Monthy Weigh In: Point B.

203.6-->207-->208.6

After last month's call for deep thought and self-analysis, I'm going to be brief now. The slight gain is annoying, but not unexpected. I really haven't focused on eating much this past month, but I've made interesting roads into the emotional and professional circles of the ven diagram I presented last month. Despite this being the heaviest I've been in 2 years, my health has never been better, my endurance on the bike and, uh, other physical activities, are strongest it's even been in my entire life.

Though I'm afraid to directly say it as it may cause a jinx, I'm kinda happy right now. Not satisfied or full or complacent or distracted by baubles, but yeah, I'm kinda happy with how things are going. Key word "going", as there seems to be movement from a very dark Point A that starts in February 2010 of the above graph, and will go to some Point C at some undetermined point in the future. It's the trip, not the destination, where all the fun lies. And I don't mean destination like a beach resort in Hawaii, I mean destination, like death. OK, I'll shaddap now.

Heaven, Hell and Point C

I'm gonna try to eat a little less in July. That is all.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2920
Very intense but good week. Ate too much because of emotional eating, but I know it's not a new normal and can be related to very specific, non-repeating events.

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MONDAY COUNT: 3270

SLEPT: 12pm-6am, 6 hrs

AM SNACK: 6:15 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:30am, Fage with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, vegetarian meatballs, tomato soup, slaw, pickles, 550 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, mahi mahi, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, popcorn, +/- 400 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, flourless chocolate cake, digestive cookies, +/- 800 cal
Emotional turmoil.
-----

TUESDAY COUNT: 3250

SLEPT: 9:30pm-1am, 3:30am- 6:15am, 6.25hrs

AM SNACK: 6:30 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 2pm, chicken meatballs, lentil curry, steamed string beans, pickles,  650 cal

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, almond croissant, +/- 400 cal

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, stouffers french bread pizza, poppa salad, 1080 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 2 kid granola bars, 200 cal
-----

WEDNESDAY COUNT: 3390

SLEPT: 9:30pm - 3:30am, 6 hrs

AM SNACK: 4am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 7am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, fruit smoothie, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, sauteed shrimp and mushrooms, poppa salad with dressing, 740 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezit, 310 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, cashews, 250 cal

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, homemade ice cream, +/- 300 cal

DINNER: 7:45pm, Chipotle Burrito, 880 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10:15pm, ice cream, +/- 300 cal
-----

BIKE CREDIT: 2550 cal
THURSDAY COUNT: 1380

SLEPT: 12:30am-5am, 4.5 hours

AM SNACK: 5:30am, iced green tea, 

BREAKFAST 1: 6am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 7:15am, 3 good donuts, +/- 800 cal

BIKE BREAKFAST: 10am, waffle, bacon, +/- 700 cal

BIKE SNACK: 12pm, homemade granolabar, 285 cal

BIKE SNACK: 3pm, homemade granola bar, 285 cal

BIKE SNACK: 4:45pm, cheetos, twix, diet coke, +/- 800 cal

DINNER: 8pm, Ethiopian food, +/- 900 cal
-----

FRIDAY COUNT: 3270

SLEPT: 11pm-6am, 7 hours

AM SNACK: 6am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 10am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11am, Fage yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, sardines and avocado on whole wheat toast, pickles, poppa salad with dressing, 750 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad and cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 5pm, hot dog, fries, ice cream, +/- 800 cal

DINNER 2: 9pm, beef patties, cookies, +/- 800 cal

Truisms: Approaching a "No Diet" Diet

Well, maybe I wouldn't go THAT far....

There are certain truisms emerging after writing this blog for 2+ years, so this post might bore the 2 or 3 of you who've been reading it religiously. When you start believing something as true that shapes  your world, you start seeing it everywhere, but it's eery when articles in the media direct address it in the span of a week or so.

This past week, yet another signpost that in the battle to lose weight, forget about exercise.

