Exercise #11 – Vive La Resistance

Not long ago, I posted a piece about how I’d finally put aside my skepticism of gyms and started lifting weights.  Once something I sneered at as the pastime of over muscled and under brained bros, I realized that this was a key part of getting myself back into shape.  The fancy term for this type of exercise is “resistance training”, which is what pretentious people say instead of “lifting heavy things”.

And I don’t need to bother with a gym membership.  Thirty minutes a day in my house is enough.  And I’m glad I can do it in my house.  Not just because of my natural misanthropy (common amongst CPAs), but also because I probably look ridiculous as I do this.  Staying away from the gym prevents witnesses to my bumbling attempts at jockery and the embarrassing photos on Instagram and Facebook that would inevitably come with it.

I’ve been using an app called FitBod that generates various exercises for me. It’s not the only one out there. I’m sure there are plenty of other options when it comes to weight lifting apps. But they all do roughly the same thing: produce an exercise regimen which will produce massive “gains” (such a jock word) by putting you through a punishing series of Herculean tasks. Typically also resulting in pain levels the next day that would make the Marquis de Sade blush.

But don’t let that discourage you.  The muscle soreness is offset by the increased self-esteem and feeling of self worth.  Also, there’s the whole “less likely to die of a heart attack before you qualify for Social Security” benefit.  So now that I’ve started broing out with the weighty thingies, I figured I’d go over some of my favorite exercises in the new regimen.

So let’s start with the normiest of all exercises, pushups.  If you are a man and your primary motivation in exercise is vanity, the push up is a good place to start.  Because your primary goal is to get to the point where you can move your pectoral muscles independently.  Face it, even if you’re in your nineties, looking good for the ladies is always a greater motivation than the “good health” nonsense.  

Anyway, the push up will strengthen those pectoral muscles, as well as the assorted arm muscles.  Regularly doing sets of pushups is a great way to feed your personal narcissism and make you a healthy person.  And I’ve learned there are multiple variants of the pushup.  Such as the tricep pushup.  Which is really just a pushup you do with your hands near your midsection, instead of pushing straight up from your shoulders.  These, as the name implies, give you a bit more work on the triceps.  Which are actually bigger than the biceps, so if you’re trying to build up the old gun show, you should try these.

Then there is the “Push Up on Knees”.  Which we used to call “girly” push ups back in the day.  But despite the fact that we used to laugh at anyone doing these in our younger, more immature years, these are actually good for you.  Because of the angle of the push, they also provide a good workout for the triceps.  And they also provide yet another reason to exercise at home, since there won’t be any witnesses and I won’t have to surrender my man card for performing these things.

And if you want to add a six-pack to those pectoral muscles, the sit up is the next thing to include.  This will tighten up those core muscles.  As I lose more weight, the gut that used to look like man-pregnancy is gradually being replaced by abs that you can bounce a quarter off of.  And if my lower back is a bit tired (a common condition as we get older), there’s always the crunch.  Originally, I thought this was just what happens when people try to do situps and fail, but apparently as long as you sit up just enough to flex the core muscles, you’re still getting a benefit.

But lifting your own weight is not the only option.  Those twenty pound dumbbells that had been sitting in the shed for years suddenly became useful to me, as the app spat out numerous exercises I could perform with these.  One of these is “rowing”, because I guess it sort of vaguely resembles the rowing motion.  You either stand holding the two weights in front of you and lift and lower, or bend over and do the same thing.  This simple exercise will strengthen your back and biceps.  And unlike many of these exercises, you can do it without looking silly.  Unless you drop a weight on your foot.

Another of my favorites, because it can give me proper, bulging, Popeye arms, is the curl.  This exercise builds the biceps and forearms.  My favorite version is the “concentration” curl.  This involves resting one hand on my knee while seated, then raising and lowering a weight in the other by bending the elbow.  I basically get ripped while posing like Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker.  Vanity and narcissism and preening reach peak levels. Or they would if I was doing them in public. Which I’m not.

Then there’s that exercise that overly muscled, shirtless bros post videos of themselves performing all over the Internet.  The deadlift.  I mean, they really like posting their W’s with the deadlift thing.  It’s one of the many “powerlift” exercises that dudes do to impress people in the gym or on Twitter or whatever.  

One that I often do is called the Romanian deadlift.  Because it was, unsurprisingly, developed by…some Romanian guy.  Who was in the Olympics.  It involves standing with the weights at my sides, then bending over at the waist, then straightening.  Easy peasy.  And this will work my hamstrings, back, glutes, and lower back.

Another exercise that apparently has Cold War oppression origins is the “Russian Twist”.  One sits on the floor, slightly lifts the feet, then takes a weight and lifts it from right to left over the torso.  This is good for the abs, shoulders, and lower back.  Although I’m a bit bothered that so many exercises are named after former Iron Curtain type places.  A disproportionate number of elite strong men appear to have been former gulag inmates or some such.  I mean, I know Eastern Bloc Soviet Era Olympians were just a bunch of juiced up roid ragers, but still, the free world needs to up its game.  I should invent some crazy hard and dangerous lifting exercise and call it the “Florida Man”.

Not to get off on a tangent.  I do that sometimes.  Frequently, really.  But back to the resistance stuff.  Such as the broiest of the broiest power lift exercises.  The O.G. strength training exercise.   The bench press.  Normally, one does this with barbells or machines at the gym.  But I’m too cheap for that.  Besides, I can do it with dumbbells too.  I just lie on the floor, and push up one dumbbell in each hand, then lower and repeat.  This exercises the chest, shoulders, and arms.  So it’s everything a man needs if he wants to strut about in muscle shirts and peacock for the fairer sex.

But the best overall exercise I’ve found is the “Clean”.  Which involves squatting and raising the dumbbells quickly to shoulder height.  So obviously the name of this exercise is the “Clean”.  I guess it’s obvious.  To someone.

Despite the inexplicable name, this exercises just about everything.  The hamstrings, calves, forearms, lower back, quadriceps, and trapezius muscles all get a little work.  Also, the bootay will tighten a bit because of this.  And for a little more arm work, one does the “Clean and Jerk”, where the “Jerk” is just lifting the weights over your head.  This is a slightly more rational name than the “Clean”, although technically “jerking” with weights is a really good way to hurt yourself.

The last two are two with strange names, but that I’ve found beneficial despite this. First, there’s the exercise with what may be the most unfortunate name ever, the Iron Cross.  Given that this name invokes images of Tiger tanks conquering Europe, the name might be considered problematic by some.  Fortunately, I’m well aware that this is originally a Teutonic symbol, and doesn’t necessarily have to be a reference to angry, goose-stepping Germans of ill repute.

And the exercise itself is fairly good.  Usually performed with a weight in each hand, one starts by performing a squat, then standing and extending his or her arms out to the sides, ending in a position roughly resembling the Cristo Redentor.  Albeit often a panting, sweaty, and disheveled version of the Cristo Redentor.  This is a good workout for the shoulders, chest, lower back, and the thigh muscles.  Also, the bootay.

Lastly, I thought I’d mention one of the body weight exercises that is good for me, but I sort of love to hate.  The Superman.  You lay prone on the floor, arms outstretched (like Superman, duh), then raise your arms and legs slightly, lower, and repeat.  This is good for the lower back and the hamstrings.  And also the bootay.  And this exercise is yet another reason to do these exercises in the comfort of your own home.  If someone were to walk in on you making this motion it could be…misinterpreted.

So those are just a few of the exercises the FitBod app has thrown my way.  And I’m in way better shape for doing them.  But I think I should close this out by dropping a few helpful tips with resistance training.  Some dos and don’ts.  Actually, it’s just two dos.  There are no don’ts today.  Maybe I’ll put those in another piece.

You may have noticed that a fair amount of these involve exercising the lower back.  And for people who are entering their 30s, 40s, or later, this can be a problem.  Old people aches can start in the lower back.  This is why it’s good to have a back brace.  I know some of you might be thinking this is “teh lame”.  Yes, I said “teh”.  I’ve discovered that young people somehow think that misspelling the word “the” adds emphasis.  I’ll never fully understand the Internet.  

But that’s beside the point.  It’s not lame at all.  I remember my days working in a warehouse in my twenties.  Failing to wear a back brace while lifting boxes all day had painful consequences even for my young and virile self.  Swallow that pride and wear the thing.  Unless you want to look like Quasimodo in your old age.  

Another trick to apply in this kind of training is rotation. I used to rest between sets, but I’ve discovered that that is actually “teh lame”. By rotating from one exercise to the next after a set (say, from an arm thing to a leg thing to a bootay thing), the workout is more punishing. But in a good way. I’ll be sweating so much that any excess sodium my body has collected is washed away in a deluge of perspiration. And I’ve noticed that my heart is pounding hard after a workout, far more so than just jogging. This is as good as cardio, and is probably the reason I’ve reduced my resting heart rate by about twelve beats per second over the past two years.

I know what you’re thinking.  That nagging question on your mind that won’t leave you alone.  Why does he keep saying “bootay”?  Well, there’s a reason.  I lost about thirty pounds while my wife was away for a few months in her native Zimbabwe.  She came home and, instead of complimenting my weight loss, she asked “Where’s your bum?”.  I suffered from a shrinking posterior as a result of my drastic weight loss.  So now I’ve been working on building that back.

In general, my wife has benefited from my gains.  And I don’t mean that way.  Get your mind out of the gutter.  I mean, that’s part of it, but that’s none of your business.  The other benefit for her is that now that my arms are bigger, my wife gets me to do more stuff for her.  Lifting and moving and so forth.  Fortunately, I don’t mind.  I’ve mentioned before, doing the domesticated, marriage chores can be good exercise too.

So, the moral of this ridiculous post is, resist.  We must resist.  Resist like the wind (not sure what that would look like).  And I don’t mean resist like some tiresome political movement.  That’s for Twitter nerds.  I mean resist obesity and early death.  We should all get into shape, and resistance training (lifting stuff) is a good way to do that.  There are literally hundreds of exercises you can perform in the comfort of your own home.  These are just a few.  Download an app, spend maybe twenty to fifty bucks on some hand weights, and join the resistance.  You’ll be healthier, happier, and live longer.  Also, it’s good for the bootay.

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Bad Habits #10 – Cursed Carnal Confections of Corruption And Calamity

I think one reason I was able to continue losing weight during the time when the country was at the mercy of the Creeping Doom From Wuhan was because the temptations of the office were not available to me.  I realize that seems like an incoherent thing to say.  How could there be more temptations at the office?  And, no, it has nothing to do with temptations that might come from secretaries or girl bosses.  I’m married.  Besides, those sorts of temptations would likely burn calories, not add new ones.

