Avoiding fruit a lot more than I used to. Tons of veggies but avoiding potatoes. Cutting out bread, rice, desserts, obvious things like that.
1: You didn't even read the OP, did you? "Fruit (which I've cut back on) tastes much sweeter."
(IME whenever people talk about cutting out carbs, they always mean "simple carbs, starches, etc.". Other than the Atkins folks, I don't think I've ever met anyone who considered broccoli a carbohydrate.)
I think I've mentioned this before, but there's a paleo takeout place that's just opened up a couple of blocks from my apartment. I'm tempted to try their stuff, but then I see things on their website like "we don't use umami" and I change my mind.
Can't be no vegetables. I assume it's no-refined-carbs, not much fruit, low carb type vegetables.
I will put in my usual dissatisfied mumbling about being somewhat heavier than I'd like to be but without the attention span/commitment to actually diet or anything, and also kind of believing that dieting is a vaguely unreasonable thing to do. Given that I've been saying the same thing for about fifteen years now, I should give up on being dissatisfied about it.
You cut out wine or you still drink wine because it's fruit and not carbs. Somehow.
I still drink wine but have avoided beer, but I don't drink very much generally.
You didn't even read the OP, did you?
I did, I was just being a dick because people say "carbs" when they mean something much more specific.
Also, I'm starving right now. I wish I was the kind of person who could successfully keep food in my desk for moments of extreme hunger, but anything within reach gets eaten in moments of mild boredom. My geranium is lucky I haven't gotten around to checking whether it's edible.
I assume it's no-refined-carbs, not much fruit, low carb type vegetables.
Right, except potatoes don't seem to qualify as "refined" and I've been avoiding those, and cutting back on corn and starchier vegetables. But plenty of beans, an increase in meat, and plenty of green leafy vegetables, broccoli, etc.
I did, I was just being a dick because people say "carbs" when they mean something much more specific.
I'm pretty sure I got chastised for this exact maneuver the last time this came up in conversation.
I do occasionally think that I will be eating much more healthily once I'm not worrying about making the children miserable. Not particularly for weight loss, but just in terms of lazy cooking and nutrition, I could live off meat and roasted vegetables pretty much forever.
Could be wrong, but pretty sure that beans are out on pretty much all "low-carb" diets. I've been on no grains, potatoes, or legumes for several months now, and feel much better and weigh less. I would love to have a paleo place nearby, whatever the hell they wanted to say on their menu.
I'm eating chili (with beans) right now.
dieting is a vaguely unreasonable thing to do
In some sense, yes of course it is. On the other hand, eating a more healthy diet as opposed to a less healthy diet obviously isn't unreasonable. And yet in practice for a lot of people, that looks like dieting, because if they aren't consciously watching what they are eating, then they will eat too much unhealthy food.
I know beans are frowned upon, but it's just really hard to design meals and find something I can stick to otherwise. I hide out in their being unrefined.
I would love to have a paleo place nearby, whatever the hell they wanted to say on their menu.
"Our standards start here: NO processed refine oils, sugars, gluten, grain, legumes, NO cooking with plastic, aluminum, technique that introduce toxins, umami, and NO using ingredients that sound like chemicals."
Apparently they also don't use vinegar.
Oh and they don't use umami 'cause it causes autism.
I don't really understand why everybody started hating on beans for nutritional reasons. It's one of the reasons I suspect paleo is bullshit.
beans are frowned upon
Don't use the passive voice. Only psychopaths frown upon beans.
Umami is a flavor. I mean, cooked meat tastes of umami. They can't mean what they're saying, which means they're either just random morons, or they mean something specific and they're describing it wrong.
I am now eating sardines regularly. So there's that.
Beans aren't paleo for reasons that I've never really understood ("lectins" but the explanations don't make much sense and that's at a pretty low level for making sense) but are generally fine on a low carb diet. I don't eat a lot of beans but I do cheat on that rule fairly routinely, usually lentils. I still don't eat peanuts. The totally unsurprising commercialization of paleo is in full effect, though it's mostly bullshit fake nonsense like cupcakes made from sweet potato flour.
24: From their blog:
Unfortunately, the food industry is very smart, and there are no regulations that mandate to disclose levels of free glutamate created by processing food, only for "added synthesized MSG". In the same way the Japanese discovered how some cooking techniques resulted in Umami, the "fifth flavor" - nothing else than free glutamate; so did our food industry. Therefore the excess that is affecting all of us today in so many levels.
Mmm, beans. I have two big containers of low-rent cassoulet (low rent in that I was using up Christmas leftovers and not actually looking at a recipe, so it's probably not terribly close to a canonical version) in the freezer at home.
I should probably head out for lunch soon before I absentmindedly kill and eat a coworker.
I should probably head out for lunch soon before I absentmindedly kill and eat a coworker.
Hard-core paleo!
Literally eating my breakfast steak right now.
Beans aren't paleo for reasons that I've never really understood
This is a good rundown of the pro and con on beans.
Also, Pythagoras? None more paleo.
I did a low-carb thing for awhile. I lost a few pounds. I gave it up. I lost a few more. Best guess is that cutting back on alcohol was a bigger deal than I thought it would be. (I once lost a lot of weight on a low-fat diet without changing my alcohol intake.)
How do you all feel about these ridiculous canisters of protein powder? The new xfit owner hocks them, and the convenience - shelf stable, super quick when I need a snack and I don't want to think or I've run out of better choices, relatively cheap because there's like 400 servings in a tub - all makes it kind of appealing.
How do you all feel about these ridiculous canisters of protein powder? The new xfit owner hocks them
I think that answers your question right there.
ridiculous canisters of protein powder
What sort of protein powder? Egg/milk/soy/pea/etc.
Is it actually effectively a snack? This is cane-shaking get-off-my-lawnism, but I think of consuming anything with significant food value as a liquid is one of the signs of the apocalypse. If you're hungry, learn to chew.
(I got distracted by irritability there, I meant to say that I thought liquid calories didn't satisfy hunger.)
Crossfit owners selling protein power in their gyms is kind of like the pigs-have-become-men ending of Animal Farm.
I wholeheartedly encourage people to go on low carb diets, because that means more bread and potatoes for me.
"No umami" is a hilarious rule. They might as well come out and say "enjoying your food isn't paleo" at that point (no vinegar doesn't help there either, and is also really inexplicable to me). The idea that some cooking techniques result in it is particularly great because those cooking techniques are called "cooking".
Though, come to think of it, that is probably more historically accurate than a lot of paleo-type diets. I doubt our ancient evolutionary ancestors were getting into too many interesting foods back before we got far enough into our various vegetable breeding projects.
I know, the new owner is completely ridiculous by any metric whatsoever. He owned a few powder-selling snake-oil nutrition stores (and still does) prior to taking over the xfit location. I just show up, get a great workout, and leave. Is that so bad?
(He's unsurprisingly into fads of all kinds, and now Wednesdays have become Gymnastics Wednesdays, and the coach is a former gymnast, and I love these classes so incredibly much. No I can't do a handstand or a skin-the-cat (at least the version that engages your muscles) or start on my knees and jump to my feet, or any other feats, but I love working towards that so much more than working towards just another boring deadlift.)
My no-time protein snack is a Quest bar (not very cheap, but good, for a protein bar) and my have a few minutes snack is celery with almond butter.
Is it actually effectively a snack? This is cane-shaking get-off-my-lawnism, but I think of consuming anything with significant food value as a liquid is one of the signs of the apocalypse.
