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Monday, August 27, 2018

Oakville to get trains every 15 minutes starting late 2018 and then Burlington in 2019?

I can't confirm or deny if we'll see this rolled out this year but Metrolinx appears to be getting serious about moving commuters faster in and out of the core at rush hour. Here's more info. But, let's not pull out the Consumers Catalog just yet - we don't know what Dougie and his merry band of policy pirates have planned.

Metrolinx's goal is 15-minute service on all its lines by 2025 (peak-only on Milton and Richmond Hill lines; all-day on the others).

I checked Google Maps to see if the Lakeshore West would be getting 15-minute peak service for September as GO's schedules have been uploaded, but it's not showing anything.

Stay tuned!

When you get too punny

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

We interrupt this blog's sleepy slumber for this important "Cindy's ongoing fitness journey" update

It's been an interesting summer for me. In the Spring, frustrated with some personal health issues, I met with my doctor to discuss a laundry list of ailments but top of mind was my weight. The scale had been holding steady at 256 pounds since January. No matter what I did such as increasing cardio, adding weights, and cycling my caloric intake, my body was a big bag of "nope".

As I wait to enter a clinical program to deal with the underlying disease that doctors claim contributes to my insulin resistance, which in turns contributes to my very slow metabolic rate, my doctor asked me if I had ever considered intermittent fasting, along with reducing carbohydrates and adding more protein to my diet. This was almost a month ago, on July 13. On the following Monday, after researching intermittent fasting, insulin resistance and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome based diets, I started eating within a 10-hour window and then for 14 hours I did not consume a single calorie. I also increased my exercise where I biked five days a week, regardless of weather, for 20-23 km, as opposed to three days a week for 27 km. When I weighed myself on July 16, I was 257 pounds. Exactly a year before, I weighed this much:


Here's what I weighed this past Monday:



I'm pretty sure I lost weight in my feet. A nine pound weight loss in one month is pretty amazing. It's also not sustainable. Most of it is probably water loss due to the heat, and exercising in this heat, so I think it's fair to say I've lost seven pounds since meeting with my doctor.

Remarkably, my body is responding to intermittent fasting and now I'm eating in an eight hour window with breakfast at 10:30 am, lunch at 2 pm and dinner at 6 pm. From 6:30 pm all the way to 10:30 am the next morning I consume nothing with a calorie. I drink a ton of water, too. My weight loss app is set to calorie cycling so the intake varies from day to day, but it's anywhere from 1247 to 1658 calories a day depending on the amount of physical activity the day before. The only thing I've worked hard to omit is sugar and anything white, with the exception of basmati rice and yellow-flesh potatoes. NO ONE WILL TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME.

If you're still reading, I'm hoping this post helps others struggling with PCOS, obesity or insulin resistance. Please talk to your doctor if this style of eating, coupled with 375 or more minutes of exercise weekly is healthy for you.

I've logged over 2200 km on my bike since April 23, 2017. I've pushed that bike so hard that I'm probably going to need to overhaul most of its components by the end of the year.

WHAT A MESS

An entire area of Toronto that used to be Lake Ontario before being filled in during the 1920s and well into the 1940s with no thought process about future development, drainage or natural floodplains, was/is under water today and hundreds of people are blaming climate change.

I'm not a scientist, I can't tell you if 50-75 mm of rain is driven by Nature pushing back, but I can tell you that Toronto's most southern communities, those south of Front Street, and its underground city running south of Queen Street, won't be able to cope with future rainfall if something isn't done to address stormwater runoff and management. You've got entire neighbourhoods and streets that used to be a lake. There's bound to be consequences when you fill in natural tributaries and bury rivers under concrete and steel. What a mess.

Summer storms aren't a new weather phenomenon, especially when cold fronts meet days long heat waves. This is only going to get worse. It throws thousands of people living in the city and commuting into the city into chaos. I blame years of provincial government stalling and Toronto politics for this garbage.

I'm working from home today so I missed the free wading pool at the York Concourse.