A 2011 meta-analysis, a study of studies, looked at the relationship between physical activity and fat mass in children, and found that being active is probably not the key determinant in whether a child is at an unhealthy weight. In the adult population, interventional studies have difficulty showing that a physically active person is less likely to gain excess weight than a sedentary person. Further, studies of energy balance, and there are many of them, show that total energy expenditure and physical activity levels in developing and industrialized countries are similar, making activity and exercise unlikely to be the cause of differing obesity rates.
Moreover, exercise increases one’s appetite. After all, when you burn off calories being active, your body will often signal you to replace them. Research confirms this. A 2012 systematic review of studies that looked at how people complied with exercise programs showed that over time, people wound up burning less energy with exercise than predicted and also increasing their caloric intake.

I would never tell anyone not to exercise -- my exercise regime of bicycling and weight lifting is key to retaining sane, happy, focused, productive and communicative with those I love....but it doesn't help me lose weight. For many years a good friend would ask, "You ride you bike so damn much, why you still so fat?" Because it's about eating less and better, not doing more. Consume and spend less: less on food, and no need to waste your time in gyms and running around in circles.

I had to dig unspeakably far through Google Image Search for a "Fat Racist" to find this image.

Oddly related to fighting consumerism to aid in weight loss and public health, the recent racist mass-murder  in South Carolina saw an interesting response that neither blames racism or gun culture directly, but anti-intellectualism that allows simplistic, fearful thought to grow and discourages the shame that should be applied to those who espouse fundamentalist views in public and in politics.

Corporate influence on climate and environmental policy, meanwhile, is simply more evidence of anti-intellectualism in action, for corporate domination of American society is another result of a public that is not thinking critically. Americans have allowed their democracy to slip away, their culture overtaken by enormous corporations that effectively control both the governmental apparatus and the media, thus shaping life around materialism and consumption.

The drive to eat more is profitable. Offering any solution other than eating less is profitable. Reason and truth that contradicts the drive to eat more is unprofitable. Anti-intellectualism is the solution to keep the stock price high. Who care if a few eggs, or church goers, or entire classes of little kids, get broken in the process?

But to get back on track, as we're not trying to solve all of the world's ills, but just lose some weight and keep it off. So truisms so far:

• Eat less to lose weight, exercise for other reasons.
• Capitalism will do anything to make you eat more.

and thirdly,

• Diets don't work.

Diets don't work for a variety of reasons, from biology to psychology. Mann points the finger, first and foremost, at human biology. "Genes," she writes, "play an indisputable role in regulating an individual's weight: Most of us have a genetically set weight range. When we try to live above or below that range, our body struggles mightily to adapt."
Second to biology, Mann blames a combination of neuroscience and psychology. Our brains are hard-wired to want food for survival, she explains, so restricting calories creates a psychological stress response, which facilitates weight gain, not loss. Also, she adds: "Studies show that willpower, the thing we all blame ourselves for not having enough of, is in many ways a mythical quality and certainly not something that can be relied upon for weight loss."

Books about a "no diet" diet address the question I occasionally get asked as I've maintained a significant weight loss for a few years now: "How did you do it?" Modern "diets" that are published in books with snappy hooks don't really answer it other than "stay forever uncomfortable on this cockamamie scheme we put on you." Eat cabbage soup for 2 meals a day for the rest of your life? Pretend to eat like a caveman? Cut out all carbs/fat/protein/food of a certain color/randomly chosen villain? Balderdash.

You just have to work with the biology, psychology and resources you're given. Anti-intellectual magical thinking will profit someone other than yourself, and will literally and figuratively keep you on a treadmill to prevent you from actually becoming engaged in life in a meaningful way, but it won't help you lose weight and keep it off.
-----

WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2720
Very much an up and down week, a lot going on.

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MONDAY COUNT: 3550

SLEPT: 11pm-6:30am, 7.5 hrs
Hungry -- probably still in calorie deficit from the 100 miles I rode yesterday.

