Common:
Neo first school performance
Snorkel at Coron first for Neo and Geet
Mine:
First home meal by Ate Luisa
Shangs speakeasy
Squash revisit
Personal trainer
Geet:
Running and tennis start
Davao and Boracay trips
Monday, December 30, 2024
Friday, July 14, 2023
10 diet myths wearing a CGM device bust for me
- Avoid carbs for dinner
- Pure carb dishes are fine as long as
they are had only for breakfast
- Protein shake with any fruit is fine
- Protein shake should only be had on
days you work out
- Ensuring some nonveg in a meal is
good enough to meet our daily protein requirements
- The only thing that matters in a
meal is ensuring it has a balance mix of macronutrients
- White rice is the enemy
- A little packaged snack or juice can
hardly do much harm
- Coffee to break the fast in the
morning is bad for the gut
- Intermittent fasting is the best
1. Avoid carbs for dinner
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like prince and dinner like a pauper” –
Adelle Davis. And then some of us stretched that ‘dinner like a pauper’ bit to
completely weed out those waist-aggravating carbs.
Turns out, that zero carb dinners causes nocturnal glycemia, where your
glucose levels drops below the recommended band of 70
mg/dL (3.9 mmol/L) and 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L).
So, I started experimenting with carb additions to my dinner, and if I
have just a little carb, paired with sufficient proteins and/or veggies, and
eaten before 7pm, my nocturnal glucose levels are a lot more stable and within
the recommended bandwidth throughout the night.
However, any excesses, like experiments with biryani one night and ice
cream on another, shoots up glucose levels, and this spike at the end of the day
is worse than daytime spikes, because the latter is unavoidable as I will explain
further in below points, and the only chance at having a straight-line glucose trend
at night is lost with that carb over-dose.
Newfound truth: Eat some, but not nothing, and certainly not too much of
carb for dinner.
2. Pure carb dishes are fine as long as
they are had only for breakfast
Most Indian breakfast dishes are guilty of being pure carb. It’s dosa and
potato, upma with veggies you can literally count, or puttu and banana where I
come from in Kerala. I used to think it’s fine to have these pure carb
breakfast dishes as a way to compensate for those zero carb dinners.
Turns out, pure carb breakfasts causes the highest glucose spikes in a
day, because by breakfast time, glucose levels are at its lowest, having
steadily fallen through the night, and then this first meal of the day with
only carb is the worst thing you could do your oxidative stress.
Newfound truth: Include some protein with the breakfast dish. Either a protein
shake, or simply an egg topped on the dosa or upma you’re having.
3. Protein shake with any fruit is fine
Protein shake with a banana and protein shake with strawberries have huge
differences. It’s true bananas are incredibly healthy, and far more nutrient
dense than strawberries. However, the excess carbs that banana have doesn’t
compensate for the protein in the shake, which ends up shooting up the glucose
levels.
Newfound truth: Protein shakes should be prepared with lower carb fruits
4. Protein shake should only be had on
days you work out
I believed protein shakes must only be had when I work out to rebuild
and repair those inflamed muscle fibers. Otherwise, the protein may be in
excess which could damage the kidney.
Turns out, we need a LOT of protein to really damage the kidney. Above 3.3g of protein per
kilo of body weight per day, which even for a 60-kilo tiny Indian male like
me, is something like 6 chicken breasts, which is impossible for me to eat over
the course of an entire day. And even if the protein is higher than what I
require for muscle repair (probably in the range of 2-3.3g of protein per kilo
of body weight per day), being water soluble, the protein comes out quite
easily with sweat and urination.
So, what I really need to do is have as many dishes through the day with
protein in it, including the protein shake to meet my protein intake,
irrespective of whether I’ve worked out or not.
Newfound truth: Never restrict protein, and have as much of it in as
many meals possible through the day
5. Ensuring some nonveg in a meal is
good enough to meet our daily protein requirements
For the same reasons mentioned in the previous point, just ensuring the
presence of nonveg in a dish is insufficient. We would need to increase that
quantity of protein as well. Be it a protein shake daily, or 2 eggs with that
upma, always try to increase the quantity of protein in every meal.