Yeah, I think it would be, as in swing-by-my-office-and-then-teach-another-class kind of pinch-hit. But who knows.
By "umami" they mean MSG, right?
Also, sunflower seeds are very similar in carb/fat/protein to almonds but way, way, way cheaper.
My no-time protein snack is a Quest bar (not very cheap
He hocks these, too, but I was put-off by the price.
Also, sunflower seeds are very similar in carb/fat/protein to almonds but way, way, way cheaper.
This is a good idea. Also I like the mindless shelling process; I've been snacking on pistachios too.
That's almost certainly what they think they mean, anyway, but at least from what Josh is quoting they're definitely under the impression that 'free glutamate' isn't in basically everything you eat. So there's some idea that MSG is bad, and so you should avoid having glutamate in things, and knowing that some things you do in the kitchen increase the amount of glutamate in food, but a general confusion overall about what this means. (Or that would be my guess, anyway.)
We should make up some ridiculous health memes and see which ones spread best around the internet. Like: "100% of patients with brain tumors were found to also have glutamate in their brain!"
But: isn't it interesting that when I ate carbs-but-no-desserts, fruit tasted the same as always, but when I cut carbs and desserts both, fruit tastes much sweeter? I think it's interesting.
"100% of patients with brain tumors were found to also have glutamate in their brain!"
People who breath air have a 0% long term survival rate.
Also: no words of wisdom on point 4 in the OP? I was hoping for some.
42: Avoiding things that make food taste good is probably an effective technique for losing weight.
51: no, that's not interesting. But I'll tell you what is interesting: how quickly that heightened sensitivity to sweet tastes can be reversed. (At least for me.) When I don't eat much dessert, which I usually don't, all of it tastes good, but as you describe honestly a bit overly sweet, and so I never want more than a bite or two. After that it becomes cloying. But! If I persevere through that "ugh" factor even once (almost always due to social pressure aka birthday parties and the like), it completely reverses. And I mean completely reverses, so that I can shovel down cupcakes by the box without them seeming the least bit over-sweet.
There is no way that is more interesting than my 51.
Apparently you have a flawed understanding of what is interesting.
I think the science on anything dietary is really very unreliable still; there aren't solid answers out there. But if you want some predigested pap, here's Vox.
55: You're pitting a journalist against a scientist, so without having read any of it I'd be inclined to trust the latter.
Shame, I am full of shame, and am shamed, and covered in shame.
I went carb mad around October or whenever they moved me to the blighted exurb where I now work, because carbs make me feel less sad, especially Doctor Pepper carbs. I had previously lost 8 pounds in a month on Weight Wachers. I now am wearing a new, largest-ever-for-me waist size in pants.
Anyway I have to give things up gradually, one at a time, to not go mad. January 1st I gave up alcohol and soft drinks. After this weekend, I guess I'll give up sugar-sweetened things. After that, at some point, bready things. It actually does work for me, not even so much in terms of weight (I'll have to go back on WW to do much about that, but once you're not eating all that stuff, it's easier to stay within your points) as energy and sleep and generally feeling a little healthier.
Maybe this needed pause play. ME ME MY COMMENT IS ABOUT ME.
63 -- most of our comments are written from an objective, if not Olympian, viewpoint, so you should feel shame for your solipsism.
43 -- we also have a gymnastics day, though it's in the evening and I can't usually go, taught by a pro breakdancer (breakdancing primarily exists in TV commercials now, so that's how he makes his living). Honestly I need that stuff so much more than the regular lifting but I'm just so bad at it. It's a problem.
You're pitting a journalist against a scientist, so without having read any of it I'd be inclined to trust the latter.
But the journalist says I can eat much more hedonistically.
Honestly I need that stuff so much more than the regular lifting but I'm just so bad at it.
This kind of thing for so many physical skills. Where are the classes explicitly aimed at people who are well inferior to what an ordinary person with any interest in whatever it is would be able to do on a first attempt, meaning to get them up to ordinary beginner levels?
Around here, there's one for soccer. But only for women with kids in the local kiddie league.
There are also adults in karate classes with kids.
A Facebook acquaintance who didn't know how to ski just posted pictures of her time in beginner ski school. She was in a class with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds. The class photo she posted was pretty awesome (they all had identical bibs).
IMBSALB: I don't understand why the gym owner hawks protein powder when he's already got hocks on hand.
You're pitting a journalist against a scientist, so without having read any of it I'd be inclined to trust the latter.
They have slightly different goals, though. The scientist wants to understand the mechanisms by which we get fat. The journalist wants to be able to recommend a diet that will keep you not-fat. Of course there's crossover in those goals, but I do think it's a slightly different orientation.
I've been doing pretty much this (as described in 2: not no carb, but no bread, pasta, potatoes, sugar-added foods, etc.) since the beginning of Nov. Not working off any particular theory, just using it as a calorie bottleneck because I can easily consume mass quantities of bread etc., and find it (somewhat) easier to rule stuff out than to consume with moderation. Rapidly lost 15+ pounds with no other significant changes, though that seems to have plateaued for a few weeks now. Have not noticed any change in my perception of sweetness, though I do crave fruit pretty much constantly.
Main problem is that household meal planning was already a big enough pain in the ass with a vegetarian/omnivore schism, and is now pretty much impossible.
I had somehow missed that beans were not allowed in paleo. AB asked about it the other day, and I was unhelpful.
73: Research show that cavemen didn't fart.
I've been not drinking so much because I really don't feel like walking to the bar when it's below zero and because in my attempt to heal my heel, I'm taking medications whose labels say I shouldn't drink. I don't know if I will lose weight or not.
Maybe this needed pause play. ME ME MY COMMENT IS ABOUT ME.
Yes, whereas the OP was truly a marvel of global thinking and altruism.
I did buy a bottle of Old Grand-dad. But if I'm at home, I tend to stop after one or two.
I don't understand why the gym owner hawks protein powder when he's already got hocks on hand.
I genuinely was stuck on how else "hock" might be spelled - it looked wrong, but I couldn't think of any alternatives.
Low carb, as in low carb dieting, generally means carb content net of dietary fiber. So, yeah, broccoli and green beans are low. Raspberries aren't even that high, net.
I've lost between 25 and 30 lbs since Labor Day, which is probably visible.
They didn't remove your foot, did they?
My sister told me that when she did a low carb diet, it made her unusually irritable.
Just throwing that out there. Not trying to say anything about any heavy metal performers or anything.
Not yet. Damn thing is pretty useless, though.
Maybe this needed pause play. ME ME MY COMMENT IS ABOUT ME.
In the same vein, my big thing is that I'm going into a Kaiser weight program with total meal replacement (shakes and the like, 960 calories a day) for 4 months, starting this Friday, along with behavioral classes/support group which then continues on its own for another 4 months. My observation has been that I'm not only at an unhealthy weight that requires very concerted effort to get down, but also the weight has led to other conditions that thwart my efforts to get physically active. So I'll lose a fair chunk of weight without much effort (other than mental, to keep away from real food) to start, then it'll be up to me to build the improved habits, recalibrate portions, etc., with a group of people that's going through the same thing.
I've been training for riding a century in Feb, so an hour of really intense spinning twice a week (minimum calorie expenditure is ~1300; I suspect it's higher based on resistance loads). Plus, thanks to my phone automatically tracking steps, I've been much more consistently going for long, brisk walks - 5-10 miles a week more than my (winter) norm. I've been paying attention to calorie intake, and I'm confident that I'm within my longterm norms (higher during the holidays, but not by a lot, and normal since Xmas I think). And yet neither my weight nor my shape have changed.
