shek.terrak.ai
Things I got asked enough times to write down, and a few I wanted to say anyway.
Evergreen pages, not posts. They say what I did and what I think, not what you should do. They get corrected and extended as I learn more, and each one carries the date it last changed. If any of it is useful, or wrong, or you just want to talk about it, write to me. That's the point of putting it up.
Three subjects, below. If you came for one specific thing it is in one of these columns; if you didn't, start with So You Want to Try Diving, which was the first page here.
Diving
Getting into it from India, where to go, and how to decide what to buy.
- Lived So You Want to Try Diving An honest starting guide for friends who ask how to get into scuba: how the certifications work, where to get certified from India and when each place is open, and which parts of it I know first-hand.
- Learned Choosing Where to Dive From India Not a ranking. Five ways to think about a dive destination that most lists skip, and the four places I have actually dived, run through each of them.
- Learned How I Decide What Dive Gear to Buy Not a product comparison but a method. The order to buy things in, why renting buys you time rather than money, and the India-specific question about servicing that almost nobody asks before handing over the card.
Travel & systems
How I plan a trip, and the file that does the work.
- Built How I Plan a Trip An AI will write you an itinerary in thirty seconds, and that was never the hard part. How I actually plan one, with every option researched in advance and no obligation to follow any of it, plus the free file so you can run the same system yourself.
- Built Build your own Carmen The travel system above, made yours. Either let your own AI interview you, or fill in a form and have the answers written straight into the file. Two minutes or twenty, and the slower one is better.
Health
What I learned coaching it, what the evidence says, and what I found testing it on myself.
- Learned Everything I've Learned About Health, Mapped Six domains: sleep, food, movement, breath, screening and measurement. What the evidence actually says for each, the one or two levers that carry most of the effect, and what I did about it myself. Cheat sheets included, and a one-page version to keep.
- Learned How to Eat, If Your Kitchen Is Indian The nutrition science that actually matters, worked through an Indian kitchen rather than an American one. The swap table that does most of the work, and the household handoff nobody writes about.
- Learned Zone 2: What It Is, What the Research Actually Says, and How to Start The most argued-about idea in endurance training. Both camps have published support, and the thing that reconciles them is a distinction most of the shouting ignores: volume builds mitochondrial content, intensity builds mitochondrial function.
- Learned VO2 Max Training: The 4脳4, and How to Earn the Right to Do It One protocol is studied far more than any other, and it is four intervals of four minutes. The trial behind it, a twelve-week ramp to get there safely, and the honest limit of what raising the number proves.
- Learned Resistance Training: The Smallest Dose That Works, and How to Grow It The dose that captures most of the benefit is far smaller than gym culture suggests. Six movements, twelve weeks starting at home with no equipment, and why strength alone is not a falls strategy.
- Learned The Training Plan, From the Best Evidence I Could Find Rather than piling up studies, this picks the single best one for each question and says why it wins. Including the uncomfortable part: the best randomised trial on exercise and mortality came back largely null.
- Learned Twenty-Eight Years of Training, Audited I listed every kind of training I have done since I was six and checked it against a lab test. It found a hole I had carried for three decades without noticing. The personal half; the evidence lives on its own page.
- Built Build Your Own Nutrition Plan The system I used with about forty coaching clients, written out so you can run it on yourself: the baseline week, the self-interview, and the weekly check-in doing most of the work. Free kit included.
- Lived I Used to Be a Nutritionist For three years I ran a nutrition coaching practice with forty-odd clients. What the system actually was, what those clients taught me that no textbook did, why a model built entirely on individual attention could not scale, and why it now has exactly one client left.
- Lived I Believed a Diagnosis for Fifteen Years. Then I Tested It. I was sure I was hypoglycaemic and had never once measured it. A fortnight of data killed the belief, killed the fallback theory too, and showed me the loop that had kept it alive.