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[wombat]

Ah the boob string... Jeez wombat, you're really in to the boob string.  You've alluded to your own giant rack on occasion, are you curious as to who has the larger rack? .

I hadn't even thought of that.  It just seems like such a... unique contest prize.

[wombat]

  I'm imagining this as that Seinfeld contest, but with health instead of masturbation.

I am not familiar with this Seinfeld contest, but your comparison leads me to conclude, since this is a race to better health, that was a race to better masturbation?  Um, in prime time?

[AugustWest]

Are you not familiar with Seinfeld at all?  Because the "Master of Your Domain" episode is probably the best known and most quoted of them all.

[wombat]

I understand that Seinfeld was a show about some people who lived in New York City. I believe it was the Upper West Side. One was a standup comedian, one was tall, and one was a girl.  In the last episode, they went to jail. And there was something about soup.

[robot_god]

I'm not really sure when or how this turned into a competition.

Well, I don't think anyone really cares about competing, but sharing the goals can help keep everyone motivated.

[jough]

I think goals are of course important, and if others are interested in a push towards healthiness too, then we can be a support system for each other (in addition, of course, to our usual support).

To that end I think maybe some kind of web-based system would be in order.  I have a lot of stuff on my plate (excuse the pun) already, so I'm hoping to find some kind of health-minder social networking site that we could join that would offer at least:

* a blog / journal
* a diet log of what we eat
* a way to set goals and waypoints (short and long term goals) and then plot progress, preferably with pretty graphs
* some means of interaction between members, like a shared message board or something.

While I haven't searched for such a thing in earnest, I would be surprised if such a site did not already exist.  If not, I guess the market is ready for one, so I'd be down if I could find someone to partner with to make it happen.  It's a big undertaking.

[Mite]

fitday.com does the first 3 of those, but it's not public (to my knowledge) with no way to see each others' stuff or converse about our dietary habits. It might give you a start, at least, and it's free.

And V - eating properly is actually cheaper. Not only in the "if you eat well you won't have to pay for diabetic supplies when you're 50" kind of way, but if you've got a farmer's market nearby, actually cheaper. We eat tons of beans and rice and vegetables and stuff, and we spend way less money on food than our friends who eat off of the dollar menu every day. It's all just planning, and the willingness to actually cook. We make a big mess of food once or twice a week, and then live off of that until it's gone. I recommend getting a rice cooker, and maybe buying my favorite cookbook, Clueless in the Kitchen. Don't let the spin of the book fool you. I'm not, nor have I ever been, clueless in the kitchen, but it's still my most used cookbook by far.

[AlohaDawg]

I like fitday - it does the things Mite mentions pretty well, and the journaling thing can be public ( Here's mine ) and we already have a message board...you could maybe create a forum just for the people who want to do this and discuss this, and restrict the membership to the participaters.

[Mite]

Sweet! I've used it regulary for over a year, and I had no idea it did that. Thanks for looking, Dawg.

[side_show]

...the journaling thing can be public ( Here's mine )

Wait... you ate at McDonald's?  That seems so... contrary... or something. 

Also, your journal reminded me that your third wee one's due date is sneaking up really fast.  You must be getting excited!

[jough]

I spent about 20 minutes putting in the nine things that I ate today, but I wasn't about to try to break down the 1/3 cup of homemade potato salad - I mean, there's just no way for me to figure out the calories in that stuff.

This project may at the very least get me to eat simpler things whose calories can be measured, since there's no way I want to spend an hour a day recording my meals on the computer when I could do it by hand in three minutes.

So of course this means that I haven't found the right tool yet.

I think I can "build" a recipe in Calorie King and save it.  I will probably tend to eat a lot of the same sorts of things from time to time, as I find healthy dishes that I like, and so to be able to save "red beans and rice" with all of the ingredients already accounted for will be helpful.

Right now I'm concentrating on being conscious of what I put into my body, trying to get more exercise, and cutting down on portions, drinking lots (and lots) of water, and at least having to get up to pee every half an hour will get me moving out of this chair throughout the work day. 

I have the advantage that I can take an hour in the morning, and hour in the afternoon, etc., and concentrate on exercise or health things.  So while I have this luxury (i.e. poverty) I will make use of it.

I am already feeling better, but some of that is the adrenalin of starting this new project.

I didn't have a bagel this morning like I do most mornings, and I did miss it a bit.  I didn't miss it though once I was done eating my cereal (plus two strawberries) and then pounding down 32 oz. of water.