I'm kind of baffled, although I suspect it's alcohol: I drank conspicuously more over the holidays (as I always do), and I think my daily average is still a bit higher. But a shot of whiskey is only 70 calories, so that just doesn't add up.
Frustrating, but I'm hoping that, if I maintain this for awhile, the slow boring of hard boards will kick in. I really only want to lose the few pounds of fat in my belly, so I don't need dramatic results.
(Ok, that was whining. I'm getting ready to have a shower, which is a pain for me, but like 1% of the difficulty that others here are dealing with daily, with no end in sight.)
But if you want some predigested pap
Pap is low-carb when it's predigested.
83: My dad went through a program like that a year or two ago, and it's made a significant, sustained, and visible difference. As it happened, he was already seeing a personal trainer, so some of the low-hanging fruits of activity were unavailable, but he's probably weighing less than he has in decades.
77 - my main diet shift over the past few months (since Thanksgiving, and as you all know ad nauseum starting from a baseline of a fairly restrictive diet) has been to mostly refuse all cocktails, beer, and/or wine in favor of straight whiskey (mostly Scotch) or tequila. I feel like this has noticeable benefits for weight and health AND means you don't have to deal with infuriating beer/wine/cocktail culture AND I drink on the whole less. Only a few months into this plan but I recommend it. I call it the "whole spirit challenge" to myself.
If you can say riding a hundred miles is riding a century, I don't see why I can't ride .00005 miles and say I've been riding for four hours.
They didn't remove your foot, did they?
I have promised myself that if I ever get to the point where I have to have a foot or a limb amputated due to diabetes, I am going to say "well, my doctor always told me I needed to lose weight!".
Luckily that possibility still seems remote at this point. I'm a little perturbed, though, that my weight is back up to where it was 5-6 years ago. OTOH I'm stronger now than I was then, and my clothes fit better than they did a few months ago.
84: I gained five pounds training for and running a half marathon. But I did change shape in the my legs became very obviously more muscular.
71: But Taubes pushes a theory linking obesity to insulin, not just a low-carb diet. They seem to agree on the efficacy of the diet and mostly disagree about the "why do people get fat?" part.
I've seen a program like 83 be super effective for a good friend, really beneficial in ways that go beyond just simple weight loss.
83: You should send me guest posts from time to time about how it's going, just because it's such an unusual circumstance and I'm fascinated.
83: I have wondered whether things like that are effective. It seems as if it would be so much easier to maintain a low weight sanely than to lose a bunch of weight.
Plants are biochemical factories that have survived this long by finding ways to make themselve unpalatable. It stands to reason that one should only resort to eating them in the most desperate circumstances.
That's not a great interpretation of the study itself, of course, but I'm willing to bet there's a decent number of people out there who are just certain that it is. (Glutamate really is linked to cancer in some sense, anyway, though I don't know of any evidence that eating it has anything to do with that.)
84 -- it's getting repetitive at this point, by once again I'll say that expecting even pretty heavy exercise to lead to weight loss, without a diet change, is very unrealistic for most of us.
It seems as if it would be so much easier to maintain a low weight sanely than to lose a bunch of weight.
Empirically, this does not at all seem to be true. Unless you are including people that are genetically thin.
Animals, on the other hand, frolic adoringly up to people, attempting to convey how very badly they want to be killed and eaten.
99 is right. But I feel better when I exercise, except for my heel.
even pretty heavy exercise to lead to weight loss, without a diet change, is very unrealistic for most of us.
But it can help you look much better in the mirror, which is what we actually mean by "weight loss". Or at least it's what I mean.
I tried low-carb diets and various other things, all of which give a nice quick 5-10 lb loss followed by a slowly increasing lust for carbs. Right now I'm having good luck with a diet that consists of eating just about 1400 Calories a day. I'm down 40 lb and feel great. I go crazy from hunger in the evenings, but I can usually take enough of the edge off with a V8. Every so often I really crack and walk down the the nearby gas station and buy one of those prepackaged ice cream cone thingies. I have a terrible weakness for them which I had not been indulging, but now I'm actually losing weight I'm more willing to forgive myself the occasional bad thing.
Because I hate both working and myself, I found the blog from 28 and read the whole entry where their "expert" is discussing the hazards of free glutamate, and the stupid is at the "evolution is just a theory" level.
I am angry now.
Do not eat anything from this restaurant. The stupidity molecules contaminating the food is liable to give you the autism.
Oh sure, exercise is great. Just responding to 84.
Is this where I pimp the BuzzFeed Clean Eating Challenge again? (I mentioned it at the other place a few days ago.) I'm not doing the whole damn thing, but I gotta say that at least the chia-seed/almond milk breakfast pudding I got from it is tasty and makes for a good breakfast.
Is that sponsored by the pear industry?
101: I sense your sarcasm, but I reject it. Animals, especially mammals and birds, spend most of their making themselves physically difficult to eat, but not unpalatable.
Every day, you'll eat three meals and two snacks (one snack after lunch, one after dinner) for a daily total of 1,300-1,600 calories.
I would literally die.
103: That's been my experience. I've been hitting the gym 3 times a week with a trainer for about 18 months and have had good results in terms of muscle tone, posture, and general health. The most striking thing has been the impact on my mind - it's almost as if I'm taking another antidepressant. I'm still heavy, but look and feel a lot better than I did last time I weighed this much.
110: Eggplant argues from a position of authority on this topic.
I'd bet I could eat any animal, properly cooked, within a five mile radius of me without any ill effects. But if I tried that with plants I'd find almost all either undigestible or actively harmful.
Animals, especially mammals and birds, spend most of their making themselves physically difficult to eat, but not unpalatable.
This is certainly not how I spend most of my time.
Five miles because I'm near a zoo, and god knows what poisonous creatures they have there.
115: It is possible that you have internalized the concept of what it means to be difficult to eat less thoroughly than most other mammals.
I have two big containers of low-rent cassoulet [...] in the freezer at home.
This is the weirdest "twinsies!" ever but we also have two big containers of low-rent cassoulet in the freezer at home.
I find that if I eat only home-prepared food, I lose weight. This may have something to do with the fact that fewer than 50% of our home-prepared meals involve pizza or french fries.
It gives one a warm sense of security, doesn't it? On any given evening when things are going badly, I can wallow in beans seething with duck-fat at will.
(Wallowing in beans and duck-fat is not an empirically well-supported weight-loss strategy.)
If the bean/fat mixture is at a high enough concentration, in fact, the fat will enter your body osmotically as you wallow.
114 is really onto something. Sounds right to me. I bet you could go through the various field guides to local animals asking "could I eat that, if it were cooked and seasoned" and the answer would be over 95% yes." I mean sure there are some venemous or poisonous critters but the whole deal with plants is that they just sit there. Eggplant you have given me a new way of looking at the world.
It's also wonderful for the complexion.
Yes, in fact, all obesity researchers agree that if you want to lose weight, wallowing of any sort is strictly prohibited.
I bet you could go through the various field guides to local animals asking "could I eat that, if it were cooked and seasoned" and the answer would be over 95% yes."
I know I've told this story before, but another volunteer in the Peace Corps had a deck of cards (Air Force surplus, maybe not US Air Force?) that were intended to provide survival guidance for downed pilots in SE Asia. The front of each card had a picture of an animal or plant, and the back had information on whether it was poisonous or venomous and how to use it to survive. The best card, though, was the one with a picture of a tiger on the front. The back had three words. "LARGE MAMMALS. AVOID."