AM SNACK: 6:45 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:45am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, sardines and avocado on whole wheat toast, health salad, pickles, momma salad, chests, 1010 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, ice cream sandwich, 430 cal

DINNER: 7pm, mahi mahi, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, popcorn, +/- 400 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 3 kid granola bars, one kind bar, 500 cal
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RIDE CREDIT: 740 cal
TUESDAY COUNT: 2925

SLEPT: 9:30pm- 5:30am, 8hrs

AM SNACK: 5:45 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal  

BIKE SNACK: 2pm, homemade granola bar, 290 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER pt 1: 5:15pm, poppa salad, dressing, veggie straws, 330 cal

EVENING SNACK: 5:45pm kind bar, 200 cal

DINNER pt2: 8pm, Chipotle burrito, chips & salsa, ice cream 1925 cal
-----

WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2970

SLEPT: 9:30pm - 12:30am, 3 hrs

AM SNACK: 4am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, lentil curry, steamed string beans, pickles,  650 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezit, 310 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, poppa salad with dressing, 200 cal

PM SNACK: 6pm, slice of streetza, +/- 300 cal

DINNER: 8pm, burger, fries, oysters, sticky bun, water, +/- 900 cal
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THURSDAY COUNT: 2660

SLEPT: 10pm-6:30am, 8.5 hours

AM SNACK: 7am, iced green tea, 

BREAKFAST 1: 10:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 1:45pm, Fage yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, momma salad, cheezits, 410 cal

DINNER: 7pm, stuffers french bread pizzas, poppa salad with dressing, flourless chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, +/-1640 cal

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BIKE CREDIT: 715 cal
FRIDAY COUNT: 1495

SLEPT: 9pm-12:30am, 3am-5:30am, 6 hours

AM SNACK: 6am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 10am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11am, Fage yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal

BIKE SNACK: 2pm, homemade granola bar, 290 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad and cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, mussels over pasta in wine and oil, ice cream and flourless chocolate cake, glass of wine, +/- 1000 cal

Piñatas are the stuff of nightmares.

I was sugar mad as a kid. My allowance and stray coins would go straight to the candy store. It was happiness and love when my mom would make a cake or brownies from the Betty Crocker mix, a rare culinary task that was within her reach. A slice of pizza made no sense without grape soda. If I felt down, sugar would pick me up. If I felt good, sugar would celebrate it.

As I slide into middle age, I think I successfully untangled these deep emotional ties to the substance that was messing with my health. Perhaps I'm not free of it, but being aware of it is more than half the battle. Indeed, early on in this blog, I approached sugar from every angle to help me get a bead on it. I even drilled down into the relationship between kids and sugar. In a nutshell, kids are growing rapidly and need lots of fuel to feed that, so their taste buds are programmed to find super-sweet (a.k.a. super-caloric) things attractive. It is in the manipulation and marketing to children for these needs that evil tends to lurk.

GIMME CAAAAANDYYYYYY!

And holy biz-natch, did I see one face of evil this past weekend. It's name is piñata. If there was something to turn a bunch of 20-odd happy-go-lucky six year olds who just spent the last 2 hours playing together idyllically into a raving bunch of blood-thirsty zombies who will think of nothing of gnawing through their neighbor's flesh to get to sweet, sweet brains candy, it is the piñata.

I never paid much attention to the piñatas at other kid's parties, there was usually only 5-10 kids and they were younger than 6. My daughter had been asking for a piñata over the past year, so when her mom suggested it, I thought "of course" and ordered one on line to my daughter's whim -- a pink stripe heart. It was a fun activity filling it with my kids -- some excess Costco swag, fruit paper and gummies and the like, but then the real crack-rock stuff: Hershey's kisses, tootsie rolls, Reese's peanut butter cups, etc -- the stuff that I loved as a kid, and my daughter specifically asked for. She wanted all the candy that I would never give her on a regular or even-semi regular basis. Fruit is on the regular. Good ice cream is on the semi-regular. Cake and cupcakes once every so often. But this stuff, this was the once-a-year, no-way-any-other-time stuff. I could see her eyes get a little glazed as we stuffed that heart-shaped box full.