I'm weaning myself off of coffee this week, too. Only three cups today.  Tomorrow, two, but I'll let myself go back downstairs for a third if I really want it.  Then I'll have just one cup, or maybe skip a day and see how it goes.

It's a drug, I'm addicted, so I am not expecting this to be easy.  People around me are already trying to undermine my success, telling me that since I've been doing so well it's okay to have a piece of cake or something.  I don't even want cake. 

Anyway, it is not my job to make other people feel better by eating the same shitty foods that they do.  I did that for close to 30 years.  I'm done now.

Having said all that, I still ate too much for dinner tonight, even with the reduced portions.  I guess I didn't reduce them enough.  I was left with "unused" calories though and the book I'm reading says that I won't lose weight if I don't consume all of my 2000 calories.  I think I'll try to knock that down to 1800 and see how it goes.  I think I could do 1800 calories without even changing that much.  I'm taking it slow, now, and once I talk with my new doctor I hope that we can figure out how many calories I actually need and what percentage of what should add up to them.

This one book that I have since thrown away suggested that calories in < calories burned = weight loss, which is so over-simplified as to be useless.  I mean, I could do a 1200 calorie diet, but if I consume all of those calories by eating butter I'll be dead within a month (if not sooner). 

I'm pretty obsessive and addictive in general, so moderation and not over-doing health now will probably be a bigger challenge than laying off of the desserts.   

I'm just finding that I'm pretty unknowledgeable about the nutritional values of various foods.  I have a bag of black beans.  Are they good for me or bad for me?  Sure, they contain starch, which in theory is bad, but is it the bad kind of starch or is it okay?

I need to do a lot more studying on this. I was so ignorant I didn't even know how much I didn't know until I started trying to count calories this weekend.

[JorgeFabregas]

Beans are pretty great for you, as I understand it. The canned ones are loaded with salt, so it seems that a bag would be better. I understand that fiber (of which virtually all beans have plenty) mitigates many of the negative effects of carbohydrates in the same meal. It prevents your blood sugar from spiking, or something like that by slowing down digestion.

[pmcd9]

I got the impression you could save a recipe and revisit it again later.  It seems like an awesome tool to me.  I fudged (mmm fudge j/k) on some of the stuff, but I think it's accurate enough.

I follow WW points system and that works for me, but this is a good tool.  Something to play with that'll keep me focused on the health.  Portable too.

45 minutes of tennis tonight.  Legs are rubber.  Swimming tomorrow.  On track five days straight.  Hell yes.

~Paul

[theinevitable]

this will be the healthiest group of internet-message-board-users of all time.

[Mite]

Once you get used to the system, you can use it pretty quickly. Once you have a few days worth of stuff in your "recent foods" menu, you can just pull a lot of stuff off of that. Sadly, one of the keys to weight loss is losing a bit of the crazy variety Americans can get in our food. At least I think so - you're likely to eat less if you're just a tiny bit sick of what you're eating. Only a tiny bit, though.

And Jough - it really is calories in < calories burned = weight loss, for the most part. Try to keep your fat under 30% of your food (that's why fitday's pie chart is so nice). For protein, I think the rule is .8 g per kilogram of body weight, which shouldn't be any kind of a problem for a meat eater. Whole grain carbs take up the rest, which should give you about 20-25 g of fiber a day. All of this stuff is displayed for you right on fitday, and if you want to go crazy it'll even show you how much vitamin A and selenium and whatever you're getting in your diet.

I know I'm the same kind of compulsive you are, and I know that if I let myself read too much about omega 3 fatty acids or trans fats or whatever, I'd never get anything else done, and then get sick of it and give up. But you really don't need to bother all that much. If you can, choose lower-fat foods (cracker barrel's 2% cheese is good, reduced fat feta is great, skim milk rather than whole, lean meats, sugar free fudgsicles are basically like treasure and 40 calories each). Only buy whole wheat bread - it should have "whole wheat" as the first ingredient, not "enriched wheat flour" or "unbleached wheat flour". A lot of wheat bread is just white bread with caramel coloring in it.

I know this sounds like a ton of work, and it is at first, but now I really don't need to think about it much. I know what's in the food I like, and I've changed my buying habits a bit to make better food choices, and it only takes me 5 minutes to put it all in the computer. That's it. Anybody who's telling you it's complicated is probably trying to sell you something. That doesn't mean it's easy to be healthier, mind, it's hard as hell, but not because it's complicated.

And good luck with giving up coffee. I had to dramatically cut back last year about this time, and it's done me a world of good. I got a french press instead of the big pot, so now I only have 1 cup of really good, rich coffee and I don't feel like I'm wasting a half-pot of drip.