Newfound truth: Ensure protein takes center stage (or center plate) in every
meal
6. The only thing that matters in a
meal is ensuring it has a balance mix of macronutrients
A balance of macronutrients is paramount in every meal. Companies like Uba create utensils to remind you to include
all 3 macronutrients of carbs, proteins and fats in every meal.
Turns out, just ensuring the good mix of macronutrients by itself isn’t sufficient.
The order in which you eat them and the time of day you eat them also matter.
The exact same dish, if had carb first, causes a much higher glucose spike.
What I did before eating a carb main course like a pizza was to have a soup
before that, and the glucose spike was tempered.
Time of day also matters. Having a meal slightly later than your usual
time causes a higher glucose spike, since your glucose levels would have
started dropping at the usual time it is expecting the food.
Newfound truth: A balance of macronutrients should be had at the same
time everyday in an order that the carb is eaten last
7. White rice is the enemy
Any kind of processed carb is quite bad for the body, as I will explain further in point 8 below. However, different types of processed carbs have different degrees of glucose spikes.
Turns out, bread and including the
glorified brown bread, causes a much higher glucose spike for me than rice. I
wondered if this had to do with growing up in India on a rice-rich diet, but
there is no literature to support this.
So, it’s probably just my gut which seems to tolerate rice better than
bread.
Having said this though, brown rice is still better than white rice. Both
from a glucose stability as well as other health benefits, as it happens to be less
processed than white rice.
Newfound truth: White rice is not all bad especially if the alternate is
bread
8. A little packaged snack or juice can
hardly do much harm
Packaged snacks and juices are another form of processed carb like white
rice, and while I thought a tiny snack would hardly do much harm, it turns out
that even a little bit causes a wild spike. And what’s worse, every steep spike
leaves a reverberation through the rest of the day, like the aftershocks
following an earthquake. So, the little snack and juice has caused far worse
oxidative stress than a white rice meal or even the pure carb breakfast. At
least the rice and carb meals offered some sort of nutrition in exchange for
the oxidation, but this snack and juice comes solely with the baddies, and it
doesn’t matter if it is even a tiny bit.
Newfound truth: If you need to have a packaged snack, might as well go
all in.
9. Coffee to break the fast in the
morning is bad for the gut
Coffee on an empty stomach is a bad idea.
It is better to have some other beverage, even simple hot lemon water as the
first drink the morning before coffee. I used to delay drinking coffee all the
way to post breakfast.
Turns out, coffee just before breakfast helps ease the glucose spike as
you’ve tempered your gut with the milk protein.
So, from a glucose spike point of view, coffee before breakfast turns
out better than coffee after breakfast. And if you are still having that other
warm beverage first thing in the morning, and coffee a little later along with
breakfast, you are still getting the best of both worlds.
Newfound truth: Enjoy coffee before breakfast and/or after breakfast
10. Intermittent Fasting is the best
Intermittent Fasting offers a
ton of benefits but there’s increasing evidence that its true impact can only
be seen when it follows a 16 hour plus fasted state. And such long hours in a
fasted state directly conflicts with the amount of protein you need to consume
in a day. Therefore, in a battle being the benefits of Intermittent Fasting and
protein consumption, the latter wins, especially as you grow older when the
body starts to lose muscle mass.
Newfound truth: F* Intermittent Fasting
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Amsterdam marathon
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Babymoon
Prelude
I never thought I would write this simply because I never thought it would happen. And I never thought it would happen because I exaggerated parenthood in my head. Would see people like Jeethu over-investing in parenting and decided it was something I could never do given the number of other things I have going on.
I used to
always say that it may take an earth-shattering event for me to come around to
becoming a parent. And then this year we had the pandemic.
For the
first time ever, I decided to just let it be and see if anything happens. And
all it took was just that first time, because we immediately realized we are
expecting, and everything changed from that moment.
We got a
car, and not just any car, but literally the dream BMW I wanted ever since our
Chintu i10. Then I got promoted. Something I have been waiting for so long.