Nor is it the availability of an endless supply of the Blessed Brown Water of Life.  Not only is it in no way fattening, but I can get plenty of coffee in my house.  I have to pay for it, sure, but the stuff I get is of better quality than the percolated tree bark they inflict on us while constantly shuffling papers and other assorted mundanities normally associated with public accounting.

No, the temptation comes in the form of sugary things.  And I don’t mean the donuts and other pastries we are occasionally gifted by other professionals and clients.  I mentioned in another piece how those are not great.  I’m talking about the office snack shelf.

An entire shelf of over-processed sweet things and carby things, enough to make the hardiest Ketobro swoon in dismay, occupies a bookshelf near the coffee machine in the break room.  And since excess coffee consumption can occasionally result in the shakes (which can lead to binging on stuff to make those shakes go away) the snack shelf presents a clear and present danger to the waistline.  

The shelf contains virtually every candy bar in existence.  In snack size, to trick me into thinking I’m not cheating that much.  Tempting me every time I refill the coffee mug.  Which is at least hourly.  Hershey bars, Kit Kats, Milky Ways, Snickers, you name it.  But rather than go into detail about the damage each of these does, I’ll just go through the typical candy bar ingredients.

Many of these have one of my personal weaknesses, caramel.  This is basically just heated sugar with cream, butter, and various other things of limited nutritional value.  Eating this liquid sugar will inject 50 or so sugary calories into your bloodstream for every tablespoon you eat.  And, unsurprisingly, there is no real nutrition in it.

Then there’s that peculiar substance known as nougat.  Many candy bars contain this, which people eat not even knowing what it is.  A bizarre substance we scarf down even as we question it’s origin. Nougat is the mystery meat of candy.  

Well, I dug into the mystery.  It’s got all of the things pretty much any other unhealthy sweetness has.  Egg whites (okay, those aren’t bad), honey, and (wait for it) sugar.  A tablespoon of nougat contains 40 to 50 calories.  And has no appreciable nutritional value.  Seeing a pattern here?

Of course, I am sort of burying the lede here with candy.  What about that most ubiquitous of candy ingredients, the god-king of early diabetes?  Chocolate, of course, is what I’m talking about.  Well, that’s not so great either.  Which shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Although it is better than caramel or nougat.  Admittedly, that bar is low.

So let’s start with the “normie” version of chocolate, mostly preferred by the great unwashed masses:  Milk chocolate.  This has 80 to 100 calories per tablespoon.  And unlike it’s confectionery cousins above, it actually has some nutritional value.  It has a little bit of almost all nutrients (a few rando vitamins aren’t present), mostly present in quantities between 0 and 5 percent of the recommended daily allowance.

Then there’s the somewhat more esoteric version preferred by people of great wisdom, virtue, and discernment:  Dark chocolate.  A tablespoon of this has slightly more calories than a tablespoon of milk chocolate, but has actual nutrition in it.  It has a decent chunk of copper and iron and magnesium, roughly 30%, 25%, and 10% of the RDA.  And from what I’ve discovered, the greater the cacao concentration (the above is for about 70%), the more nutrients.  

Then there’s the crazy uncle of candy ingredients.  The one that is generally not as loved as the others, and occasionally quite toxic.  And by that I mean, peanuts.  Not that peanuts are bad, but they’re just not quite so tempting as the sugary sweetnesses listed above.  Probably because they actually have some nutritional value.  These tend to have 50 calories per tablespoon, and actually contain nutrients, typically in the neighborhood of 5% of most vitamins and minerals.

So that covers the common ingredients of candy bars.  But there are other temptations on that shelf of oversweet iniquities.  There’s hard candy.  Things like Nerds and Now and Laters.  The type of wildly colored things that make hyperactive kids go into overdrive.  These are basically just raw sugar after it’s been attacked with artificial colorings and flavorings which gestated in the darkest heart of the factories of Big Candy corporations.  These have 40 to 50 calories per tablespoon.  And not much else.  Unless you suffer from insulin resistance, in which case they have…consequences.

Then there are things which one would think are healthier, but they’re not really.  Such as pretzels.  One would think they’re okay, since they’re effectively just bread.  In my last piece, I went over in detail how bread is actually reasonably healthy.  And pretzels are a little better than other snack type things in terms of calories, with maybe 30 calories per tablespoon.  But there’s not a lot of nutrition there, with only a few traces of this or that micronutrient.  Also, they’re heavy on the salt, which is a problem if you’re trying to get a handle on your blood pressure.

And if I go for the healthy, hippy stuff, like trail mix and granola, I’ve discovered to my chagrin that they’re not particularly good for me either.  Each has about 40 calories per tablespoon, and, like almost everything else I’ve listed here, maybe a few nutrients in the 0 to 5 percent of RDA range.

Some of you might be thinking “these calorie counts don’t seem that bad.”  But that’s another problem with the Shelf Of Diabetic Doom.  Everything I’ve listed here is what you get when you eat only a tablespoon.  Nobody only eats a tablespoon.  That would require superhuman discipline.  If you see someone with this level of discipline, you may assume that all of the recent UFO stories are true and aliens are amongst us.  Call the police on anyone you see with this level of self control.  There’s clearly something not right about them.

These things may be present in small portions, but they tempt me every time I pass by them. The siren’s call of the captivating confections reaches out. And even if I did only grab a single one (say, a tablespoon’s worth) each time I pass by, I would end up doing that ten times a day at least. That would add up quickly.

Fortunately, the office manager had the wisdom to put nuts on this shelf.  Not just peanuts (which aren’t really nuts), but actual nuts, such as cashews and almonds.  I know some Keto bros hate nuts, because they have (gasp) carbs, but these are a healthier option, as I’ve discussed before.  These, unlike candy, fill you up, reducing the temptation to graze every time I pass the shelf.  And they provide decent nutrition.  So the best thing to do is supplant snacking on candies with something else, like nuts, since I’m not an extraterrestrial and don’t have the discipline to not snack at all.  

So these things, like most things in the “Bad Habits” pieces I’ve written, are to be avoided.  Perhaps not entirely, especially for the few that do have some nutrition.  I’m allowed to live a little.  But having these temptations around, even if you only have one every time you pass by them, can add up to an extra 300 to 500 calories per day, breaking your diet.  So don’t have them in your house, or at least make sure you have a healthy option available.  This is necessary, unless you’re an alien with superhuman discipline.  And if you are, please leave and stop scaring our Navy pilots.

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Good Habits #10 – These Are The Things That Try Ketovore’s Souls

In my efforts to expand my knowledge of all things dietary in my pursuit of godlike abs and immortal levels of immunity, I follow a lot of health nuts on social media.  This includes the “normie” doctor types who do weird stuff like…tweet health information that’s backed up by years of empirical data.  But I also follow a variety of others such as vegans and vegetarians, and their arch-nemeses the carnivores and ketovores.  

I admit that I follow more of the latter two than the former two.  Not that I have any particular bias towards their dietary beliefs.  In fact, I spend a fair amount of time razzing both of them for their oddly religious dedication to their lifestyles.  They all seem to be convinced that theirs is The One True Diet, the way and the truth and the light which leads to the enlightenment of good health.  

But the main reason I follow more Keto/Carno types is that they seem to be funnier.  Even the ones who drop the crusty old “Vegan by proxy” joke (Cows eat plants and I eat cows, lol!) are funnier than the average vegan.

Part of the reason for this is that the plant-based types seem to spend most of their time signaling how virtuous they are with their cruelty-free lifestyles.  The meat-eaters apparently tell jokes because they don’t have much to virtue signal about.  I mean, killing and eating an animal may be a perfectly natural thing, but I don’t think anyone would believe that it demonstrates that you’re a paragon of all things good and decent and right.  But there is one thing the ravenous gobblers of animal flesh do seem to virtue signal about.  And that is the apparent diabolical nature of sugar and carbohydrates.

Recently, when one of them, who will remain nameless, (mostly because I forgot who it was and don’t feel like doom scrolling my Twitter feed to remind myself) stated that snacking was a diet killer.  This is not necessarily a false statement, but I asked him if snacking on an apple or a handful of nuts between meals to curb appetite might actually be a good thing.  

One of the acolytes of Ketoism simply tweeted “An apple is 10% sugar” in response to my apparently impertinent question.  This tweet had a note of finality to it, as if that ended the debate.  Like he was saying “Fruits have sugar.  Checkmate, loser!”

I remain unconvinced by these anti-fruit fanatics.  I’ve written before about how fruits are actually fine.  And nuts too, although that didn’t appear so controversial to the disciples of the meat diet.  So I stand by my position that a healthy snack between meals is fine.  I do it often, and I have sixty fewer pounds than I once did, which backs up my stance.

In defense of the low carb warrior elite, though, it is worth noting that adopting one of their diets does often help people manage various medical conditions.  The Ketogenic diet was apparently created by a doctor treating childhood epilepsy, after all.  And it does help people lose weight, for one very simple reason.

Adopting any low carb diet pretty much requires that you eliminate all junk food from your diet.  Things like potato chips and crackers and candy and other snack stuff are usually high in carbs, so if you eschew carbs, you must eschew these things.  Now, I’ve mentioned before that the real problem in these foods is probably the added fats and oils, not the carbs.  But the Ketoists appear to have blundered into a good habit, even if they may have done it for the wrong reason.

But one of the things that Keto-types pontificate about the most is the sinister horror that is…grain.  Carbohydrates from grains appear to be the Antichrist of their religion, a horrible beast that will one day slouch toward Bethlehem to be born and bring about the end of days through insulin resistance and diabetes.  I’m just a bit skeptical of this position.

I’ve discovered in the process of counting calories (another diet practice which the devourers of animals scoff at) that it is entirely possible to lose weight and be in good health without giving up grains.  This was particularly comforting to me, since it also meant that I didn’t have to sacrifice grains in their distilled and fermented forms either.  Although I have noted before that those libations can be a problem for the diet if we consume too much.

So let’s start with that hellish combination of flour and yeast that the Keto universe clearly thinks is the earthly incarnation of Beelzebub.  Bread.  Yes, bread.  Based on the tweets of the Keto/Carno peeps, bread appears to be the archdemon of gluttony himself.  Apparently, bakeries are infernal engines of iniquity to the Ketobros.  