Baby tigers are probably delicious.
125: Even mud, while apparently low calorie, is contraindicated for wallowing if weight loss is desired, as we can see by examining hippos.
127: That does it! I'm sending a team of volunteers from the World Wildlife Foundation to set up a picket around your desk.
87, 93-96, 105: Thanks!
Don't know about guest posts, but maybe. They're big on data and are upfront that a certain percentage of participants do gain the weight back afterwards, but it's a good opportunity.
seething with duck-fat
Having not that many uses for a quart of goose fat, I've been using a little every day to fry my morning egg in. It's amazing how much better it makes it.
This guy is in favor of whey protein:
http://roguehealthandfitness.com/undenatured-whey-for-health-muscle-and-cancer-prevention/
I have totally started using it. It is pretty nasty.
he also is in favor of intermittent fasting:
http://roguehealthandfitness.com/the-optimal-anti-aging-strategy/
Roast vegetables. Potatoes particularly, but anything is just magically better with duck/goose fat. (I have never cooked with chicken fat. I wonder if it's magically wonderful in the same kind of way? I should give it a try -- it'd certainly be cheaper.)
They have to mean "MSG or similar additives" by "umami" or else they're basically saying their food isn't tasty, or maybe just raw?
My half-assed theory on point 4 is that what keeps someone lean is extremely subject specific, and there's a difference in what will work for maintenance for a person who has never been overweight or obese, and what will work for someone with a history of being heavy, yo-yo diets, etc. I think the strength of paleo for a lot of people is that it's really hard to eat crap on it, until they complete the revolution of sweet potato almond flour muffins everywhere, at which point, it will turn out that not eating sweets is the key to losing weight.
If you must eat a tiger, leave out the liver or you'll die a lingering and agonising death from hypervitaminosis A.
[The oldest diagnosed human pathology I know of is a case of hypervitaminosis A identifiable in a fossil of Homo ergaster. The people who worked on it concluded that she had probably eaten a carnivore liver during hard times.]
To the extent I have an overall scheme or model for my eating, it's to eat as much as possible the way my grandfather would have when he was my age, in the thirties.
The cardinal rule is not to eat between meals. Beyond that, I'm not very concerned about what I'm eating, because the surrounding and effort of putting a meal together tends to lead to good balance and nutrition.
I tend to eat a fairly heavy lunch. This is most often the previous night's dinner leftovers, if there are any. Today that was chicken, which my wife cut up and cooked in barbecue sauce, so somewhat messy. Her leftover had Ricearoni, mine had some Orso we had left over, with the sauce.
I try to eat everything with a knife and fork. This takes some getting used to for such things as small pieces of chicken. The trick for a wing, for instance is to cut it at the joints, which will make 3 bit-sized pieces. I'll pull the bone out of my mouth with my fingers, I just won't put it there with them. I need a real metal table knife for this kind of thing; plastic won't cut it, so to speak.
there's a difference in what will work for maintenance for a person who has never been overweight or obese, and what will work for someone with a history of being heavy, yo-yo diets, etc.
This is what seems to me to be the really interesting question in weight loss/maintenance/obesity -- what is the difference between people who have an easy versus a hard/impossible time maintaining a low weight. To what extent is it just behavioral/psychological versus physical, to what extent is it changed by past history (of higher weight or dieting), and is there any way to turn one sort of person into the other?
I've been known to cook a duck just so I could collect the fat drippings. Though lately I've been cooking with ghee, which has some pretty awesome frying capabilities.
Potatoes particularly, but anything is just magically better with duck/goose fat.
We bought some potatoes for the fat, actually, but I am out of practice with cooking potatoes, for heebie-like reasons. So they've been sitting in the basket. I just don't think to cook them.
83: Best of luck. I have two coworkers who did/are doing similar things. I'm a bit worried that one, after losing (guessing) maybe 150 lbs (and starting to run half-marathons!) is starting to regain some of what he lost, but he was able to discontinue all his blood pressure/cholesterol meds, and the other is reducing her daily pill intake/insulin/I have no idea what else significantly as well. I hope you have the same success.
I'm lucky about food in a lot of ways. I have a sweet tooth, but if I don't have sweets on hand, I won't generally get them, and it just takes a little for me to be satisfied. The boyfriend really doesn't much care for rich, heavy food (because he is crazy), so his choices dictate most of what we eat. Me: How about stewed lamb shank? Him: Eh, too heavy. Maybe salad? Me: OK.
137: I think it's fascinating, and I honestly think we really have no idea yet. "Eat a little less and easy on the alcohol and sweets" works really well for me if I need to get in shape, but I never really got badly out of shape.
I wonder if it's magically wonderful in the same kind of way?
I have and not really. I mean it's better than rape seed oil obviously, but it lacks... something, that duck/goose fat has.
Also, you'd need to cook a fuck of a lot of chicken to collect enough fat to do potatoes for four.
Sort of topically I'm at the dentist and he has a book with nothing but pictures of various types of pigs.
but it lacks... something, that duck/goose fat has
So maybe it should be rendered with... hmm... onions!
eat as much as possible the way my grandfather would have when he was my age, in the thirties.
So I should eat by changing my identity, having a secret marriage, and pretending to be estranged from my family while actually maintaining close, affectionate relationships with them.
145: Right, but blog it. Hell, you could probably get a book out of that too!
I think 114 is probably underestimating how far "properly cooked" can be taken when it comes to plants. An awful lot of dangerous alkaloids can be destroyed/removed by a prolonged soaking and/or hard boiling (see, e.g., lupin seeds which are actually pretty popular in some places in Europe, but need to be soaked for up to a week to leech out enough toxins that they won't kill you). And a lot of seeming indigestible plants have parts that are edible to human beings (not always big parts, but if you've used maple syrup you're basically eating part of a maple tree and that's a pretty indigestible looking plant).
Probably not all plants, of course, and certainly there are a lot that aren't worth your time unless it really was the only available thing to eat and you had a lot of patience as well, but that's true of at least a decent proportion of animals as well. It just seems less true with plants because we've bred the hell out of a lot of plants so we almost never eat any plants that we didn't carefully design to be comparatively easy to eat.
Also the "other toxic legumes" section of that link has the following, amazing sentence:
It resembles a tiny flattened chick pea a little larger than a lentil, and is a great source of protein and neurotoxin.
It turns out that typing "how many animals can you eat" into Google brings up nothing but a lot of infuriating vegetarian propaganda., not a straight answer.
146/147: It didn't seem worth a post of its own, but we have one new development. We asked the new cousin how they found out when my grandfather died, and he said, "Your mother told my mother." So my grandmother knew about the identity change, at least, and to some extent that he was in touch with his family of origin.
Discover Magazine steps up to the plate, though. I feel like this is a broad enough cross-section that we can safely conclude that you can eat most animals. Some of these aren't very exotic and I've eaten a bunch of them. It turns out that the guy who died from eating cockroaches died from asphyxiation, not from eating cockroach meat.
153: I think that first page has an error and it's not that squirrel brain is considered a delicacy but that someone a few hours from me did in fact eat it and get CJ disease, but I am not inclined to google and fact check whether I remember something correctly from the late '90s or Discover's listicle is flawless. Probably they'd win.
I guess I've already had 10 of the "20 Animals You Could Eat But Probably Won't." Who fucking doesn't know that you can eat snails and jellyfish and snakes and squirrel?
