Exercise #8 – How To Lose Weight Through Rapacious, Capitalist Real Estate Investment

Nearly eleven years ago I bought a house.  I did it mostly for financial reasons, since I was single back then, and didn’t have any family considerations.  It was 2010, and the real estate market was basically at rock bottom, so I knew I could get a good deal.  Also, the government was giving away $8,000 in cash to anyone who bought a house that year.

After a rather lengthy and annoying closing process (don’t get me started about how irritating that is), I signed for the house and moved in.  After hours of moving in boxes (which is pretty good exercise, burning maybe 200-300 calories per hour), I sat down to relax in my new home.  It was a nice place in a good neighborhood.  It was cheaper than renting.  And did I mention that I was going to get $8,000 in government cheese out of the deal?

Of course, it ended up being slightly more than I bargained for.  I quickly found myself making multiple trips to Home Depot to buy gardening tools, a lawn mower, and various other things I’d need to keep the house together.  The first project was to level out the patio, which had roots underneath it pushing up the pavers.  I mentioned in my second piece that I eventually tore up the patio completely.  But back then, it was enough to just make it flat enough to walk on.  I didn’t want anyone tripping over them and suing me.

So I spent an afternoon pulling up the pavers that were off kilter, chopping out the offending roots underneath, and restoring the patio to a reasonably flat state.  It took about four hours on a Saturday, and I know now that I burned over a thousand calories doing that.  Of course, there was a downside.  I woke up the next morning and went out to the back porch to see a giant black snake waiting on me.  

Apparently, he was perturbed at all of the clanging about the day before, and decided to greet me in the morning.  Fortunately, this wasn’t the poisonous kind (I Googled it), so I shooed it away with a broom.  I thought about killing it, but that kind of snake eats rats, so I figured having him around would prevent vermin from getting in the house. 

But that’s beside the point.  The point is, buying a house isn’t just good financially.  It’s good physically.  According to the Cronometer app, chopping wood can burn just under 400 calories per hour and landscaping work maybe 300 or so per hour.  The work you’ll need to do to keep your house in good shape is also a decent way to keep yourself in good shape.  

I discovered this again when the sink fixtures broke in the bathroom.  After getting estimates from a few local plumbers on repairs, I made an important discovery.  Plumbing is an absolute racket.  The amount they charge for even basic repairs is just criminal.

Fortunately, accountants like myself have a critical skill.  We’re all awful cheapskates.  It’s part of the accounting skill set to be a miserly skinflint.  And because of this, I refused to be ripped off, and decided to do it myself.  This is much easier in the days of YouTube.  For almost any home repair you can think of, there’s at least one YouTube video of some guy doing it.  So I just had to watch some other guy replace the fixtures and then awkwardly ape what he did.  It only took me about four times as long.  And of course required another trip to Home Depot for parts.

It was a bit more of a workout than I expected, because to repair this type of sink (the kind that hangs off the wall), I had to completely unhook it from the wall, carry it to the garage (they aren’t light), and then install the new fixtures in the back.  And the old fixtures were a bit rusty, so there was a fair amount of wrenching and cussing involved.  All of which burned calories.  Well, the wrenching did.  Not the cussing. Although that does have certain mental health benefits at times.

According to the Cronometer app, an hour of plumbing work burns just under 200 calories.  This was another several hours of exercise.  It would have been worth it just for the savings (the parts cost about a tenth of what the plumbers were going to charge), but I also probably burned at least 600 calories with my amateurish plumbing efforts.  Despite my limited experience, the finished project looked fine.  A real pro wouldn’t have taken all afternoon, but it was worth it.

When I got married, I noticed that marital life only added to the number of physical home maintenance tasks that I was obligated to do.  My wife would find all sorts of tasks about the house that needed a man’s input.  I tried to inform her that we live in an age of equality and she could probably do these herself, but discovered rather quickly that this apparently does not apply in certain circumstances.  And apparently the determination as to when these modern standards apply was entirely within her discretion.  Anyway, I’ve discovered that hard work tends to make me healthier (mentally and physically), so I didn’t complain too much.

One of the projects she dumped on me was appliance repair.  My wife told me one day that the dryer that came with the house wasn’t working.  YouTube came to the rescue again, and I discovered that the problem was that the belt was broken.  So instead of buying a new dryer for several hundred dollars or paying a similar sum to a ripoff artist (AKA a repairman), I decided to buy a new belt for twenty dollars or so and replace it.  Of course, this is easier said than done.  Replacing a belt requires you to dismantle the dryer, pull out the drum (I.E. the cylindrical spinny thingy) wrap the belt around that, all while threading it through the motor.  Which you literally have to do blind, since the drum blocks your view.

I was sweating like crazy by the time I was done with this.  It was a lot of effort.  Probably another 500 calories burned.  But it was worth it.  The dryer worked for another two years.  It did start making an awful, screeching, banshee-like whine after a few months, but I learned to ignore that.  Occasional annoying noises (which can be muffled by closed doors) are a small price to pay when you can save several hundred dollars.  I would just turn some music on (like Metallica) when the dryer was making the noise, and it blended right in.

And certain outdoor activities can come with marriage too.  I never thought of myself as a gardener, but my wife insisted on starting a garden in the backyard.  And she made good progress growing all sorts of plants.  You don’t know what you’re missing until you eat vegetables straight out of the ground.  It’s much better than something that’s been sitting on the shelf for days.  And the responsibility of maintaining the garden increasingly became mine, since she lost interest after seeing a few snakes in the backyard.  I told her they weren’t poisonous, but I was rather sternly informed that was irrelevant.  Fortunately, tilling the garden can burn 200-350 per hour depending on how vigorously you work at it.  So the extra responsibility was actually a blessing.

