#pinsky

I want to dribble-drabble for tumblr.

Give me things to write.

Malin Pinsky had the first of two lightbulb moments in 2003 while crossing the churning Drake Passage. It separates the tip of South America from Antarctica. He was standing on the bridge of a research ship. Just five months earlier he had finished college, where he studied biology and environmental science. Now he was scanning the sky for seabirds. It was one of his duties as a research technician on the cruise. But his eyes kept straying to the vast, mysterious slate-blue ocean.

As the ship entered nutrient-rich Antarctic waters, water-temperature gauges on the bridge abruptly dropped. Whales suddenly showed up all around the ship. “It was stunning,” recalls Pinsky, now 38. Today he’s a marine ecologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. But that moment on the bridge helped him realize “that the ocean looks featureless from the top, but there’s so much going on underneath.”

While scanning for seabirds here, in the Drake Passage, Pinsky began to appreciate that “the ocean looks featureless from the top, but there’s so much going on underneath.”Goddard_Photography/iStock/Getty Images Plus

The second lightbulb moment hit him several months later. The locale was far less captivating. Pinsky was then an intern in Washington, D.C. for Oceana. It’s a conservation group. His job was making photocopies. Lots of them.

It was around when two big reports had come out. Both focused on what policies might best preserve U.S. ocean resources. “And I realized, wait a minute. We have all these laws and policies that determine how we as a society interact with the ocean. And they’re far out of date.” The problem, Pinsky realized: “We don’t yet have the science to know what the new policy should be.”

Today he runs a sprawling lab — with a cast of about 20. And it’s leading a charge to collect those data. Amidst this era of global warming, “The overarching focus of the lab is to understand how marine ecosystems are changing,” Pinsky says. His team wants to learn why ocean ecosystems are changing. They also are searching for “choices we can make as a society to alter that course.”

One research area has gotten a lot of media attention over the last year: how warming ocean waters are reducing the share of fish that can be harvested sustainably around the globe. His team’s work was included in a high-profile international report. It suggested that nearly 1 million species are facing possible extinction. Part of what’s putting those fish at risk is what people are doing.

Pinsky’s team also seeks to learn how our changing climate, as well as overfishing and habitat destruction, might be driving changes in fish and other animals in the sea. To find out, team members travel each year to coral reefs near the Philippines. There, they carefully catalog populations of clown fish. They collect data on the growth and mating of these fish, their diversity and other factors. A staggering number of different things could affect clown fish numbers.

Jinks: Pretty sure, yeah. Why?

Claudia: No reason! It's just...isn't Pete kinda...immature for you?

Jinks: Claudia?

Claudia: Yes?

Jinks: Fargo.

Claudia:

As with most things in life, it helps to set goals and track your progress. That way, you’ll know where you’re going and when you’ve achieved your goal. Goal setting will also give you a clear view of your goals along the way so you can keep track of whether or not you’re going to meet your final goal.

But, many people setgoals that are unattainable or unrealistic. If you set goals that you can’t reach, you will never succeed, and you will become frustrated and give up the whole project.

So, the first step in reaching your goals is to make sure they’re realistic for you. There are three things to look for when you’re setting your goals. They should be:

•   Specific

•   Attainable

•   Measurable

If your goals don’t have these three characteristics, they will be much harder to attain. So,instead of setting a goal to lose 100 pounds in 6 months, which might be attainable, but the end is very far away, try making it your goal to lose 1-2 pounds each week. Then celebrate every time you reach that goal. Pretty soon,all those 1 and 2-pound losses will add up to a big weight loss.

Sometimes behavior goals work even better than weight goals so, for example, you can make your goal to drink 8 glasses of water every day for a week. This goal is doable,measurable and very specific. Best of all, it will help you lose weight, which is your end goal.

Set goals for exercise,how many vegetables and fruits you eat every day, and keep an eating journal to record what you eat. The feeling when you’ve accomplished a goal is often reward enough for many people.

Playing the Numbers Game

As tempting as it is,don’t let dieting turn you into a scale watcher. If you’re always watching the scale, you will become obsessed with your numbers. Then, if your progress is slow, you will start to become frustrated and feel like a failure. But there are other ways to measure progress besides the scale.

Another great way is to track your measurements. Sometimes these numbers will go down faster than the scale and will show your success. If you take your measurements weekly, and keep a log, you’re going to feel good about your progress and you won’t lose hope too soon.

It’s best to measure around your upper arm, waist, thigh, hips and your bust or chest. If you take these measurements every week, you will be able to see just how much your body is changing.

Another way to measure your progress is a body fat test. You can use electronic measuring devices or calipers to measure your body fat. As with your measurements, sometimes you won’t be losing weight, but it will be obvious that your body fat is decreasing.

In addition to the above physical body measurements, there are several medical measures that you can track to measure your success. For example, your doctor can help you track the following:

•   Heart Rate

•   Blood Pressure

•   Blood Glucose

•   Cholesterol

It is amazing how just a few weeks of dieting can change these essential numbers. These are the measures that will show your success so keep a journal where you can see and appreciate your progress or create a graph that will visually show how you’re doing and let that chart become your inspiration.

Reward Yourself

Remember that dieting is a long haul, but you can celebrate many milestones along the way. So, reward yourself for all the small wins rather than waiting until you reach your goal weight.

Here are some goals you can create rewards for:

•  Drinking water daily

•   Every 5 pounds lost

•   Bigger milestones like 20 pounds lost

•   Exercising 3 times in one week

•   Getting your cholesterol below 200

•   Taking less diabetes medication or stopping completely

When you’re deciding what rewards you will give yourself, be sure they are not related to food.Having special meals to reward success is a time-honored way to celebrate, but it’s not a good choice if you’re dieting.

Instead, try rewarding yourself with something that will help you stay motivated, such as:

•   Splurge on an outfit in your new size

•   Go see a movie

•   Get a mani/pedi

•   Buy a new pair of earrings (you won’t have to worry about the fit!)

•   Take a short holiday

•   Get a massage