Monday
VR Adventure:
We take a solid hour in the morning to do a few hard-mode Supernatural workouts.
What I want to do is “cheat” and weigh myself after a workout in the morning, before I eat anything.
This does three things.
First, I fast a little longer.
Second, I get my workout out of the way which makes me feel good about myself and de-stresses the day.
And third, I hopefully see some motivating weight-loss, at least a little jump here at the beginning.
Food: 19 WW
Weight: 187.6
It’s not a giant jump down that I was hoping for, but I still got the first two benefits I discussed, and besides, I consumed a bunch last night, so not entirely unexpected.
Today’s Awesome:
I spend a lot of time talking about advances in energy. What about another basic: medicine. How close are we to curing cancer? Obviously there are a ton of different kinds of cancer, but in general, how closer are we? Here is a recent article interviewing excellent authorities.
‘Evidence of infections linked to cancer provide hope of preventing up to half of all cancers’
Cancer is a general definition for a series of diseases, so we cannot take a general approach – a solution for every type of cancer – but we can develop a general strategy. It needs an alliance between the different stakeholders, not only in the health sector, but also in the social sector, because many of the behaviours that favour the onset of cancer are modifiable by lifestyle and prevention. We also have to take advantage of the immense progress in technology. I’m confident we are going to find a better approach to tackle this disease.
We have the possibility via digital technology today to take a lot of data that, in principle, could be related to genome sequencing, since, as far as we know, there are some cancers that are genetically determined. We know that the majority are related to five factors, four of which are behaviours – alcohol use, tobacco use, eating too much, and not doing enough physical activity, as well as pollution. Digital technology can incorporate a lot of data, going from the very general to the specific characteristics of a single person.
For Your Consideration:
We take part of this week to acknowledge The Slap.
Tuesday
VR Adventure:
Little Supernatural workout, 30 minutes. Also, I joined the Supernatural VR Facebook Group, with the hope of finding folks to compete with and share stories and motivation. Hoping it pushes me just a little further each day!
Food: 35 WW
Weight: 188.8
Today’s Awesome:
Meanwhile, a smattering of cancer breakthroughs of 2021.
For Your Consideration:
Wednesday
VR Adventure:
Nice long Supernatural workout today, and behold! A better weight.
Food: CHEAT DAY
Weight: 186.2
Today’s Awesome:
I read this whole thing about what we can expect in 2022, and I’m not sure I’m grasping big expectations. Maybe that’s just wise. Steady progress.
For Your Consideration:
Thursday
VR Adventure:
Another 30 minute Supernatural workout. Back into the classical music selection. So nice.
Food: FAIL DAY
Weight: 188
Today’s Awesome:
Here are some folks jumping in to raise funds for all kinds of cancer, and that’s pretty awesome.
For Your Consideration:
Friday
VR Adventure:
Big ol’ Supernatural workout in the morning.
Food: FAIL DAY
Weight: 188.2
Today’s Awesome:
Here is some progress on cancer treatment: tele-health!
“When your child is going through cancer, just those little things—like you get to stay home one more day instead of having to go to the hospital again—can make a big difference,” Alicia said. Doing the visit virtually “just made it so much easier on the whole family.”
For Your Consideration:
Saturday
Food: 28
Weight: 189
Today’s Awesome:
One super cool frontier in cancer research seems to be in immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy is a promising strategy to treat cancer by stimulating the body’s own immune system to destroy tumor cells, but it only works for a handful of cancers. MIT researchers have now discovered a new way to jump-start the immune system to attack tumors, which they hope could allow immunotherapy to be used against more types of cancer.
For Your Consideration:
Sunday
VR Adventure:
Alright, I recruited Carrie to play along in my Cold War space horror adventure.
I asked around whether it was scary and everyone said no so everyone LIED. Ooof, that red spacesuit guy is horrifying. And even though Carrie watched me play, the upshot is that she just watched me get scared. Still, it’s such a gorgeous game and I want to know what happens in the story, so we’re sticking with it.
Food: FAIL DAY
Weight: 188.4
Today’s Awesome:
Of course, me and my deep learning/machine learning knowledge want to know how I can help. And of course the efforts are there! Even non-experts in cancer research can lend a hand through public challenges. Possibly it could help with spotting cancer, as with this breast cancer detection. There are, however, quite a few barriers to using deep learning in the medical field, despite the hype. The work is hard, but hopefully worth it.
Meanwhile, I’m not the only one who decided to do a deep dive into cancer breakthroughs his week!
Here is an entire set of stories from Axios, and well worth a read.
For Your Consideration:
Outro:
Well, we’re at 188.0 for our rolling, weekly two-week average. Which is still, technically, going down, but only at a rate of like, a tenth of a pound.
It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on. After a day or two of eating well, I see a drop in weight. Then you factor in a party here, a fast food day here, and so on, and I have 3 out of 7 good days of eating. So, not great. I’ve got some strategies for this that I’ll work on now that my exercise is much better.
Together, we will be unstoppable.