I kept the ice cream, cake and piñata indoors until the end of the party, and the tradition of gathering around a be-candled cake and singing to the celebrant was enough to focus the crowd. But as we furiously cut cake, scooped ice cream and served 40-odd mouths, just 10 feet away the magnetic power of the piñata beckoned. After all the kids got cake and and open call to the adults to serve themselves, the crowd around the table was a little sparse. A ring of about 10 kids stood around the piñata, staring at it, like it would burst at any moment simply by quietly focusing their mind energy on it.

To cut a long story short, another dad at the party who had real-world piñata experience jumped in and advised me how to set it up and tried to control the crowd with magical side-walk chalk lines. Still, every swing of the broom handle was one more likelier chance for some kid to get whacked on the head or worse. After getting most of the kids to take a few whacks, I called for any parent volunteers, because this fucker would not break. For a moment, I clawed at it with my hands, but no. In desperation, afraid of the 20+ little kids slowly closing the gap between me, them and the candy explosion poised to burst around my head-height, I pulled it down and shouted, "GO FOR IT!" That was unnecessary, as at my feet a dog-pile of 20+ little kids formed, with a soundtrack of shouts for candy, cries for help, guttural murmurs of air being pushed out of lungs by compression, and after a whole 10 seconds, cries that some only got one piece of candy, while unfairly others got pounds and pounds. (I feel for those parents in particular.)

After the fact, I asked my daughter how she liked her party. Unlike last year, there were no crying jags or drama, she lead a pack of fellow girls all day, and the present pile was larger than ever. However, she did not like how little candy she got from the piñata. I recommended maybe next year, instead we should do goodie bags where each kids gets the exactly the same amount. "No," she scolded, "next year when the piñata opens, just let me take candy, and then everyone else!" Unless we engage in some TSA-level security to hold the crowd behind a gate, I just don't see that happening.
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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2615
Surprisingly low average, but probably due to eating crazy the weekend before and not being hungry on Monday...

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BIKE CREDIT: 715 cal
MONDAY COUNT: 2095

SLEPT: 9pm-4am, 7 hrs
Overate a bit this weekend due to my daughter's party and all the sweets I cooked up and packed into that damn piñata.

AM SNACK: 4:15 am, iced green tea, 150mg caffeine

BREAKFAST: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, vegetarian meatballs chicken soup, health salad, pickles, 650 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, mahi mahi, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, popcorn, +/- 400 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 2 kid granola bars, one kind bar, 400 cal
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TUESDAY COUNT: 2370

SLEPT: 9:30pm- 7am, 9.5hrs

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, lentil curry, steamed string beans, pickles,  650 cal

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 5pm, shrimp empanada, 2 cookies, +/- 800 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 2 kids granola bars, kind bar, 400 cal
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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2630

SLEPT: 9:15pm - 11:45pm, 2:45am-5:45am,  5hrs

AM SNACK: 6am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, grilled pork loin, poppa salad with dressing,  pickles, 620cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezit, 310 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, cashews, 310 cal

DINNER: 8pm, pork curry tomkatsu, water, +/- 800 cal
-----

BIKE CREDIT: 1370
THURSDAY COUNT: 2910

SLEPT: 10:30pm - 3:15am, 4.45 hr

AM SNACK: 3:30am, iced green tea, 150 mg caffeine

BIKE SNACK: 5am, homemade granola bar, 320cal

BIKE SNACK: 7am, homemade granola bar, 320 cal

BREAKFAST 1: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, Fage yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, grilled pork loin, poppa salad with dressing,  pickles, 620cal

PM SNACK: 2pm, momma salad, cheezits, 410 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, 2 cookies, +/- 600 cal

DINNER: 6:30pm, Pizza, salad, beer, +/- 700 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, ice cream, +/- 700 cal
-----

FRIDAY COUNT: 3070

SLEPT: 11pm-6:30am, 7.5 hours

AM SNACK: 7am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11:45am, Fruit smoothie, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 2pm, sauteed shrimp and mushrooms, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, +/- 650 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad and cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER 1: 5:15pm, hot dog, fries, ice cream, +/- 800 cal

