Never exercise, just skip the Breakfast Soda.

If you really love food, if you can only stay sane by rewarding yourself with burgers and chocolate, or if you work with food for a living, are you doomed to be a lard butt? According to Big Food and Big Bev and Big Gov, you can consume until your heart's content, just "balance" it with some exercise. That's all! Keep on buying! Don't change any bad habits that keep our industry funded that you childishly enjoy! Just jog a little and consume our reduced-flavor-calorie stuff!

Killer At Large: Why Obesity is America's Greatest Threat (also available on Netflix on-demand) is a pretty decent documentary that goes beyond the usual hand-wringing and approaches the issue from multiple angles, including one that is commonly sidelined in the media: economic.

It is in the economic interest of industry to keep things the way they are, and it is the driving force of capitalism for unending growth & expansion (pun intended.) So when government gets involved in tackling the obesity issue, food and over-consumption tends to be overlooked in favor of personal responsibility and more efficiently consuming large amounts of food with....a little bit 'o exercise! The documentary includes some cringe worthy clips of Bush extolling his love of exercise and biking, and exercise gurus yelling at a room full of press attending an obesity conference to stand up and shake their butts.

I was trapped driving a car recently for about 6 hours, and was forced to listen to CNBC to stay awake. They had an interview with the CEO of Pepsico, and a lot of hay was made comparing them to Coke. Thing is, Coke does just beverages. Pepsi does all sorts of food, from soda to chips to candy to crackers, almost all of which are designed to be, in the words of the CEO, "fun-for-you" foods. However, in response to the obesity epidemic, they are doing much research to roll out "good-for-you" versions of the same foods we gobble up.

Short thrift is given to a few critics who scoff at Pepsi, as soda and chips are bad for you, period, and if you just make artificially-sweetened sodas and reduced-fat chips, your still propagating a culture of over-consumption, overly processed foods, and still leave out the basics that a company like Pepsico have no interest in -- hawking whole vegetables, whole fruits, and laying off everything else.

Consume more: Breakfast Soda.

Pepsico issued a press release on a new product today: Kickstart Mountain Dew. It's not a soda, or a juice, or an energy drink, but a combination. This is Pepsico's spin on a "good-for-you" product: breakfast soda. It tastes like Mountain Dew, with a citrus or fruit punch twist, has only 80 calories per 16 oz serving, has the caffeine of about a cup of coffee and has juice in it. Five percent juice, actually. So, basically, it's Mountain Dew with a teeny amount of juice, a jolt of caffeine, and the corn syrup is cut with artificial sweeteners to bring the calories down. I'll say it again: Pepsico's idea of a new good-for-you food is reduced-calorie breakfast soda.

The New York Times recently featured a working chef named Jesse Schenker who dropped 55 pounds in a year. One can assume he's been eating his ass off, and just "balanced" his professional life with some exercise, right?

Trips to the gym are not part of Mr. Schenker’s repertory; he tried that and didn’t like it. 

-record scratch- Wh-wh-what?! Indeed, when you work upwards of 60-80 hours a week (around food no less) and wish to both sleep and have a relationship with another human being, spending hours on a treadmill or lifting weights for even an hour is not an option. Pray tell, how did Jesse drop a fifth of his body weight with out religious trips to the gym?

Dr. Gullo told the chef that he was a “finisher,” someone for whom mere contact with a basket of bread, a box of doughnuts or a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish would lead, inevitably, to the inhaling of its complete contents.
The trick was to provide Mr. Schenker with something different to inhale. Sugar and other carbohydrates were out. Certain fats were discouraged. Shrimp, salmon, egg whites and Greek yogurt were in. Mr. Schenker applied his knowledge as a chef to create dishes that used the ingredients Dr. Gullo had rubber-stamped. “I came up with a million things,” he said, among them a curried egg salad in which Greek yogurt stood in for mayonnaise. These days Mr. Schenker might plow through a bowl of that, shoveling it down with the help of high-fiber, low-carb crackers.
“I’m still a finisher and I’m still eating at 1 in the morning,” he said. What he’s eating, though, might be a big bowl of shrimp.

Huh. So Jesse changed what he was eating and in effect consumed less calories and more fiber and nutrients. As for working around food, I spent some time working full-time in a professional kitchen and...I lost a lot of weight, because instead of eating meals, I was nibbling all day so I never got hungry despite eating less and always being on my feet. So Jesse had that going for him, and when he wasn't working with potentially unhealthy food, he came correct.

Exercise is for those of unrefined taste and undeveloped sense of honor!

It's a slippery slope to be against exercise. I Internet-trawled for arguments against exercise and mostly came up with screeds like this, most likely written by guys who as kids got picked last for the kick-ball team. I found a lot of legitimate reasons to exercise from many, many sources:

• Builds lung, heart and organ strength
• Builds muscle tone and muscle mass
• Curbs hunger (during the activity)
• Helps with depression
• Delays the onset of age-related deterioration

And for the most part, I agree full-on with those reasons. I lift weights twice a week for about 45 minutes, I ride my bike as much as humanly possible in the cold season and ride a road bike 50-150 miles a week in the warm season. It makes me feel good, it helps me clear my head, and my body is stronger for it.

