31 kg of gear (plus our cold-weather kit bag). This is basically just one, 50-pound checked bag plus a small carry-on backpack. This needs to fit our science equipment (laptops and other fancy equipment for the geophysics, hammers & sample bags for the cosmogenic rock sampling). Hopefully, we will be able to fit all the creature comforts in there as well. At least we won't need too much shower stuff since there will be no bathing in the field! I will, however, need to find room for a small birthday cake...

9) It will take me one train ride, 4 plane fights, and about 3 days to get to Rothera (the base in Antarctica). I'll be spending a little while on the base as we pack for the trip and I get the rest of my "How to camp in Antarctica" training. It's a little ways away from home (listed from Cambridge because that's where the British Antarctic Survey is based, but I'm further North than that):
Cambridge (UK) to Rothera = 14435 km

Map of the important flying locations in Antarctica.
From British Antarctic Survey website.

Rothera to South Pole = 2492 km

For reference, New York to San Francisco is only 4126 km and takes approximately 6.5 hours on a plane.

10) Our camp will be >80 degrees south latitude. Needless to say, we're going to be in a very remote location.
Camp Location: -80.272587, -81.230101. Hint: If you copy those coordinates into Google Earth (free to download), you can see the location on the map! It's hard to find the right way to explain exactly how remote our camp will be, but here are a few indicators:

Some of the planes, called twin otters, have skis for
landing on snow and ice.
Photo from BAS www.photo.antarctica.ac.uk

• From the base (Rothera) to our camp, we will have to take at least 3 shorter plane rides (Rothera - Fossil Bluff - Sky-Blu - ? - Camp). Some of the planes will even have skis instead of wheels! 

• Rothera to our camp: 1468 km

• Finally, the best indicator of a remote location:
  Our camp to nearest McDonald's = 4336 km. 

It can be nice to get away from it all for a while :)

Student Question: How many kilometers from our base to the South Pole? Are we closer to Rothera (the base) or the South Pole? (You will probably want to use Google Earth for this - cool tool called the ruler measures distances).

Off to keep packing!

Calling all future scientists!

Do you know any kids who might be interested in learning about Antarctica? Are you interested in learning more about the mysterious continent down south yourself? Read on to find out how!

As part of my postdoc, I'm headed to Antarctica in January 2014 (January 2-Feburary 10) to do geology field work in a remote mountain range from a camp based on the ice. I will be looking at how the ice sheet has thinned through time (geologic past, so over thousands of years). Ever since I was little, I have dreamed of going to Antarctica and I'm finally getting that chance. I'd like to take this opportunity to inspire any children who, like me, are curious about Antarctica and want to get their questions answered and I want to show them how cool science can be by sharing this opportunity (electronically) with as many people as possible.

Our neighbors at Rothera (the base). Photo: Andy Hein

My original thought was that kids might be interested in learning about Antarctica, but it turns out that there’s really no reason to limit this to kids! Anyone who’s interested is welcome to ask questions and participate, but I’m still reaching out to parents/friends/family of kids who might be interested in learning more about the mysterious, chilly continent down south. Kids are so curious and creative - I can't wait to see what they come up with! Being a scientist is about asking questions, so 'every child is a scientist' (as this article explains).

This is something that kids can do by themselves or with their classes at school, if parents/teachers are interested. If you have a teacher friend who might be interested, please feel free to share my contact info. I'm happy to develop something to work with as many or as few hours that they might want to put into this project. I’m also happy to continue this after returning and include information on Scotland as well :)

Thanks to Andy Hein for the photo!
See the research blog from last year here

I will be posting information online via my blog and twitter as I prepare to leave, while I'm down there in the field, and once I get back. I'm planning to document the regular living conditions pretty thoroughly since I don't even know what to expect so I assume other people will also be curious. In addition to just reading things on a website, I thought of some other fun ways to get involved with classes, even though I can't be there in person. Here are some of my ideas:

1.  Video chats: Video/skype chats before and after I go to explain what I'm going to be doing and then how things turned out. The internet is unfortunately not good enough to do anything like this directly from the base in Antarctica so it can only happen before and after. 

My little science explorer mascot :)

2.  Question/Experiment 'Scavenger Hunt': Before I go, everyone can help me make a list of questions or "experiments" for me to perform while I'm there. Kind of like a scavenger hunt for me once I arrive down South. The people on base are always happy to help with things like this so even if I don't know the answer (which will be common!), there will be lots of people down there who do lots of other things and they should be able to help. This means that everyone can ask a much broader range of questions and I can tweet/post answers as I go. I really hope someone wants to do this - I think it sounds like a lot of fun!

3. Questions for kids: I can ask them to figure things out or look up answers to questions I post and give out prizes to the first right answer when I get back (or postcards sent from Antarctica). 

4. Penguin Stories: I have a mascot that I will bring with me - a baby penguin. He's going in the field and he will help me tell my science story. Who doesn't like penguins? And penguins telling stories? What’s not to like?

5. Other directions: There are lots of general educational materials out there on Antarctica - as a research area, international treaty area, early explorer/adventure destination, climate change research center, etc. If there's a particular angle that a teacher or student is interested in, I can try to help steer a discussion in that direction and probably provide some educational materials as well.

Please talk this idea over with anyone you think might be interested in the opportunity to learn more about Antarctica and get back to me with your thoughts. I'm in the early planning stages and trying to get a feel for who might be interested and how this will work best for everyone.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

 Please feel free to contact me via the email listed on my university web page. I look forward to hearing from you if you are interested or if you just want to contribute your questions to the list!