DINNER 2: 8pm, seating sandwich, half a cookie sandwich, water, +/- 700 cal

Introduction: Random Thoughts on Alcohol

I've never written much about alcohol because I've never been much of a fan of it. Like caffeine, it is both a drug and a food and deeply entwined in our culture. Unlike caffeine it is heavily regulated -- banned to consume by anyone under 21, tightly controlled by where, when and whom it can be sold. It's history in the United States is a story of morality and religion fighting with man's natural urge to party and get stoned out of our brains. I've also taken classes in wine and spirits while in c-school, and did a lot of first-person research while living in England. There is a lot of there, there.

But it was this recent article that got me thinking: climate change is spurring wine production. Due to warmer temperatures, Washington State is finding it harder to grow apples but a lot easier to grow less water-intensive wine-grapes. Due to the same effect, the wine-region of France has slowly crept to the southern tip of England. Also, as temperatures rise and water lessens, the concentrations of sugar increase in a growing wine grape, which then produces a "hotter" wine, i.e. more sugar to ferment into a higher alcohol level.

I wrote about something called "sugar alcohols" in this blog years ago. On one hand, there is a chemical class of something called sugar alcohols that are low-calorie sugar substitutes. But on the other hand,

Sugar and alcohol have something in common: If sugar were to get in to a fight with alcohol, he'd slice his hand off and casually admit, "I am you father...."

"4-Luke-oh, you are a distillation of me, Darth Sucrose." Sorry.

They're both super-simple carbohydrates that the body needs to do little to get into the bloodstream. Sugar will rush in and give you fast energy, then a crash. Alcohol will rush in and get you drunk, then hang you over. When sugar undergoes the metabolic process known as fermentation, an environment is produced to allow yeast to go nutso and eat all the sugar. The yeasts belch & poo two new, simpler components: alcohol and CO2. Through distillation, any boring stuff like water is taken away and you're left with spirits.
Sugar is 4 cal/g, and even though alcohol is made directly from the sugars in the original sources like grains (vodka, beer), raw sugar plants (rum) and grapes (wine), it has 7cal/g. It's quite a different animal. Or is it?

"Excess sugar can alter metabolism, raise blood pressure, skew the signaling of hormones and damage the liver — outcomes that sound suspiciously similar to what can happen after a person drinks too much alcohol. Schmidt, co-chair of UCSF’s Community Engagement and Health Policy program, noted on CNN: “When you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense. Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.” 

Alcohol is an acquired taste, but the pleasure from it's intoxicating effects is universal and timeless. Add some sugar to an alcoholic drink to mask the taste of the alcohol and make it taste like candy, and you got one wicked brew.

I've spoken at length about "addiction" in this blog, mostly dealing with forms that some don't readily accept as real: sugar addiction, food addiction, addictions of behavior rather than physiology. It's pretty accepted in our culture that "alcoholism" is a real thing. Infact, according to recent style of new study that combs the entire world wide web, it is estimated that....

Worldwide, some 5 percent of the world's population — about 240 million people — are dependent on alcohol. The accepted mental health definitions of dependence speaks of compulsive use, loss of control over substance use and a failure to stop using even when people are aware of the problems alcohol is causing. More than a billion people, or 20 percent of the human race, smoke tobacco.

There is a debate underway about the root causes of addiction that can be summarized something like this: if your life sucks, drugs that alter your consciousness make your life seem less sucky by comparison, despite the horrendous toll it can take on you and those around you. If your life is good and you have support and people who love you, the appeal of drugs that alter your consciousness to get away from the reality you find yourself in is a lot less appealing, and therefore a lot less "addicting". The opposite of addiction is connection.

If you come from a broken home, if your job doesn't pay you enough to live, if you live in a neighborhood full of violence and uncertainty, you're more likely to become a junky...not because you're a racial minority or have a genetic disposition. Not because drugs are any more addictive than other things that give pleasure. It's that the drugs are one of the few things that give you pleasure. And I include that commonly available drug, alcohol, as a main contender.

