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Low Cal Honey

September 30th, 2008

sugarbearI like honey. It’s natural. It’s sweet. And best of all it has zero calories. I mean, how could it not? Why else would they have replaced all the sugar cereals with honey equivalents?

What? You mean it’s not a low calorie sugar substitute? Sheesh! You’d think it was some sort of miracle diet food the way Super Sugar Crisps were suddenly ditched in favor of Golden Crisps. They even renamed Sugar Bear to Super Bear. What’s up with that?

Well, today I have a honey of a story for you. I wish I could claim this as my own, but it’s something I heard on the radio. Still, it’s too good to not share.

Apparently a woman walked into a store one day and asked the shopkeeper about some low calorie honey sold there. The shopkeeper, puzzled, said they didn’t carry any. The customer insisted. “My roommate bought some and I know she got it here!” This did not change the shopkeeper’s mind about her inventory. “In fact, not only do we not have any, I don’t believe that even exists. Honey is honey, plain and simple.” Undeterred, the customer disagreed. “I saw the jar. I had some and it tasted just like real honey. I’ve got to have some. It’s around here somewhere!” So they marched around the store and low and behold the customer found it.

Click here for the real-life punchline.

Posted in You Know What Sounds Good Right Now? | 9 Comments »

Almost Like Magic

September 29th, 2008

I wholeheartedly believe one tactic to help a floundering diet is “mixing it up” a bit. If you’re stuck in a rut and can’t seem to get the needle moving down again, it’s probably time to try something different — even if for a short while.

For those of you just tuning in, let me summarize my last thirteen months:

  • I dropped twenty pounds in two months.
  • I survived the holidays–barely.
  • I got stuck at 212 pounds for what felt like a decade.
  • I went up to 224 halfway through the summer.
  • I finally got back to 212, which was good in that it was less than 224, but bad in that it was right back to that point where I was stuck for what felt like a decade.

Not to spoil the ending, but if you look at the bottom of this post, you’ll see I’m miraculously back down to 210. It’s been six months since I’ve been that low. So what did I do this week to give myself a boost? I mixed it up! Let’s take a look:

  • Monday. Had four bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast; one half of a deep dish pepperoni pizza for lunch; and McDonald’s for dinner.
  • Tuesday. Pancakes and sausage for breakfast; eight Long John Silver’s chicken planks for lunch; spaghetti & meatballs with garlic bread for dinner.
  • Wednesday. Four bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and pancakes and sausage for breakfast; just a Diet Coke for lunch; and three chili dogs for dinner.
  • Thursday. Egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam.
  • Friday. An entire box of Cookie Crisp cereal, pancakes, sausage, spam and pizza for breakfast; one deep dish pizza, topped with pepperoni, crumbled Big Macs, and chopped up Long John Silver’s chicken planks for lunch; two quarts of Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream and an entire sleeve of Thin Mints for dinner.

See how I mixed it up? I had a Diet Coke on Wednesday. I’m positive that’s what caused me to get back down to 210 this week.

Okay, okay. For those who still believe I stumbled upon some junk food miracle diet, I have to fess up. I didn’t eat any of that this week. What I did — for once — was stick to the stupid plan. You see, once one gets a couple of months into a diet, it’s very easy to let “just this one bite” turn into “just this one serving” which then turns into “just this one quart of Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream.” Calories, hidden or blatant, add up. This week, I decided to double my watch and things worked out well. Even Saturday and Sunday went well, and that almost never happens.

My advice to you this week: write down what you’re eating each day. I use The Daily Plate. It has it’s quirks, but overall it’s done remarkably well for me. And if you’re already writing it all down, go back and look at your data. It’s easy to write it down then never look back. Never forget that the reason you’re writing it down in the first place is to go back and use the data to your advantage later.

I forgot that for a while myself.

Onederland Update

Day 63
Starting Weight 224.0
Lost So Far 14.0
Pounds To Go 11.0

I’m pretty happy with this week’s results. I mean, I know my target is supposed to be the standard “1-2 pounds per week” but after nine weeks, that’s gets to be a bit difficult to sustain. And the best part? I’m right on the edge of another weight ‘decade’. Nothing like changing the first two numbers of your weight to keep you going.

Posted in Return to Onederland | 6 Comments »

Eating Out Tips

September 26th, 2008

Dieters face few challenges greater than a trip to a restaurant. Eating out is (or should be) an occasion and therefore, by definition, isn’t the place to hold back. Unfortunately, eating out is sometimes a necessary evil and you’d be hard-pressed to find greater temptation anywhere. (Yeah … nothing like paddling against the current for a week and then trying to use willpower to not climb on that motorboat.)

So to help you out through this difficult time, I’ve compiled this list:

  1. Look the menu over carefully. If you simply cannot find anything to suit your diet, just order water with a slice of lemon. Because, yeah, that’s the same thing as the burrito supreme.
  2. After the maitre d’ seats you and your waiter comes over to list the specials, stop him and ask, “Where am I?” If he replies, “McDonald’s” then you should go somewhere else.
  3. Today’s portion sizes are large. Find out if it’s okay to split the cheeseburger between you and your twelve friends.
  4. When ordering a salad, always make sure you get the dressing on the side. If you’re asked specifically which side, I recommend the side of the road.
  5. Pizza can actually be a healthy food! When asked what toppings you’d like, be sure leave off the pepperoni, sausage, chicken, ham, bacon, pineapple, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, cheese, and sauce. Ask about their low-fat, low-carb crusts.
  6. Restaurants delight in hiding bad foods behind frilly words. In the dish descriptions, steer clear when you see terms like, fried, crispy, creamy, juicy, wonderful, delicious, tantalizing, heavenly, savory, etc.

