a sennight past

posted on May 12, 2008
filed under food, health | 2 comments

I realized when I started this post that I never posted the results of my bout with South Beach Phase One in January. I was able to lose almost four inches around my waist. That was then. I’m doing SBP1 again (notice my level of familiarity with the program, that I can confidently sling about the acronym as if I invented the thing), and I’m a week into it. And I have lost almost two inches at this point. An important note here is that I did not gain any since January. No, 2007 was the year that I wrecked all the progress I made in 2006. As I have said before, 2007 was not my year. But, if the trend (and indeed, my history of losing roughly two inches per week on SBP1) continues, I will be able to again fit into the closetful of clothes I bought in ‘06 when I was - dare I say - en fuego. But this year is different. This year, by the time I rest, there will be pronounced ripples across my midsection, instead of the parabolic curve of the past.

Someone asked me why I was doing this, and then offered up a quick explanation of “mid-life crisis.” I will neither stipulate to that nor deny it. However, when you’ve seen half of the years in your species’ expected lifespan, and you know that the decisions you make at that point are going to affect the second “half,” you need to be confirming that you’re making the right decisions, otherwise that “half” is going to be short and pathetic.

If you’re thinking about the South Beach Diet (distinctly different than the Diet of Worms), which I clearly recommend, you have to do two things. One is you have to give up fast food. The corollary to this is that you can get a grilled chicken salad almost anywhere. The second thing is you have to be intimately familiar with nutrition if you go to restaurants. They usually have no idea what South Beach is all about (it is important to know that it is very different than Atkins or the Zone), and thus make very few dishes compatible with it. Typically, however, if you remember: no bread, no pasta, no rice, no sugar, no fruit, no sweet vegetables, you’re ninety percent there. My two typical restaurant meals on SBP1 are the aforementioned grilled chicken salad, and fajitas, sans tortillas.

So you’ve all heard it - two more inches by this time next week. That’s my goal. Let’s see what happens.

Sphere: Related Content

let’s do lunch

posted on April 24, 2008
filed under food, health | leave a comment

Here is an open challenge - find me a better meal for you than this one.

The Chick-fil-a Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich - Here’s the skinny (pun intended). Boneless chicken breast, marinated in some sort of yummy-sauce, on a wheat bun with lettuce, tomato, and pickle. It comes with Honey Roasted BBQ sauce, and in the combo, is accompanied by waffle-cut fries and a drink.

How to make it good for you: substitute the fruit cup for the fries; it’s more expensive, but you’re buying better health and an insulin-crash-free afternoon (with help from the non-processed-flour bun). If you don’t drink Diet Coke or an equivalent, get water. Lose the sauce packet. The thing is tasty enough by itself. Don’t supersize it; you’re not really that hungry. Especially not if you’re eating like you should - healthy snacks in-between meals.

The results? 320 calories, 3.5g of fat (only one gram saturated), 43g carbs (none of it processed), and 28g of protein (which you need, because you’re working out regularly, right? RIGHT?). And you will be full. To reiterate my challenge: find me a better meal for you that you can get without making it yourself or spending over seven bucks.

Sphere: Related Content

bad miss

posted on April 23, 2008
filed under uncategorized | leave a comment

On the whole, I think television is a tool of the devil (or would be, if, you know). There isn’t much I want to watch. Unfortunately, I watch it anyway. However, there have been a few shows that simply rock. My love for Monty Python’s Flying Circus is well-known. There haven’t been a lot of BBC-produced shows I’ve enjoyed (Young Ones, Vicar of Dibley) since, but the latest is cracking me up. You must see That Mitchell and Webb Look - it’s classic British comedy; don’t laugh, there isn’t time. Since the truly silly is what gets me the most - it’s time for Numberwang!

Sphere: Related Content

and what we have left undone

posted on April 21, 2008
filed under uncategorized | leave a comment

Quoting famous people to make your point is powerful. Equally important, however, is what you leave out.

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)

Now if you really want to misquote someone, leave the next bit out:

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

(ibid.)

If you want to make a point that isn’t based on the truth, using a Michael Moore-style approach is a good way to do it.

(Scientific American article that inspired the above) (how evolution fits)

Sphere: Related Content

god and/or guns?

posted on April 16, 2008
filed under uncategorized | leave a comment

And it’s not surprising then (that) they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
– Barack Obama

This is an interesting “give a man a fish” statement. Yes, the bitterness is “not surprising.” Little should surprise anyone anymore. “The devil made me do it,” as it were. And I suppose there are things that I could blame my frustrations on. At the end of the day (perhaps it should be the beginning of the day), however, what I should say to myself is “what am I going to do going forward?” Will I sit and stew over my predicament? Will I find my way into drug abuse, alcoholism, or violence? Will I become another welfare recipient? Will I expect God, the police, the government, the church, etc to come and save me?

Or will I get over myself, realize that I am responsible for not only the vast majority of my problems, but 100% of what I’m going to do to fix things, and make it happen?

Is there a way that our government can bring about this mindset, rather than just ultimately paying everyone off for their votes and their silence?

