Tequila!!

Tequila! God, I hate that stuff. The Dining Section of today's Times had a piece about "embracing cheap tequila," which oddly sent me through a series of emotions and memories involving the one solitary time in my life I tried tequila. It was only once, in hopes of hallucinating and absolve myself of a girlfriend -- a better plan had never been hatched, obviously.

My professor for Culinary Management was also the director of the wine program at the school, a serious oenophile. I took an 8 part wine unit involving tasting styles of wines from all over the world. As for liquor (or in industry lingo, "go-go juice" "spirits"), we spoke of it, but never sampled. Why the short thrift?

Because wine is wonderful with food and liquor is wonderful with water, ice and whatever it takes to make it taste less like liquor. I'm not a big fan of wine in general, but when it is combined in the mouth with good food, the food becomes something else, something you can string big airy words together to make yourself sound profound and arty. It's like a party with music versus a party with out music -- it's still a good party, but misses a certain something.

Liquor, however, does not play that well with food. There's just too much "heat" -- too much alcohol. That's all ya taste, and it overwhelms the palate. It only takes a few ounces and the mouth becomes numb and taste goes to the wayside all together, unless the liquor is mixes with other strong flavors. Hence, the #1 way to consume tequila is in super sweet, fruity margaritas.

Taste the Rainbow, if the Rainbow were to get you TOTES TRASHED, YEE HAAAW!

Unlike the complexity of fermented wine or brewed beers, distilled liquors all go through a stage where they are broken down and cleansed and all that is left is alcohol, water and maybe some substances guaranteed to give you a hang over but can be filtered. At that point, whether you started with corn or wheat or cactus or potato or rice, it all pretty much tastes the same. It's how it's treated (or in vodka's case, not treated) after this point, whether aged in wooden barrels (whiskey) or smoothed out with botanicals (gin) or sweetened and flavored (liqueur) that makes it the products we come to know. And none of it is food friendly.

We never did a liquor tasting, there was no point, and I was fine with it, because I don't need to taste tequila to bring memory, only a smell of some one's tequila shooter of some one sitting next to me at a bar.....When I was in my 20s, I drank a quart of tequila to see if I would hallucinate. I might have hallucinated, I don't remember anything but waking up in tequila sweat, hung over and broken up with my girlfriend at the time. Just the smell of the stuff takes me back to that morning.

Liquor is great to get relaxed fast, a social cocktail is a wonderful thing, I suppose. I just don't like to get drunk, even when I was younger. Modern cocktail culture is twee and pretentious, trying to add quality ingredients to drinks where the amount of heat kinda renders the effort moot.

No.

I do use liquor in one aspect of my culinary life. When I use vanilla beans, I cut them in half and scrape out the wonderful black paste that adds truly wonderful pure vanilla flavor to dishes. I take the spent beans and let a large bunch of them sit in 190 proof vodka (that's 80% alcohol) for a few months in a dark closet. I then blend it into a mash, strain it, then cut it with 50% water -- quadruple strength vanilla extract for pennies on the dollar. For the same reason alcohol is an excellent window cleaner and paint stripper, it also extracts all the essential flavors out of a bean. It also doesn't add any of it's own flavor. I have to cut it with water because adding too much alcohol to a dish may affect outcome.

Does it really matter what is in the bottle, as long as it meets the high standards of the ad?

Most liquor with in each class is pretty much the same (hello, vodka!). Companies spend stupid amounts of cash to distinguish themselves, as their products can't do it for themselves. Like wine, certain kinds of liquor are more refined in flavors (hello, sippin' whiskey), but let's get real -- you get a few shots in, and unless you have a very strong, especially trained palate, the tasting portion of the evening is done.

THE COUNT:2350
Lifted weights this morning. I confirmed that yes - I can do a negative pull up, but after one, I felt the soreness come back to the level it was yesterday, so I left it at that, and cut back on the back-targeted weights.

Assembled ice cream sandwiches today with my sheet of brownies and homemade vanilla ice cream. Despite cutting them into 2" squares and being conservative on the ice cream filling, each smallish sandwich rang up at 265 cal per  sammie! Doesn't sound like much, but I could easily down three or four without blinking.