And as if
all the pieces had to align themselves perfectly, it so happened that my role
was to start on September 1, and I was finishing my previous role by the end of
July, giving me exactly the full month of August as a break before I resume
work.
Again, something
I always wanted to do - have a break in between roles.
In every transition
I had in the past, I moved instantly from one role to another. I remember all
my engineering friends having a long break between BE and their first job, but
I barely got a few days. I had to miss out on my first ever international trip
that Hari and Bala ended up going by themselves because of that job. This trend
just continued. Even when I was relocating to Netherlands, all I had was a week
between getting to know that I was to move here and landing up here.
This time
though, not only did I get the full month break, but I also aptly got it in my
birthday month, and the month the rest of Europe is on holiday given it is the
best season of the year.
It was
literally all pieces falling together, and we set off on our 2-week hiatus filled with scenic views and delicious food.
Luxembourg
Our first stop.
I would have ideally liked to travel a little more than just 4 hours from
Rotterdam, but we had to make do with this given the time it took to pack and
finally leave home.
No complaints
though, as we slept comfortably at Nirav’s place and then ate a hearty meal at
Romit’s the next day given the awesome cook he is, before proceeding to our
next stop.
Baden-Baden
I never
knew West Europe had thermal spas like Budapest or Istanbul or even New
Zealand. We figured this place existed just 2 days before deciding to travel
there and so glad we did. The hotel we stayed itself had a spa and swimming
pool which I maximized. But beyond that, there were big community spas at
walking distance where we could literally spend the entire day, much like the geothermal
pools of Iceland.
Celebrated
my birthday here among great German beer and local food, and of course the
coveted Black Forest cake of Black Forest!
Zurich
This was a quick halt for Geet to complete her Coaching course before we continue towards Italy, and for me to get an opportunity to meet Munda.
Deepak and Supriya were kind enough to once again share their place. And
it was a perfect prelude for what is coming given the interaction we had with their little 2-year-old.
What made
the stay even better was that it was Ganpati at this time, and Geet got an opportunity
to even perform Visarjan that we little expected to happen in this part of the
world.
From here
we drove towards Tuscany, with one stop at Lake Como for our first Italian meal
of the trip.
Marina di
Carrara
The highlight
of our trip. This place was simply stunning. Nobody ever talks about it and the
only tourists there were the 2 of us. But it really should be more popular.
For one, this
is a town by the Tuscany beach that is filled with youngsters wearing next to
nothing. For another, it is just an hour from Cinque Terra, which is exactly
what La Spezia serves for tourists wanting to visit the colorful 5 towns of
Instagram.
We figured
Marina di Carrara is so much better than La Spezia as an option to stay in
Tuscany close to Cinque Terra, and the next 2 days were incredible.
The first
day we travelled to Cinque Terre and revisted Riomaggiore and Monterossa, the 2
towns we liked the most here.
They were too
many tourists and the weather way too hot for us to enjoy it much though.
The next
day we visited Porto Venere and this was an even better place than Cinque Terre
to visit. Similar colorful houses and beaches, but fewer people and more restaurants.
Lauterbrunnen
We drove
from Italy to Lauterbrunnen with another quick stop at Lake Como, this time
meeting Christina for lunch.
Lauterbrunnen
is again lesser known for this specific highlight – the sunset off the mountain.
We got to experience this given we reached there exactly one hour before the
sunset, and the views were breathtaking.
We drove
back from Lauterbrunnen to Rotterdam in one stretch for 12 hours in a day, but
it was fine as we felt we had a good enough trip and now wanted to get back to
our own bed at home, and prepare ourselves for the next phase.
Saturday, May 2, 2020
How to measure marketing effectiveness with irrefutable data
The
difference between Sales and Marketing is the very first thing you learn at
B-School. Philip Kotler taught us that Marketing is about creating value for something, and Sales about the
realization of that value.
However,
what none of us learnt at B-School, and possibly still grappling with, is how
do you measure the effectiveness of Marketing? Sales is the most
straightforward thing to measure, but Marketing seems to be measured basis the
whims of the marketer themselves.
