by Matt Soreco on August 10, 2010
Just thought I’d throw in a little update about my nutritional supplement regimen. It’s changed a little since my Healthy Living Checklist post.
Not much else has changed other than this. I’ve been very good at adhering to my list.
Since the checklist post, I’ve added in Myoplex Original Powder for the majority of my “breakfasts.” I put breakfast in quotes because really it’s just a stop gap rather than a full-blown meal replacement. I’ve gone and spread my meals out, so that I have the shake as my first meal of the day (about 7am), followed by some dry cereal (Cheerios, Oatmeal Squares, etc) at about 10-10:30 am. Together that’s what I consider breakfast. The Myoplex is easy and does not require any thought. I’m not a morning person, so something quick and easy works. Quick and easy AND healthy is very hard to find (or taste good). So this is it.
For lunch I split up a regular sized sandwich (usually honey maple turkey or tuna) into two, which I eat at 12 and 2. I might have a small snack at about 5, and then a regular dinner at 6:30 or so.
I’ve done this in the past. Besides the theory that this aids in metabolism, it keeps me from ever feeling very hungry. So the smaller “meals” are a lot more satisfying and there are no cravings for anything more.
Besides the MyoPlex, I’ve added CoQ10 into the mix. Again, I must disclose that I work for Purity Products (not that I think the FTC is one of the 3 people who ever read my blog). I now take the following each day:
Perfect Multi Super Greens (multivitamin, phytonutrients, probiotics)
Co-Q-Omega (Concentrated Omega 3 Fish Oil with CoQ10)
Dr. Cannell’s Advanced D (Vitamin D and cofactors)—I only take one a day, not two)
All together I think these give me what I might be lacking and fills in any gaps. I’ve always taken a multi and have taken omega 3s for some time. The added D is new since last Fall and the CoQ10 is a recent addition into the regimen.
That’s all folks.
by Matt Soreco on June 28, 2010
In my last post I mentioned a “healthy living” checklist. I don’t really have one, well until now I guess. Over the last few years I’ve been tackling one at a time. Some I’ve been on-again/off-again with, but enough discipline has started to set in so that some are permanent. The goal being all permanent of course.
Here is the list:
Exercise – at least cardio 3 days a week. This is what I’m doing the couch to 5k program for. My goal is to start more higher intensity interval training. Hopefully I get to that by September. I’m also going to work in some resistance training.
Eat Right – Try to make each meal count. I don’t think I’m too bad in this area, although my diet isn’t really well rounded. I can definitely eat healthier (more fruits and veggies) even though I don’t really eat unhealthy things.
Vitamins – This goes along with healthy eating to some degree, but can be mentioned separately. Again I must disclose that I work for Purity Products, but I’ve always taken multivitamins and have taken omega 3 fish oil for a long time before working here. Recently I’ve upped my vitamin d intake. I like supplements as they fill in the gaps missing from my overall diet.
Sleep – This is something I can improve on. I got at least 6 hours a night, but my bedtime was sporadic. I would also get into the habit of hitting the snooze button a lot. My goal is to get 7+ hours in, to go to bed at a set time, and to wake right up.
Sugar - I’ve been good at avoiding excess sugar for the most part for a long time. Now I even water down some “no extra sugar added” juices because I’ve become accustomed to how things are supposed to taste (not obnoxiously sweet).
Salt - They say most people have a weakness for either sugar or salt. I never ever crave anything sugary. But I do with salt. I know I eat an unhealthy amount. I have been cutting back without missing it too much.
Artificial Sweeteners - I’m going to cut this out all-together. Let others debate the risks. I don’t want to find out years later that it has really been unhealthy all along. Plus like I mentioned under sugar, I’ve gotten used to (and prefer) things the way they’re supposed to taste.
Water - I can’t believe that this is something that I have to be mindful of, but it is. As last year’s C25K posts can attest, getting enough water can make or break a workout. Plus the documented health benefits are not even debated. I have a Brita filter at home, and when I get bored of plain ole’ water, I drink Poland Spring’s flavored sparkling water.
Caffeine - Probably not bad in moderate amounts, I was by far going well beyond moderate amounts. I quit cold turkey a few weeks ago. Mostly because I felt like my energy was out of balance. Plus I really don’t like anything having a hold of me like the caffeine did. It took 4 days for me to get over it. Now I don’t really miss it. Although I did have some decaf with cake this weekend. I might start drinking some green tea, which has about 1/4 the caffeine of coffee, in very small amounts to get the health benefits of the tea and the moderate amount of caffeine.