Lunch was tricky. After yesterday's amorphous calorie day, wanted to stay on track. I originally started preparing boiled corn in addition to the shrimp and brussel sprouts, but as I was doing the math, the count was going over 1,100 with butter. So I cut the corn out, though it may not be good to eat tomorrow. Funny, I regard corn on the cob with a little bit of butter healthy, but in the realm of the Weight Watchers system , corn is not considered a vegetable so much as a carb like bread. I now see why.
AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8am, steel-cut oatmeal, banana,  500 cal

LUNCH: 1:15pm, breaded shrimp, roasted brussel sprouts, baby carrots, 7oz diet coke, 785 cal

DINNER: 6:30pm, whole wheat pasta with red sauce, tomato & moz salad, a little broccoli, homemade ice cream sandwich, +/- 1040

Influence & Choice to Become a Lardbutt

Eating a part of healthy diet based on sound nutrition principles of balance, variety and moderation.

I don't want to be shrill. I know my little corner of the Internet here is probably not going to change any one's minds when it comes to politics. Like money and sex, politics is one of those topics best saved for only those closest to you, and if your on different ends of the spectrum, tread lightly and listen before you speak. Food is political. If that statement annoys you, feel free to skip away to Fox News, I guess. Oy, did I just show my hand?

I eat fast food once a week. It keeps things interesting, and I'm able to pat myself on the back and say, "Hey, Fatty, you are not a food snob!" Currently, I rotate through Subway, Golden Krust and McDonald's. It's a fine addition to a part of my literally "balanced" diet, something all the reps from Big Fast Food recommend when questioned about the perceived/relative/comparative/insert non-shrill word here lack of nutritional value in their products.

"Many nutrition professionals agree that McDonald's food can be part of a healthy diet based on the sound nutrition principles of balance, variety and moderation." - McDonald's

What they won't say is that many nutrition professionals also agree that the part that McDonald's food plays in an actual balanced diet is maybe once a month or to once a never -- less is good, none is best. Sensible nutritional advice says we have no lack of fat, salt, or meat in our diet, so cutting some out is always a good thing. So what Ronald McDonald is really saying:

It's on you, suckahbutt!

What McDonald's is really saying is that a healthy diet is an individual responsibility. One makes their own choices, and one could choose to be healthy. Sounds like a reasonable way of looking at things, except when you look at the flip side. If it's all on the individual, then those who chose to (or even inadvertently) influence the individual are off the hook.

Yep, I'm going there, suckahbutt. Sorry, Sassy Black Woman Stereotype!

Let's get REAL, mammacita. McD's is not in the nutrition business, they're not in the health business. They're in the sell-as-many-burger-pucks-to-benefit-our-shareholders business. It's on YOU to fit nutritionally void, high fat, low quality calories into the balance of your diet. You feel compelled to eat McDonald's 10 times a week? Not McDonald's problem, only McDonald's benefit.

And there lies the rub. If you go to a bar, drink 20 shots of Yager, roll into your car, then drive off a cliff and die, your family can sue the bar and probably win. Roll into McDonalds, stuff yourself silly time after time until die of gout, and we shrug our shoulders, it's not such an obvious and direct relationship. But there IS a relationship. McDonald's profit, the entire industry of food profit, people get sick, and our failing medical safety net picks up the slack.

And what if the government were to shift into action, bolstering the medical safety net by taxing every one -- both individuals and businesses who have made poor/profit-motivated choices to help get us to this place? John Schnatter, CEO of some shitty fast food pizza chain, recently announced to his shareholders:

"Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis," Schnatter said. "If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interests," Schnatter vowed.

Shitty pizza left, douchy CEO right

 Schnatter would blanch at the idea that he and his shitty pizza company hold any responsibility for the health and well being of his customers. I guess there is a core philosophical difference between a shlubby 99%er like me and a master of the shitty-pizza universe like Schnatter:

• Me: We're all in it together. Good health is a societal responsibility. Good Government for all.
• Schnatter: Everyone for themselves. Good health is a personal responsibility. Nanny State wants my money, wah wah wah.

Fact is, despite all the bad publicity that Morgan Spurlock heaped on McD's with his documentary, Supersize Me, McD is still supersizing. Every time I go, the person behind the counter asks, "Do you want to make that large?" I grunt no, I assume personal responsibility for my health.

