Weight: 385.8 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 6 lbs. in 3 weeks
Another good week. I'd been hoping to break my short term goal of 385 lbs but I'm happy with what I lost this week. I'm going to start keeping track of total weight lost since it helps reinforce how well things are going overall.
It's just become a whole lot easier to not eat at Subway. It seems they are running a Every Sandwich Tells A Story Contest for kids but homeschooled children need not apply. Ostensibly the reason for the exclusion is because the grand prize is intended for the winner's school but homeschoolers do have organizations that would benefit from such equipment as well. The company could certainly have provided an alternative grand prize that would have been appropriate to everyone. Ironically the original contest announcement contained numerous misspellings. Most have since been corrected but I note that one of the prizes is still a Scholastic gift "bastket." I guess whoever wrote the copy wasn't home schooled.
I wasn't home schooled and I have no children to home school but I still sympathize with those who choose to take their children out of the public school system in order to give them a better education. It seems like every day there's a new story regarding some new outrage at a government school. Take, for example, the recent case at Morningside Elementary in Port St. Lucie, Florida where a teacher called an autistic 5-year-old to the front of the class and then had his classmates vote him out, giving each child a chance to comment on him, i.e. insult, in the process. When did elementary school become Survivor? Until the legislature stops dragging its feet on the issue of school choice home schooling is the only affordable option many parents have if they don't want to subject their child to the public school system.
From a nutritional point of view, it's just as well that I drop Subway. Despite the much vaunted Subway diet, their sandwiches have too much bread and the meat they use is low quality. You're much better off going to the grocery store, buying a loaf of whole grain sandwich bread and having the guy at the meat counter thin slice a roast turkey breast for you.
Here's a little something I picked up from the Body For Life program. As you adjust your diet to a healthier lifestyle, it's common to develop cravings for foods that you enjoy but no longer allow yourself to eat. It's also common to obsess over the foods you're craving until you finally break and go on an eating binge, gorging yourself on all that good stuff you've been denying yourself. Then you feel guilty about going off your diet, decide that it's too hard and you can't do it, and you give up and go back to your old eating habits. I've done it myself on several occasions.
Give yourself a cheat day. One day a week you are allowed to eat anything you want, diet be damned. When you find yourself craving something, make a mental note to have it on your next cheat day. When your cheat day rolls around, have that greasy burger or pizza or big bowl of ice cream and don't feel guilty about it. Since you're not denying yourself anything, just putting it off until your cheat day, you don't have to obsess over food and it becomes much easier to stick to a healthy eating plan. But there are a few caveats.
My cheat day is Sunday. I chose Sunday because I almost always have lunch with my parents on Sundays and making it my cheat day means we're not limited to restaurants where I can eat healthy food. Just because I need to lose weight is no reason to punish them. I do allow myself a little flexibility on cheat days though that flexibility is tightly defined and based on a condition not entirely under my control. I occasionally have dinner with friends on Saturday and on those occasions I allow my cheat day to start with Saturday dinner and end with Sunday lunch so if my friends want to order a pizza I don't have to be a stick in the mud. Sometimes being a stick in the mud is unavoidable though. This weekend I may be having dinner with friends on both Saturday and Sunday in which case I'm going to have to insist that we eat healthy one evening.
Weight: 387.4 lbs.
Once again I felt a small measure of fear stepping on the scale. Was what I've been doing working or was last week just a fluke? Down another 2.4 lbs. it's starting to look like I'm on track with my program. Stayed away from Subway this week but couldn't resist a trip to Quiznos though at least I got the oven-roasted turkey breast instead of the roast beef. Only other bad-ish food I had this week, not counting my cheat day (more on that later), was a spicy chicken salad at Pei Wei. First time I'd gotten it and I hadn't realized that the chicken would be "crunchy," i.e. breaded and fried.
Okay, so there's nothing new about this video. I don't care. I dig Tay Zonday and I'm in the mood for a little Cherry Chocolate Rain today even I would never drink the soft drink that its advertising.