But at the risk of being decried as an infidel, I have to say, bread really isn’t that bad.  One slice of bread, of almost any kind, is going to have about 100 calories.  From what I’ve seen, the nutrition in bread is not overwhelming.  Each slice will have a smattering of vitamins and minerals, with most vitamins and minerals present in the 5-10% range.  So it’s not a superfood, but it’s fairly well rounded and the calorie cost is low.  Naturally, the less processed kinds, like whole wheat, have more nutrients.

So you can have Texas Toast with your steak and you can have sandwiches at lunch and you will not be condemned to eternal suffering.  There’s a reason Dante Alighieri never found a circle of Hell for people who ate too many carbs.  Which is good news for him, because literally every Italian would end up there unless they ate Keto pasta.  Also, you won’t get fat eating bread.  Bread just isn’t that heavy on the old calories.  Assuming you don’t eat the entire loaf.

So bread is allowed for lunch and supper, but what about breakfast?  It really seems like a disproportionate amount of Keto sins are committed at breakfast.  Take biscuits, for example.  I mean real biscuits, not those things that peculiar British people call biscuits but sensible Americans call cookies.  I dealt with the effects of cookies and other desserts in another piece, so I see no need to go into it here.

The buttermilk biscuits commonly eaten in America at breakfast are really not all that different from a slice of bread in terms of calories and nutrition.  In an ironic twist, the thing that can make them unhealthy is when we do Ketoish things to them, like drowning them in meat gravy.  This is one of the things that contributed to obesity in my home state of Georgia.  But by themselves, biscuits are fine.

And that bit of breakfast bread we acquired from our former colonial masters, the English muffin, is just fine too.   Each will have maybe 150 calories, with a little better nutrition than normal bread.  Instead of maybe 5-10% of the RDA of most nutrients, these have anywhere from 15 to 30% of certain vitamins, like thiamine, and minerals, such as iron, manganese and selenium.  They’re not terrible at all.  If anything, they are actually a benefit of British imperialism.  

But most importantly, they form the base for America’s greatest feat of cultural appropriation.  By taking a bizarre form of bacon from the Canadians (face it, it’s really just ham), Hollandaise sauce from the French, and the English muffin, we created the single greatest brunch menu item ever: Eggs Benedict.  This, amongst various other reasons, is why I’ll never go full Keto and give up bread type things.  Even if this dalliance with carbs would ultimately result in me being cast into the abyss by Keto adherents during the final reckoning, it would probably be worth it.

Other breakfast breads are pretty good for you too.  Such as the thing made by residents of that large city on an island in the frozen wastelands far to the north of Virginia.  You know, the one with all the buildings and the statue in the harbor.  I’m talking about bagels.  These have 250 calories each, and much better nutrition than bread or English muffins.  Not only do they have the nutrients in other breads that I mentioned above (only in greater quantities), but they also have a decent amount of calcium and magnesium.

There’s also an option for people who think they’re better than other people.  Something we borrowed from the French, a people who mastered the art of looking down their noses at other cultures (mostly the British) long ago.  So if you wish to practice this sort of egotism, croissants are a good choice.  They have 200 to 250 calories or so.  Their nutritional value is not as good as a bagel, but better than bread.  But what you sacrifice in nutrients, you make up for in narcissism.  

But if you hate the French (I.E. you’re British) you can thumb your nose at them by doing something very American. And by that I mean, adding ham and cheese and eggs and bacon and other things to the croissant. I remember getting an extensive lecture from my high school French teacher that this was anathema to the French. At least, I assume it was extensive. I was in my teens, so, as usual, my mind wandered about five seconds after she started talking.

But enough about breakfast and my lazy high school habits. There are a few more lunch and dinner breads I should go into, like rolls. Your typical roll has about 75–150 calories, and roughly the same benefits as bread. Or, if you’re in the glorious holy lands south of the Mason-Dixon line, you can have cornbread and hush puppies on the side. These have 200 calories each, but are not much better than bread in terms of nutrition. But they are sort of…awesome. Especially with cane syrup. Having said that, one must be careful when eating these things alongside a larger meal. The calories from side dishes can add up if you’re not careful.

Now, one thing many of us do with breads is add a healthy dollop of butter to the thing. Keto proponents often post the ridiculous amounts of butter they choose to add to their meats, all while pretending this is healthy. It may be Keto heresy to say so, but it’s really not heathy. Another thing I’ve touched on before. It’s just extra calories with few nutrients. If you must put something on that bread, try jelly. It’s not great for nutrition either, but at least it’s got fewer calories than butter. And I know, that’s Keto heresy too, because jelly has (gasp) sugar.

I don’t want to come off like I’m hating too much on the Keto/Carno types.  I mean, I guess I’ve just spent several minutes of my life laying waste to them.  But if that diet works for them, it’s fine.  If you are one of the devotees to the denomination of Ketosis or Carnivorism and are able to maintain a healthy lifestyle, I wish you all the best.  Especially if you have some medical condition which you have only been able to treat with this form of diet.  

But for the rest of you, you don’t have to take a pass on the breads and grains and things.  Especially if you love them.  Diets work best (in my opinion), if you don’t have to give up too many of the things you love.  Despite the protestations of the Ketovores, consumption of grain will not bring final judgment on you or the rest of civilization.  These things may not be the healthiest things you eat (I identified what those things are in another piece), but they are perfectly fine in reasonable quantities.  You can have bread, rolls, and sandwiches and the world will not come to an end.  Nor will your life.  It might even last a little longer.

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Exercise #10 – How To Burn Calories Acting Like A Lunatic

When I was younger, the family took a summer vacation to Canada.  Of course it was summer.  No native Georgians are going to brave the frozen wastes of Canada in the wintertime.  We visited Quebec and saw the historic sites of the old walled city.  We went to Toronto and went to the top of CN tower, back when it was the tallest tower in the world.  I probably just dated myself.  That tower hasn’t been the tallest thing in the world in decades.

But my age is beside the point.  One detour produced life changing experiences for me.  On a lark, we decided to also go rafting on the Ottawa river.  I’d never done it before, but wanted to try.  We rolled into the rafting place, out in the country and away from the hustle and bustle of Toronto.  We got suited up in life jackets and grabbed our paddles.  Then, a strange thing happened.  The Canadians warned us that it was going to be “hot” that day.  Seventy-six degrees.  We tried to contain our laughter and somewhat condescendingly told them that we called that “room temperature” in Georgia.

Anyway, the rafts were loaded into the river, and we paddled vigorously in the “hot” Canadian sun.  After a while, we came to the first set of rapids and gleefully steered towards them.  As we hit them, the raft lurched and there was a distinctive “whump” sound as it hit the hardest part.  It was a rush.  Not unlike the feeling one gets on a roller coaster.

After that, I was addicted, and I have gone down several rivers since then.  And there are some very good ones in Georgia.  Such as the Chattooga river, made famous by the disturbing cinema masterpiece Deliverance.  I can claim now that I made it down the river that Ned Beatty and Burt Reynolds couldn’t.  Of course, there were no banjo players with a penchant for sexual assault on the river when I did it, so I had an easier time than them.  And yes, I know I just ripped off a Jeff Foxworthy joke.  Sue me.

The rapids on that river are pretty fierce.  Rapids are ranked from one to five, normally.  One is for the kids, and five is for the suicidal, kamikaze adventure types that want to get sent flying through the air and possibly land on jagged rocks.  Good times.  The Chattooga has a lot of threes, fours, and fives, and even one six.  This one is basically only good for people who’ve grown tired of life.

Okay, I’m exaggerating.  A bit.  But rafting can turn a river into a naturally formed theme park ride.  It’s exhilarating.  And I’ve noticed, now that I’ve been getting into shape, it can be a good way to stay in shape.  An hour of rafting can burn off 300 to 400 calories.  So, it’s not as good as just going for a run or a bike ride, but the advantage is that a single trip usually takes three or four hours.  Do that in the morning and you can eat almost anything you want for the rest of that day.

And if you’re a weird, misanthropic loner, there’s an option available for you too.  Take a ride in a boat created by the native peoples who were deranged enough to ride it on icy rivers.  Kayaking can be done solo.  I’ve mentioned before how kayaking (and also canoeing) on ponds or streams can be good exercise.  But doing it on a wild mountain river is better for burning calories.  Expect to burn 300-400 calories per hour.  Just don’t complain if there’s no one there to save you from drowning.

And since these trips to rivers with rapids are inevitably in the mountains, I’ve discovered there are plenty of other unwise things I can do in the mountains.  Like hiking treacherous paths while overloaded with an ungainly rucksack.  This kind of hiking, known to pretentious outdoorsy types as “mountaineering”, can burn anywhere from 300 to 650 calories per hour.  Depending on how badly you’re weighted down and how “technical” (Read: deadly) the terrain is.  Or, put simply, the loonier you are, the skinnier you get.

If traversing vertical terrain is more your thing, you can always go with rock climbing.  That’ll burn about 450 per hour.  I mean, I suppose you could be one of those guys or gals that does fake rock climbing in the gym.  But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as rock climbing unless you’re doing something your life insurance company would deny you coverage for.

And if being in contact with solid ground isn’t your thing, you could always traverse dizzyingly high crevasses using ropes.  “High roping” is that thing where you have two ropes, one to rest your feet on, and one to slide your hands along.  There are plenty of nuts out there that will gladly do this over a canyon or ravine, or between two skyscrapers.  And, for the lily-livered, there are courses where you do this only twenty or so feet off the ground with safety equipment to prevent an untimely demise.  It doesn’t matter how you do it as far as the waistline is concerned.  Either the crazy way or the cowardly way will burn 250 calories per hour.

And if you’re really into daring gravity to take you, there’s skydiving.  I’ve never done this, since I inherited a fear of heights from my Dad.  Sure, he overcame it by jumping out of airplanes in the Army, but I’ve just never felt that much of an urge to rid myself of it.  Technically, it’s decent exercise.  It burns about 200-250 calories per hour.   But it’s unlikely that it would take that long to hit the ground.  If you fall for more than an hour, you probably fell off the Earth somehow.

There is another alternative, though.  You can pretend you’re a bird and rude one of those things Leonardo Da Vinci designed but was too chicken to try himself.  Hang gliding burns about the same number of calories as skydiving.  And because of how physics works, gliding allows you to burn calories for a longer time than plummeting directly towards the Earth.