Most
organizations use something called Brand Equity where they define a bunch of
parameters for the brand and track the scores against them basis responses from
consumers. Writing that itself sounds like hogwash.
With Digital
Marketing, you can quantify the effectiveness of Marketing a little better, but
even the KPIs like CPM, ROMI, Conversion Costs etc are only related to a
specific campaign, and does not differentiate between the legacy, penetration, usage
or recency of the brand.
One
seemingly straightforward manner to measure Brand Equity was once narrated by
Nitin Paranjpe at Unilever, where he said the exact price difference between
the average value of the category and the price the brand is capable of
commanding, is the Brand Equity for the Brand.
While this
is possibly the closest to measure the effectiveness of marketing with irrefutable
data, since there is measurable currency involved, just like in Sales, is there
any other way to measure the effectiveness of marketing?
One possible
option could be the Turnover contribution of all the non-core business of a Brand.
For
example, in the case of Harley Davidson, 12% of its overall Turnover comes from
accessories like Helmets and Jackets linked to the Harley Davidson Brand. These
may be a distraction from the core product of Harley Davidson, their bikes, and
possibly the least profitable as well. But the fact that consumers are so loyal
to the brand that they spend on these accessories, shows the strength of the
Harley Davidson brand.
The
earphones, charging cables and phone cases of the iPhone could define the Equity
for Apple, where consumers may purchase these even if they don’t have an
iPhone, which only shows the strength of the Apple brand.
The caveat
to this option is that the very premise behind the existence of any brand is to
grow its business, and the way to grow business is to bring in more users
(courtesy Byron Sharp from Why Brands Grow), and therefore every brand, Apple
included, is always looking to democratize their offerings, so that more users
can buy into their core products and services.
Anything outside
of this is simply a distraction that does not help grow the business. Apple for
example will grow by creating a cheap iPhone that more consumers can purchase
rather than selling phone cases!
However, if
a Brand is on the journey to build loyalty and not grow penetration (I know
Byron Sharp and all of his lackeys will vehemently disagree this to be the job
for any brand at all), then it is possible to use this specific metric of
non-core Turnover contribution to measure the Equity of the Brand and therefore
the effectiveness of Marketing.
Take a
luxury brand like Louis Vuitton for example. Maybe they don’t really care about
getting more users and are losing significant value to counterfeits. But if
their sole purpose is to build loyalty on the brand, then this form of measurement
may indeed have some merit.
What do you
think about this this form of measuring Marketing?
Are you
aware of any other ways to measure Marketing with irrefutable data?
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Importance of partnerships in running a successful business
Every single
time someone quotes a successful business, it is always attributed to one
person. Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sam
Walton of Walmart, Richard Branson of Virgin, the list is endless.
Occasionally,
the success of a business is attributed to the entire team rather than a single
person. Semco Partners from Brazil is probably the best example here. They were
one of the earliest companies to move from corporate autocracy to corporate
democracy, where the decision making was left to the employees.
Back in 1980
when Semco underwent this transition, they had many skeptics, but they have
proved they could be like a bunch of ants working towards to a common goal of
building an anthill, without any direction from a single leader.
One could
argue that there indeed was a leader in Ricardo Semler who laid the foundation
with a motivating vision, and this brings us back to the first point of
attributing the success of a business to an individual.
A motivating
vision is the driving force behind several companies today, in some cases that
vision has surpassed a century of its existence. Unilever is a prime example
here where despite divesting their margarine business a few years back, which
was the basis of their origin (Uni was the margarine brand and Lever was the
soap brand that formed the company 134 years ago) they continue to uphold the
values setup by the founder, Lord Lever.
Unilever
and Semco are great examples of a team working efficiently despite their
founders being long gone. Apple and Walmart are great examples of companies
that continue to be quoted in the same breath as their founder. However, in all
cases, success is either attributed to an individual, or a team that has embraced
the vision of an individual. Very rarely is any credit given to one important
element of all these companies, which is the person who first partnered the founder.
This is
about Steve Wozniak partnering Steve Jobs, Paul Allen partnering Bill Gates,
and possibly even Helen Walton partnering Sam Walton.