However, exercise is not the answer to lose weight. Not even half the answer. In fact, I'd go so far to make two statements:

• One can lose weight with absolutely no exercise by reducing caloric intake alone.
• Exercise can be be counterproductive to losing weight.

Yep, if you exercise anabolicly (i.e. lift weights and the like), your muscles will respond by getting bigger. Muscles weights more than fat. Of course, it is much healthier to be 210 lbs of lean muscle than 210 pounds of mushy fat, but this blog is about losing the chunk and not becoming a walking wall of muscle.

And yes, if you exercise aerobically (i.e. run, cycle, jog, treadmills,) your body will burn calories quicker than if you were sitting on the couch watching Buffy. However, when the rubber hits the road, it's not so simple.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. More precisely, you need to burn 3500 calories more than you take in. Let's say you want to bike and lose a pound. It's going to take me about 3 hours of moderate effort on a bike to burn about 3500 cal. Voila, lost a pound in just 3 hours, right? Of course not, because when you aerobically work out for 3 hours, those calories need to come from somewhere, and they ain't coming straight from your butt to your power-stroke. Your blood sugar is going to drop unless you feed your self. And if you let it go, you will be hungrier than you ever were. If you try to not take in any calories, you get really tired, listless and fuzzy. Then you lose consciousness/fall asleep. And when you wake up you will feel weird. And very hungry. I know, I've done it.

I've been a fat cyclist for over ten years because even though I'd burn massive amounts of calories, I'd consume even more massive numbers of calories. My traditional post-ride meal would be a combo-plate from a local Chinese restaurant. That $9 plate would easily be over 2000 calories. And the pint of ice cream that would chase it would be another 1000. That's not to mention the several thousand calories I would eat while riding to keep my blood sugar steady....

Advertising really brings out the worst, sometimes.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2311

Last Saturday ate relatively conservatively until a birthday thing with pie, Mallomars and cupcakes, which gave me the sugar rush and a slight crappy feeling. Ate Chinese then was super-craving sugar -- not much in the house, so I spooned some peanut butter with chocolate syrup. Sunday I went all-out, corn flakes in the morning, a diner BLT with onion rings for lunch, then a Superbowl party in the evening with ribs, brisket, my mac n' cheese, potato buns and cupcakes, not to mention beer. I ate conservatively by old-me standards, but still felt a mild ate-too-much-low by Sunday night which I hope to someday not have to experience every weekend.

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MONDAY COUNT: 2335
Nice to be back to healthy eating after the weekend. Funny how after religiously always getting oil on my Subway hero, going without was barely noticeable, as the layers of vegetables they put on it makes it taste pretty moist anyway. I know the power of fat to transmit flavor, but the structural make u of the sandwich allows it to have a LOT of surface area in the mouth while being chewed, which actually helps transmit flavor efficiently, too.

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, steel cut oatmeal, 375 cal

PM SNACK: 1pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: Subway 6" veggie patty hero on 9 grain wheat, cool ranch Doritos, 16oz diet coke, 650 cal
Ordered with just vinegar, not oil and vinegar, saved 200 cal without much of a difference in taste.

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, apple/carrot/kale/beet/ginger/cilantro juice, 130 cal

DINNER: 8:45pm, roasted flounder & broccoli, jodhpur lentils, pickle, poppa salad with homemade dressing, 7oz diet sprite, 780 cal
Another convenience packet o' lentils, this time in a cumin-laced yellow creamy sauce, though no cream, just the starch from the cooked lentils. The good thing about this meal is when I sat down to eat it, I put it on a large 12" dinner plate AND it still looked like a hell of a lot of food.

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, cheesy poofs, 300 cal
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TUESDAY COUNT: 2190
Woke up sore and hungry, which made me happy. Sore, because I pushed it a little on the weights and makes me one fraction of a step closer to doing a pull up, hungry, because I kept to the budget yesterday.

Today, I had a cavity filled, and could only eat with my left side in the evening, so I skipped salad and replaced it with some juice, and went soft and busted out a tetra box of tomato soup to go with some soft quinoa and tender boiled shrimp. Weird eating cheesy poofs on one side of my mouth was strange, didn't get the full taste.

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, fruit smoothie, 375 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, almond butter & grape jelly on whole wheat, momma salad, 7oz diet coke, 630 cal
Increased the almond butter by 1/3 in the sandwich, and made 1 sandwich instead of two, decreasing the amount of grain by half. I now appreciate how calorie dense a nut-butter sandwich can be. Bread: 200, almond butter: 300, jelly: 30, vegetables: 100. Now that works for a good balance of protein/fat/carbs and fiber bulk, especially for a packed on-the-go meal!

PM SNACK: 7:30pm, apple/carrot/beet/kale/cilantro/ginger juice, 135 cal

DINNER: 8:15pm, boiled shrimp, boxed tomato soup, quinoa, 750 cal
Soup was a little too salty, a little too tart. Very convenient but I know I can make much better. Still, a nice change of pace.