He moves away from the mic to breath, you know.
Here it is late May and fresh strawberries abound at the local grocery stores. As the weather builds towards summer warmth, they're the perfect little treat as is. Still there are times when you want to do something special with them. Here is a simple recipe that makes for a tasty treat and a relatively healthy dessert.
(Photo courtesty of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)
INGREDIENTS
2 quarts fresh strawberries, hulled
1 cup packed light brown sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup balsamic vinegar
DIRECTIONS
About 1 to 2 hours before serving time, toss the strawberries in a large mixing bowl with the brown sugar, salt, and balsamic vinegar. Refrigerate for 30 minutes and toss again. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes and toss again. Drain and serve cold in a clear glass bowl.
Tip: In order to produce quality food you have to use quality ingredients. When it comes to balsamic vinegar, you get what you pay for. Balsamic vinegar is aged in wooden casks. The longer the vinegar has been aged, the more expensive it is likely to be. A cheap condiment grade balsamic vinegar is fine for making salad dressings but for a recipe like this you probably want an old vinegar that has been aged for at least 12 years.
I frequently attend social gatherings hosted by a friend and his wife. Yesterday he asked me what sort of healthy snacks they could provide that would help me stay on my weight loss program. As it happens, due to my tendency towards compulsive overeating I try to avoid between meal snacking. I really should only be eating because I'm actually hungry. Still, it's a legitimate question. What sort of snacks can we eat that are healthy? (Photo courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)
A lot of traditional snack foods aren't particularly healthy. Potato chips, corn chips, tortilla chips, attendant dips, crackers, pretzels, cheese sticks, fried or otherwise, bagels, with or without cream cheese, cookies and candy are all bad for us consisting, as they do, largely of starch, fat, salt and/or processed sugar.
These days some nutritionists say we shouldn't snack at all and that the way to avoid snacking is, instead of eating 3 big meals, we should eat 5-6 fist-sized meals over the course of a day. That works out to eating about once every 3 hours. Unfortunately I don't know of too many employers who would looking kindly on their employees taking 3 meal breaks during the course of a day.
So what kind of snacks can we eat that's not bad for us? Fruit, raw vegetables and nuts (little or no salt added please) are all good. In moderation of course. Gorging on anything, even relatively healthy food, is never a good idea. Want a tasty snack? How about apple slices dipped in 100% natural peanut butter? Want to talk about convenience? Few things are more convenient than a piece of fruit like an apple, peach or pear that you can eat without any special preparation beyond washing it off. Many grocery stores sell ready-to-eat celery sticks and peeled baby carrots not to mention containers of pre-sliced cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon. Nuts are also quite convenient though I would stay away from honey roasted and flavored varieties that may have a lot of added salt and/or sugar.
When I was a child, my grandparents had both a pear and a peach tree as well as some fig trees. One of their neighbors had black walnut and pecan trees. Some of my fondest memories growing up are of Sunday visits with them when we would sit out on the front porch, where they had a porch swing, or at the kitchen table snacking on freshly picked fruit and nuts. I look at modern housing developments, houses packed together tightly on small lots with little room for trees and nary a porch to be seen and I feel sorry for the people that live in them. Sure, they've got their Wiis and their X-Boxes, Playstation 3s and big screen tvs, and all the other amusements that modern life affords. Yet sometimes there's just no substitute for a lazy Sunday afternoon swinging on the front porch talking with friends and family while watching the world go by or stepping out into the backyard and picking fruit right off the tree.
If you're looking to find out who I am, you're out of luck. One of the reasons I started this blog was so I could spout off about whatever issues interest me without having to worry that some prospective employer might happen across it while Googling my name and decide not to hire me for reasons not connected to my ability to do the job. If you're looking for information on the real Rip Ford, the Handbook of Texas Online and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum are probably your best starting points.