My other t-shirt says, "Free to believe in Determinism"

But the choices I make are shaped by my environment. My environment is shaped by rules and regulations, laws and fees that make McDonald's hamburgers really cheap and fresh vegetables not so cheap. My choices are also manipulated by advertising and media who target our instinctual urges for fat, sugar, salt and things that are not so great for us.

To say my choices are mine and mine alone would be a staggering statement of ego and self-delusion. People aren't getting fat and sick because they want to be, they're getting fat and sick because of poor choices shaped by environmental, economic and political forces that manipulate so-called free will. Anyone (Republi-cants, cough cough) who try to tell you otherwise are just the devil trying to convince you he doesn't exist.

No, the tax code does not give preferential treatment to corporate industrial farms  to grow commodity crops at the expense of smaller farms that grow crops for eating by people. Nothing to see here, make your own choices, move on, thank you and come again!

THE COUNT:+/- 2,200
Woke up hungry, hungriest I've been this early in memory. A little proud I was able to skip an evening snack and keep within my budget yesterday. Also woke up still sore in my pull-up back muscles, so delaying my 2nd lift of the week to tomorrow -- soreness is damaged muscle that is healing a.k.a. coming back bigger and stronger, and breaking it down some more before it regenerates would be counterproductive, not lazy (which for some reason I ask myself, even though I know it's not.)

Had a very busy day, cooked a batch of knishes for a documentary, cooked off more in the afternoon for a client, made brownies and ice cream for desserts for a dinner we have been invited to tomorrow and for over the weekend. Ended up eating knishes during the day, took myself out to veg dim sum to cool down after. Have no idea how many calories went down my gullet, estimations were based on how hungry I was left. I was a narrowly hungry by bed time, so I couldn't have been too far off.

AM SNACK: 7:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8:45am, kolon bloe with whole milk, 300 cal

AM SNACK: 10:45am, homemade potato knish, +/- 150 cal

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, fried spinach knish, +/- 300 cal

LINNER: 4:45pm, mixed gluten, mashed taro treasure boxes, mock shrimp rice rolls, mini lotus leaf sticky rice, water, +/- 1000 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, almonds & chocolate chips, water, +/- 425 cal

Hunter Gatherers Didn't Harvest Fritos

Hey, where the Fritos at?

Take the breadth and depth of all nutritional advice over the years, and you will have one hairy, contradictory stew. Eat no carbs, just protein and fat! But fat makes you fat! Too much protein gives you cancer!  Sit ups will flatten your tummy! It is impossible to non-surgically target fat! Drink 64oz of water a day! Drink only when thirsty! Well, another assumption about fitness & nutrition bites the dust, and the exercise industry isn't going to be happy. Y'know how exercise "revs up" your metabolism, so when you work out like crazy, your body becomes a FAT BURNIN' MO-SHEEN?!?! Nope. Nah gonna happen.

Gonna happen? Nah.

The popular assumption is that we're getting fat because we're sittin' around watchin' TV & eating Frito's. That is perhaps half right. Back before refrigeration and indoor plumbing and drive-thru fast food restaurants and Brawndo, poppa had to get out of the cave and do some high-energy hunting, while momma had to strap on Baby Bambam with some furs and vines and do some intense gathering. All that working out must have kept them thin and trim. They must have been moving around harder than Richard Simmons at Fatty Disco night.

So some scientists took it upon themselves to find some hunter-gathers in Tanzania, members of the Hazda tribe who keep it seriously old school. (Excuse me, srsly old skool.) They must be all skinny n' shiz because their metabolisms must be supercharged from working all day to get fed, right? Nope. After precise measurements involving observing walking via GPS and special drinking water that could mark energy expenditure and metabolic rate in each and every pee pee, the scientists found that the Hazda's metabolism were pretty much the same as the average American.

These findings upend the long-held assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended more energy than modern populations, and challenge the view that obesity in Western populations results from decreased energy expenditure. Instead, the similarity in daily energy expenditure across a broad range of lifestyles suggests that habitual metabolic rates are relatively constant among human populations. This in turn supports the view that the current rise in obesity is due to increased food consumption, not decreased energy expenditure.

