McCain Obama Dance

I must admit I smiled through the entire video. Well done.

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: McCain, Obama, Dance

Alton Brown for Miller?

What in the world?

 

This seems contrary to everything he stands for! Why else would I spend hours making my own baked beans when I could simply open a can of them? Why did I spend an entire afternoon drilling and chopping coconuts with the goal of making a coconut cake from scratch when I could simply bake a boxed cake mix or buy a cake at the store? Alton Brown was the reason! He has preached to me about avoiding the pre-packaged and the bland for years. He taught us that with a little extra effort, you can enjoy something grand! This is the last thing Alton should be endorsing.

Miller Lite is a horrible beer that I would never serve to guests, much like a store bought apple pie. The very idea of adding Miller Lite to a "Holiday Feast" is an insult to whatever holiday you might be celebrating. 

I realize that everyone has their price, but this particular endorsement is a betrayal to his fans and his profession. How embarrassing. Someone get me a beer. No, I mean a real beer. 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Alton Brown, Good Eats, Food Network, Miller, Miller Light

Diet: Project Fail

This is from the Telegraph:

 

'Drunkorexia slimmers skip meals for alcohol'

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

Last Updated: 2:42am GMT 18/03/2008

Women are increasingly skipping meals in order to "spend" their daily calories on drink in a phenomenon known as "drunkorexia".

Gram for gram alcohol has more calories
than carbohydrate or protein

With pressure on young women to drink but also remain slim, many are now swapping dinner for a large glass or two of wine.

Slimming clubs where food items are given points and dieters have to stick to a daily limit may encourage the practice, according to experts.

They said the habit, widespread in America, is becoming more common in Britain.

Prof Janet Treasure, the head of the eating disorder unit at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said the practice was very dangerous as it was effectively combining binge drinking and disordered eating patterns.

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"They get fully hooked, it is an extremely noxious thing. It is more common with bulimia than anorexia but you get the combination of empty calories with no nutritional value and the risky behaviour that goes with being drunk."

Gram for gram alcohol has more calories than carbohydrate or protein and a small 150ml glass of white wine can contain 150 to 170 calories.

This would mean a large pub glass of wine which is commonly 250ml would hold as many calories as an average light lunch.

A shot of vodka with a low calorie tonic mixer is a more modest 100 calories while some beer can be a gut-busting 250 calories a pint.

Susan Price, the spokesman for the British Dietetic Association, said missing meals in order to drink more was not an appropriate way to lose weight or remain a healthy weight.

"You are more likely to be binge drinking. What you should do is eat a healthy balanced diet and choose low calorie mixers and non-alcohol low calorie soft drinks."

 

Awesome. Does this mean there's a support group? I'd love to attend some of the meetings. You decided to skip some meals because you strictly budgeted your caloric intake to include nothing but cocktails? Awesome. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. Your rationalization skills are on par with my own. Let me raise a glass to all the drunk but soon to be skinny chicks! The article doesn't indicate if this behavior is perfect or not. In a perfect scenario, the women skip a meal, have some cocktails, then seek out sexorcise.

Diet: Day 10

For the most part, I'm hanging in there. Breakfast is easy, in that I enjoy the coffee and the fruit. While the idea of bacon, toast and jam, grits, omelettes, hash browns, ham, and a tall café con leche sounds like something I'd be interested in, I really don't have the time for all that. My weekday breakfasts suit me just fine. Lunch, however, is a little more troubling. My M-F lunch consists of escaping from work and hanging out at a restaurant for the better part of an hour. Since the beginning of the diet, I mostly sit at my desk eating celery and carrots. This makes the work day seem much longer, and infinitely more miserable. Yesterday's lunch was running errands and walking around the park, just to change up the routine.

Dinner hasn't been too bad. For one thing, I've been substituting alcohol for food. While the nutrition in a few whiskey and Diet Cokes doesn't quite measure up to a pile of catabolic foods, the drinks seem to make me a bit happier. Last night I didn't want either. I ate a few handfuls of Fiery Habanero Doritos along with about four ounces of spaghetti sauce with sausage chunks.

