Jimmy's Oasis

99th post and updates on my health and bookstore ideas

Jimmy Chen -

It's still a bit difficult for me to believe, but I will have written a blog post every day for 100 days by this time tomorrow. The 100-day challenge itself is something I will reflect on in my 100th post, so today I will talk about the other two long-running topics that I've focused on during this journey - my health, and my plan to open a bookstore.

Health

Since I started tracking on August 7th, I've lost significant weight - from 74.4kg in early August to 67.1kg two days ago. My waist circumference has decreased from 89.5cm to 81cm. I've improved from my first run at an 8'46" pace over 3km to a personal best of 5'53" earlier this month.

I'm not sure whether my levels of cholestorol, blood sugar, or uric acid have gone down as it hasn't yet been three months since my last health check, but I'll make sure to do a blood test before the end of the year.

Some final reflections on the most effective aspects of my health improvement journey:

  • The things I measured were the things I improved on. I weighed myself in the morning every day, and seeing the number influenced countless micro-decisions I made. Tracking my average pace for my runs almost certainly helped me to improve as well.
  • Find a few easily accessible healthy meals and just eat them over and over. It's better to form habits and be consistent than be over-ambitious. I think I might have eaten three specific meals (beans and eggs, an energy bowl from Lokal, and a wrapless burrito from a Mexican restaurant) more than my next ten most frequent meals combined.
  • If I summarize my diet as three simple principles: 1) avoid white carbohydrates; 2) avoid fructose; 3) schedule a "cheat day" every week.

Bookstore

No one around me thinks opening an English bookstore is a good idea, which has made me break it down into ever simpler concepts. The simpler the initial concept is, the less costly it would be to start on my own. Currently, my version is as follows:

Mission: make it possible in Shanghai to read any English book.

Vision: a marketplace for members to browse, buy and sell old English books, with digital versions to fill gaps in the collection.

Initial concept: reading room decorated with physical books donated by members, and a few Kindles/iPads holding the more obscure titles (members can request that we purchase and download new titles they'd like to read).

If I find a small laneway house (or the ground floor of a laneway house) in a good location that I like, asking for a below market rental fee, I'll give it a shot.