But if risking becoming a pink stain on the ground is not your cup of tea, you could always go for a watery grave instead.  Diving into the sea and seeing the exotic sights at the bottom is a good way to stay in shape.  Most of the campsites I visit have a lake nearby.  I also live 100 yards from Tampa Bay.  So various options are available if I feel like daring Neptune to claim me and drag me to Davy Jones’ Locker.   

Snorkeling will burn about 300-400 per hour, and requires minimal preparation and equipment.  But if you’re willing to go through lengthy training, licensing, and buy expensive equipment, scuba diving is nearly twice as good.  You can burn 500-600 calories per hour while exploring a coral reef or underwater wreckage.  The downside is there’s an off chance a shark will take a bite out of you.  I mean, that’s technically a form of weight loss (very rapid weight loss), but it has consequences.  Like amputation and possibly an early appointment with your Creator.

And if you don’t fancy going far to do wacko stuff and have the maturity of a thirteen year-old, there’s another unhinged thing you can do.  Skateboarding can burn 300-400 calories per hour.  But there’s a problem.  There’s apparently always someone with a camera around.  So when you inevitably faceplant or rack yourself on and handrail, the humiliation will be preserved on YouTube for all time.

And it’s not just about public shame.  You can seriously hurt yourself.  World Class skateboarder Tony Hawk got injured so many times growing up, his doctor thought his parents were abusing him.  And he got off light.  The off chance of a gruesome final exit from the mortal coil is ever present when you do this.

If you haven’t noticed yet, there are risks to these things.  There is the possibility of a painful demise involved in all of these.  Which is a bummer.  I mean, I guess decomposition is a form of weight loss, but it has numerous downsides.  Still, your other option is to engage in boring things outdoors (which can still be good for you) or just “lift weights” (which is actually kind of awesome) or “go for a run” or “go for a bike ride”.  You know, “normie” stuff.  A word I learned recently that I’m about twenty years too old to be using. 

But for people who prefer not to be absolute dullards and prefer to live life by risking losing it, these nutty outdoors things are for you.  If you’re willing to play games with life, the bonkers stuff is a pretty good way to kill a weekend while killing some calories.  Just try not to kill yourself in the process.

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Bad Habits #9 – Why Are You Eating That Compost Pile?

I’m about to commit heresy against the kind and compassionate vegetable eaters of the world.  The eaters of plants who insist that theirs is the One True Diet who endlessly shower the Internet with evidence of their latest #crueltyfree meal.  By that I mean vegetarians.  And their somewhat more orthodox and fundamentalist cousins, the vegans.  It’s a heresy I’ve discovered in my research on how best to maximize the micronutrients I get while minimizing calories.  This blasphemy is as follows: We should never eat salad.

I realize that this seems like an unforgivable affront in the eyes of God and man and Mother Nature.  I could be beset by rabid vegan inquisitors for uttering such sacrilege.  It’s very possible that Clifton Collins and Thomas Jane could break down a wall and punish me for a veganity violation.  But no matter how many mean tweets I might receive from the swarms of high and mighty eaters of green things, I stand by this.

For starters, salad is sort of bland.  The only way to make non-bland salad is to top it with stuff that has actual flavor.  Like dousing it in cheese, which, as I’ve noted before, can be a bad idea.  Or covering it with sauce or dressing or whatever, which can also be a bad idea.  So, just about the only way to make a salad not bland is to cover it with stuff that breaks your diet.

Nothing made the general lameness of salad more clear than old episodes of Iron Chef.  The original Japanese one, not the Food Network knockoff.  Whenever one of the chefs made a salad, the commentators would describe it as a “subtle” salad.  That was literally the only adjective they could come up with.  The fact that they could come up with no more enticing adjective than “subtle” demonstrates just how dull salad is.  Why would anyone want to eat something that was merely “subtle”?  Air and water are pretty damned subtle too.  With only slightly less flavor than salad.

But there’s another, more practical reason not to eat salad.  Cooked vegetables frequently have more nutritional value.  It’s basically because plants’ cell walls are harder than animals’ and…jeez, I’m boring myself with this biology lesson.  The regular guy’s way of saying this is that certain types of cooked vegetables are broken down somewhat, allowing you to absorb more of the good stuff.  So let’s walk through the various salad ingredients and see the differences between cooked and raw.

Let’s start with lettuce.  Actually, bad example.  Lettuce is basically useless.  It’s like slightly crisp, green water.  There’s almost no nutrition in lettuce.  And there’s no information on the nutritional value of cooked lettuce that I could find.  Probably because only a lunatic would cook lettuce.  

So let’s start with green, leafy things that aren’t lettuce but go well in a salad.  For starters, there’s Popeye’s favorite.  Spinach.  I’ve mentioned before that Popeye was on to something with the spinach.  

Spinach may be the healthiest thing there is. It’s got almost every micronutrient that doesn’t require ending the life of another member of the animal kingdom. And even in its raw form, a handful or so of it will provide virtually all of your daily needs in Vitamin A, and all of the Vitamin K. But it only provides bits and pieces of the rest.

But sauté, steam, or otherwise lightly cook it, and the vitamins provided will increase by anywhere from 400–700% in most cases. Instead of getting ten or so percent of your iron and manganese, you’ll get more like 75%. Instead of getting a small bit of vitamin B2, vitamin E, and potassium, you’ll get over 25%. And those are just a few examples.

And I know you’re thinking spinach is bland and lame and maybe even gross.  But that depends on how you spice it.  Add some salt and pepper and maybe something with a little bite to it. Or, you could cook some up with your scrambled eggs and bacon each morning, like I do.  

Or you could admire the genius of the 19th century pizza master Raffaele Esposito and eat his masterpiece, the Margherita pizza.  His ingredients matched the colors of the Italian flag. White cheese, red tomato sauce and green spinach.  It’s super patriotic if you’re from that place that thinks pasta is it’s own food group. It’s also the easiest way to sneak spinach into a meal without making the process of eating it feel like a chore.

And if spinach doesn’t fit your taste or personality, there are other options. If you like kombucha and don’t like bathing (I.E., you’re a hipster), there’s always kale.  Or if you like your cousins in an unholy way (I.E. you’re a redneck/hillbilly), you could go with collard greens or turnip greens.  These have many of the benefits of spinach, although not quite as much.  Cooking them increases these benefits by anywhere from 200% to 500%.  So if you’re bored with cooked spinach, these are good alternatives.

And if you’re more of a basic, boring person, there’s always cabbage.  The slightly more useful cousin of lettuce.   In both it’s red and green forms, it’s still a good source of vitamin C and K when eaten raw.  But cooking it will increase most of the nutrients available by 50-100%.

Mushrooms are yet another salad thing that is better cooked, if you like eating alien fungus that grows in the waste of animals.  Raw mushrooms are a decent source of vitamins B2, B3, B5, copper, and selenium, with smaller portions of the other things.  But cooking mushrooms increases the nutrients you can absorb by 200% to 700%.  And since this is yet another thing that goes well with eggs and bacon, it’s easy to mix them in and cover up for the fact that they don’t actually have flavor.

And what about cucumbers, another ubiquitous salad ingredient?  Well, they’re not much better than lettuce.  And they’re also something only a maniac would cook.  I haven’t had either of these in months.  There’s no point.

But there are it’s exotic cousins, the zucchini and the squash. These are decent sources of vitamins A, B2, B6, and C, as well as manganese and potassium. And, overall, cooking them increases the nutritional value by 50–100%. Although it can actually reduce the vitamin C.

And I know you’re thinking “but they’re gross”.  Not necessarily.  I once had the pleasure of visiting one of Enola Prudhomme’s restaurants in Lafayette, Louisiana.  They made both of them edible by attacking them with Cajun spice.  Sure, my eyes watered a bit, but I could wash that down with various libations of questionable origin only available in Louisiana. Like bowel-burning moonshine apparently distilled in the most disreputable part of the bayou.  Or chase it with some alligator bites, which, as I noted in a previous piece, can be pretty good for you.

And then there’s the only thing in a typical salad that has flavor…tomatoes.  As is typical of things that taste good, it’s nutritional value is not so great, although it does have a decent amount of Vitamin C in its raw form.  And I never thought of cooking them, until my wife made me a full English breakfast.  Yes, they cook their tomatoes.  Which I thought was weird.  But now I know that cooking them will double the iron benefit, amongst other things.  Although it can reduce the vitamin C.

This doesn’t count for fried green tomatoes.  That’s something those of us from the exotic lands of sweet iced tea and inbreeding do to make tomatoes unhealthy.  We cover the tomatoes with “breading” (flour, usually) and add so many carbs that even the most stoic Keto bro would flee in terror.  I’ve noted before that there’s a reason Georgia is so obese.  So cook the vegetables, but don’t add unhealthy stuff.  That defeats the purpose.

Although now that I think about it, I guess you don’t have to pass on salad.  Just cook it first.  I’ve put a few pictures on my (admittedly underused) Instagram page of my attempts at cooked salad.  Which have actually turned out well, considering my mediocre cooking abilities.  

Add some (or all) of the leafy greens above, mushrooms, tomatoes, and maybe the zucchini and squash too.  And maybe some of the best of all salad ingredients: bacon.  Then season with a little salt and pepper, stir fry in olive oil for five minutes and add some balsamic vinegar.  It’s a salad, except with flavor and more nutritional value.

Now, it should be noted that cooking some vegetables can actually reduce some of the nutrients in them.  And I’ve noticed that certain fruits are actually less nutritious when cooked.  And boiling anything tends to pull out the water soluble vitamins, so steaming or grilling is best.  Cooking isn’t always a good thing.  But, in general, if something has no real taste in its raw form, cook it.  It’ll probably make it healthier.

Having said that, it’s important to remember not to overcook the vegetables.  Cooking them too long can actually destroy the nutrients.  Well, it destroys the vitamins.  You can’t destroy the minerals.  Unless you’re somehow having a thermonuclear reaction in your kitchen.  If you are, you should stop cooking immediately.  

Personally, I’ve never done this.  I may have unintentionally produced biological or chemical weapons in my kitchen (some of which are on my Instagram feed), but I can proudly say I’ve never created nukes in my kitchen.  I’ve never crossed that line of international law.  Along with…over 99% of the human population.  Or maybe 100%.  I don’t think Oppenheimer was doing what he did in a kitchen.

But my culinary violations of international law are beside the point.  The point is, I don’t eat raw salad.  Unless someone makes it for me. Free food changes my mind in a hurry.  Even if it’s just a free salad.  But cooking veggies, for the most part, allows your body to absorb higher levels of micronutrients.  And you can cook them in ways that aren’t merely “subtle”.

