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[theinevitable]

About to go get an awesome BBQ sandwich, since I have to pick up some of their sauce to bring to the GF's family as an offering. Pulled pork, sauce, bun... nothing better.

[miles]

Ham, swiss, and fresh whole basil leaves, grilled and melty.

Yessss. It absolutely has to be ham and swiss; the salty/savory blend perfectly counterbalances the sweet basil. Prosciutto would probably work, too.

Oh man, I don't use basil nearly enough. It would make so many things better.

[Nabubrush]

I'm going to have a fairly crap cheeseburger on Friday.

[Nabubrush]

Seriously, why would you be planning this, then. I would be trying to wiggle off that hook already.

1) The missus signed up for Weight Watchers online tracking.
2) ??
3) I'm going to have a fairly crap cheeseburger on Friday.

[jay-ell]

1) The missus signed up for Weight Watchers online tracking.
2) ??
3) I'm going to have a fairly crap cheeseburger on Friday.

WW is good, actually -- I was very successful with them a number of years back (lost 35 lbs, got knocked up, lost 35 lbs again, got knocked up again) and still use the same principles I learned from that experience. But there is no reason to be eating crap cheeseburgers. There are plenty of low-calorie, healthy foods that taste good; you don't need to rely on pale imitations of high-fat, overly processed junk food. Hit me up for recipes if you're so inclined.

Unless you mean, you have been craving a crap cheeseburger because you are tired of eating salads with the wife, and Friday is an opportunity to get one. In which case, gruffle the shit out of that, yo.

[Nabubrush]

WW is good, actually -- I was very successful with them a number of years back (lost 35 lbs, got knocked up, lost 35 lbs again, got knocked up again) and still use the same principles I learned from that experience. But there is no reason to be eating crap cheeseburgers. There are plenty of low-calorie, healthy foods that taste good; you don't need to rely on pale imitations of high-fat, overly processed junk food. Hit me up for recipes if you're so inclined.

Unless you mean, you have been craving a crap cheeseburger because you are tired of eating salads with the wife, and Friday is an opportunity to get one. In which case, gruffle the shit out of that, yo.

Bing.

They give you points, and then like special reward points, right? And I'm at work, so my special reward points, if used, with pretty much necessarily go toward some crappy version of what I actually want. The other thing is that since I'm in an institutional setting, it's difficult to know what the hell is going on with the food they prepare. I've got this cool scanner to figure out stuff with bar codes on it, but as for the giant pan full of turkey-a'la-king? No one knows.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I've been doing WW for a few months, and it's working well--down about 20 lbs so far. But yeah, in Nabu's situation that's a pain in the ass. I already annoy the crap out of my wife by asking her a zillion questions about how she prepared dinner and then figuring out points before I'll sit down to eat (though she can't argue with the results). There are some foods and restaurants where you pretty much just can't eat because you don't know what the hell you're getting.

[Nabubrush]

I was talking about it with a buddy from New Orleans this morning. He said his company has these big feasts for clients and stuff like that, and he was watching one of their engineers make etouffee. The dude had this big pot and he was getting the shrimp together and fixing to make the roue and he just unwrapped like eight pounds of butter and dropped them in. Yeah, yeah, he's making enough for thirty people, but that's still a whacking big glass of butter to drain.

[jay-ell]

I've been doing WW for a few months, and it's working well--down about 20 lbs so far. But yeah, in Nabu's situation that's a pain in the ass. I already annoy the crap out of my wife by asking her a zillion questions about how she prepared dinner and then figuring out points before I'll sit down to eat (though she can't argue with the results). There are some foods and restaurants where you pretty much just can't eat because you don't know what the hell you're getting.

Yeah, doing WW the first time really cut down on our eating out. We didn't have kids at the time, so that was kind of a big deal.

Does Mrs. del Vaca know about SparkRecipes? You can enter all the ingredients and get a ballpark nutritional count for any given recipe. You can save them for future use, too -- WW had something very much like it when I was signed up (5 years ago) but SparkRecipes is free. So when we're watching our calories, I can tell Pedro, "Your dinner tonight is 640 calories per serving, but if you want an extra piece of bread those are 100 each." It's time-consuming to enter the recipes, but if she has a set rotation of family favorites (like I do), you can just enter the things you eat most frequently and estimate the rest.