There you go. You’ll thank me later.

Posted in Pizza Night | 5 Comments »

The Mystery of Weight

September 25th, 2008

I’ve always found it odd that the one thing we obsess over more than anything — our weight — is the one thing we seem to know the least about. Oh sure, we understand the basics. Eat too little, and we lose weight. Eat too much, and we lose our skinny clothes. That’s the basic premise, but the reality is a bit more complex. After all, we’re talking about a machine with trillions of moving parts.

First off, how do we gain weight? In simple terms, like this: if you weigh 150 pounds and you eat a five-pound monster cheeseburger, you’re now 155 pounds. But are you? Well, not really. You can’t actually count the weight change until processing is complete. Food is fuel. Your body breaks it down into the parts it can use and the parts it can’t. The parts it can use become energy for your body’s cells. If it needs all of it, then when all is said and flushed, you’ll still be 150 pounds. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. However, if you can’t burn the usable fuel, the body thinks, “Hey, you know what? My ass just isn’t big enough. Let’s send some of this extra energy down to those fat cells. I’m sure we’ll be using it Real Soon Now.”

Now, how do we lose weight? The most obvious answer is we pee and poop. I mean, it’s hard not to notice how it goes in one end and out the other. But it’s easy to forget that stuff is just the parts the body doesn’t want. What it does want, as mentioned above, becomes food for your cells. And their waste products make up the bulk of weight loss. Yep. We’re talking cellular poop. And what they poop out is primarily carbon dioxide. Believe it or not, most of the weight you lose is done so via exhaling. This is the main reason you generally weigh less in the morning than you do in the evening. This is also the main reason you should sleep alone. You don’t want to inhale someone else’s weight loss.

Anyhoo … enough of the biology lesson. Now what about the real mystery? You know the one I’m talking about. It’s happened to all of us. Things are going along normally day after day, and then one morning — bam! — you’re suddenly three pounds heavier overnight. Three pounds! How the *bleep* does that happen? You quickly count up everything you ate yesterday… Let’s see… the muffin… coffee… there was that fried rice for lunch… um… a bag of Doritos… hmmm… chicken for dinner… . But as hard as you try, you simply can’t come up with any reasonable result that remotely adds up to three pounds.

The reason you can’t is because you aren’t the USDA. And the USDA estimates that the average American eats 4.7 pounds of food each day. If you drink your eight glasses of water (and by “glasses of water” I do mean coffee, tea, soda pop, beer, wine, and prune juice.) then that’s an additional four pounds. So if you mysteriously gained three pounds overnight, all that really means is that you didn’t use the full eight pounds you took in.

So don’t let it get you down. Eventually, as long as you’re doing things right, it all works out in the end. At least that’s what the USDA tells me.

Posted in No Help Here | 5 Comments »

Music These Days

September 24th, 2008

I seem to recall some decades ago my dad complaining about the modern music scene. I mean, all parents do that, right? It’s laser-etched into their DNA. They wouldn’t be card-carrying parents if they actually liked the same music as their children.

“It all sounds the same! There’s no variety! There’s no real musical value in it.” In short, “It’s nowhere near as good as the music I listened to when I was growing up.” If you think I’m quoting my dad, you’d be wrong. Those lines were found on a 4,000 year old copper scroll dug up in the Alps about forty years ago. (Ironically, though, my dad said something quite similar.)

That’s because we’re genetically programmed to believe that whatever happened to us between the ages of twelve and nineteen are the greatest things that ever happened. Nothing before and nothing since will compare to what hit us in those formative years. I understand that and so I truly believe that my music was better than my dad’s, and his was better than my grandfather’s, and so on back to the bronze age.

Except for today’s music of course! Have you listened to it? It all sounds the same! There’s no variety! I swear, kids these days don’t know what good music sounds like. They wouldn’t know a good tune if it came up and bit them on their iPods.

Okay, I’m kidding. Sort of. I’m unlike my dad because I actually do like some of today’s pop music. I will readily admit that during my daily commute, from the privacy of my car with its tightly rolled-up windows, I’ve let my fellow drivers know in no uncertain terms that I ain’t no Hollaback Girl. They also know that they can look (but they can’t touch) My Humps. I even believe I’ve invited them to Crank dat Soulja Boy — even if I have no idea what that is.

But I’m also like him in that I wonder: where’s the good music? And by that I mean the truly and musically good music. Sure, there was a lot of crap during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. (And that’s essentially the stuff he was complaining about.) But I also know of songs that never made it within ten megahertz of Casey Kasem’s charts. While we endured Donna Summer, at least Sweet was there with the eight-minute version of Love is Like Oxygen. I can understand not finding much merit in Funkytown but what about Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding? Where is today’s Stairway to Heaven, or Bohemian Rhapsody, or Yes’ fifteen-minute epic masterpiece Awaken?

I’m not saying there aren’t catchy tunes out there, but where are the songs we’ll be listening to in thirty years, still pouring out over the airwaves as we step out of our Deloreans into the clocktower square? They’re either not out there or they are, but just not reaching these aging ears of mine.

madonnaI will say one thing, though, about today’s charts. Check out Madonna. She’s fifty and she’s still got it. I’m pretty sure there weren’t any edgy, pop, female singers on Casey’s show in 1978 who were born in 1928. Love her or hate her, you have to admit, she’s doing something right.

Now, where’s my copy of Going for the One? I’m going to mail it to Ryan Seacrest and make sure he understands what a good album is supposed to sound like. Oh, there it is. I left it right next to my hearing aids.

Posted in Leftovers | 1 Comment »

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