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Good Habits #9 – Risking Disaster in the Kitchen Can Help You Lose Weight

I mentioned a while back that when I was a bachelor, I ate crap.  As a result, the five miles a day I was running was completely cancelled out by the garbage I was wolfing down.  Sometimes it was a tendency to binge on potato chips and ice cream.  Sometimes it was my tendency to indulge in fried chicken.  Since there’s a Publix two miles away and they have, hands down, the best fried chicken on the planet (don’t @ me, your argument is invalid), this was something I did a bit too often.

One trick I tried to get past this was just not keeping food that was premade in the house.  That way, if I was hungry, I had to work for it.  My innate lack of motivation to cook anything or leave the couch offset my desire for food.  Of course, unwillingness to leave the couch is its own problem, but that’s a subject for one of my pieces on exercise.  

Another thing I tried was to eat apples or other fruits, which, as I’ve noted before, is something we should be doing more of.  But these aren’t full meals.  Sooner or later the desire for something more substantial would set in, resulting in a trip to Publix, unable to resist the siren’s call of their fried chicken, or a trip to the nearest fast food joint.

The real problem was that I couldn’t cook.  Not well, anyway.  My attempts at cooking always seemed to invite catastrophe. My attempts at bacon produced bacon flavored charcoal.  My attempts at grilled cheese produced what I can only describe as grilled cheese after it’s been napalmed.  Several times. 

I even tried to make chocolate chip cookies once.  Not that dessert is a particularly good idea.  But that’s beside the point.  I ended up making chocolate chip hockey pucks.  They were so hard their only possible value was for starting a riot.  Although breaking windows with chocolate chip cookies would have been so awesomely ridiculous, it almost would’ve been worth it. The headline would have said “Florida Man breaks windows with chocolate chip cookies, starts riot.” I guess I missed my chance at immortality.

I couldn’t even make an omelet, which is one the simplest of breakfast meals.  My omelets inevitably produced a “chef’s scramble”.  Which, I’ve learned, is just an omelet gone horribly wrong.   The act of flipping the omelet tended to end in disaster whenever I tried it.  So, every time I see “Chef’s Scramble” on a menu, that just means the chef at that restaurant lacks the ability to make a proper omelet.  I immediately leave when I see this.

I wasn’t completely useless as a cook.  I had the standard man-cooking abilities.  I could make steak, hamburgers, and hot dogs.  But hamburgers and hot dogs can be surprisingly fattening, and steak, unless you eat a relatively small portion, has loads of calories.  Especially the kind that really taste good, like ribeyes, which are from the fatty part of the cow.  And despite what the most rabid acolytes of the Keto/Carno religion will tell you, too much fat in your food is a problem.

I occasionally tried to download recipes.  There are plenty of free recipe sites.  Allrecipes.com, FoodNetwork, etc.  But there are a couple of problems.  Any recipe online comes with a lengthy story about how some guy or some gal’s grandmother or great-grandmother made some extraordinary recipe back during the 1930s and fed her shoeless family of seventeen kids.  These unnecessary overshares usually require endless scrolling.  The kind of scrolling that produces irreversible carpal tunnel syndrome.  But that’s not even the worst part.

After scrolling through the seemingly interminable story about how Mam-Ma or Mi-Ma managed to help her overly large brood survive the Great Depression, I’d get to the actual recipe and find several deal breakers.  Such as a recipe that would require some absurdly obscure ingredient that’s only available in one shop that I’d have to drive ten miles to get to.  Or available in a nearby Whole Foods, but I’d have to go bankrupt to purchase it.  There’s a reason that store’s nickname is “Whole Paycheck.”

Or I might find that it’s a recipe that requires that I marinate something for thirteen hours.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.  Or it might just require a bazillion steps and take more than 15 minutes of prep time.  If the recipe takes more steps to complete than a piece of Ikea furniture, I’m just not interested.  I don’t mind cooking, but I don’t pretend to be Gordan Ramsay or any other fancy schmancy chef.  I’m not going to work that hard if I’m not getting paid.  I want simple recipes that take less than half an hour, and preferably less than five minutes.

This explains the attraction of the most diabolical of modern cooking implements.  The microwave.  Cooking things in the microwave basically ruins them.  And the stuff that’s ready made for the microwave might as well be dog food.  It’s either barely filling 300 calorie Lean Cuisine stuff (which tastes like dog food), or it’s some preprocessed corporate slow acting poison that provides lots of calories and few nutrients.  And also tastes like dog food.  So, hard pass.

So I tried doing stovetop things.  The easy thing to go with when one is a bachelor is Hamburger Helper.  It’s relatively straightforward, but I noticed a problem.  One night, I cooked a batch of this, ate part of it, then put the rest in the fridge.  And when I went back the next day, my previous night’s feast was locked in an iceberg of congealed fat.  No wonder my waist kept expanding.  

Having said that, the skills involved in making Hamburger Helper are useful.  Because it’s basically stir fry, which is a decent way to cook healthy food if I use the right ingredients.  I’ve written before about how ground beef (at least the wrong kind) can be an excellent way to get fat and die young.  But if I avoid the fattier of the meats, add in some greens (I’ve explained at length why this is good) and maybe some rice or potatoes (another thing I’ve explained the value of before), I can cook a healthy and relatively cheap meal.  

My first attempts were probably so toxic they violated the Geneva Conventions.  I’ve occasionally shared some of these abhorrent calamities on my Instagram feed, just to horrify the denizens of the Internet.  But once I got the hang of it, they were…not bad.  So I’m no longer at risk of getting raided by the FBI or ATF or whoever arrests people for cooking up biological or chemical weapons.  My food is no longer a war crime.  And mostly edible.  Although it does occasionally look like dog food.

There’s another implement I used to ignore that’s even better, though.  The microwave oven may be a disgrace in the eyes of God and humanity, but the regular oven is an entirely different story.  What if I told you there was a way to cook stuff that took only five minutes of prep time?  

I’ve learned that it takes maybe an hour or two to make a roast (along with roasted potatoes and veggies), but the prep time is only five minutes.  I season a roast, potatoes and veggies with salt and pepper and maybe a few random spices.  Then I put the roast in the oven.  When there is an hour left of cooking time, I add in the potatoes.  When there are ten minutes left, I add the veggies.  A complete, healthy meal, which always comes out great.  And while it’s cooking, I can be doing literally anything else.

And, of course, there’s the one cooking implement that all men must learn to be proper men.  The grill.  Any man’s man card is invalid if they can’t grill.  Besides, it’s easy.  Grilling is basically what our barely sentient caveman ancestors used to do. So anyone should be able to handle a grill.  I, like most real men, prefer the charcoal grill over the gas grill.  In part, because the result tastes better.  I mean, I guess the gas doesn’t require cutting down trees, but the added taste from the charcoal is worth the cost in deforestation.

I use the three beer method to grill.  Start the fire, then drink a beer.  By the time I’m done, the coals are ready.  Then I put the meat on and drink another beer.  By the time I’m done with that one, it’s time to flip the meat.  Then I drink another beer.  When I’m done with the third  one, the meat’s ready.  The secret here is to make sure the beer is light beer. Too much alcohol can break a diet (and a liver) if you’re not careful.

Home-cooked food is usually lower in calories than restaurant food or precooked or preprocessed food.  Usually because these things have a lot of added fat and oil, which can be a problem.  By doing it myself, I cut out a lot of calories.  I mean the restaurant food is better (way better), but not being 60 pounds overweight anymore is kind of awesome too.

I’m still not Gordan Ramsay, nor will I ever be.  Mostly because I don’t have that weird twitch when I talk.  Or an explosive temper and rude demeanor. But also because I’ll probably only ever be a decent cook.  Having said that, being a decent cook contributed to my weight loss.  Cooking for myself, as opposed to eating take out, pre-cooked food, or processed, soulless corporate food, probably reduces my caloric intake each day by at least 500 calories. 

So all of us should be cooking for ourselves.  More of this, plus a decent amount of exercise, will turn us from a nation of fatties to Adonis-like, statuesque things of beauty.  Or at least people who aren’t constantly splitting pants and dying of heart attacks.

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Exercise #9 – Forgive Me Divine Spinoza, I Have Become a Meathead

The last time I regularly went to a gym (not counting the occasional two week trial to this or that gym which I cancelled before their rather exorbitant fees kicked in) was in grad school, where I had free access to the school’s gym.  And by “free” I mean it was funded by a non-waivable, $700 athletic fee attached to my tuition.  

Gym culture at that college gym was not noticeably different from other gyms.  Women in yoga pants on exercise bikes reading trashy romance novels while pedaling away.  People on ellipticals watching the chyron scroll on muted news channels.  People on stair steppers wondering what caused their life to go so horribly wrong that they’ve resorted to using the single lamest exercise machine there is.  And then there were the weightlifters.

I always thought the weight lifting guys were insufferable.  They seemed to spend their time stacking impossible masses of weights and making exaggerated grunts while lifting these ungodly burdens.  This seemed designed to impress the ladies and outdo the other bros.  Then they’d dramatically remove their shirts and pose with their Adonis-like abs exposed, also to show for the ladies and show up the guys.  It was a strange cross between male dominance games and preening peacockery, with maybe a dash of roid rage.  Vanity and frat boy antics were never my preferred method of getting the ladies, so these kinds of guys (meatheads) always struck me as obnoxious.

And my entrance into the online health-o-sphere (a word I just made up which is not an actual thing) didn’t improve my impressions.  Meatheads pose shirtless on Twitter, take videos of themselves deadlifting and squatting and whatever, and occasionally post pics of the massive steak, eggs, and bacon meals they eat.  Ok, that last bit isn’t so bad.  But combined it all seems like an elaborate projection of virility.  Or penis size.  Or compensation for lack thereof.

But as with everything else I’ve discovered while getting into shape, math overrode many of my prejudices and preconceptions.  Lifting weights is good exercise.  It’s great exercise.  I’ve been able to burn a good 350-400 pounds in a forty minute set.  Which is about as good as a run.  Except that I don’t have to venture out into the blistering Florida heat to do it.

There’s another benefit to meatheadiness.  Bigger muscles make the normal workouts more effective.  It’s basic science.  Moving a larger mass burns more energy than a smaller mass.  And as the muscles become bigger, the burn just gets bigger for the same work.  And having more muscle mass means I even burn more calories at rest.  So even if I’m watching football with the boys, binge watching Game of Thrones for the umpteenth time, or being forced by my wife to watch This Is Us, I burn more calories than I did previously.