This person
is the inspiration, the execution, the pragmatism, or sometimes just the
capital, behind that visionary. But there is usually that single entity that
compliments another in a manner that it snowballs into something much larger
than anything each individual of that partnership ever deemed possible.
We never
give this second person much credit because our brain remembers in stories, and
stories are best told with one hero. It was just Neil Armstrong or Usain Bolt.
Nobody ever remembers or at least cares too much about who came second.
There are
exceptions through. Wright brothers were a partnership, and so were Edmund
Hilary and Tenzing Norgay. But these are exceptions because their stories were always
written and shared with both members together.
The importance
of a partnership should not be underestimated though. Steve Jobs may have
almost never made Apple if it wasn’t for Steve Wozniak, or at the very least, taken
a much longer route or found much lesser success than becoming the world’s
largest company in 2019.
The importance
of a partnership can be found all around us when we break things up to its
lowest form. Every single piece of software code breaks down to either 1 or 0. Every
single atom contains a proton and an electron (the neutron is just a good
friend of the proton sitting tight in the nucleus).
There is
always an entity of a complimentary nature to make another entity as big and successful
as we know them to be. Partnerships are therefore vital to the success of a
business as much as it may be to a relationship.
Finding
that single right partner is the key to ensuring you’ve taken that vital first step
towards creating something of value and leaving a legacy. Attempting to do this
alone or attempting to directly start with a team may make that effort a lot
more arduous.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
What therapy can tell us about consumerism
Therapy is
an understated and often scorned at phenomenon, where people are stigmatized to
believe that they have some sort of a disorder if they seek therapy.
But the
great equalizer this pandemic has been, where you are forced to do exactly the
same thing that almost everyone else in the world is doing, therapy is also
beginning to receive its much-needed attention and acceptance.
Be it
talking to a professional therapist, or a life coach, or even a friend, people all
around are starting to reach out. And for those who may still be uncomfortable opening
to a another human, there are plenty of virtual therapists, and even bots in
some cases, who can address you and potentially alleviate your vexations.
The most
common form of therapy though, that almost everyone in this lockdown is embracing,
is some sort of home-skill that they never knew they were interested in before,
or never had the time to delve into as much as they are doing now.
Bet it
painting a canvas or baking a “coronabread”, everyone is up to something and
splattering their achievements across social media. While the ones we have
visibility to may be out of vanity, most of them are also underpinned with therapy.
Because these things people are doing are also bringing in a sense of peace
to our idle and perturbed minds. At its very core, this is
exactly what therapy is.
What’s
interesting though, is that what one person finds therapeutic, may be stressful
for another. I find doing the dishes in the dishwasher therapeutic, and I know this is a source of stress for many others. However, I also know I am not alone in
this, because Bill Gates himself does the dishes to unwind, and he is definitely
not short of help, either humans or machines, to do this for him.
Why is it
then that we have different tasks that are therapeutic for us? It’s because we
have a System 1 at play in the brain, that operates as differently as System 2.
System 1 is led by the limbic brain that controls primary emotional functions like
fear, hunger or sex, while System 2 is the neocortex that is unique to just us
humans which is what makes us top the food chain.
Now how is
all of this understanding of the democratization of therapy and its relationship
to System 1 linked to consumerism? Well, that’s because as much as we may want
to deny it, purchase decisions are not driven by System 2 or our rational
brain, but always by System 1. So much so that we will concoct rational explanations
and even become brand evangelists for a purchase we have made, while it was
actually just the food-craving, sexually-starved limbic brain making that
choice.
So if both therapy
and purchase decisions are driven by similar underlying motivations, does it
not make sense then to develop an understanding of what we find therapeutic, in
order to sell something to us?
As marketeers,
we always need to ask why repeatedly to go beyond the root issue, but also hold
back before we reach God, in order to find the real insight behind any consumer
problem or opportunity. Delving deeper into therapy, which everyone has now
embraced, may just open up some interesting demand spaces.
In the mighty challenge to generate strong insights, asking the right questions are key.
Maybe questions around therapy could also be added to our repertoire.
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