The shedding of the extra weight was supposed to make me feel better. Not having a spare tire around my waist was supposed to make me happier. Getting to that point is making me feel depressed. I have little doubts that what's missing is the exercise component. My sedentary lifestyle needs to change a bit. Diet alone may shed some pounds, but it's not a long term solution.

Diet: Day 6

Went to bed on Thursday night at about 8pm, so my batteries were fully charged for Friday. Sleep is an interesting diet strategy. While I'm busy sawing logs, there's little opportunity to stuff my face with pizza. Maybe I should aim for 12 hours of sleep every night.

Friday's breakfast consisted of fruit salad (blueberries, mango, strawberries) and Friday's lunch was my usual rabbit mix of celery, carrots and radishes. Friday supper was a slice of hickory smoked turkey (note: hickory is a bit too strong for the delicate flavor of turkey) and two slices of salami. I realize the cold cuts aren't exactly diet food, but that meat was the only solid food eaten on Friday night.

I brought home bags of citrus from work, so the juicing process started around 8 PM, and drank quite a few grapefruit and vodka cocktails.

The ratio I like for this drink is the juice of one small grapefruit, one shot of vodka, three ice cubes, and two shakes of salt. Stir. I serve the cocktails in Old Fashioned glasses, and one would be amazed at the rate of consumption by the average guest.

Let's see what I was ingesting.

Vodka- 1 oz. - 60 calories
Grapefruit Juice - 6 oz. - 72 calories

That's around 130 calories per drink, and I tossed back 6 or 7, so most likely I drank around 500 calories. Maybe the alcohol isn't such a good idea. On the other hand, I stayed up until around 2 am, so I'm sure I burned more calories while entertaining I would from sleeping. Yes, the power of rationalization.

Before bed I popped two Phillips tablets. As of this morning I can report the good news. Gentle. Overnight. Relief.

 
The woman in the video is gobbling down the tablets like Altoids, but I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you would enjoy having a bathroom emergency while out to the movies. I looked into how the Milk of Magnesia works.

"Milk of magnesia is a saline type laxative. This means that the magnesia acts to pull a salt or saline solution into the intestines from the blood. This excessive fluid then provides a flushing or laxative action within the intestines."

So while the tablets won't give you explosive diarrhea or anything, your large intestine filled with water usually requires some corrective action on your part. There's no way I'd take three of those on a date.

Breakfast this morning was a piece of bacon. Once again, I know it's not a diet food, but it was good for the soul. I also drank a few cups of coffee with just a touch of the fat free International Delight French Vanilla creamer. One tablespoon of that stuff contains 30 calories combined with all sorts of unnatural gums and chemicals. Mmmmm. 

Diet: Day 5

Woke up yesterday and despite the drunken stupor that I was in the night before, I felt fine. No real hangover. Strange. There's a couple possibilities there. 1) The Finlandia vodka is so pure that it doesn't leave you with much of a hangover. 2) My new diet has already reduced the toxins in my system so much that hangovers are a thing of the past.

Maybe some of each? Anyone have any thoughts on that. To be clear, I drank plenty of alcohol. Enough that I should have felt terrible well into the following evening.

Supper last night was cabbage, onions and soy sauce fried up in a teflon pan. Meh. Can't say I was too thrilled about it. My second course was some sort of natural soup from a can. It was supposed to be Hoppin' John, and contained tomatoes and black eyed peas and jalapeno peppers. I can't remember the brand name, but it was mostly terrible. I also didn't feel right about eating the starchy beans, or anything from a can, no matter how "organic" it's supposed to be.

The diet has also caused one potential terrible problem. I'm not making this up. No bowel movements since Sunday. Today is Friday. I don't think there's any point in hopping on a scale right now, because all that I've eaten for the past five days has either been converted to energy, or is still inside the intestines. What's weirder is that the consumption of crazy amounts of alcohol usually results in the beer shits. No such luck. Turns out that alcohol does not solve all my problems. Who knew?

Diet: Day 4

The diet is becoming a bit of a struggle. Everywhere I turn, the world is offering me donuts and buckets of fried chicken. Well, at least it seems that way. For two days I've been glued to the Food Network. For some reason it's irresistible to watch people bake cakes, grill steaks, and dress up their baked potatoes with eleventy billion toppings.

