The sleep diet continues and I have new weird shoes October 10, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , trackbackI’ve fallen a bit behind on this blog. It’s sad, because there’s so much interesting stuff going on that I’d really like to record for posterity. But I’m applying for jobs now, so I feel like I need to be much more restrained about what I say.
I also just got back from my sister’s wedding in Maryland, which was fantastic. I doubt I’ll ever attend another wedding with sumo suits at the reception.
With regards to the sleep diet, I just cut down to 6.5 hours a night. I’m at the very beginning of the adjustment period, so I still feel pretty groggy in the morning, but not as bad as I would expect. Considering that I needed 8-8.5 every night as of just a few months ago, I consider this a successful experiment so far. If it ended right now, I think I would go back to 8 hours a night, but I’m going to push a little further and see what happens.
In other interesting news, I have moved away from sneakers as my main footwear and am now wearing Vibram’s Five Fingers almost everywhere:
The original motivation came from the article You Walk Wrong in NY Magazine. The author interviews a number of podiatrists who hypothesize that many of today’s foot and knee ailments stem from the fact that the thick padded soles of today’s shoes cause us to adopt a walking style very different from the gait our bodies evolved for over tens of thousands of years. The theory sounded reasonable to me, and as I’ve been dealing with running-induced knee injuries for the past 7 years, I thought I’d try out a more minimalist shoe to see if changing my running and walking form would help. (My roommate Craig has started doing the same thing, though he decided to pay somewhat more to get shoes that don’t make him look like a weirdo.)
What I didn’t anticipate was how incredibly satisfying I find it to be able to feel the ground through the shoes’ thin soles. Imagine you’d worn gloves for 25 years straight and now finally got to take them off and actually touch things. That’s how happy my feet feel.
Comments»
Do you expect to use them in the winter?
Was worried about that, they’re rather cold in the rain. Fortunately, I just found some super-cheap Vivo Barefoots on eBay :)