I was on a date a while back with a women who was a bit of an oenophile. She sampled three or four glasses, sniffing and swirling, before she chose the glass for us. The wine was okay I guess, it went well when I mixed it in my mouth with my entree. However, there was a "chocolate board" for desert, a small tasting of six high-end artisanal dark chocolates from around the world. I tasted the hell out of that, and made comments about the "grassy", "stone-fruit" and "loud tannic" activity of each piece. Funny, all the wine-terminology I was taught in c-school burst forth when testing my palate on chocolate. It's not addiction that drove her focus on the wine and my focus on the chocolate -- it was the heightened pleasure. It's when you can't stay sober at work or keep your weight under 500 lbs that maybe the term "addiction" should be brought in.

Before Prohibition, the United States still had the backbone of a European cultural attitude toward alcohol -- it was good for food and celebration. There were always unhappy or stupid people who would abuse it, but pushing it underground just made it sexier and put drinking on the side of "freedom" and "adventure" and "rebellion", which are naturally American values. By the time I got to college in the 1980s, with the drinking age pushed up to 21 only a generation ago, it was a big deal for a lot of my fellow incoming freshmen to be away from home and have the "freedom" to drink crappy beer in the privacy of their own dorm rooms with each other. My parents always made alcohol available to me -- there was nothing more square or boring than doing what my parents did, even it was in the form of dry martinis and interesting whiskeys.

What was my point? Alcohol. As with any drug, make it cheap, make it commonly available to all, regulate the manufacture and tax it, and let people decide for themselves if it is good or bad. If you want to fight alcoholism or drug abuse (or the crumbling of the nuclear family or many other social ills that show a lack of real connectedness with each other), raise the minimum wage so that the weakest among us can live with dignity. Society should be shaped more with carrots than sticks. Regard it as a compliment to good food, not an intoxicant to party with.

Well, that was a ramble. Thanks for taking that walk with me!
-----

WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2830
Not great, but a step in the right direction.

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MONDAY COUNT: 2985

SLEPT: 10:30pm-5:45am, 7.25 hrs

AM SNACK: 6:15 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, falafel, chicken soup, health salad, pickles, 725 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, mahi mahi, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, popcorn, +/- 400 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 3 kid granola bars, one kind bar, 500 cal
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TUESDAY COUNT: 2640

SLEPT: 8:30pm- 4:45am, 8.25hrs

AM SNACK: 5 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal
First time in almost a week due to broken parts. Surprising how good it tasted after the involuntary absence.

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, mushroom masala, steamed string beans, pickles,  620 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, sauteed chicken breast, roasted brussel sprouts, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACKS: 8pm, 3 kid granola bars, kind bar, 500 cal
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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2830

SLEPT: 9:15pm - 5:15am,  8hrs

AM SNACK: 5:45am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, fruit smoothie, 450 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, sautted chicken, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, 400cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezit, 310 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, cashews, 310 cal

DINNER: 8pm, pork tonkatsu curry with rice, pork dumplings, cupcakes +/-1200 cal
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BIKE CREDIT: 1285
THURSDAY COUNT: 2865

SLEPT: 11pm - 3am, 4 hr

AM SNACK: 3:30am, iced green tea, 150 mg caffeine

BIKE SNACK: 5am, homemade granola bar, 340cal

BIKE SNACK: 7am, homemade granola bar, 340 cal

BREAKFAST 1: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, Steel cut oatmeal,  450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, sautéed shrimp and mushrooms, quinoa, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, 950 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad, cheezits, 410 cal

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, reese's peanut butter cups, +/- 700 cal

DINNER: 8pm, Russ & Daughter's Cafe dinner, +/- 800 cal
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FRIDAY COUNT: ---

SLEPT: 10:30pm-5:30am, 7 hours

BREAKFAST 1: 10am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11am, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 2pm, almond butter and grape jelly on whole wheat toast, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, warm chocolate pastry cream, +/- 900 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, momma salad and cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER 1: 5:15pm, went off the rails here, with a friend with whom I usually eat too much. Totes worth it.