It's not the TV, it's the Frito's. The Hazda's aren't hunting Big Macs, and they ain't gathering french fries. It what Michael Pollen has been banging on about for a while now: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Because a buffalo is a lot harder to hunt than an eggplant is to gather.

A wild Fritobeast, freshly killed and yet to be cleaned and gutted.

In the NY Time's commentary on this study, they go a bit further:

Close mathematical scrutiny of past studies of exercise and weight loss shows that that happy prospect (that if you exercise, your metabolism won’t drop as you lose weight or will even speed up) is, sad to say, unfounded. One of the few studies ever to have scrupulously monitored exercise, food intake and metabolic rates found that volunteers’ basal metabolic rates dropped as they lost weight, even though they exercised every day. As a result, although they were burning up to 500 calories during an exercise session, their total daily caloric burn was lower than it would have been had their metabolism remained unchanged, and they lost less weight than had been expected.

I lift weights twice a week and get in a long bike ride once a week, and on the face if it this time-consuming, inconvenient habit may directly be interfering with my quest to get slim. However, no one is saying don't exercise, as it still has many benefits. It makes you feel good, it builds muscle, it strengthens silly little things like lung capacity, reduces bad cholesterol, and builds bones. Just one of those benefits is not a huge reduction in weight. More precisely, you may lose weight, but not on a 1-to-1 ratio. All this time that people have marvelled at me for riding my bike so much but not losing weight, well, SCIENCE! For every 2,200 calories I burn on a long bike ride, the final effect after adjusting for slowing metabolism might be 2/3 of that.

All said and done, the current research still points to the same main way to lose weight: simply eat less. No special miracle machines, no magical foods, no exceptional way of  timing or combining foods. I would love to see a study of all weight-loss plans from the past 40 years and compare participant's success along the data which shows if they reduced calories or not. I suspect there would be a very large correlation. There is no harm in a Richard Simmons dance-a-thon if it makes all involved feel good and work towards controlling diet, even if cavemen didn't have access to his deal-a-meals way back when..

THE COUNT: 2320
Very sore this morning, particularly under my arms towards my back: pull-up muscles. When I did that successful negative pull-up yesterday, I got so excited I did it two more times, then increased my reps from 5 to 6 through my routine.

Very hungry in the evening, hard to not eat a snack and go over budget. Oddly enough, instead of watching TV, I cooked to keep busy. Having a dinner party Saturday night and B will be out of town, so want a homemade meal that takes minimal work to serve. So I made whole wheat ravioli from scratch, the filling with veg I picked up from today's CSA (squash, onion, Italian peppers, a jalapeno) with some good yogurt, a little egg and a handful of dried spices and salt. Did the math, the tiny little buggers are 21 cal/ravioli. (Yes, I did taste the mix for seasoning, but really, it had to be under 10 cal for the sampling...)

AM SNACK: 6:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8am, steel-cut oatmeal, 375 cal

LUNCH: 11:45am, Quarter Pounder, fries, diet coke, 890 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, momma salad, 80 cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, whole wheat pasta with turkey meatballs, homemade sauce and sauteed spinach, 7oz diet coke, 950 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9:15pm, 7oz diet sprite, 0 cal

The Joys of Midlife Crisis

The perfect storm of  "midlife crisis" and "cycling", according to Google Image....

I am white, middle-class, male and....middle aged. I am 41. I am in crisis, hear me roar, if you can compare casual self-snark to roaring, which is pretty white, middle-class and male of me.  Am I in crisis? I don't think so, you be the judge. Am I reevaluating how I've lived my life health-wise now that my beard and chest hair is going gray, my schedule is centered around my kids and I now reside outside of marketer's prime target of 18-39 year olds? Perhaps.

This morning I had a minor breakthrough. Twice a week I lift free weights at home, and part of my routine is on the pull up bar. No, not actual pull-ups, but attempts at training myself to get to the point of doing one...damn....pull up. I stand on a stool so I'm at the high position of the pull up, kick off of the stool, and try to slowly lower myself. When I started doing these "negative pull ups" a few months ago, I dropped like a stone. Today, I kicked off and....stayed at the up position for a solid 3-5 seconds and lowered myself slower than usual. Which proves....only a middle aged guy would get so excited about this kind of thing, and then blog about it.

There is nothing sweeter than the staged excitement of a generic middle aged white guy.

