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APP-e New Year!

By: Melanie Marti n

APP-e New Year! Every year, many of us make New Year’s Are you ready to start your health and wellness program in 2021 using one Resolutions to lose of these apps? The HDOT Wellness weight, including me. Committee is sponsoring a weight loss Despite working out 6 contest beginning on January 19th and will days a week, I can’t lose weight the way I could when I was younger. run for approximately 8 weeks. Individual and ofÞ ce prizes will be awarded. Please Let’s face it. Age DOES email melanie.martin@hawaii.gov or call make a diff erence when 831-7912, to sign up and learn more about attempting to lose the contest rules. holiday pounds, or perhaps the COVID 15 that got packed on during quarantine. Lose it! protein consumption. Similar to Lose it!, MyFitnessPal can sync with fi tness tracking apps, including Fitbit, Jawbone UP, Garmin, and Strava. It will then adjust your calorie needs based on what you burned via exercise. You can download the app for free, but the cost for premium features is about the same as

Frustrated at not being able to shed pounds easily, I turned to technology to see if it could give me an edge in the “battle of the bulge.” Turns out, there are tons of apps that I can download on my phone to help count calories and track exercise. The other day I downloaded Lose it! which actually puts me on a caloric budget for the day. Yesterday, I was 561 calories over budget! Must have been the pumpkin pie with whipped cream I had for dessert. Lose it! can be downloaded for free, but if you want the premium services, it will cost you $9.99 per month or $39.99 for an annual subscription. Fitbit is also a great tool to use to track your exercise. The only downside is you have to buy the device for about $129 in order to track your movements via the app. Fitbit records your steps, miles walked, and your heart rate. It also allows you to challenge your friends. This could be a good thing if you like friendly competition or, if you’re like me, a bad thing. I competed with a friend a few years ago, and I found myself jumping rope at 11 p.m. just to beat her.

Some other apps that made the top 10 list of best apps according to healthline include MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, and Noom. Like Lose it!, MyFitnessPal calculates your calorie needs for the day, and allows you to log your daily food intake. The app can generate a few diff erent reports, including a pie chart that gives you an overview of your total fat, carbohydrate, and I’ve seen many commercials advertising Noom, so I decided to look into it. The app has all of the features that Lose it! and yFitnessPal apps do, but it adds health coaching to the mix. Obviously, it is way more expensive, costing about $59 a month or $199 for an annual plan. I suppose the benefi t of Noom is that it focusses on the behavioral side of eating and helps you develop a healthy relationship with food. Noom also has support groups and community chats so you can share your journey with others.

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New Year, New Computer

How many of us are starting 2021 with a brand-new PC? From Cyber-Monday deals to Christmas, new computers are exciting for their possibilities. Here are a few guidelines to keep you safe going into the New Year.

- Auto-

mate software

updates: Turn on automatic updates if that’s an option. Many software programs will automatically connect and update to defend against known risks. This includes all antivirus, web browsers, and operating systems.

- Install a backup solution: Having any backup solution for your personal data is like having insurance. Better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it. Recommend having online backups if you can aff ord it. Make sure to test the recovery process now instead of after an emergency. Don’t forget to think about a solution for your mobile device.

- Protect your personal information: Make sure your passwords are long and strong

By: Darren Cantrill

by combining capital and lowercase letters with numbers and symbols to create secure passwords. Find a password manager utility to help manage all your passwords. Don’t use the same password across multiple sites and enable Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) where possible.

- Inventory and recycle: Before you recycle your computer, remove the hard drive and destroy it (drill through the middle, take a hammer and work out your frustrations). Don’t rely on the recycling business to protect your information. Take care of this yourself!

- Clean up your passwords: Look back to the August Newsletter article “Has your password been stolen?” to check if any of your passwords have been compromised.

Finally, don’t forget that your current PC and mobile devices can also benefi t from the above tips. Make these your goals for 2021 so you can start the year off right. Happy New Year!

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Give Blood To Save Lives

By: Shelly Kunishige

Aloha fellow HDOT employees!

As some of you may know, the Public Affairs Offi ce supports our joint blood drives with DoTAX and DLIR at Punchbowl. We haven’t been able to have a blood drive since March due to COVID-19. Unfortunately, the need for blood has not been paused during the pandemic. In October, the Blood Bank of Hawaii (BBH) issued more blood products then they collected (3,860 blood products given compared to 3,246 donations) and they estimate that they only have a week’s supply of blood on hand at any given time.

I donated on Dec. 23 and wanted to share the precautions BBH is taking to keep their donors safe during the ongoing pandemic.

Precautions • Donations are now by appointment only to ensure social distancing. You can schedule an appointment at www.bbh.org or by calling 8484770.

• Donors are temperature checked, staff wears masks and face shields on the donation fl oor, and surfaces are sanitized between each donor.

Other Facts: employees are allowed a “reasonable amount of time off with pay to donate blood to the Blood Bank.” • There are two main locations for donations and three pop-up sites on Oahu. Those sites are: * Young Street Donor

Center – 1907 Young

Street * Dillingham Administration – 2034 Dillingham Boulevard * Adventist Health

C Castle in Kailua * Waikele Center * Kapolei Walmart

• Days of operation for

the sites vary. * Young Street, Dillingham and Waikele Center are: Monday – Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Friday – Sunday, 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. * Adventist Health Castle is open Monday through Wednesday and Sunday. * Kapolei Walmart site is open Thursday on the same weekday hours as the other sites and Friday through Saturday on the weekend schedule.

• When they do have neighbor island drives, they’ll show up on https://www.bbh.org/#blooddrive

If you continue to donate, thank you. If you haven’t ever donated, please look at the BBH website to learn more about the importance of community blood banks and the COVID-19 precautions being taken. You can always schedule an appointment at www.bbh.org or by calling 808-848-4770.

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