To give a little summary, John Salmon Ford was born in South Carolina and raised in Tennessee. He came to Texas in 1836 intending to join the fight for independence from Mexico but arriving after the fighting was done. Over the next 60 years he would be present for most major events in Texas history. He wore many hats during his time in Texas. He was a doctor, a surveyor, a newspaper editor, the superintendent of the Deaf and Dumb Institution in Austin, Superintendent of Conscripts for the Confederacy's Department of Texas, and helped set up the State Historical Society. He held several elected offices: representative to the 9th Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1844, state senator in 1852, and mayor of Brownsville in 1874. In 1875 he served as a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention.
He earned the nickname "Rip" during the Mexican War while serving as a Texas Ranger under the legendary Ranger Captain Jack Hays. As a doctor, Ford had the duty of writing letters home to deceased soldiers' loved ones to inform them of their death. Roughly 13 percent of all soldiers involved in the war died, most from disease, and Ford found himself having to write so many letters that he soon shortened his closing to "Rest In Peace" and then later to simple "RIP". For the rest of his life he would be known as Rip Ford.
He passed away on November 3, 1897 in San Antonio.
It's very easy to bake a chicken breast. Prepare your breast for cooking. I trim off any fat, skin and bits of bone and then rinse it briefly under cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. I generally also marinate my chicken breasts because otherwise they can be a bit flavorless. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. When the oven is ready take a baking dish or pan, hit it with some non-stick cooking spray, put your chicken breast in it and place in the oven on a rack in the middle. Wait 20-30 minutes. To check to see if the breast is done, take out of the oven and cut into the thickest part of the breast. If the juice runs clear the breast is done. If the juice isn't clear, place it back in the oven and give it a little more time.
Because chicken can be a carrier for salmonella I like to be sure the breast is done and use a meat thermometer instead of the juice test. There's some dispute over at what point it's safe to eat a chicken breast but everyone I've read seems to agree that by the time the thickest part of the breast reaches 170 degrees Fahrenheit any bacteria should be dead so that's the target I use.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on this since I assume everyone already knows this but it doesn't hurt repeating. Raw chicken can be a carrier for salmonella which is why it is important to always cook chicken thoroughly before eating. Dry, chewy overcooked chicken is preferable to getting food poisoning. When working with raw chicken always be sure to thoroughly clean everything that has been in contact with the chicken. Don't just limit yourself surfaces that were in direct contact with the chicken but get the surrounding area as well. Be sure to wash your hands as well.
Marinating is a way of flavoring meat as well as helping it stay moist while cooking. Basically you want to submerge the meat in the marinade for 30 minutes or longer. This allows the marinade to soak into the meat adding flavor and moisture. To help the marinade penetrate deeper into the meat, so it's not just on the surface, it's helpful to stab the meat a few times with a fork before placing in the marinade. I find that lightly beating the meat, as though you were massaging it, before marinating also helps. You can marinate in a bowl, add just enough marinade to cover the meat, but I prefer using a Ziploc bag, squeezing as much air out as possible so it's just the meat and the marinade in the bag.
While your grocery store probably has a section dedicated to just marinades, don't limit yourself to just that. Pretty much any liquid can be used as a marinade. For example, I routinely marinate chicken breasts in Briannas Lemon Tarragon or Santa Fe salad dressings.
Something that has quickly become apparent to me is that if I want to lose weight, I need to take control of the food I eat and the best way to do that is to cook it myself. Unfortunately I've never really learned to cook. Oh, I can follow a recipe as well as the next person but I don't know any basic cooking techniques. That's kind of important since I tend to prefer food that's convenient to prepare. I don't want to spend a lot of time measuring and chopping and otherwise laboring in the kitchen just to eat something. With a knowledge of basic cooking techniques that won't be necessary. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a cookbook on basic techniques. I tried taking a cooking class once but instead of teaching us basic cooking techniques, like she advertised, the woman had us sit there and watch while she cooked various recipes and then let us sample the results. If I wanted that, I could have just stayed home and watched cooking shows on television. Anyway, as I pick up things I'll be posting them here to my blog.
Weight: 389.8 lbs.