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, cheesy poofs, 300 cal

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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2345
Had a nice day making a few meals I would not have made nearly as well if I didn't have c-school training. Usually I see my training come out in small and modest ways, but today I remembered, "oh yeah, I can cook just about anything decently!"

AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, steel cut oats, 375 cal

AM SNACK: 11:30am, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, tenderloin steak with pepper rub, spinach daal, roasted brussel sprouts, pickle, 7oz diet coke, 600 cal
Picked up a pepper-rubbed grass-fed medallion of beef tenderloin at the market, just to mix it up a bit. Damn, should of taken a picture of this meal. Each component was about 200 calories. Big 12" dinner plate filled with food to the edge. Huge pile of brussel sprouts, big silky brown/green pool of lentils overlapping the brussels, and a (relatively) teeny 4oz medallion of steak, which is the recommended serving size, about what fits in the palm of your hand. I guess taking pics of all my meals would be a bit too much, huh?

I do have to admit, I'm not a big steak guy but I enjoyed the hell out of this piece of meat. Cast iron pan preheat over high heat. Sprayed with canola. Let the meat come to room temp. Seared on each side about 2 minutes, let rest about 3 minutes. Used my parent's steak knife to slice it thin as I ate it, made it last through all the brussels & daal. Beautiful peppery crust, caramelized and mahogany brown. Center was reddish/pink, perfectly medium rare with a nice contrast of textures from the well-done on the outside to the edge-of-mushy unctuousness on the inside.

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, beef jerky, 60 cal

DINNER: 8:30pm, mango jalapeno chicken meatballs with shirataki noodles & sautéed mushrooms dressed in soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine, poppa salad with homemade dressing, 7oz diet sprite, 1010 cal
Busted out the wok for the first time in a while. Holy crap, if this had real full-calorie noodles, this would have been a 2000+ calorie meal! Used my c-school training to make this taste pretty good -- heated a tbsp of peanut oil with slices of fresh ginger and garlic, tossed the aromatics, cooked down the sliced mushrooms at high heat with a little salt, tossed in the par-boiled noodles, hit it with a tablespoon each of fish sauce, soy sauce, mirin wine, sesame oil and a small squirt of siracha, tossed in the heated spicy meatballs. The sweetness of the mango in the meatballs really helped the dish balance.

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, cheesy poofs, 300 cal

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THURSDAY COUNT: 2335
Had a good work out in the morning -- though I've been doing 5-second curled hangs from the pull up bar, I still can't do a pull up, so I've resumed an additional set of lowering myself slowly, which I did originally before I was strong enough to hang in place.

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, Fage full fat yogurt with almonds, agave & vanilla, 400 cal

LUNCH: 1:30pm, sardine & avocado on whole wheat toast, chana masala, momma salad, pickle 7oz diet coke, 815 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, bite of school-made cookie, +/-20 cal
When a teacher and a stack of 3 year olds offer you a cookie from a batch they just made, and they all look at you with big, quiet, expectant eyes, you can't say, "no, I'm obsessively looking after my calorie intake, thank you." No, you choose the smallest bite on the plate and tell them how incredibly fantastic it was!

DINNER: 6:30pm, 2 slices pizza, poppa salad, +/- 800 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, fritos, 300 cal
I have a long history with fritos, it was my first "diet" food back in high school and when I'm doing miles on the bike, it's a go-to energy snack. Unlike the cheesy poofs with 30+ ingredients, Fritos are just corn, corn oil and salt.

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FRIDAY COUNT: 2350
Fell asleep at 9pm, and Mili slept late while B took E to school, so I didn't wake until 8:30pm! What was that? Woke up feeling good, not sick or sad, so I guess I just needed it. My upper arms, front and back, as well as the corners of my back by my arms are unusually sore, which means...slow lowering from the curled position is definitely the way to help me to get to a real pull up!

AM SNACK: 8:30am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, heritage Os with whole milk, 315 cal

PM SNACK: 12pm, remnants of the momma salad, 45 cal

LUNCH: 1:30pm, baked hake loin, steamed string beans, chana masala, pi 7oz diet sprite, 510 cal cal
Hake is a fish very similar to cod, who knew? Got a big bag of frozen loins from Costco on a whim, getting tired of the flounder fillet flatfish vibes for now. Used an electronic thermometer to make sure the internal temp was right.

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, apple/carrot/kale/beet/ginger juice, 135 cal

DINNER: 6:15pm, sauteed chicken breast, asparagus, whole wheat Israelis cous cous, 7oz diet sprite, 940 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:15pm, poppa salad with home made dressing, 150 cal
Rushed home to make dinner for everyone, forgot to eat salad. Had to finish it, as I'm not gonna eat it over the weekend and it would go bad. And I hope it prevents me from getting too hungry in the later evening.

EVENING SNACK: 8:15pm, Fritos corn chips, 7oz diet sprite, 255 cal
Held back a small amount of chips so I could hit my budget on the nose, yep, I'm nuts.