Also, I’m growing back into the clothes that no longer fit.  By adding good weight where there was once bad weight.  Which appeals to my accountant side, which hates spending money, and my man side, which generally hates all forms of shopping that don’t involve the purchase of automobiles, sporting goods, or electronic devices.  I can keep the old clothes as I keep the fat off.  And also delay heart disease and death and stuff.

But these are all secondary concerns.  The primary benefit is to mental health.  Not the positive mental health that comes from generally being responsible and taking care of yourself.  I’m talking about the huge increase in mental health that comes from shameless vanity.  I already achieved the most important goal of weight lifting.  I can move my pectoral muscles independently.  Euphoric levels of testosterone enter my body every time I blatantly flex.  I now understand what all of the musclebro preening was about.  It feels good.

Now, I know there are more than a few people who are a tad suspicious of testosterone.  They see high testosterone guys as barbaric lunatics who live to crush their enemies, see them driven before them, and to hear the lamentations of their women.  This is not the result of testosterone.  It’s the result of psychopathy.  High testosterone doesn’t necessarily make men crazy.  I mean, off the charts testosterone is bad (it can cause a few health problems) , but a healthy, relatively high level is good.  Low testosterone, on the other hand, can make men irritable and depressed. 

The truth is a good testosterone level makes men happy.  We should all want men to be happy.  Because happy guys build things and buy things for their wives/girlfriends and generally do good things.  Unhappy men are the ones who burn villages to the ground and rob little old ladies.  So a healthy level of testosterone is generally a public good.  So by lifting and preening, I’m literally making the world a better place.  You can’t convince me otherwise.  Your argument is invalid.

Testosterone is apparently also good for fat loss, at least for men.  As our levels go up it’s easier to build muscle and keep the fat off.  At least, that’s what the fancy schmancy lab coat guys are saying.  And being in a good mood also helps us get motivated to exercise.  So, increased levels of man juice can lead to an upward spiral of health and happiness.  Meanwhile, the low testosterone guy is going to go into a downward spiral of depression, stress eating, and greater weight.  A hole that is hard to get out of.  And usually leads to premature diabetes.

Having said all of this, I’m a little leery of testosterone treatments.  Call me old fashioned, but I think I should increase my levels naturally.  By working for it.  Not by taking supplements.  Not by getting needles stuck in me.  That’s totally cheating.  Also, there’s the off chance that some quack sticking needles in me will cause me to grow tentacles or a tail or webbing between my toes.  Medical accidents like that produce super villains, so I’ll take a hard pass.

Now there is a problem with going to the gym.  Because I’m an accountant.  That means I don’t like spending money.  And it means I really don’t like other people.  Misanthropy is probably the main reason people go into accounting.  Fortunately, my general hatred for humanity doesn’t prevent me from partaking in weightlifting.  I can have weights at home.  I can avoid the gym (and the cost) and avoid the annoying presence of other members of the human race.  Including the more irksome of the muscle men.

But even though I still see the most meatheady musclebros as unbearable, I no longer look down my nose at them.  I know that lifting can be a transformative experience.  I remember the euphoric feeling as I gradually lifted and lifted, and the huge dopamine hit of finishing, knowing I’d accomplished something.  It was even better than the runner’s high, except without the chronic knee damage that running was causing me.  Whatever snide thoughts I’d had of weightlifters vanished.  My prejudice against them was gone.  

Sometimes this feels like I’m selling out my fellow nerds.  Standing around and rolling our eyes at the sweaty, overly buff dudebros of the gym is one of our favorite pastimes. But the jocks know something we don’t.  There is something to this weight lifting stuff.  So now I’m a lifting fool.  I apologize to my fellow white collar dorks.  But riding a desk and gradually expanding my waistline is a thing of the past.  I’ve seen the value of engaging in blatant physicality.  Forgive me, but I’ve become a meathead.  And I like it.

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Bad Habits #8 – Blobs On the Bayou: Why Louisiana is So Obese

When I wrote a piece on why my home state of Georgia is obese, I looked at a map of the country showing each state’s relative obesity.  There’s a big blob of obesity (bad pun intended) in the South and Midwest.  Including the state where some of my favorite cuisine is made, Louisiana.  Louisianans are a bunch of porkers.  And their cuisine appears to play a big role in that.

I love the food of Louisiana, especially the Cajun stuff.  Although it can be a bit strange.  Like Jeff Foxworthy said “Louisiana has, guarantee you, the best food on this planet as long as you don’t ask too many questions about what you’re eating.”  And some of the strange things they eat can make the gut expand.

Take…alligator, for example.  The scourge of golfers and fishers and also drug dealers who hide in the Everglades.  Now, in my last piece I noted that normally this is quite good for you.  But Cajuns tend to fry their alligator half to death.  Not to mention infuse it with enough spice to set your digestive system aflame.  Alligator may be a low calorie meat in its normal form, but when it’s fried, we’re adding lots of calories without much extra benefit.  Breading and frying can double the calories sometimes, which can double the waistline if we’re not careful.

Alligator is hardly the strangest thing they eat. Cajuns also like frog’s legs. Which makes me wonder, were Cajuns desperate back in the day and forced to eat this strangeness to avoid starvation?  The same likely reason the Scottish ate haggis?  Or are they just weird?  Or maybe it’s an outgrowth of too much cousin love?  It seems like the most inbred people do strange things with amphibians.  Cajuns eat them, hillbillies lick them to get high, etcetera.  The examples are endless.

Anyway, frog’s legs are a generally low calorie food, with about the same calories and nutrition as alligator meat in a similar sized serving.  It would be a healthy (but odd) choice, except for the Cajun’s obsessive need to fry everything into submission while dousing it in enough spice to turn your brain into a bonfire.  So these two Cajun “delicacies” are already showing us why expanding girth is a problem in the Pelican State.

And even when Cajuns have an opportunity to be healthy, they blow it.  They eat all sorts of vegetables common in the southern diet.  But they fry them too.  Like fried okra or fried squash.  Two things that are normally healthy (although slimy, gross, nasty, and an affront to decency) are made unhealthy by frying them into oblivion.

Fortunately, there are healthier options.  Take crawfish, which is basically a poor man’s lobster.  It has roughly the same in calories and nutrition as lobster meat, including generous doses of vitamin B12, selenium, copper, and omega-3 fatty acids, amongst other nutrients. The main problem is the effort involved.  Removing these from their shell takes about twice as much work as a lobster, with a fraction of the meat as a reward.  But if you want Cajun food without Cajun fatness, this is the way to go.

Cajuns also have things that look like food, but really aren’t.  Take boudin balls.  These are balls of pork, liver, and assorted veggies, like onion, peppers, and celery.  Most of this seems harmless.  The problem here is the liver part.  I already mentioned how offal is awful in a previous post. 

And the people who make these also succumb to the urge anyone who lives south of Virginia and east of Texas has.  Which is…to fry.  Fry all the things.  These balls of normal goodness plus awful offal are breaded and fried into a little ball.  And that extra frying, naturally, adds a bunch of calories.  So you’ve got heart-stopping levels of cholesterol, and crazy calories from the frying, with maybe a few decent nutrients from the one or two vegetables in the mix.

And when it’s lunchtime, Cajuns still manage to stay unhealthy.  Instead of sandwiches, they eat po’boys.  Which, to the untrained eye, looks like a hoagie.  Hoagies aren’t the healthiest thing.  Not because the ingredients are inherently bad, but slamming a foot of stuff into your mouth tends to add up calories-wise.  But the Cajuns feel an urge to make it worse.  A po’boy is a hoagie with fried things (fried shrimp, oysters, whatever) crammed into a foot long bun with mayonnaise and other fatty stuff.  This is what you eat when you want to dare heart disease to take you.

I don’t want to sound like I’m slamming Cajun food though.  It is good, although not good for you.  For example, let’s think about the greatest of all Cajun dishes.  Jambalaya.  This typically consists of chicken, Andouille sausage, shrimp, and tomatoes and other various veggies simmered and spice to perfection and served over rice. With enough spice to set your hair on fire.  

Most of this is fine.  Yes, Keto-bros, the rice is fine.  And chicken and shrimp aren’t going to break the bank calories-wise either.  The trick here is the Andouille sausage.  It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but a single link usually has about 250-350 calories.  And they generally put more than one link in there.  Although I guess Cajun Andouille is preferable to French Andouille. The French version is made from guts.  It’s the French form of haggis.  Anyway, the point is that even the greatest of Cajun dishes can fatten you up.

Speaking of Cajun things with carbs, there’s etouffee.  This can be made with shrimp, crab, or crawfish over rice.  It doesn’t seem bad, but there’s a problem.  It’s cooked in roux, which is literally sauce made from fat and flour.  It’s fat soup with carbs.  A concoction both vegans and low-carb bros would be horrified by.  I think my arteries are hardening just thinking about it.

And then there’s gumbo, the classic Cajun soup.  It could have sausage, shrimp, celery, onions, or literally anything else.  And sometimes they make it fattening by adding stuff like roux.  For those of you who think soup is a low calorie option, don’t include gumbo in that calculation.  This stuff can fatten you up just as much as the other options I’ve listed here.

But there’s a worse thing.  It’s easy to come across gross gumbo.  For one not commonly known reason.  Gumbo is, in reality, just an excuse for a Cajun chef to clean out the back of his fridge.  You have no idea what’s in there, or what’s been growing on it while sitting in the fridge.  They must figure that rather than let things go to waste, they’ll just put enough spice in to kill off any microbial life and serve it to unsuspecting tourists..

And after getting morbidly obese by frying things that would otherwise be healthy, Cajuns have fattening desserts to top it off.  Like pralines. Which are pecans, sugar, cream, butter, and vanilla.  So once you’re done getting fat off of strange, alien, fried things, carbalicious soup, and really fattening sausage, you can dose yourself with enough sugar to turn a kindergarten class into raving, hyperactive lunatics.  Sure, not everything about this is unhealthy. I mean, nuts are good, but dessert is generally not.

One thing I’ve learned that as I’ve started carefully analyzing my diet is that everything that I love is bad for me.  This included fried things and dead pigs (two staples of the Southern diet), and also now includes Cajun food, one of my favorite forms of food, and possibly the most unique cuisine in all of America.  But sadly, it’s not that great for you.  So don’t be a bunch of fatties like the Cajuns.  An occasional indulgence is fine, but if you eat this every day, you’ll be a bloated piece of alligator bait.