It is with some trepidation that I stepped on the scale this morning. As only the second time that I've weighed myself since beginning my weight loss program, this was the one that was going to tell me if what I've been doing is working or not. Under those circumstances there's always the fear that you're going to discover that you're only breaking even or, worse, actually gaining weight. This was compounded by several factors. First, I'm only working on the first of my life goals; eating right. Each life goal represents a major change in lifestyle and it's hard to make one major change much less three so I've decided to take them one at a time. First I'll get my eating under control. Next I'll start going to the park to get some aerobic exercise. Finally I'll start lifting weights. Right now I'm just watching what I eat. I'm about ready to start going to the park but I hurt my ankle a couple of weeks ago plus it's been rainy of late so I haven't been able to start that phase yet.
This week I also made some dubious food choices. I'm having a little difficulty staying away from Subway and Quizno's since they're both running specials where some of their large sandwiches are only $5. Unfortunately that's more bread than I should be eating and I tend to gravitate towards some of their fattier meats.
Despite that I weighed in two pounds lighter than I did last week, putting me at the top range for healthy weight loss, so I'm pretty happy this morning. My healthy eating plan is obviously working and if Subway and Quizno's are the worst of my vices, that's still a lot better than a bacon & cheese Whataburger with fries and a large Dr. Pepper made with Imperial pure cane sugar. Now if the rain would just let up so I can start going to the park in the mornings.
It may seem strange to be writing a review of a book that, as far as I know, is out of print but I'm going to do it anyway. Eating By Design by Carrie Latt Wiatt is worth looking at if you're trying to lose weight. Psychologists will tell you that your habits are your habits because there's something about the behavior that you enjoy engaging in. Wiatt applies that principle to your eating habits to help determine why you eat what you eat.
The meat of the book is an eating personality test. When you take the test you'll probably find that you score highly on several of Wiatt's eating personality types. I suggest paying attention to all of those. For example, I scored highly as a "Passionflower", a "Soloist" and a "Lotus Eater". What does that mean? Well, a Passionflower is someone who eats for the pleasure of it. A Soloist is someone who makes food choices based on convenience. A Lotus Eater is someone who may actually have an eating disorder, compulsive overeating in my case. In short, I'm someone with a preference for food that doesn't require a lot of work to prepare or clean up after and is a pleasure to eat and I tend to eat for reasons that have nothing to do with what my body actually needs. I'm a lot more likely to be successful in following a healthy diet if I keep all of these things in mind.
Having determined your eating personality type(s), Wiatt presents you with strategies for creating a healthy diet plan that you can stick with and even provides some sample diets. I wouldn't treat this book as the only thing you need to begin eating a healthier diet but it is a good starting point.
If you're looking to lose weight I suggest visiting a used book store or perhaps the local library and seeing if you can find a copy of Eating By Design by Carrie Latt Wiatt.
Now that I've established how much I weigh it's time to set some goals. It's important to keep those goals realistic so that I don't become discouraged. I need to lose close to 200 lbs. I'm not going to do that in 60 days and if I tell myself I am, I'm just setting myself up to fail. A realistic and healthy rate at which to lose weight is 1-2 lbs. per week. At that rate I can expect it to take me 100-200 weeks to lose the weight I need to lose. That's means I can expect it to take 2-4 years to accomplish my goal. On the plus side, if I can maintain healthy habits for that length of time they should be pretty well established by the time I reach my target weight.
Unfortunately I'm going to find it hard to remain motivated for 2-4 years so I'm going to set myself an intermediate goal. Something I should be able to accomplish in a short period of time. When I reach that goal I will celebrate, though not by eating fattening foods, and then I will set myself a new intermediate goal. My first intermediate goal is to reach 285 lbs. That means dropping 7 pounds. I'm hoping I can do that in a month but I'll allow myself 2 months just to be safe.