Breakfast was an egg and some fruit. Lunch was once again the rabbit mix of carrots, radishes and celery. The final meal was pan fried scallops over a tossed salad. The salad was great. Will eat again. I ate the top half of the salad with no dressing, but for the second half of the bowl (once I'd eaten all the scallops) I used some of the mojo marinade I had saved from making Cuban sandwiches. It seems like a perfect diet salad dressing: vinegar, orange juice, garlic and salt. I doubt the orange juice lends it many calories.

Then later in the evening I started drinking Diet Coke and vodka with a splash of coconut rum. And then I drank a few more and a few more. While most of my day today is wrecked, I felt so ill this morning that I didn't want to eat.

Must drink water.     

Diet: Day 3

Work yesterday was crazy busy, so there was not much opportunity to cheat on the diet. Breakfast was a boiled egg and a tangerine. The egg was cooked via the Julia Child and Georgia Egg Board method, reprinted below.

 *  Exported from  MasterCook  *

                       The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg

Recipe By     : Julia Child, “The Way to Cook”
Serving Size  : 1    Preparation Time :0:40
Categories    : Cheese/Eggs                      Family Recipes

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
--------  ------------  --------------------------------
                        For 1-4 Eggs:
   1      to 4          Eggs
   2      quarts        water -- * see note
                        For 12 Eggs:
  12                    Eggs
   3 1/2  quarts        water -- * see note
                        For 24 Eggs:
  24                    Eggs
   6      quarts        water -- * see note
                        Special Equipment_________________________
                        High (not wide) Saucepan with cover
                        Bowl w/ice cubes & water (large enough to
                        completely cover eggs)

*note:  water should cover the eggs by 1 inch, so use a tall pan, and limit
cooking to 2 dozen eggs at a time.

1.  Lay the eggs in the pan and add the amount of cold water specified.  Set
over high heat and bring just to the boil; remove from heat, cover the pan,
and let sit exactly 17 minutes.

2.  When the time is up, transfer the eggs to the bowl of ice cubes and
water.  Chill for 2 minutes while bringing the cooking water to the boil
again.  (This 2 minute chilling shrinks the body of the egg from the shell.)

3.  Transfer the eggs (6 at a time only) to the boiling water, bring to the
boil again, and let boil for 10 seconds - this expands the shell from the
egg.   Remove eggs, and place back into the ice water.


Chilling the eggs promptly after each step prevents that dark line from
forming, and if time allows, leave the eggs in the ice water after the last
step for 15 to 20 minutes.  Chilled eggs are easier to peel, as well.

The peeled eggs will keep perfectly in the refrigerator, submerged in water
in an uncovered container, for 2 to 3 days.

                   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOTES : The perfect hard boiled egg has a tender white, and a yolk properly
set.  There is not the faintest darkening of yolk where the white encircles
it (a chemical reaction caused by too much heat in the cooking process).
Eggs cooked this way can also be peeled neatly.

The system described here, developed by the Georgia Egg Board,  takes a bit
of fussing - but it really does produce an absolutely Perfect Hard Boiled Egg!

The 40 minute egg method (crazy, I know) yielded mixed results. The first egg was perfect, with the shell peeling off rather easily. Some of the other eggs were a struggle, and they ended up looking mutilated after I struggled to peel them.

Lunch was radishes, celery, carrots and, ahem, a Diet Coke. I think the Coke contains too many chemicals to help with the detox process, but I drank another one later in the evening. For some reason, I craved a Jameson and Diet Coke. Supper was snapper, broccoli, and green beans.

All in all not too bad yesterday. I ate a few pork rinds as well, knowing they don't have many calories and are totally free of carbs. For today, I hope to eat a larger volume of vegetables, as well as more water. The rule of thumb is to take your weight (in lbs.) and divide in half to get the number of ounces of water one should drink on a daily basis. Starting with 220 lbs, I would need to drink 110 ounces of water. The bottles here at work are .5L, or 16.9 FL OZ, so I'll need to down seven of these things. I hope no one hogs the bathroom, as I'm going to be in there quite a bit.

Breakfast this morning is a veritable feast. I started with some strawberries and a boiled egg. Next I'll move on to the South American peach (the first one on Day 1 wasn't so good. I'd say it was rather tasteless.) and a locally grown grapefruit and an apple of unknown variety. I think it's a Braeburn, but my wife keeps washing them and picking off the stickers.