There are a decent number of animals that are really not a good idea to eat, though (like most toads), and it's not always obvious which ones are. (Garter snakes, for example, are dangerously poisonous in like one specific area of the pacific northwest and otherwise fine.* It has to do with diet in a lot of animals - they might be immune to someone human beings aren't).
*One of my favorite bits of trivia because "where on earth can you find the most poisonous snakes?" is a beautiful bit of pedantic little bitchery. The others (not garter snakes) are limited to parts of Southeast Asia.
One of my favorite bits of trivia because "where on earth can you find the most poisonous snakes?" is a beautiful bit of pedantic little bitchery.
Is the answer not Snake Island?
No, there are no poisonous snakes on Snake Island.
There are a hell of a lot of venomous ones, though...
And so Spike falls for the pedant's trap.
157 -- whoa. Best place ever. I will make use of this information.
"Megan McArdle, you have won a new job as ... lighthouse operator on Snake Island. Welcome to the new regime!"
If the answer isn't Snake Island you're asking the wrong questions.
I'm at the dentist and he has a book with nothing but pictures of various types of pigs.
Clarence Threepwood, DDS
I was at the dentist last week and just like every single time I wonder why 1) there are New Testaments looking at me accusatorily from the side tables in the waiting room, 2) I get such shitty cell service, thus making me bored and inclined to glare at Bibles.
153. Snowpiercer has like most of the train subsisting on pbpxebnpu, so that's more information. Also in Papillon, lots of educational material there.
You are welcome.
Less fictionally, many plants express compounds poisonous to animals that might try to eat them. Are skunks edible?
Oh hey, this is the supplement powder being hawked, from the exact chain of snake-oil shops that New Owner also owns.
It claims:
FORZA PRO™ is designed for serious athletes and health conscious individuals looking for one of the highest quality protein sources available.
What's wrong with high quality?
The ingredient list doesn't just say whey protein, it says CROSS-FLOW MIRCOFILTERED whey protein. That certainly sounds high tech.
Heebie, if you want protein powder, go buy some, but just get regular whey protein powder at the grocery store. Don't fall for this scam.
So my grandmother knew about the identity change, at least, and to some extent that he was in touch with his family of origin
Maybe because I've been married a long time, but it seemed implausible to me that she wouldn't know, maybe not everything, but something.
The concept of the "Plan" in Papillon made quite an impression on me when I was in high school. Sure I tried it, didn't you?
151 -- Now it's going to turn out that your grandmother was behind the whole thing. What started as a simple name change, common as dirt, only became an elaborate conspiracy after she entered the scene.
Don't listen to urple, heebie! He's part of the plot to keep you from reaching your full potential for AWESOMENESS!
Would it still taste like sugar-free chocolate mint?
Now it's going to turn out that your grandmother was behind the whole thing. What started as a simple name change, common as dirt, only became an elaborate conspiracy after she entered the scene.
This is pretty much what my brother and his wife think.
Maybe because I've been married a long time, but it seemed implausible to me that she wouldn't know, maybe not everything, but something.
Before, I was arguing that she didn't know anything. It seemed super weird to me to draw the line excluding your children, once they were teenagers or young adults and still curious as hell to know about your past. Whereas if Grandma was also excluded, then it was more of a Grandpa-tells-no-one universal exclusion.
169. There he married two teenage sisters and impregnated both. After spending several months in relative paradise, Papillon decided to seek vengeance against those who had wronged him.
Practically biographical, sure.
174: It makes it a weirder thing to have done, but like idp says, a more plausible thing to have gotten away with. Keeping up a deception like that in front of your kids wouldn't be hard, kids accept their parents as background information. But one urban Jewish adult convincing his wife, from the same background, that he was a churchy rural Protestant, seemed like Napoleon-of-Crime level deception. The story makes him much less superhumanly weird once you know that your grandmother was in on it.
Actually, he was 16 squirrels in a rubber suit.
I was doing so well with weight loss after having a baby. I was a few pounds lighter than when I got pregnant, but Halloween ruined my resolve and I started eating chocolate nonstop. I gained back eight of the pounds I had lost.
My New Year's resolution was to stop eating chocolate. I'm down three more pounds and I hope to continue decreasing the weight. I don't know what will happen once I stop nursing, though. The last time I was able to lose a lot of weight I had to exercise 1.5 hours per day five times a week. That's no longer possible because of the time demands of having a baby. Maybe I'll continue nursing until she's five.
from the exact chain of snake-oil shops
Incidentally, snake oil is the #1 export of Snake Island.
Breastfeeding didn't seem to me to make an iota of difference to my post-partum weightloss, such as it wasn't. I lost all the weight I lost pretty fast, and then held steady while continuing to breastfeed for another ten months, both times.
Apparently, plant toxins can be good for you in the right dose.
http://roguehealthandfitness.com/intermittent-challenges-health/
maybe even radiation as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
I started eating chocolate nonstop...once I stop nursing
Oh man, we discovered that when my wife had chocolate when she was nursing, the kids just couldn't sleep. She had to give up all caffeine.
181. Right, aspirin is willow bark and vinegar, tamoxifen and many other compounds have their origin in the study of plant proteins.
She should have had some wine with her chocolate.
182: It would be wonderful if that explained A's sleep problems. I've tried so many things to make her sleep, I've almost given up. The best I can get is her waking up three times a night until I take her into the bed at 4:30 where she proceeds to nurse and nurse and nurse until 7 (or 8 if I'm lucky).
Maybe I'll skip coffee for a day and see if that helps. When your wife gave up coffee, did it take awhile to be purged from her system?
I don't know what will happen once I stop nursing, though.
I stopped nursing and immediately lost a noticeable amount of weight. (I don't keep exact tabs on my weight, but in the 5-10 pound range.) Immediately as in, within two weeks. I guess I was one of those people who holds on to a store as long as my body thinks it might have to nurture another creature. I was surprised though because I thought I had tapered the nursing down to an amount that was practically none. We're talking less than five minutes once a day.
182, 185: Baby sleep is such a variable, stressy thing that I think nursing mothers get very superstitious about eliminating foods from their diets -- you cut something out, and have a coincidental good night's sleep sometime in the next few days, repeat ad lib until you're living on tef and jicama as the only foods 'the baby can tolerate'. I would be very skeptical about making yourself miserable by eliminating something that's a rewarding part of your diet, unless you have a really clear, obvious relationship (take it out, baby sleeps much better, add it back in, baby sleeps badly again, take it out, baby sleeps better again).
Isn't the dilution effect on breast milk so extreme that it's pretty extremely unlikely that the caffeine in coffee would keep your kid up? I can't wait to type this into Google and discover "You may choose to do so, but drinking coffee is not advised," says intrusive, vague internet Mom with no supporting science.
I've read that caffeine is very diluted in breast milk, but eliminating it from my diet is maybe the one thing I haven't tried. She's eight months old! Why won't she sleep?!
Yeah, that's my thinking. And eliminating coffee, for a coffee drinker, has huge potential for making your life miserable.
If the mother eats grains while nursing, the baby totally turns into a worthless flabmonster.
And eliminating coffee, for a coffee drinker, has huge potential for making your life miserable.
Especially if you need coffee to stay awake after the baby kept you up all night.
Every time, after the first two weeks post-partum, I've plateaued at the same exact weight until I was 3-4 months post-partum. I also start losing all my hair at that point. Much faster than I lose the other.
but eliminating it from my diet is maybe the one thing I haven't tried. She's eight months old! Why won't she sleep?!
She's probably just a bad baby. Mine certainly were. Neither one of them would sleep regularly until they were about two.