Here's a medically vetted definition of midlife crisis:

A period of personal emotional turmoil and coping challenges that some people encounter when they reach middle age, accompanied by a desire for change in their lives, brought on by fears and anxieties about growing older.

Or it could all be BS. I can't afford a sports car, couldn't stomach a mistress, and I think I can rule out plastic surgery after discovering "sliming".

Hey baby. Wanna ride in my luv-wagon? Don't worry, I slimed before I left home!

For me, one of the central appeals of distance cycling is the clarity of mind that comes from emptying the body of all energy. (Well, not ALL energy, thangyooverymuch.) The mind wanders, sometimes into areas unbothered up to that point. I was thinking of my parents and how they dealt with their inevitable slides into middle age.

My mom....did nothing, she continued to smoke, do no exercise, never change up her diet, spend a lot of her weekends in bed because she could. The only change she made in her later years is give up her weekend martinis, probably because she didn't enjoy the increasing after-effects. Don't get me wrong, she was a great woman and she had a great life, but she was not an example of good healthy living.

My dad had it a bit harder and had to work to retain health. He had a stroke in his early 50s, and took to a stationary bike on a regular basis to control his adult-onset diabetes. Like me, he had a sweet tooth but he never smoked, and drank as little as I do (read: rarely.) After retirement, he enjoyed going to the 14th St Y to work out to retain tone and mobility. I fully believe he had an extra 5 years of quality life because he took care of himself.

And that's what struck me on the ride. Five extra years of QUALITY life, of being mobile, relatively dependant, able to read and enjoy music, go out on the weekends with his son, etc. Not five years of lingering in a twilight state, being dependant on those around you. Quality vs. quantity. I want more of the former, even if it means shortening the later. Perhaps my dad could have started working out and cycling closer to my age and he would have had an easier time of certain things, but I can't fault him for not working hard and having a fruitful career and being there for me and my brother. But still, he had to get a serious warning before springing to action. Hopefully my serious warnings will come a bit later.

The grey is starting to creep from my beard to the sides of my hair. I saw some photos of me from last week's wedding, and was surprised to find my hair line had subtly jumped an inch back or so. My dad lost his hair a lot earlier than me, and until he became really ill and they shaved his head, he rocked that comb-over like a boss.

My hairitage

Perhaps I will perform one full pull up before the month is over? It'll be a physical feat I was never able to do in my teens, 20s or 30s. I upped my reps this morning as way of celebration -- I can now do 35 push ups, while I would max out at 10 in my teens. Ahh, the bleating of middle age. Good thing now that I got it out of my system, we can move on...into doddering old age!

THE COUNT: 2165
Can't say I ate healthy over the weekend, but I did watch the quantities. Took Edie for her first hot dog with my friend MAP -- I indulged in just one dog and tater tots instead of my regular 2, and did that kind of self-control through the weekend. Should I be eating dogs? Probably not. But I'm not blowing out my stomach, either.

AM SNACK: 7:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, fruit smoothie, 360 cal

LUNCH: 12:30pm brisling sardine & avocado salad on whole wheat toast, momma salad, pickle, 7oz diet coke, 580 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, small amount of cheese tortellini, +/- 100 cal
Edie wasn't eating her snacks, I was getting hungry....

DINNER: 6:45pm, Stouffer's French Bread pizzas, 7oz diet sprite, 860 cal
I was planning a healthier dinner, but felt run down by looking after 3 tots for a few hours.

EVENING SNACK: 9:15pm, 3 chocolate chip cookies, water, 240 cal

Phriday Phun Quizz, Ghost Busters Edition

Fine, thanks for asking!

So! Two weeks in, how we doin'? I'm really enjoying this new format, after grinding out autopilot blog entries 7 days a week for five years. I'm spending a lot more time writing, and taking time to proof and rewrite, and actually doing research and linking things to support my opinions/question my assumptions. Before I wrote yesterday's entry on bariatric surgery, I was a lot more inclined to regard it as solution to the growing obesity crisis. After looking around, it certainly is not the answer.

And so the week ends. Here are a few questions to see if you were paying attention since Monday. Guess correctly and see a very convincing argument for bariatric surgery. Guess wrong and see an animated man get torn apart.