Still no exercise. That's the biggest failure so far. Burning calories is the way to go. I think at work today, I'll walk around flexing muscles and striking bodybuilding poses.

My co-workers will love it.

Diet Day 2

Not too bad yesterday.
Here's all the food I can remember eating.

Breakfast: Peach and Apple
Lunch: Garden salad from Publix, eaten with no dressing whatsoever
Snacks: 1 large carrot and 2 radishes
Water intake: 8 glasses, which is a FAIL after starting out the day downing bottle after bottle. Must drink more water today.
Supper: 1 blackened orange roughy fillet, cooked in a Teflon skillet with just a touch of olive oil. Cabbage, broccoli and onion saute, with again, just a touch of oil. The key ingredients for supper were black pepper and Hungarian Paprika.

As a late night snack, I cracked open the jar of Clausen brand sauerkraut. Not bad. I'm not a big fan of sauerkraut, but it was crunchy and fairly decent. I won't be eating any more though. As some point I might feel like I'm starving, but I'm not quite there yet.

Not too long after dinner, supper, whatever is your last meal of the day, I still felt hungry. The potato chips and dip were calling me. I think that feeling must come from having no carbs available for burning. I remember it from the last time we tried something similar to the catabolic diet. Can't say it's a good feeling, but I can take comfort in knowing that it prolly means my body is working on converting stored energy. I wonder how long until my glycogen stores in the liver run out. I know that the first few pounds will be nothing but water, shed from this process, but losing a pound or so a day would be plenty of motivation to keep up the diet. I don't think I'm going to get on a scale until the beginning of day #8.

Diet: Day 1

The plan last night was to "live it up" by eating and drinking like a fat person for one final evening. I didn't quite pig out like I planned but the quality of my choices adequately reflect my inner fat person. First up was a Totino's frozen pizza, lovingly prepared by my beautiful wife. Of course I ate the whole thing! That Serving Size of 1/2 a pizza? Bwhahahahahahha! Eating 1/2 a frozen pizza is for losers. Looks like I more than covered my fat and sodium requirements for one meal. Next up was a bag of Doritos. The bag contained both chipotle ranch and zesty taco flavored tortilla chips. To wash down the pizza and chips I knocked back my last four Sam Adams. That wasn't nearly enough beer to balance out the unquenchable thirst that one gets from eating Totinos and Doritios, so I went to the store and bought a 12 pack of Bud. I think I drank about 5 or 6 of those cans, then moved onto coconut rum and vodka. So this morning, I had no problem with sticking to the diet and drinking massive quantities of water. As of this writing, I'm up to 72 ounces. The odd part is that I haven't had any of that water make it to the bladder yet. This will be my last morning of extreme dehydration for at least a couple weeks. The plan is to drink water and then drink some more water then drink some more, then eat tons of veggies that contain mostly water and the fat will simply melt away. That's the plan anyway.

Today's breakfast was a giant apple and a South American peach. My inner fat person is requesting waffles with ice cream with strawberry syrup. Since I have no access to such breakfasts here at work, there's not really any temptation.

I wonder how my dieting partner Deb is making out this morning?

One thing I failed to do was record an accurate measurement of my enormous deer gut. Shedding pounds is not really the goal here, I'm more interested in shedding inches. A body this big uses far too much sunscreen, and takes forever to coat. Any ideas on the best way to measure things? Should I have someone slip a tape measure around my waist while I sleep? That way I can avoid all cheating like sucking it in? Too bad I have no way to measure my water displacement. I'm too big / tall to be completely submerged in the bath tub.

For the record, I weighed in yesterday morning at 220 lbs. 

I'll be sitting on my ass all day at work, so any exercise will have to take place this evening. I think an evening walk would be a good place to start. I'd really want to avoid excessive physical activity at the beginning of the diet. If I don't ease into it, something awful will happen. I'll break an ankle, pull a muscle, or some other injury that would limit my ability to continue exercising. It's better to take it slow and ease into the physical activity, as my body will already being going through withdrawal from the usual assortment of tasty treats I feed my face every day. A body can only endure so much. No more beer and chips is already enough shock to the system.

Time for another bottle of water. That will make four. Go me!