That’s all for now.
by Matt Soreco on June 21, 2010
Got both workouts in over the weekend. I felt really good. I definitely didn’t lose much wind from my 6 month layoff. I really pushed the pace on the 60 second jogs. I could have probably started with week 3, but I’m just going to follow the program in full. Hopefully I can push myself harder in the early weeks to gain me some extra wind for the latter weeks.
The shin sleeves are working like a charm. No shin splints. I also switched back to my old sneakers, which are much more comfortable.
I can’t stress how much of a help the C25K for Android app is. I get easily distracted and frustrated the more I have to pay attention to things (stopwatch, etc) other than my jogging. The app lets you listen to music, and sounds bells each time it’s time to run or jog.
My caffeine withdrawal is over. It feels good to have more balanced energy throughout the day. Now I have to work on the diet a little more to start taking some pounds off.
Although I slacked off for 6 months, I really didn’t do anything too too unhealthy (especially based on today’s standards). I have been maintaining my vitamin d, multivitamin, and omega 3 fish oil supplementation. Just a disclaimer, I work for Purity Products.
I must must must buy winter gear this year and run throughout the winter. I was hesitant to lay down money and thought I’d take the workout indoors. That has failed me so many times that this time is the last. I’ll invest in winter gear to stay in shape all year round. I hope.
by Matt Soreco on June 10, 2010
This is sort-of follow up to my last post about this summer being about finishing projects, getting ideas off the ground, etc. Already I feel better. In the GTD sense, I think I’ve mastered the day to day, week to week, month to month, things that have to get done. What was seeming to escape me was the someday/maybe/not-so-urgent items. Especially the ones staring me in the face everyday. A lot of them are household projects. In a few focused and dedicated hours on Sunday, I got a lot accomplished. I was sort of under the gun since I had a party to go to later in the day. I think if I focus and remain disciplined, I can find a few hours each weekend to continue on my goal to FINISH. It feels good to finally cross off some things on the long list. It builds a momentum.
Even at work at Purity Products, some career wishlist items are being crossed off. Just yesterday we launched our first multivariate test that we’re managing in-house. I have this undying fascination on learning to do things myself. Career wise, it’s hard to tell if that’s a good thing or bad thing. I don’t think everyone “at the top” needs to know the itty-bitty details on how a MVT test works technically. But I seem to in order to be comfortable. Well that’s off my list. This is in addition to what I’ve mentioned before in one of my past “what I’ve been working on” posts. This stuff if kinda related to finishing as most have been on a career todo of sorts.
by Matt Soreco on June 2, 2010
I’m in the process of transferring this entire blog from Blogger to my own domain running WordPress. This is my first post to WordPress directly.
For practice, I’ve done it once before, transferring my Bills’ site’s blog.
Now I’m just waiting for the last part, switching the dns entry that pointed blog.mattsoreco.com to blogger. Once this change is done, I have a rewrite rule in my .htaccess file to forward blog.mattsoreco.com to mattsoreco.com and maintain the rest of the url parameters.
I left this off my last post about “finishing” this summer. I’ve wanted to transfer my sites (personal site and blog) to one whole site for some time. Now it’s done.
I know there will be some mopping up afterwards as not all the urls will match up exactly.
All and all it was pretty painless–assuming I’m not missing anything.
Next step is to freshen up the design and format. Which I must finish by the end of summer. And of course tinker around with plugins and other customizations.
This is good practice as we might move my company’s (Purity Products), blog from WordPress.com to a more customizable installation.
by Matt Soreco on March 17, 2010
Besides my very first post, I haven’t blogged much about work. So here goes.
I have a passion for online marketing. I kind of fell into it back when I worked at The Foundation Center. They needed someone to manage a lot of the nuts and bolts of the online marketing program, which was ramping up in parallel with a new e-commerce enabled website. Prior to that I worked on coordinating the direct mail program, which I liked, but I saw the new opportunity and jumped on it. I’m glad I did! The online marketing program was built, with my help, from scratch. I mean scratch. Imagine that… I became addicted to the immediate results you can see when marketing online. Although we didn’t have the best analytics and tracking (or any at all), it was obvious where sales were coming from following an e-mail or newsletter ad.
I plan on writing more about my online marketing travels in future posts. I just wanted a quick intro to frame this post because most of my time since, has been on retention marketing (upselling, e-mail marketing, merchandising, etc). And of course analytics.
I got 8 years into my career and realized I by and large was working on half of the internet marketing puzzle. I needed acquisition experience!