This is the blogger:

1. After a bike ride
2. Before a bike ride
3. During a bike ride
4. as he is when not bike riding

What kind of yoga does this lady practice?

1. Fartamukti
2. Mysorebutt
3. Asstangy
4. Fot Yoga

This is a fine example of:

1. Lap Band Surgery
2. Man-birth
3. Polish hemmeroids
4. diners at a vegan restaurant

Special vaguely NSFW Bonus Question:

"Sliming" is:

1. A side effect of lap band surgery
2. A side effect of Ghost Busting
3. A sub genre of Japanese porn
4. All of the above

INPUT:................4550

BIKE CREDIT: -2,200
THE COUNT:...2,350

Road about 90 miles up to Poughkeepsie this morning, left out at 4, got home by train around 6. Funny how the bike-fuel diet would be decimating if it were not matched with the calorie burning, but matched with the relatively strenuous task at hand, what would make me feel horrible sitting around makes me feel fantastic on the bike. Hmm, I think there's a blog post in that..

BREAKFAST: 3:15am, bagel and cream cheese, banana, 7oz diet coke, 650 cal

BIKE SNACK: 6:15am, trail mix, 620 cal

Made up of off-brand cheerios, dark chocolate chips, dry roasted peanuts, and salted almonds.

BIKE SNACK: 8am, Gatorade, 130 cal

BIKE SNACK: 10:15am, trail mix, 620 cal

BIKE SNACK: 11:30am, 32oz Gatorade, Fritos, Entemann's chocolate chip cookies, 1040 cal

BIKE SNACK: 3:30pm, coffee cake, 20oz diet coke, 260 cal

DINNER: 7pm, tofu satay, roti canai, Singapore rice noodles, +/- 1230 cal

Lap Band Surgery: Putting the Deaky in Freaky

No, it is not.

The LA Times recently reported (via Gawker) that it has been previously under reported how many people have died from lap band surgery. Lap band is the latest in bariatric surgery, a.k.a. cutting the fat out by cutting up the stomach. Lap band surgery is...kinda freaky.

With a traditional gastric bypass procedure, your stomach is disconnected from your large intestine, then stapled so food goes into a tiny upper pouch, then both pouches are connected separately to the small intestine, thereby "bypassing" the large intestine, where food is usually absorbed more efficiently. When you think about it, that's kinda freaky. But wait: lap band gets freakier by a factor of three deakies!

With lap band, an inflatable silicone ring is slipped around the stomach to create a small top pouch and a bigger bottom, and no staples or rerouting of the intestines are required. While this surgery is still, like gastric bypass, major surgery, it is not considered as invasive or risky. However:

"As patients lose weight, their bands will need adjustments, or “fills", to ensure comfort and effectiveness. The gastric band is adjusted by introducing a saline solution into a small access port placed just under the skin." (full description here)

A port just under the skin. Images of people freaking out on too many drugs claiming they have bugs under their skin comes to mind. Having a medical device in my midsection that can be inflated and deflated by jiggering about with a port right by my belly button, that just adds too much deaky to the freaky.

Reading through the wiki that gives all the advantages over gastric bypass (lower mortality, adjustable, reversible, there were also a bunch of potential disadvantages, of which only one jumped out at me:

"Bulging of the port through the skin"

GAAAAAAH!

Quattoscopic Surgery

Then there is "sliming", a side effect too disgusting to go into here. Click the link to read the description, but the picture is oddly....porny. So it may be NSFW if you or someone who sits near you swings that way. And by swing, I mean an incredibly disgusting pervert.

I'm squeamish when it comes to surgery, I admit. I'm irrationally scared of needles. I have watched numerous good friends undergo successful Lazik surgery on their eyes to lose the glasses, but I could never get down with the idea of someone cutting up my eyeballs....WHILE I WATCHED. I've never had surgery of any sort, and hope to keep it that way until my cogs pop.

Despite that, over the years I've half-seriously googled up gastric bypass, then in more recent years lap band. So many promises of how THIS IS IT, this is the lazy fat person's solution to losing weight without working at it!

It'll turn you into a 23 year old blond chick!