I find that if I eat only home-prepared food, I lose weight.
Sooooo, I try and abide by this rule, but I'm pretty sure my constant cooking is still making me fat. (Is that a humblebrag? Quite possibly.)
Kid #1 wouldn't sleep regularly until about 2. Kid #2 now sleeps pretty regularly at six months (though still wakes up at 5, too early in my view). In my view, this is because Mom #1 fed on demand and did co-sleeping and various other attachment parenting things, followed by something like cry it out at around 2 which finally sort of got Kid #1 to go to sleep (though still, at seven, she has sleep problems). Mom # 2 did cry it out earlier and Kid #2 got used to it in a few days. Let's have the most pointless, contentious internet parenting debate ever!
Also none of our babies ever slept through the night until they we forced them to.
pointless, contentious internet parenting debate ever!
sport bra top or yoga pants: which is the greater boon to humanity running his errands?
I've tried cry it out and it helps get her back to *only* waking up three times a night. But if you don't go to her at 11pm, 2am, and 4:30 am, she'll wake up every 30 minutes and cry until you feed her.
There have been two instances where she slept 4-6 hours straight for five days in a row. Man, those were some good times.
Eight months is a LONG time to be waking up that much. You must be seriously tired.
Oh good, this conversation gave me a let-down reflex. Wheee.
So, so tired. My only saving grace is that my husband will take her in the mornings so I can get a little extra sleep. Otherwise I'm barely functional.
For serious, there are "sleep consultant" people who will talk to you over the phone and come up with a plan. It sounds like you're at that point. That's murder-level lack of sleep.
Rascal is nursing 3-4 times a night, too, but he's 2 months old. Also he's in our bed, and I don't necessarily have to fully wake up to nurse. But he still screams when he's done for a while, once or twice a night.
He started daycare yesterday and I think he had a kind of rough day.
197: Oh, people have had this argument before at a much more contentious level than we could manage.
I really think it's mostly luck of the baby. We did nothing organized about sleep, and ours were both very easy on us.
I think it's pretty much all luck, too. I actually think that about almost every part of parenting - you hatch the kid, and they are going to be whoever they are going to be.
The Calabat has been an excellent sleeper, with intermittent periods of hell, because when he wakes up, he will be up for an hour or two at a time. We did CIO around ten months old because it was taking two hours to get him down to sleep. He does pretty well 80% of the time and 20% of the time can't sleep anywhere but on me, and can't sleep there either, so it makes for a long night.
FWIW, I never noticed any effects due to coffee/chocolate/spicy foods/whatever, and my suspicion is that most of baby sleeping is neurological, and all of the strategies are giving parents something to do to keep them busy until the kid sleeps.
209: That's a great idea, thanks. I really love that website and I used it a lot around 4 months. I should review it again.
200: If you were in my timezone you could call me, because those are Selah's preferred night wakeups too. Not the most fun, but then I remember the nights Alex woke me 20-plus times and this is heaven by comparison.
She's eight months old! Why won't she sleep?!
Henley rule to the rescue: "She's eight months old, but she won't sleep" s/b "She won't sleep, but she's eight months old."
The bright side, LS, is that the constant sleeplessness will leave your brain so impaired that you will have only hazy memories of this period.
it's getting repetitive at this point, by once again I'll say that expecting even pretty heavy exercise to lead to weight loss, without a diet change, is very unrealistic for most of us.
I know that this is CW/backed by studies, but I'm trying to understand the mechanism here. The predigested pap at Vox says it's true, but their basic reason is that people will use exercise as an excuse to splurge. You'll have to take me at my word that this is not happening: I'm very aware of what I eat, how much, when, etc. I'm not snacking/splurging any more than I did a month ago, before the walking and cycling.
Here's the equation I can't make work: my weight is/has been quite steady (185 ±3 lbs), with let's assume 2000 calories/day consumed and burned, so 14,000 per week. Per 84, I've added something like 4000 calories/week burned, which comes out to over 550 calories/day. I know that, in fast food/restaurant world, 550 calories is like 2 french fries, but I cook almost everything I eat, so I feel certain I'd have noticed a 28% increase in calories consumed.
So what's the supposed mechanism? Have I really padded every single meal by over a quarter without noticing? Am I eating a second breakfast without noticing? Or is there some magic by which my metabolism has transformed to expend 18,000 calories per week without consuming more than 14,000 or burning any fat?
but I love working towards that so much more than working towards just another boring deadlift.
I'm the anti-HG. I considered going back to yoga where I always seemed to be working toward cool things and never arriving, but opted for strength training at the gym. I love it because it 's so simple, and doesn't require much in the way of coordination. Can you lift that? Okay then, add five pounds and see what happens.
I'm not snacking/splurging any more than I did a month ago
Which, to be clear, is "not very much." I basically eat a small breakfast, a substantial lunch, a "normal" dinner, and one sweet thing every day. Sometimes I'll have an afternoon snack, but not every day. Point being, there's no plausible culprit like "an extra muffin."
And maybe this is all moot, and I'll get to a (slightly) lower steady weight in another 6 weeks. But 99 says this won't happen, and I want to know why.
I have read somewhere that part of what makes weight loss through exercise difficult, is that you literally get tired and expend less energy in the rest of the day. It sounds difficult to imagine, but could you be, e.g., sitting stiller/walking around less other than the big walks/fidgeting less and so on?
Sleeping longer and/or more deeply also.
And I don't think that means it's a net wash in terms of fitness, of course -- actual exercise builds muscle/cardio fitness in a way that fidgeting doesn't.
Also, you are probably turning fat into muscle even if you can't see any change.
Anyone got a spare quarter of a million they can lend me so I can buy this cool ekranoplan?
http://bringatrailer.com/2015/01/12/soviet-aerosledge-1978-tupolev-a-3-ground-effect-vehicle/
Per 84, I've added something like 4000 calories/week burned, which comes out to over 550 calories/day.
How are you arriving at this 4000 calorie figure? That'd be the first thing I'd consider, that your exercise isn't actually burning as many calories as you think. Certainly the calorie calculations on exercise machines are notoriously unreliable.
I would be very skeptical about making yourself miserable by eliminating something that's a rewarding part of your diet, unless you have a really clear, obvious relationship (take it out, baby sleeps much better, add it back in, baby sleeps badly again, take it out, baby sleeps better again).
Such a thing would never have occurred to us! It's like you've invented some kind of radical new method of ascertaining the truth of a hypothesis.
Liz, I'd give it a few days, because who the hell knows.
Such a thing would never have occurred to us! It's like you've invented some kind of radical new method of ascertaining the truth of a hypothesis.
Well, you guys *were* sleep-deprived...
Maybe your kids are throwing gummy bears into your mouth while you sleep.
One day around Christmas my mom told me that she didn't like eating either goose or duck because they're too fatty. I thought she meant she didn't like them because she thought they were unhealthy, but no--she said she didn't like the taste of fat. At that point I decided my mother had been replaced by an alien. I'm glad the goose/duck fat part of the thread is here to confirm that for me.
she said she didn't like the taste of fat
Though I love goose fat, I don't actually love goose. Too rich! At least on its own. There's a reason that goose stuffing has so much fruit- the sweet/tart goes a long way in balancing out the richness.
