The glass-is-always-half-empty angle of losing weight is worrying about gaining it back. This hobgoblin of the mind assails you most notably before a vacation, where you might not be able to exercise in the mode to which you have grown accustomed (read: addicted), and where you will probably eat and drink more than you would at home.

This happened to me for the first time when I started cycling; I knew I wasn’t going to take my bike on vacation back then, and was loathe to disappear for the 90 minutes to two hours most rides take.

The second time this happened, I had gotten into rowing, and again, knew that I wouldn’t be able to row. I did get a list of bodyweight exercises to try and did those on the beach.

This summer I once again found myself worrying about giving up my hard-won gains: would not exercising cause me to gain weight? Would I lapse into old habits?

Happily, though, I managed to do two things: keep it light on the food and drink, and exercise.

For the latter, each morning began with a walk, up the beach, then back up to the hotel. That was usually 2.5 miles. So 300-400 calories to start the day, minus some coffee on the way back. Easy and not surprising.

But the new discovery for me, thanks to the Apple Watch: swimming. Specifically, treading water.

In the hotel pool, on the first day of swimming, I saw that my watch was trying to record an outdoor swim. Once I told to watch to go ahead and record, I learned that just putzing around in the pool was burning around 100 calories every ten minutes. So a half hour was 300 calories, and you can do the math.

I actually got more exercise on vacation. Fear: unfounded.

I came home after one week in Ocean City, NJ, and after a hard 10k row, I weighed exactly what I weighed when I left.

Always hoped this was an urban legend.

My overall cardio fitness, as measured by the Apple Watch, has been low for a long long time. No more tho!

Researchers have been working on a way to prevent RSV since the 1960s, without success. But on August 3, 2023, the CDC approved a drug called nirsevimab (trade name Beyfortus): a long-acting monoclonal antibody that is 80 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations and 90 percent effective at preventing intensive care unit admissions. Nirsevimab is administered as a single, intramuscular injection and can be given at the same time as other vaccines.

A Breakthrough Product for Babies

When imposed on us, boundaries can feel upsetting. Because many people view happy relationships as problem free, a request to behave differently can feel like a rejection. Some people—out of trauma or other wounds—interpret a “no” from a loved one as the end of a relationship. But boundaries are supposed to help preserve relationships, not destroy them. “People typically believe that boundaries are to control people, and in actuality, they are safeguards for yourself and for peace and comfort in your relationships,” says the therapist and Drama Free author Nedra Glover Tawwab.

THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD CONCEPT IN PSYCHOLOGY

Paul Krugman:

The bottom line is that even though many people would like someone to blame for high grocery prices, it’s really hard to find domestic villains. Despite what the American right claims, Joe Biden didn’t do this. Despite what some on the left would like to believe, neither, at least for the most part, did greedy corporations.

Why Are Groceries So Expensive?

You can blame Putin and weather, he does say.

Your attachment style is not so much a fixed category you fall into, like an astrology sign, but rather a tendency that can vary among different relationships and, in turn, is continuously shaped by those relationships. Perhaps most important, you can take steps to change it. So Arriaga could give her concerned students good news: Attachment style isn’t destiny.

ATTACHMENT STYLE ISN’T DESTINY

Oliver Sacks on saving humanity:

I think we have to preserve the human scale — in life, in building, in architecture, in technology. The human scale doesn’t mean we can’t have grand visions of the universe, it doesn’t preclude the development of physics and cosmology, but it does mean one shouldn’t be an anonymous person — an anonymous non-person, one of a thousand non-people — in a skyscraper.

Henry Miller, concluding Tropic of Cancer:

Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.

The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself

Fans of the Blade Runner film know well that this gritty sci-fi noir is based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which, like many adaptations, differs in significant ways from the source novel). I never knew, though, why it was called “Blade Runner” (although that was the title of Rick Deckard’s job, in the movie). The film’s name was cribbed from another novel for which no one less than William S. Burroughs had adapted to a screenplay:

No film was produced from the Burroughs treatment, but Hampton Fancher, a screenwriter for a film based on Philip K. Dick‘s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), had a copy. He suggested “Blade Runner”, as preferable to the earlier working titles “Android” and “Dangerous Days”, for the Dick adaptation.[3] In the film, released as Blade Runner in 1982, the term is never explained, and the plot has no connection to the Nourse and Burroughs stories.

The Bladerunner