Long Term Goal: 200 lbs. in 2-4 years
Intermediate Goal: 385 lbs. in 1-2 months
Rating: 2 out of 5
I went into Speed Racer with low expectations. I'm not a fan of the Wachowski brothers. I thought The Matrix was pretty eye candy but that was about it. I didn't like what they did to V For Vendetta in translating it to the big screen and I didn't care for the way they treated Alan Moore in the process. I thought the trailers for Speed Racer looked terrible. So why did I go see the movie? I went to see it because nearly 40 years ago I loved to watch the original Speed Racer on television and there was a part of me that hoped I was wrong and that the movie would be good. Sadly it lived down to my expectations.
What was good about it? Very little. Most of the casting is spot on. I thought Emile Hirsch was good as Speed and John Goodman made a great Pops Racer. In fact, the only bad casting was Kick Gurry as Sparky and Roger Allam as the villain, Royalton. Gurry doesn't fit at all and Allam comes across as a Tim Curry-wannabe, to the point where I wondered why the Wachowskis didn't just cast Curry in the role.
Neither the plot nor the dialogue is particularly good. Given the movie's 2+ hour length you have to question the decision to include Speed's origin story. It's not like Speed is an alien rocketed to earth from a distant planet or a high school student who gained superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. He's a guy who likes to drive fast. Do we really need to spend a lot of time on flashbacks of Speed as a little kid obsessing over racing? As far as plot goes, it can be distilled down to this statement: all corporations are evil and all races are fixed. Dialogue tends towards the heavily clichéd and the story isn't particularly well thought out.
I'm bothered that Racer X is fairly open about being a government agent. I'm also bothered that Pops isn't the one who tricks out the Mach 5. All Pops puts in, really, are the hydraulic jacks and pretty much every car in the movie has those. In fact most racecars seem to spend as much time airborne as they do on the ground. Pops does put a canopy on the Mach 5 but it takes the government to make it bulletproof. The government also gives Speed all his other gadgets. Remember kiddies, government is good, corporations are evil.
With the Wachowskis making the movie you would expect it to at least be decent eye candy but even at that it's a failure. Everything just looked horrible. This is the latest movie to be shot with the actors in front of a green screen and then everything else added in with computer generated images (CGI). Other recent movies to use this technique would be Sin City and 300. Unfortunately Speed Racer doesn't do a very good job of integrating the live action actors with their CGI backgrounds and the results look horrible.
Perhaps most disappointing are the race scenes. In the world of Speed Racer all car races are a combination of drift racing and demolition derby. Being the best driver apparently means being the best at forcing other people to have accidents but its okay because every car has a special system to ensure the driver escapes even the most horrific of crashes without a scratch on them. Cars constantly slip and slide as if they're on ice no matter what the surface whether it's a racetrack, the desert, a dried out mud flat or a road. In fact there's a sequence where Speed, Trixie and Racer X, all driving separate cars on a winding mountain road at high speed, have a conversation via radio. At no point in the conversation do any of them stop fishtailing back and forth. Not even on the straightaways. There are even points where cars just spontaneously begin doing 360s for no apparent reason. When they're not busy driving sideways, which seems to be how most drivers in the movie spend their time, they're flipping through the air since everyone has hydraulic jacks.
My advice? Skip Speed Racer and go see Iron Man instead. Even if you've already seen Iron Man you'll still find it a more enjoyable movie than Speed Racer.
One of the most common mistakes people make when trying to lose weight is hopping on the scale every day to see how they’re doing. Let’s be clear on something. The scale is not your friend. If you want to lose weight, don’t weigh yourself more often than once a week. Here’s why.
A healthy and realistic weight-loss goal is to lose 1-2 pounds per week. If you lose weight faster than that there is a good chance that you’re doing something unhealthy. You could even be doing something to damage your ability to lose weight and keep it off, like burning muscle instead of fat.
If you’re only losing 1-2 pounds per week that translates into .143-.286 pounds per day. That’s not much progress and may be imperceptible thanks to natural fluctuations in body weight. If you weigh yourself every day, especially when just beginning a weight-loss regimen, it’s very easy to become discouraged and give up. Instead just weigh yourself once a week and don’t worry about the days in between.