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Good Habits #8 – Wild Things And Things That Probably Shouldn’t Be Food Can Actually Be Good For You

Years ago, when my father was still in the army, we lived in Europe for three years.  Occasionally, we’d have to travel around for him to go to this meeting or that meeting.  This probably started me on my journey to becoming a hardcore foodie.  We’d eat out in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, you name it.  Except for anything east of the Iron Curtain.  This was in the bad old days of the Cold War, and half of Europe was still under the control of the guys with ridiculous fur hats.  And I don’t mean the guards at Buckingham Palace.  I mean the guys who think vodka is a food group.

On one trip to Italy (Always a good stop for hardcore foodies.  And drunks.  And prospective fat people and diabetes sufferers.  And young heart attack victims), I was stuffing my face with pasta, earning a baleful glance from my mother at my atrocious manners.  Fortunately, the Italians’ manners were far worse, so I fit right in.  Once I’d finished choking down a baseball sized wad of noodles, I looked at my Dad’s plate and asked to try what he was having.  Sharing around a bit was a normal thing for us, since we were eating things we frequently couldn’t get back home.

He scooped a bit of the innocuous looking meat on my plate, which I promptly wolfed down.  It was tasty, although a bit chewy.  I liked it, and it wasn’t like anything I’d ever had.  I asked my father what it was, and he told me it was…octopus.  I nearly gagged, and he grinned widely.  I think he knew how I’d react, and gleefully basked in the glow of my shock and dismay.

Octopus is not something a young boy thinks is food.  They’re squirmy things that we’d see floating through unearthly underwater environments on PBS.  Or see squeezing through tiny holes.  They’re tentacled nightmares that haunted the dreams of H.P. Lovecraft and influenced his imagining of the horrific beings that haunt his rather twisted stories.  They’re freakish, alien monstrosities.  Not supper.  Of course, when you’re age is in single digits, supper is hamburgers, mac and cheese, spaghetti, and other basic fare.  There’s a reason the kids’ menu is always boring nonsense.

But I benefited in the end.  My dad’s prank didn’t just make me a foodie.  It made me a weird foodie.  I mean, not quite Andrew Zimmern weird (I don’t eat genitalia), but I learned that things that are a bit esoteric can be very good.  And I’ve learned recently, they can also be very good for you.

Six ounces of this slimy, otherworldly creature have 280 calories.  Like most seafood, it’s a little light on the calorooskies, which is a good thing.  It’s loaded with B vitamins, which is not surprising.  Most meats, even slimy, otherworldly, tentacle-creature meat, have these.  It has 40% of my Recommended Daily Allowance in niacin, 30% of my B5 requirement, 85% of my B6 needs, tons of vitamin B12 (way more than is necessary for a full day), over 100% of the copper, selenium, and iron requirements, 24% of the magnesium requirements, two-thirds of the phosphorus, one third of the potassium, and half of the zinc.  Also, it has 40% of the daily requirement of Omega-3 fatty acids.  It’s cousin the squid is almost as good in terms of nutrition (it has slightly higher quantities of some nutrients, such as vitamin E), with two-thirds of the calories and 60% of the Omega-3s in the same portion size.

Meats, including strange meats, generally come with the same types of nutrients.  Six ounces of almost any meat will provide anywhere from 20% to 100% of your RDA in many B vitamins, as well as high quantities of copper, zinc, selenium, iron, and phosphorus.  But oftentimes the weirdo meats have additional benefits (and lower calories) than the standard staple meats of the American diet, such as beef, pork, and chicken.

Another bizarre beastie that’s healthy is conch, the strange beast which comes in a shell which seems carefully sculpted to perfection by Mother Nature herself.  With an abominable, nightmarish tentacle-being crammed into the middle.

The last time I had live conch in my house was when my wife and her assorted girlie friends took a trip to one of the beaches near Sarasota on one of their girlie-friends-only trips.  She brought back literally dozens of tiny conch shells.  I discovered her boiling them in the kitchen, and asked if that was what was for dinner that night.  She said “You got jokes?”.  Clearly, she didn’t consider these to be food.  She’s not as much of a weird foodie as I am.  

No, her goal was to kill the things inside, then clean out the shells so she could use them for decorations.  Naturally, I was the one who got stuck with the duty of cleaning out the shells.  She couldn’t bear the thought of touching the horrid critter within, dead or alive.  Fortunately, now that I know she finds them terrifying, I can use this to punish her, which I often do when we go to the beach.  Any time I feel like self-imposing celibacy for a week or three, I can frighten her with live ones, or disgust her by eating dead ones.  Conch fritters are a great thing, and the look of distress on her face when I eat them always fulfills my recommended daily allowance of schadenfreude.

Anyway, six ounces of cooked conch has 220 calories, so it’s not bad at all for those of us trying to lose weight.  It’s a little light on the B vitamins, although it has plenty of B12, something which is (with a very few exceptions) only available in meat.  Unless you take supplements.  Which is cheating.  

But I guess I’m getting off track with my peeves about supplements.  Back to conch.  It also has the minerals typical of meat that I listed above.  In addition, it has 75% of my folate RDA, nearly 75% of my vitamin E requirements (which is something that’s hard to come by, unless you eat nuts), 16% or so of my calcium needs, and almost all of the magnesium I’d need in a day.  Also, like most dead denizens of the oceans, a decent chunk of omega-3 fatty acids.

But creepy things of the ocean aren’t the only weird food I’ve learned are actually good for me.  Anyone who grew up in the American Holy Lands of the Southeast has partaken of the flesh of the antlered, cervine beast.  Deer, in other words.  I’ve noted before that hunting these things can be decent exercise.  Eating them is not bad for you either.

After you brutally hunt and kill Bambi’s mother, the resulting venison will provide 270 calories for every six ounces.  In addition to the typical nutrients that come from faunacide, venison also has a decent chunk of potassium.  This is not something that’s hard to come by, but it is something we need in relatively large quantities, so it’s always good to make sure we’re getting enough.  And if you waste Bambi’s northern and Canadian cousins (elk and moose), the nutrition is about the same.

That’s not the only weird frontier meat I’ve heard of.  My sister-in-law’s family comes from the gun-nuttiest state north of the Mason-Dixon line: Michigan.  Where they hunt things with M-16s and eat anything they kill.  Including…bear.  Yes, bear.  I never would’ve thought of that as food either.

Bear is not as healthy as the other things.  Six ounces has 440 calories.  Bears are fat.  Go figure.  But it contains all of the normal meat nutrients, including 100% of B12, zinc, and iron.  But only if you’re willing to murder and eat Winnie the Pooh.  I’m not.  Bambi is fine, but Winnie the Pooh is where I draw the line.

And then there’s the uniquely American animal that was the staple of the Sioux diet, and mostly just target practice for colonists.  And by that I mean, bison.  Nearly wiped out, they’re making a comeback, as many ranchers are raising them for food.  I’ve noted before in a piece about burgers that ground bison burgers are quite good for you.  But if I avoid throwing dead stuff in the meat grinder and have a six ounce bison steak, I’ll get 300 calories, which is not bad.  In addition to the normal meat nutrients, it also has about one third of my potassium RDA.

Then there are the things that medieval men called transportation and weird French people actually consider food.  Les Francais are known to eat horses.  Which is strange to American sensibilities.  How does one eat Mr. Ed?  Can’t they just turn him into glue like normal people?  Anyway, if you do ever eat horse meat, you’ll find that nutritionally it’s almost the same as bison.

Then there’s the animal that infomercials scammed unsuspecting Americans into buying and raising.  Alpaca.  Or its cousin, the llama.  Information on these is scarce on Ye Olde Interweb Machine, but from what I’ve been about to find, a six ounce portion of these has maybe 240 calories, and tends to be lower in cholesterol than many other meats.  And in addition to the B vitamins that all animal sacrifices appear to have, they appear to have healthy doses of zinc, potassium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium and copper.  But I couldn’t find traditional nutritional information for these.  The only sources were obscure medical research stuff that appeared intentionally designed to have the information in an unhelpful, wonky format.  Also, it uses that strange, exotic method of measurement (the metric system) that is only used by…everyone on the planet except Americans.

If you find your way to the west coast, especially up in the uber-frozen wastelands of Alaska or Canada, there is a surprisingly kleptomaniac animal that you can eat.  I mean, the sea lion.  If you manage to catch and eat one of these fish thieves, you’ll get 200 calories per six ounces, the usual assortment vitamins and minerals humans get when asserting their dominance over other animals (in many cases over 100% RDA, such as with iron, selenium, copper, and B12), along with 75% of the vitamin A RDA and 20% of the potassium.  Also, a third of the omega-3 fatty acids you’ll need.

And it’s much more docile and trainable (and therefore more adorable) cousin, the seal, has 240 calories per six ounces, the normal meat nutrients, and 20% of the Vitamin A.  And one third of the  omega-3s I should eat in a day.

And then there’s that strange, poisonous thing that the Japanese turned into a delicacy.  Pufferfish.  Or blowfish.  Or whatever.  I’ve often wondered how many people died before they figured out how to make this edible.  Maybe some medieval Japanese daimyo just fed variants of this to his peasants until one of them finally didn’t keel over.

But I digress.  Nutritional information for this is almost as scarce as the furry, infomercial scam animal from South America I mentioned above.  But from what little I did find, six ounces of this has only 150 calories, and it apparently includes the various minerals and vitamins one would expect with almost any seafood.  The downside is the off chance that it results in…death.  Or perhaps even undeath.  I’ve heard that assorted Voodoo sorcerers in Haiti use pufferfish poison to turn people into literal zombies.  So maybe we should all take a pass on this weird meat.

But for more classic North American weirdness, there’s the other thing rednecks like to kill.  Wild boar.  You’d think that boar was basically just pork.  But you’d be wrong.  Pigs are the sedentary, obese cousins of boar.  Boar are far less fattening.  Six ounces has 270 calories, and the usual nutrients that one can get from being an apex predator and ruthlessly killing and eating animals.

And then there’s the animal only enjoyed by crazy Cajuns and crazy Florida men.  The latter of which is obviously redundant.  And by that I mean…alligator.  This also only provides the normal nutrients of meat.  There’s nothing special here.  Except, it only has 150 calories per six ounces.  It’s a slightly chewy meat that tastes like a cross between catfish and chicken.  Which seems like an abhorrent hybrid, I know.  But you should try it.  With lots of cocktail sauce.  And actual cocktails.  But not too many of those.  Too much alcohol can kill a diet.