225: Oh, make fun, but anecdotally a lot of nursing women take foods out of their diets without doing much in the way of testing -- take something out for a week, there's a good night of sleep, or less crying, or something that's within ordinary variation, that week, and that's enough to put whatever the food is on the never eat it again list. Saying 'superstitious' sounds really negative of me, but people, generally, are superstitious like that, particularly about trying to influence things with a lot of random variation in them, and particularly when it's something stressful -- actually testing things out systematically is a very unnatural thing to do. (I'm sure you and your wife did, and given that these are your children, I'm completely unsurprised that they were unusually sensitive to almost anything.)
It's worth consciously avoiding going off half-cocked, though, because cutting down your diet like that can make life even more miserable when it's already hard.
To get back to the OP, 4 is a real problem. My wife has a (nurse practitioner) friend who has gone hardcore into "functional medicine," and sends her books and articles and lectures. There's clearly a lot of wisdom there (and a lot of overlap with things like paleo and other alternative diets), but it's very difficult to disentangle the well-supported, generalizable information from the weakly-supported woo and hucksterism. Partly this is due to a true dearth of settled knowledge, and partly due to the fact that there's so much money to be made on the woo side.
Oh man, we have a friend who got sucked deep into "functional medicine" at the cost of probably tens of thousands of dollars in treatment at this point, most of which is doing nothing, and has kind of made her unbearable to be around because of the ever-expanding list of environmental whatevers that are supposedly doing something for her mysterious health issues (which IMO are at least possibly caused by the treatment). Maybe it has a more benign side.
As for diet, a huge part of the problem is that supposedly respectable "nutrition science" as practiced by universities was and is super corrupt and also largely bullshit, probably the worst respectablish scientific discipline (maybe "social psychology" is in the mix too). If nutrition science people feel aggrieved they largely have the bullshittitude of their own discipline to blame.
Oh, make fun, but anecdotally a lot of nursing women take foods out of their diets without doing much in the way of testing
This woman in my online moms group was obsessive about the intolerances she thought her baby had, and it was always "mucous poops". Oh no, I ate corn, and then my baby had a mucous poop! No more corn! At one point she literally was down to eating something like two things. (Not teff and jicama though.) No one else in the group quite got up to saying, Honey that's just what baby poop looks like. But they asked lots of nicey-nice questions trying to get around to that same point.
What's the problem with grains, again? I grasp the arguments for and against beans, but grains ... I was under the impression that there are better and worse grains. Whole grains better, say. Chiefly, there's a fair amount of nutritional value in such things; they provide vitamins and minerals, as well as fiber, that you're not otherwise going to get. No? I'm thinking quinoa and farro. I'm beginning to like wheat berries. Don't like barley very much.
If only I had had some duck fat when I redeemed the remaining too-salty ham from Christmas with white beans and other soup makings, but my daughters' fathomless appetite for latkes means we go through it surprisingly quickly. New Year's resolution: get another tub of duck fat.
To the cassoulet subthread: I recently had a terrific non-traditional cassoulet with duck sausage and rabbit leg confit, A+++ WOULD EAT AGAIN. I also had rabbit poutine, about which I was considerably less enthusiastic.
Green poop was sort of neat. The blue poop after some birthday cake with apparently too much food coloring was a bit alarming.
IANAfitnessprofessional, but an extra 550 calories a day is quite a lot. How are you arriving at that number, and what are you doing for exercise?
That'd be the first thing I'd consider, that your exercise isn't actually burning as many calories as you think. Certainly the calorie calculations on exercise machines are notoriously unreliable.
Not based on machine readings, but on "distance"/time and online calculators. Which aren't gospel, obviously, but it's in line with what Endomondo says when I do a bike ride of comparable intensity (e.g. 16 miles in 44 minutes is something like 1200 calories, and the session is much harder than a normal bike ride). May be overestimating a bit, but not enough to change the underlying point (that is, 3500 extra calories burned is also hard to explain away).
It sounds difficult to imagine, but could you be, e.g., sitting stiller/walking around less other than the big walks/fidgeting less and so on?
Definitely not less walking around, because the whole reason I'm doing more fitness walking is realizing that I wasn't walking as much as I thought. So my daily step count is way over what it was before I started actively doing something about it, and a good portion of that now comes from brisk walks that raise my heart rate. I suppose it's possible that I'm sleeping more deeply, and I surely slept somewhat more during the kids' break (although I was also staying up late, so I don't think there was a big sleep gain). I'll admit that hadn't occurred to me.
OTOH, doesn't spending time in cold places burn calories? My office was about 50º all of last week. Not that I'd expect to lose weight from it*, but that would counteract subtle calorie-conservation effects.
*indeed, it's a truism among cyclists that we tend to overconsume calories after cold weather rides because they *feel* extra hard
Not teff and jicama though
At first it's just teff, but then you have to make injera with it, and then you have to use the injera to sop up yebeg wat, and before you know it your baby is acting all colicky again. Maybe it's best just to have an Ethiopian baby to begin with.
237: Latkes fried in duck fat had literally never occurred to me. This will happen. Soon.
Not based on machine readings, but on "distance"/time and online calculators. Which aren't gospel, obviously, but it's in line with what Endomondo says when I do a bike ride of comparable intensity (e.g. 16 miles in 44 minutes is something like 1200 calories, and the session is much harder than a normal bike ride).
FWIW, this running calorie calculator says that running 4 miles in 45 minutes at 185 lbs. only burns 560 calories. There's no way in hell I believe that cycling the same amount of time burns more than twice the calories.
(I suspect that Endomondo is, among other things, including your basal metabolic rate in that calorie count. That does shit for you; you'd be earning that sitting on your couch.)
242: They're so tasty I can't even. Potatoes and duck fat are besties.
Rule of thumb (as a mediocre distance runner) is that one mile burns 100 calories for a 150lb person, give or take, and running is one of the best calorie burners per minute. When runner have to cycle to crosstrain the usual advice is to go half again as long to get a similar workout (so a 30 minute run becomes a 45 bike ride at the same intensity.)
Still, bodies are weird, and you might be hanging out on a plateau and drop five pounds next week.
235: I swear, at least half of newborn advice is meant to make it sound so difficult that of course Mom has to quit work, what with all teff and jicama preparation.
(I suspect that Endomondo is, among other things, including your basal metabolic rate in that calorie count. That does shit for you; you'd be earning that sitting on your couch.)
Ah, now this is probably correct, and maybe explains most of it.
There's no way in hell I believe that cycling the same amount of time burns more than twice the calories.
As LB has noted before, humans are designed to jog, and as Di Kotimy has noted, jogging distance X burns roughly the same calories as walking distance X. So I'm not sure your intuition about cycling vs. running is quite correct, because running is uniquely ineffective as a calorie-burning exercise. That said, this calculator gives ranges between 600-900 for 45 minutes at the level of cycling exertion I've been doing, netting out the basal calories (hence the significantly lower total, which, as I said, explains a lot), but is still comfortably above (~1.5X) the calories burned for any running rate that I, personally, could maintain for 45 minutes.
So, bottom line, we're talking 2,400 extra calories/week (750 net calories x 2 for spinning, 300 net calories X 3 for walking). Throw in some extra, quieter sleep, a few hidden calories here and there, and there's probably no there there: I may be at a slight calorie deficit, but not enough to show up in the short term.
And now I'm off to walk the dog.
running is one of the best calorie burners per minute
meet
running is uniquely ineffective as a calorie-burning exercise
FIGHT!
245: I think that rule of thumb is for people who are good at running but not at cycling. I'm the reverse, and the calculator linked in 246 shows that a pace I could maintain for 45 minutes running burns 525-570 calories, while the pace I readily maintain on my bike for that long burns... 583 calories. Although, truthfully, if I were only going out for 45 minutes, I could probably reach the 700 calorie level; I could ride at the 583 calorie rate for literally hours.