I use Spark a lot -- I print my usual rotation of meals from the Spark interface so that my three-ring-binder everyday recipes includes nutrition info right at the top of every page. I've actually switched to Spark's nutritional tracking program, too, because they have a nice web interface, an iPhone app, and a recipe calculator that are all free to use. But it requires a little more discipline than WW, because the Points system really does make it easier to keep a running total in your head throughout the day.

I need to get back to tracking. I've put on some pounds lately and I'm not very happy about it.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Over time you figure out places that you can successfully eat out, though. I go for the shrimp salad at Baja Fresh probably once a week, because it's good, it's only 11 points even with the tortilla chips, and because I actually feel like I'm eating at Baja Fresh. (Unlike, say, getting the low-cal menu items at IHOP--that makes me completely miserable because everyone else is having pancakes with syrup, and I'm eating a plain-ass omlette with turkey bacon, and I feel like I'm completely wasting my time and money. Fuck that noise.) Corner Bakery is a good option too.

Haven't used Spark Recipes yet, but I'll check it out. The missus is NOT doing WW, so she's not quite as concerned with content, but she'll usually give me the recipe (if she's working off of one) or just remember or write down the details, and I'll hammer it out one way or another.

[theinevitable]

I need to start using that site. My problem is that even when I cook something kind of healthy, I eat basically the whole pot. Cuz, you know... It's healthy!

[jaydub]

I like Spark a lot.  I'll occasionally track food for a while to see if I'm getting balanced macronutrients, keep an eye on sodium, etc.  Mostly I keep track of fitness minutes on it though.

Academically, the topic of weight loss interests me, and I discovered something along the way that goes a long way to explaining what's going on when people go through the cycle of diet/gain/diet/gain; namely that a good couple pounds of lean body mass is the short term energy storage molecule glycogen - and that each gram of glycogen requires 3 grams of water to store.  Your body will preferentially work through that glycogen before dipping into long term fat stores, so you can drop 5-10 pounds without losing an ounce of fat.  Once your calorie restriction ends or exercise level drops the glycogen stores zip back up, bringing along their associated water - and this process happens in a hurry.  The net result is that the beginning of a diet, when those first pounds come off, sets you up with an unrealistic expectation about what will happen with the next couple weeks!  Also, dieting to lose 5 pounds is a chump's game.  If you want to lose 5 pounds of fat, you need to diet down 15 pounds (or so) so that when you come off the diet the return to homeostasis of your glycogen stores will leave you with the net loss you were aiming for.

[theinevitable]

shit, but what if I really just want to eat slightly healthier and bike more so I stop developing a gut? Is that also a mook's game? I think if I lost 15 lbs I would be back into "underweight" territory. But right now I'm... a skinny dude with a big belly.

[jaydub]

Get some muscle mass.  Everything is easier if you increase the amount of lean mass on your frame.  Bonus: you need to eat a lot more while you're gaining.

[jay-ell]

That is some Science. Thanks for bringin' it.

I would really just like to get to the point where I can wear a swimsuit without being embarrassed again. (This isn't as hard as it sounds; my standards are low.) I carry my weight in my stomach, and I have long thin legs and skinny little bird arms. (Not to be braggy about my legs, but they are without a doubt my best feature.) So most of the time I can dress myself to conceal the spare tire, but in a swimsuit there's just no hope.

I am reasonably fit when it comes to strength -- I can lift and carry my 70-lb daughter if she cooperates -- but I also inherited my dad's unfortunate genetic characteristic of not gaining a lot of muscle mass, even from lifting weights. "Sinewy," is what I'd call it. When I took two consecutive semesters of strength training for my PE credits in college, I was in pretty good condition and could lift a lot more than you'd expect based on my size. I think I weighed 120 and I could bench 90 and squat 200, or something like that. Maybe that's not impressive, but it was a marked improvement from where I started. The thing is, my arms and legs never got any bigger and I never gained weight from working out.

So, JayDub the Science Guy, does this mean that I'm doomed in terms of trying to lose fat by gaining muscle? Or is it that my muscles, such as they are, are more densely packed and will burn more energy regardless of their actual size and weight?