Sphere: Related Content

soy un perdedor

posted on April 16, 2008
filed under uncategorized | leave a comment

I have misspeled. I have put apostrophe’s where they do not belong. I have used words where there homonyms should go.

I am truly sorry and I humbly repent.

(is it sad that I have these lyrics memorized?)

Sphere: Related Content

you’re only as old as you feel

posted on April 15, 2008
filed under uncategorized | 8 comments

Oh, this is rich. Yes, I may be a nontheist now, but even as a believer the thought of the world NOT being billions of years old was a non-issue. Lately, the Young Earth Creationists have come back into view for me (for various reasons). I could go on AT LENGTH about these people, but that is best left for those still within the Christian tradition to deal with. But to state the Bible is true and literal, and ANYTHING else you see that says otherwise is false… I’m not sure what clinical mental disorder that is, but it probably has a name.

So as long as we’re taking the entire Bible literally, I think a page from Landover Baptist’s theology is appropriate:

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21

Two-year-old tantrum in the store? Teenage angst? College boy too big for his britches? There’s always an answer.

Sphere: Related Content

this land is your land

posted on April 6, 2008
filed under musings, opinion | leave a comment

“Candidates are told stories by people all the time, and it’s common for candidates to retell those stories. It’s not always possible to fully vet them, but we try.” — Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee (link)

Perhaps then, the proper choice is to not tell the story.

So here are the seeming truisms of modern U.S. political activity:

Your friend that is telling you this or that about politics is in some way misinformed (that includes this)
Your candidate is in some way lying
Your candidate’s primary concern is winning
Your candidate’s lifestyle is nothing like yours
Your candidate does not represent most of your values
Your candidate, if successful, will implement none or almost none of their campaign promises
Your candidate, historically, will either do something bad or nothing
Your candidate will drive some sort of wedge between you and someone you love

Nevertheless, you live in the most successful democracy in the history of mankind (assuming you are in the United States - statistically, based on my web server statistics, you are), and there is currently no democratically-elected government that is even close to offering the number of services ours does for the amount of taxes that we pay.

Our car may be misfiring and the exhaust may be smoking, but dang if everybody else doesn’t want a ride at some point.

Sphere: Related Content

upgrades

posted on April 3, 2008
filed under musings, opinion, technology | leave a comment

In response to a Twitter entry, I was reminded of an exchange I had this morning from a user:

I need to download a new version of Microsoft…

I immediately thought; “oh, we ALL need a new version of Microsoft….”

Sphere: Related Content

the green muse

posted on March 27, 2008
filed under food, musings | leave a comment

I’ve been wanting to for quite some time - ever since I found out it was illegal (or at least the distribution of it was, which is no longer true), that some of the most notable writers of the Victorian and Romantic periods were fans, and that the culture that surrounded it was worth experiencing, even if it were based around a myth. I am talking about Absinthe. After its demonization in Europe in the late 19th Century, as well as one case of faulty inductive reasoning by the authorities, it went underground, and though it continued to be produced, it quickly gained the reputation of being more dangerous than moonshine during Prohibition (whether cut with Methyl alcohol or distilled through lead-soldered car radiators). An event that both furthered this perception and caused an awakening of interest was an article in Nature magazine in 1975 stating the similarity of the thujone (a chemical in Wormwood, the ingredient of “interest” in Absinthe) molecule to the THC (active ingredient in marijuana and hashish) molecule. No studies were actually done, however, and the similarity has proven to be just structural. Nevertheless, the mystique grew - which was for the better, since the increased attention was what ultimately relegated the purported baleful effects of thujone to the mythology heap.

My own experience with it, however, was much like what Hemingway described as “brain-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.” After even one glass of Scotch - my favorite spirit - I tend to mellow out, slow down, and relax. This glass of Absinthe, however, seemed to put my mind into overdrive - thoughts were coming at a mile a minute. It is worth noting at this juncture two points: one, I had looked forward to this moment for some time, both for the cultural experience, plus the notion that Absinthe would indeed cause a more “lucid” intoxication. The second point is that I was watching a show on “Brain Fitness” at the time, which is a topic that already causes my mind to race (indeed, my mind generally races on its own, with no need for chemical help - most of the time, the chemicals are to slow it down). It may have thus been a self-caused lucidity; the realization of a long-awaited goal mixed with the alcohol providing a rush of endorphins to the system. As far as the taste goes, although I generally quite enjoy other Anise-flavored drinks (Anisette, Ouzo), this was not particularly tasty. It is a very herbal drink, but pales in comparison with the herb flavor of Jägermeister, of which I am a big fan (which, ironically, has an associated rumor - false, of course - that it has opiates in it). The louche is the most interesting thing - the transition of greenish-clear liquid to milky opalescence from the dissolution of a suspended sugar cube by cold spring water.

It was an interesting moment - once you’ve done it, you realize that the hype is far greater than the experience, but the fact that you’ve done it still rests comfortably. Kind of like traveling abroad, reaching the top of a mountain, or getting your degree - you look back and it was no big deal, but the anticipation makes the experience that much more enjoyable - and you can say “yeah, I’ve done that.”

Sphere: Related Content

« go back — keep looking »