That’s what made my current position at Purity Products so appealing. I was able to leverage my experience in retention and apply it solely on acquisition. I’m now responsible for SEO, SEM, and other initiatives like partnerships, social media, content creation, etc. It’s a challenge, but I love it.
On the social media front, I’ve launched Purity Products’ Blog. I’ve launched Purity Products’ on Twitter. And Purity Products’ Facebook page. And even some other pages like YouTube and LinkedIn. There is still a lot of work to be done to maximize those!
As I go, I hone my craft so to speak. The biggest area, analytics. I’m currently reading Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. While reading, there were some ah-ha moments, but far more reassuring moments. I like to have my suspicions, thoughts, and theories backed by “experts.” The biggest takeaway so far is to focus on the analytics that matter most and what’s most actionable. Looking at too much data can be more of a distraction. It’s helped me so far. And it’s helped Purity Products too.
We recently launched some new features on the site, and careful attention needed to be put on the effects. Careful planning was done before (to make sure we knew what we had to measure) and after (to make sure what we were seeing is valid). It’s always nerve wracking to launch big new projects, but it’s reassuring to know you have all the bases covered to measure and take action if something isn’t giving you the desired results.
One area that I’m focusing a lot of attention on is funnel metrics. In e-commerce, there are a lot of steps customers go through before they ultimately order. If you can improve each step, even a little, the results follow. A lot can be improved with improving usability. Sometimes there are technical and resource limitations, or other priorities, that stand in the way. I’ve been given the green light to test some alternate pages hosted separately from our main site. This gives me the control to make changes quickly and easily. The goal is to target the first part of the funnel with laser like precision. Meaning a customer is looking for something, show it to them right away instead of requiring them to navigate through a site. So if you were looking for Purity Products Hyaluronic Acid or Purity Products Fish Oil, you’ll find all products right away. If you’re looking for Purity Products Vitamin D, it won’t take you long to find exactly what you’re looking for. Same is true for Purity Products HA Joint Formula. Even if you are looking for Purity Products Reviews, I want you to find them quickly.
So far the traffic those sites have received are converting pretty well. They are highly targeted, so it’s no surprise. Whether or not the orders are incremental remains to be seen. Either way, the learning is valuable.
Wow, that was a really long winded answer to what I’ve been working on. I promise to post shorter posts on specific content areas soon. I finally feel I’ve touched on all areas on online marketing, so I can hopefully share some of my expeience in each area. Hmmm, maybe I’ll map out an outline later today…
by Matt Soreco on June 15, 2009
Pretty excited to see a new version of Google Maps available in the Android Market. It now has voice search as well as transit and walking direction options.
I should note that after the cupcake update, I noted that GPS was still slow to locate my position. Well after a reboot, it’s now much faster than it was before. And pretty consistent too. Finally.
The new maps is supposed to help an issue with Latitude updating. I STILL need to hit refresh for it to accurately update my location. I’m not sure what this was supposed to fix, but Latitude is still not working right for me. Good thing I have no real use for it as no one I know uses it. But it would be nice to brag about the feature if it worked right.
I’ll have to test out the search by voice option. I’m not too confident in the results as the search by voice feature fails to understand a word I say. Must be the NYC accent…
I’ll also have to give the transit and walking directions a real try. My first attempt at getting me to my house to NYC was a fail. It had me taking a real wacky route. I suppose if I was somewhere unfamiliar, any route wouldn’t seem wacky if it get me to where I needed to go. I was happy to see that driving directions from my office to home were spot on. Driving directions is really what I need most.
by Matt Soreco on October 10, 2008
Wow, well over 2 years ago I set up this blog in hopes to get it up and running one day. Well better late than never I guess. I’m going to blog about my interests, my career, and random thoughts.
My interests. Sports. Mostly football and baseball. I’ve been a lifetime Yankees and Bills fan. Yes, Bills even though I’m from Yonkers. I’m more a fair weather basketball and hockey fan (Knicks and Islanders). Besides sports, I follow politics casually and am glad I’ve found a career (internet marketing) that taps into my interest in e-media and marketing.
My career started out in sales, but who was I kidding? I’m no salesman. Besides I did more direct marketing than cold calls to build leads. I guess it was a sign of things to come. I started my marketing career on the “paper” side, but soon fell into online marketing. I have almost 10 years of online marketing under my belt. Mostly on the retention side, but most recently acquisition. I presently work for Purity Products, a vitamin and supplement company. Check out my LinkedIn profile.
In my spare time I co-founded and run the website for the New York City Buffalo Bills Backers. It was the prefect melding of my interests in sports with my career and interest in web marketing.
I hope this isn’t too much of a boring introduction. 