FIGHT!
I know, I laughed when I saw that.
And playing with that calculator, it says that running for 31 minutes at my old (slow) pace, I'd burn 400 calories; in order to burn that much on a stationary bike I'd have to go for 31 minutes at >160 watts, "vigorous effort". And in a spin class I'd only burn 347 calories.
I swear I slept much better when I was on a not all that strict no sweets and not much refined flour stuff diet. Right now I snap awake at 6 a lot, sometimes because the cat is a cat and sometimes I guess from conditioned response. Today I felt drugged, which was partly the sleep thing I guess and maybe partly that thing that happens when day lengths are finally normalish where my brain cracks open for a while. So yeah. Sleep. Carbs.
Having looked at their "Advanced Sample Workout Plan", I want to burn that site to the ground. Weight training 4x weekly with an upper-lower split? Fuck that noise; get a kettlebell or find a barbell and do basic whole-body exercises.
Jesus, now I sound like Ripper.
This morning (as I blearily posted at the other thing) the 6 am wake-up happened as the end of a dream. I had flown from NYC to Philadelphia which took 3 hours for some reason. Bave greeted me at the airport. I was so relieved and (ugh, it is rotten to have an everyday thing feel like an impossibility) proud that I asked "did I really just fly here?" and he said yes and, beginning to remember how this usually goes, I asked "and am I awake?" and then awoke.
Oh well.
FIGHT! WE WILL BURN MORE CALORIES. Hee.
It's an estimate, but the idea is just that about a mile on your feet is about 100 calories. Once you add in a time constraint, running is better for burning calories than walking.
I think part of the difference is that you have to really push it as a cyclist (very vigorous, or longer) to burn the calories that a runner would burn on an easy run. Runners who are crosstraining have a harder time doing that. By that calculator I'd have to be racing on a bicycle to match what I do for a daily easy run -- and I'm slow!
and as Di Kotimy has noted, jogging distance X burns roughly the same calories as walking distance X
So this conversation is simultaneously going on at "the other place?"
||
Dropping in amid work crunch that has kept me away, to ask if anyone knows how I might get in touch with alameida to ask a lighthearted, non-urgent question about reading material for kids.
|>
In hindsight, I was not at all delusional to think my child had a food intolerance, that it was the first thing you're told to eliminate (dairy), and that it probably contributed a lot to the extraordinary screaming in the early months. But that shit (literally) is so hard to diagnose, and I always felt vaguely gullible investing effort in it. It's mostly because the effects were so strong and persistent -- she still can't eat dairy years later without digestive problems resulting -- that I got to feel vindicated about it. And the vindication was like: I only made you eat cheese to see if you'd still crap blood and cry or if I was making it up, oh, ten or twelve times. Sorry about that. Science!
I have mixed feelings about cry-it-out. I could have done it but didn't, had a feeling the problems would resolve themselves without it, and guessed right. So I had that nice feeling of having guessed something right.
Wow. I am very curious about how these people interpret the gospels.
255: No, here in the past.
254: See, I think it comes down to what you're trained for. A couple years ago I got a rare chance to do a flat, zero traffic ride on Presque Isle, Erie. Including to and fro through traffic from the motel, I went 19 miles in 51 minutes, so the core of the ride was ~45 minutes at 20+ MPH. A hard ride, but I am a casual cyclist - even in summer months, I'll go weeks without a ride that's more than ~5 miles back and forth to the Pirates game. Point being, this isn't an elite performance.
That calculator* says that ride was worth over 900 calories. To match that with a run, I'd have to do 5 minute miles for 45 minutes. Which is double what I was capable of when I was in the best running shape of my adult life (at 29), and almost certainly more than I could have done when I was actually running track in HS (I never ran my hardest for 45 minutes, but I'd be shocked if I could have run even 2 5-minute miles, let alone 9). Even dialing all the way back to what I could do without riding hard - the sort of ride that I wouldn't even feel 5 minutes later - the running equivalent would be 9- or 10-minute miles, which matches that age-29 peak (and I would not have been recovered from that run after 5 minutes).
250: The bike in the spin class - which is this model that can rock and "turn" - doesn't have a watt meter, but I can say that the workout effort is very comparable to that 900 calorie Presque Isle ride. So far it's been mostly just me and the trainer, so the workout and effort are tuned to me, which is pretty awesome since I'm only paying to be part of a class.
*To 252, I make no representations about that site's recommendations, but their calorie calculator seems sound, as far as these things can go
Under some circumstances, being better trained for an activity means it will burn fewer calories -- you're doing it better, i.e. more efficiently and with less work.
33: Also, Pythagoras? None more paleo.
Beans were anciently used in casting votes by balloting, the white beans for affirmative and the black ones negative. When Pythagoras said to his disciples, "Abstain from beans," he had no reference to them as an article of diet, for he ate them himself. What he did mean, and what his immediate followers already understood, was that they should abstain from the intrigues of politics as being antagonistic to a philosopher's pursuits.
The link in 262 is interesting but untrustworthy.
66
Honestly I need that stuff so much more than the regular lifting but I'm just so bad at it.
This kind of thing for so many physical skills. Where are the classes explicitly aimed at people who are well inferior to what an ordinary person with any interest in whatever it is would be able to do on a first attempt, meaning to get them up to ordinary beginner levels?
I need this with yoga. I've been doing it seriously (3-6 times a week) for almost two years, and on a good day I can touch my toes. I'm pretty sure I have arthritis in both hips. On the plus side, I rarely wake up with searing pain or unable to move any body part, which was a not infrequent occurrence before yoga. Clearly I need to do yoga as physical therapy, but it's frustrating to work hard at something and have no noticeable progress and be worse than people who've been doing it for 5 minutes.
215
I find with weight/gain loss that it's quite delayed, but that I'll see progress eventually. I don't know if there's any actual scientific basis to this, but it's mostly been my experience. Last winter I gained about 10 lbs in 3 months, which is the most weight I've gained in a short period of time and a lot for me and my build. Stopping binge drinking and eating brie 5 times a day knocked about 5 lbs off, but the remaining 5 stuck around and didn't seem affected by diet or exercise, so after 6 months I figured they were a permanent new addition. Over the next 6 months though, I kept up not binge eating and exercise, and they just kind of disappeared without me trying to do anything.
I hear you about yoga. I'm remarkably inflexible, and I'd kind of like to fix that, but my occasional attempts at a yoga class (very occasional, as in there are years between attempts) are so dispiriting -- there's always an instructor describing the position you're supposed to get to, and then what you should be doing as an attempt if you can't manage it completely yet, and I can't get near the beginner's version.
But anyways, it's been a pattern where I'll gain some weight, feel like I'm doing what it takes to get it off, but it takes much longer than I expect. It's always eventually worked, so I'd be patient if I were you, and just keep up the good work.
257: you know, it is perfectly ok ethically speaking to punch ministers of religion in that sort of situation. They pull this sort of thing because they think they've got some kind of shield.
263: it does go on to note that beans also tend to hinder the development of psychic powers. Which might be a good thing if you are, say, the devoutly religious mother of a teenage girl who is getting bullied at school. Shut up and eat your lentils, Carrie.
I think my overall flexibility is OK (AFAICT), but I never have to worry about my inability to touch my toes. If 3 years of being a hurdler in HS didn't get me toe-touching, nothing on earth will make it happen at my age. Just some oddity of my physique - it feels like the tendons behind my knees will snap.