Don't trust them, it is not cheap to eat in Thailand
You might have heard that food in Thailand is very cheap. You can go out for dinner spending less than two euros per person. This might be one of the reasons why I found it hard to find Airbnbs with a full kitchen. By full kitchen, I mean to have a stove where you can use a regular pan, nothing too fancy.
The reality for me is perceived different. Yes, you can pay little money for eating out. The problem is that your diet will likely end up being based in rice or noodles with a small protein source.
This is a problem because protein is crucial for you as a human being. It doesn’t matter that your number one priority isn’t to look like Schwarzenegger, your body needs it. You use it for many functions from transporting molecules around your body, storing them, for protecting you against diseases, for giving structure to your hair, nails, muscles and many more. In short, you need to eat protein. Eating only rice and noodles isn’t going to make you arrive to your recommended daily intake.
Once you put more protein source ingredients in your plate, the price of your bill will increase.
🌏 Chiang Mai
Another one about Thailand, pollution.
It seems I am ramping up in this newsletter against this country. Don’t take me wrong, I am enjoying my time here but, I want to be critical with the “bad parts”.
After coming to the city, it seemed like the air wasn’t the cleanest. Even though I was going for walks outside, it seemed the air wasn’t fresh. After a bit of research, I found out that this wasn’t just an idea in my mind, the air quality here is very bad. I found a very nice website to see pollution levels in different cities. The one for Chiang Mai, where I currently live.
You can look yours up. I find it a nice exercise because I had never thought of that so much as now. Since it is not sure yet where I will go in the coming months, I want to take this into account on the next location decision.
🤸♀️ Preparing a calisthenics plan
Going with the flow, in some ways, has been something I have done and often do in my life. However, if you don’t have a minimum plan on where you are heading to in your life, most likely you won’t get there. That’s why I created MyIdealLife.
For improving my pull ups, I have been following a training plan. Because of that, I have been mainly training in gyms since November.
This Saturday I’m going to Japan. The next two weeks I will be travelling pretty much every day, so my routine is going to change. There are some days I plan to go to parks to train outside or to train at home.
Because of this, I did some research on how to train the lower body when you don’t have external weights. It seems to me, that if you have a pull up bar, with ones’ weight you already have a lot of hard exercises you can do to work out. In comparison, I can do over a hundred free squats without getting too tired.
My conclusion was that I can use the time, to work on building a good pistol squat foundation. Plus, I can do some exercises that activate the lower body combined with jumps, for example, squat jumps or jumping lunges. Also, holding the exercise like in sumo squats for a longer time, increases the time under tension for the muscle. My plan is to combine those techniques while working on mobility, an area that which is important for growing older in a better body condition.
For upper body, if I can’t find pull up bars nearby, or I end up working out in a room, I was also thinking of working on my handstand technique. As well as using push ups and plank variations to activate a bit the shoulders as well as building core strength.
That being said, I don’t want to stress about working out when there is a tight travel schedule. I keep these in mind for the days that I have more free time or I can plan the workout first thing in the morning.
👩💻 What have I been up to
The last days I have closed a project that Alba, my cofounder, and I launched last year. CompassMe was an accountability health group for Spanish speakers. It has been beautiful to work with her and loosing a bit my fear of launching, of showing my work to the world.
Regarding my nutrition game, a person that I admire a lot, gave me honest constructive feedback. This is the kind of feedback I appreciate very much because it might hurt, but if that person is ahead of you in the direction that you want to head to, it might save you lots of time. Part of it was this quote:
People buy 4 things and 4 things only. Ever. Those 4 things are time, money, sex, and approval/peace of mind. If you try selling something other than those 4 things, you will fail.
The feedback was that although the idea seems nice, the concept I had in mind was too complex for doing an MVP. I had thought of doing mini nutritional games and although they could be fun to play, game developing is hard enough in itself. In order to build a decent first version, it would likely take me months.
For the good or the bad, I am quite a stubborn person. So I was thinking on what to do next, if the nutrition game was really what I found the most meaningful right now. It is hard for me to let go.
CompassMe taught me that it is beautiful to build something. That people appreciate more than I thought of when you give them a service of value that helps them.
I concluded that even though this might seem like another project that I am putting to the side, I will focus now on another different solution where I see more potential that could be beneficial for others.
☀️ Sunbathe
And talking about other solutions… Sunbathe is the next solution that I am starting to work on. It is going to be a mobile app that will remind you when to go out for a walk in the sun for you to get enough vitamin D.
This vitamin is very beneficial for our health in many ways. I didn’t know so much about it until I saw it more in depth during one of my nutrition classes. Having a deficit of vitamin D can lead to health complications since it takes part in our immune system, cell growth, muscle function and many more.
I have been feeling like a researcher, taking many notes on different papers, studies and articles I have found on the topic. The following days, I will work on the service to calculate the time for your walk to get the minimum daily intake of vitamin D.
That’s it for me for this week.
Thanks for reading.
I love you very much world,
Julia