Resolutions

Instead of posting individual posts every day to track my progress (or lack of) in the 60 day challenge, I created this page (https://kudithipudi.org/2012-60-day-resolution/) for the daily entries..

Wish me luck :).

Happy New Year!!

Wishing all of you and your families a healthy and loving 2012. If there is one thing I learnt in 2011, it is that if you are healthy rest of the things in life will follow.

I haven’t posted any updates on my 2011 resolutions in the last few months. So here is a final recap

• Lose the gut
• I really didn’t accomplish the goal of losing the gut. But I gained some good habits (eating breakfast, eating consistently throughout the day, keeping track of my weight)
• I have collected some interesting data as part of tracking my weight through the year. Plan to do some analysis on it later on.
• Final chart of my weight in 2011
• Increase traffic to Kudithipudi.org
• I wrote a bit more in 2011 than in 2010, but not as much as needed.
• Snapshot of 2011 traffic compared to 2010. As you can see, the traffic has increased nearly 80%.. 
• CISSP Certification
• Didn’t attempt this at all.
• Wanted to do this in the last quarter, but things got a bit hectic :).
• Take a Vacation
• Successfully went on a vacation to India.

Overall, 50% of the goals were accomplished. As they say, the glass is half full :). Not bad.

And yes, I am going back to my old habit of not making resolutions :).

After a long hiatus :).. here’s a quick update on my 2011 resolutions. In short.. NOT GOOD.. I haven’t made progress (in fact slid back) on any of the pending items.

• Lose the gut
• I have gained back nearly all the weight I lost.
• I blame it mainly on my mother-in-law :).. She was visiting us for a couple of months and it is amazing what good home cooked food can do to you tummy :).
• I passed the annual insurance discount health check (my cholesterol came down), but need to concentrate on losing the weight.
• Here is the obligatory chart.. 
• Increase traffic to Kudithipudi.Org
• Again no progress.. haven’t written a lot and the traffic is plateauing as a result.
• CISSP Certification
• The books are serving as decorations for my bookshelves :).. Need I say more.

Thinks look pretty dark eh… Let’s see if we can turn them around. Anyone has ideas on how to stick to the plan?

Another late update. I really want to post these updated in the first week of the month, but something or the other always stops me from doing it. Maybe one of my resolution should be to post updates on resolutions on a timely basis :).

• Lose the Gut
  • This is the first month, where my weight at the end of the month was higher than the weight at the beginning. And I blame all of it on the yummy food I had in India.
  • This was also the first month during which I didn’t measure my weight on a daily basis for more than 80% of the time.
  • Here is how the graph looks like
  • I feel like I have hit a plateau in my effort to lose weight. And I think I know why. I stopped exercising (whatever little I used to do 🙂 ). One small resolutions and so many issues :).
• Increase traffic to kudithipudi.org
  • Another goal I didn’t do anything about in April. In fact, this is probably the one goal where I have consistently lagged behind. I haven’t been writing as much as I want to. Plenty of ideas, but at the same time plenty of excuses 🙂 to not write. But does it really matter? I just need to get it done.
• CISSP Certification
  • I started preparing for the certification. I think I should just schedule the exam, so that I have a deadline to meet.
• Vacation
  • With the recent vacation in India, I think this resolution has been met.  One down, three more to go 🙂

A bit late on posting my monthly updates :). I blame it on the travel to India and poor connectivity. Here come the updates

• Lose the gut.
  • I continue to lose weight thanks to the simple diet technique. My lowest point so far is 179.6lbs.. That is nearly 15lbs lower than my max weight this year!! :). Here’s a graph of my daily weight.
  • I haven’t been exercising as much as I used to. Although I have multiple excuses, I don’t think it matters. I should just suck up and stick to the plan. I think my travel to India in April is going to hinder the progress. But I promise to get back on track.
• Increase traffic to Kudithipudi.org
  • This is probably the one goal that I haven’t done a good job making progress on. Although I intended to write several new posts, I didn’t manage to publish them. Here’s a snapshot of March 2011 traffic compared to 2010. It is higher, but not at the level where I want it to be at.
• CISSP Certification
  • Although I did not make direct progress on this goal, I was able to improve my knowledge and network in the security arena by attending the Netsecure ’11 seminar arranged by IIT.
• Vacation
  • Jhanvi and I are going to be in India in April for 3 weeks. So expect a ton of pictures 🙂 in the next few weeks.

Here come the monthly updates on my 2011 resolutions.

1. Lose the gut.
   • Continuting to follow the diet in Tim Ferri’s book. I seemed to have plateaued in February (between 185 – 187 lbs), so I kicked it up a notch with chemicals. OK.. no steriods. Just some good old garlic. Today, I weighed 183lbs!!.. That’s 11.5lbs in 2 months. Here’s a chart of my daily weight since 1/3/2011
   • I think the trick is to really keep the diet simple, so that you don’t have to worry about what you are eating. The 2 egg whites for breakfast is great. In March, I am planning on extending the “keep it simple” to lunch. Some beans and spinach are going to do wonders.
   • I also started practicing Yoga on weekends. This is another thing, once I get up to speed and more comfortable, I plan on doing every day.
   • My running distance is up to 4 miles now.. Up from a embarrassing 1 mile :). And this is the same guy that used to run Marathons :).



2. Increase traffic to kudithipudi.org
   • I published 7 posts in Feb 2011. Not as many as I wanted, but the increase in traffic has been pretty impressive so far. Here is a snapshot of a Google Analytics report comparing the first two month periods of 2010 and 2011. (click on the image for a larger size. The blue line shows 2011 traffic and the green line shows 2010 traffic)
   • I still didn’t publish the posts I have been meaning to for sometime now 🙂
3. CISSP Certification
   • No progress on this yet :(..
   • I did start the process to form a hacker group at work to discuss and brain storm new technologies. Not close to getting certification, but something to keep the mind busy.
4. Vacation
   • Our trip to India is finalized. I even bought the tickets!! And we are going to fly through Abu Dhabi. How abt that for a 3 hour layover vacation 🙂 ?