But once you start doing the research, it's not easy. It is a hell of a lot of work, with a lot of potential side-effects, and lots of discomfort. Basically, instead of

• me powering through too few calories to make me feel hungry day after day after day, and using this blog as a crutch and support mechanism, 

it would be

• me powering through too few calories to make me feel hungry day after day after day, and using my cut-up, rearranged or silicone-enhanced innards as a crutch and support mechanism.

Despite what the medical industry is promising, despite what they are convincing the insurance industry to pay for, despite the hot chick on the billboard, surgery is not the easy option to lose a lot of weight, just another option that is probably very suitable for some, but hardly all. Maybe after a year of limited caloric intake and increased caloric output without significant change, I'd reconsider my surgical options. But it probably wouldn't make for a very humorous blog.

THE COUNT: 2345
My digital scale died on me this morning, so I could not count out the ingredients to the huge pot of tomato sauce I made -- other than some Italian peppers, roasted garlic and a little tomato paste, it was basically the same recipe as the previously measured batch, so I'll just assume it's the same calorie value. B picked up a new scale for me, so all is well!

AM SNACK: 7:15am, iced green tea, 25 cal


BREAKFAST: 10:30am, fruit smoothie, 350 cal


PM SNACK: 1pm, momma salad, +/- 100 cal


LUNCH: 2:30pm, Subway veggie burger 6" sub, Doritos, diet coke, 760 cal

DINNER: 7pm, sauteed chicken breast, steamed string beans, boiled corn, kraft mac n' cheese, 7oz diet sprite, 1110 cal
Made the box of mac n' cheese for Edie yesterday, and this meal needed some sort of carb to it -- I was hungry. However, after reading the box's nutritional info closely, the stuff as I prepared was 400 cal for a 70g serving. 70g of the stuff is only a palm-ful. The meal was good and satisfying, but snack-blocked me from eating something this evening. Should have done a baked potato or something. Even a 2oz portion of pasta would have been half the cal.

Weigh-In: 222

The end of the last three months are thus:
May-->225.4
June-->223.4
July-->222.0

I only restricted calories for half the month in June, and this past month was the first full month of restriction. I'm one pound over where I was the year before, when I lost weight from the stress of leaving my job situation at the time.

By the end of last August, I added 2.5 lbs, so the end of this month will be a moment of truth. If I go below 221 when I weigh in September 1st, I'll:

1. be the lightest in recent recorded history and more importantly, 
2. be breaking the cycle of losing weight in the summer and putting it back on through August.

I don't think I'm ready for another visit to the nutritionist quite yet, but I am a little disappointed by this result. I thought I would have lost more....and maybe I did. I increased the intensity of the free weights I've been lifting twice a week and my arms, chest, midsection and back have never felt sturdier - though you wouldn't be able to tell under the layer of blubber that smooths it out. Perhaps if I continue to gain muscle & definition as I lose weight, there will be a relatively sudden transformation when I go from:

After a bike ride a few months ago

to:

After lifting weighs, recently

So, I'm going to do two things:

• I'm going to reduce my calorie intake further to the nutritionist's original recommendation of 2,200-2,350 calories a day. In a few months, if I am not seeing the results expected (and I have not, in all honesty, busted my calorie budget more than a few times), I will seek another consultation.
• If I gain weight but lose fat because of muscle growth, how will I know? This is how. I wish I had a Tanita scale over the last 2 years to track the fat percentage ratio of my body, it might of made today's weigh-in a more celebratory (and definitely more data-driven and geeky) day.

THE COUNT: 2165
The first day of eating at the nutritionist's recommendation left me hungrier in the evening, but didn't prevent me from falling asleep.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:30am,  Heritage Os and whole milk, 300 cal


LUNCH: 11:30pm, whole wheat spaghetti with sauteed spinach, homemade tomato sauce and turkey meatballs, 810 cal


AFTERNOON SNACK: 1pm, small slice of homemade wholewheat pizza, +/- 100 cal
Visiting C and her toddler daughter in Bed Stuy, came in just as they were pulling a pizza out of the oven they made together. Would have been the height of silliness to not eat with them just for the sake of the calorie count.


AFTERNOON SNACK: 4:30pm, kosher dill pickle, 10 cal


DINNER: 6pm, Stouffer's French bread pizzas, 7oz diet sprite, 740 cal


EVENING SNACK: 9:45pm, popcorn, 180 cal