And weird meats around the world are also lean and healthy.  When I visit my wife’s African homeland, we occasionally can go on a safari and eat things that one only finds in a reservation.  Like impala, warthog, buffalo, and crocodile.  Their nutritional value is about the same as deer, boar, bison, and alligator.  And you can enjoy them all in an exotic, off-the-beaten-path locale.  So I can eat healthy and feel like Anthony Bourdain when we visit her family.

And there is one last weird food I had once that I should cover.  Only once, because it’s expensive.  The delicacy of guys with funny hats and vodka addictions and strangely centrally planned economies.  And by that, I mean caviar.  Which is fish eggs, which seems really odd.  Of course, I can’t judge too much.  The haggis that my Scottish ancestors thought was food is noticeably weirder.  

Caviar has 450 calories per six ounces.  Not that anyone would ever eat that much (unless they’re uber-rich Russian oligarchs), I’m just trying to be consistent with everything above.  This much caviar has all of the animal sacrifice nutrients, and has half a day’s Vitamin A, one third of the Vitamin D RDA (which typically only comes from dead fish or sunlight), 20% of the Vitamin E, half of the Calcium and all of the magnesium I need.  And all of the Omega-3.  Way too much, really, over 7 times what I’d need in a day.  

Unfortunately, there are downsides.  It’s high in cholesterol.  Six ounces will have five times what I should be eating in a day.  So you shouldn’t eat caviar for the same reason you shouldn’t eat organ meat.  Also, I’m pretty sure it costs more than cocaine.  And eating it makes you a communist.  So there’s health, financial, and geopolitical reasons to never eat this.

Still, for the most part, strange foods aren’t bad for you.  They can be healthy.  So don’t be afraid to try some new things.  Eat some weirdo animal you didn’t think was food.  Eat the alien sea monster.  Eat the giant lizards.  Eat the wild, sylvan animals.  They’re loaded with all sorts of nutrients, and most are light on calories.  But maybe stay away from the poison fish.  And don’t eat the commie food.

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The Details Behind The Diabolical Diabetes Conspiracy Being Orchestrated By The Girl Scouts Of America

It’s that time of year where young girls tempt the American public.  Okay, that sounds weirdly pedo.  I’m talking about the Girl Scouts tempting us.  No, that still sounds pedo.  I’m talking about Girl Scouts tempting us with sugar and spice and everything nice.  Cookies, I mean.  I’m not talking about anything salacious.  Get your minds out of the gutter.

Since my niece is selling these, I received orders from the matriarchal autocracy on high (my mother and my wife) that I was obligated to purchase literally dozens of these things.  Diabetes be damned, it’s more important to educate the young in sales and marketing and all things capitalist and awesome.  My personal health (at least according to the women in my life) is at best a secondary concern compared to this.

Now, I like Girl Scout cookies.  Since I grew up in Savannah (where the Girl Scouts were founded), I’m sort of obligated by law to like them.  But as I’ve pointed out before, desserts are probably something we should keep to a minimum.  Having said that, cookies, due to their relatively small size, aren’t as bad as some of the alternatives.

Now, cookies by definition aren’t super nutritious, but one thing to keep in mind with all cookies is that you won’t be getting any Vitamin B12, A, C, or D.  Because there’s no meat, vegetables, fruit, fish, or sunlight involved.  Obviously.  That would be weird.  Only a rabid vegan would entertain the idea of vegetable cookies and only a rabid carnivore would think fish or meat cookies are a good idea.  All though I’m sure there is at least one dark, horrible corner of the Internet where these sorts of abominations can be found.

And anyone who manages to successfully irradiate cookies in a way that it makes your body produce Vitamin D (as it does when exposed to the sun), is a mad scientist, Bond villain type who will one day lead the world to its inevitable destruction.  So, Elon Musk, in other words.

Anyway, I figured I’d go through these cookies one by one and analyze the damage appeasing my mother and wife would do to me.  Depending on which type of baked decadence the Girl Scouts are offering, the calories per cookie vary.  So I’ll review the nutritional value for each of these in a 130-190 calorie helping, which is probably the most a snack should be, and analyze how much of my Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) it fulfills.  Public Service Announcement: The amounts provided are for a man of…ahem…a certain age.  Women and younger or older people may have different requirements.

So we’ll start with the least exciting cookie, the Trefoils.  Which are really just shortbread cookies.  Leave it to the British to invent the least exciting cookie in existence.  These are so British that when you Google shortbread, it comes up as a “biscuit” and not a “cookie”.   If we took standard British reserve and understatement and somehow incarnated it in baked sugar form, it would be shortbread.  Although, strictly speaking, shortbread is Scottish, not English, so when compared to other forms of Scottish cuisine (like haggis, which I touched on in an earlier piece), they’re noticeably better than other foods the Scottish are famous (or infamous) for.  

Five of these things which only barely count as cookies have 150 calories, about 15% of my thiamine RDA, and about 10% of my RDA in riboflavin, folate, and iron.  And small quantities of the other essential nutrients.  So, minimalist nutrition from a cookie with minimalist flavor.  

Next in line are Lemon Ups and Lemonades.  Which appear to be just shortbread with lemon flavoring or frosting.  So it’s like the cookie version of the British, except with ingredients they found after colonizing the Caribbean.  So it’s like eating Britishness plus imperialism.

Anyway, two Lemon-Ups have 140 calories, about 10% of my  thiamine, folate, and iron RDA, about 15% of my selenium RDA, and little bits of the other nutrients.  Also, according to the website, they’re “Naturally Flavored With Other Natural Flavors”.  Which is disturbingly vague.  And in no way mentions lemons. 

Two Lemonades, on the other hand, have 150 calories and about 10% of my thiamine and selenium requirements, and de minimis amounts (sorry, I’m an accountant, and we occasionally like to show off the only two Latin words we know) of various other nutrients.

The next cookie in line involves one of the few things British people are known for (although I don’t know if they invented it) that is not dreary and reserved.  And that is…toffee.  Two of the Toffee-Tastic cookies have 140 calories.  And virtually nothing else.  Literally tiny bits of all of the other nutrients.  Excepting the ones I mentioned seven paragraphs ago that come from tropical fruit, vegetables, sunlight, or animal sacrifice.  Apparently, toffee is so British even its nutrients are understated.

So for slightly more American cookies, we have Tagalongs.  They’re American because they involve peanuts.  Which are from South America.  But they were grown heavily in North America (thanks to George Washington Carver’s excellent contributions to agricultural science), especially in my home state of Georgia.  We even had a president from Georgia who was a peanut farmer.  So I’m officially culturally appropriating them from the South Americans.  Also, it doesn’t matter that the Chinese now grow more than us.  They’re totally Murrican.  Your argument is invalid.

Anyway, these chocolate-covered peanut butter delights have 130 calories for every two cookies. And about 20% of my copper RDA, 10% of my manganese RDA, and not much else.  Which is a bit disappointing, since one would assume that nut products have more nutrients.  But as I’ve pointed out before, peanuts aren’t really nuts.

And then there are the Do-Si-Dos, a strange mating of boring British shortbreadiness with appropriated Murrican peanut butter.  Three of these have 160 calories about 10% of my thiamine, niacin, iron, phosphorus, and selenium RDA, and 15% of my manganese.  So adding American awesomeness to British boringness appears to have made the nutritional value noticeably better than just British boringness alone.

Then there’s the hotel room/hospital bed cookies.  And by that I mean, Thin Mints.  Generally unimpressive baked sugar-coated with minty chocolate.  The only upside is that you can eat more because they’re small.   Four of these yield 150 calories, and about 10% of my thiamine, folate, iron, and selenium requirements.  So the nutrition is about as unimpressive as the cookie itself.

Now on to cookies made from ingredients appropriated by non-British people from the Americas.  Such as caramel and chocolate.  Three of the Caramel Chocolate Chip cookies have 170 calories and about 10% of my vitamin E, copper, iron, selenium, and phosphorus requirements, and about 20% of my manganese needs.  So, still not a big deal, although given that vitamin E can be hard to come by, it’s better than some of the other options.

And now for the thing that Girl Scouts almost certainly culturally appropriated from the Boy Scouts.  S’mores, the hardcore Murrican fattening agent regularly celebrated around campfires.   Two of these cookies have 150 calories, about 25% of my manganese RDA, about 15% of my selenium requirements, and just under 10% of my vitamin E needs.  

And the vest-wearing little minxes have a second variant.  They found a way to make them more tempting.  S’mores with chocolate coating is a thing now.  Two of these have 190 calories, about 10% of the thiamine, iron, and selenium requirements.  So with increased temptation comes…less nutrition.

And of course, I’ve saved the best for last.  The most tempting and colonial of them all.  Caramel and chocolate and coconut and almost nothing boringly British.  The most seductive of the girl scout desserts.  And I realize, saying “seductive” and “girl scout” in the same sentence is sort of creepy.  I admit it makes me feel sort of dirty.  

But face it, Samoas are the single greatest cookie in the history of humanity.  A testament to the greatness of American ingenuity.   Small, baked atolls of sugar, infused with coconut and caramel, and then carefully drizzled in chocolate.  And despite all of these exotic ingredients, no real nutrition.  Two of these have 150 calories.  Bits and pieces of this or that vitamin or mineral, but not much.  But honestly, if I were to slide back into obesity because of Samoas, it would almost be worth it.

So I suppose Girl Scout cookies, like most desserts, aren’t completely terrible.  But only if you eat one or two.  And I shiver at the thought of the sort of dark, maniacal, twisted soul that could only eat one or two.  It’s simply inhuman.  Seriously, anyone with that sort of discipline is likely an alien invader in disguise, and you should run away from them.

And whatever nutrition these cookies provide is nothing that you can’t easily get from other, more healthy sources.  So, in general, these should be avoided.  But I’ve already been forced to buy large quantities, and I’m not the type to just throw stuff out.  So I guess for the next few weeks I’ll need to exercise like a lunatic.  Because I can’t eat Girl Scout cookies like a lunatic (I.E. just one or two), so I’ll need to make it up some other way.

So if you, like me, have been dragooned into buying these delectable doses of premature diabetes, stay active.  Fortunately for me, I’ve recently added weight lifting to my normal routine, and it’s making it easier to stay in shape.  But I’ll discuss that in a later piece.

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