Apart from simple repair work, improving and adding to your house is beneficial.  It improves and adds to the value of your house and can also improve and add to your health.  One project I’ve thought about is making a fire pit.  I realize a fire pit seems redundant in a place like Florida, but it’s nice to have a cookout in the summer, and useful in the two weeks of winterish (below 60 degrees Fahrenheit) weather we get in the first two weeks of January.  I had some experience in masonry working on a project at the Wormsloe Historical Site in Savannah in my youth, so it’s not that hard.  And masonry work burns 140 per hour, which is decent.  When you consider that these projects take hours (if not days) you’ll make up in quantity what you lack in quality.

I’ve also discovered that electrical work can burn just over 200 per hour.  The downside of course is electrocution and death.  And I generally avoid anything that requires me to go into the walls, since it’s likely I would just make a mess.  But if you can do this yourself, it’s worth it.  Electricians are almost as absurdly expensive as plumbers.

Another group of ripoff artists are painters.  If you want to save money and burn calories, paint your own house.  That’ll burn 200 calories per hour.  And save probably $2,000-$10,000.  Just make sure you leave the windows open, so you don’t get high on the paint fumes.  Paint sniffers are probably that lowest level junkie that other junkies look down upon.  It would be a shame to become one by accident.

And then there are the normal upkeep tasks.  I have to mow the lawn every two weeks.  And I have to rake the yard every two weeks, because Florida is weird.  The weather is constantly like summer, but the trees seem to think it’s always autumn and shed leaves like crazy.  This also requires me to clean the leaves from the gutters regularly.  Every spring I have to do maintenance on the sprinkler system.   And I occasionally have to clean mold from the side of the house, since the humidity of Florida is a breeding ground for all sorts of gross stuff.  This general manual labor burns 150 per hour and frequently fills up an afternoon.  So any day I do a lot of this work, I’ve burned off anywhere from 400-800 calories.

And then there’s the thing men hate the most.  Housekeeping.  But the various mopping, cleaning, vacuuming, and so forth will burn 120-260 calories an hour, depending on how vigorous the work is.  And my wife gets a workout too.  Because if I do the cleaning, she scoffs at my work, which is not up to her standards, and just redoes everything I did.  I’ve noticed a general difference between cleanliness standards of men and women.  Like most men, I’m fine with any environment that doesn’t require a hazmat suit.  My wife, on the other hand, would prefer that the floor be so clean that we can perform open heart surgery on it should the need arise.

So, buying a house is good for you in a lot of ways.  The investment will probably grow in value over time, and the amount of work it takes to maintain it will cause your belly to shrink in size over time.  It seems like a lot of responsibility (and it is) but it’s worth it.  Besides, a gym membership costs money.  A well maintained house increases in value, so it’s like you’re getting paid for your exercise.  And saving for retirement.  And generally feeling better about yourself.  So buy a house and start pouring work into it.  Your financial, physical and mental health will all be better for it.

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Bad Habits #7 – Offal is Awful

When I was growing up, my mother would make a rather strange form of gravy at Thanksgiving, with chewy mushy bits of what appeared to be meat in it.  Except that it didn’t taste like normal meat.  Because it was kind of gross.  I was informed that these were “giblets”.  Then I was informed what “giblets” are.  Turkey innards.  I nearly spit them out.  And for the rest of our childhood, my brother and I would scornfully refer to this travesty as “guts gravy” and imperiously turn up our noses at the vile concoction.  I don’t honestly know why my mother even put up with our bratty younger selves.

My mother isn’t the only woman in my life that inflicted innards on me.  My wife has done it too.  Because when we visited her native Zimbabwe, I was treated to “guru”.  No, not a wise, spiritual teacher.  Besides, Buddhism isn’t really a thing in Zimbabwe.  No, guru, in the Shona language, is the word for tripe.  Except that they apparently forgot to wash it.  Because the stuff was brown.  I really didn’t want to think about why it was brown either.  I ate it to appease my in-laws.  But the stuff was vile.

Of course, her people are equally horrified by the tripe we find in America, which is bleached into absolute submission so that it’s indistinguishable from lace.  But I’m generally horrified by all organ meat.  Especially kidneys, stomachs, and intestines.  We all know what ultimately comes out of those organs, right?.  No one in their right mind would want to eat that, would they?

But I’ve noticed in my time on Twitter, that numerous diet and nutrition types love to tweet pictures of animal entrails that they’re about to eat.  At first, I assumed they’d lost a bet, but the reality is they’re absolutely celebrating eating the viscera of a dead thing.  Posting pictures of the two pounds of liver they’re about to eat is a weird form of virtue signaling among the Ketobro/Carnobro crowd.

Liver is another thing that mom occasionally fed us that I found foul.  A friend of mine once told me “You’re eating the body’s filter.  Would you eat your air conditioning filter?”  I once made the mistake of sharing this jest on Twitter, and got mobbed by the aforementioned Keto/Carno types.  Mostly insisting, with surprising vehemence (I’m not sure why anyone would be this passionate about animal insides), that the liver is not a filter.  Which, in fairness, is sort of true. 

But it’s also sort of not true.  It does do some filterish type things. But I was taken aback by the visceral (Pun intended, and I laugh at the pain that frightful joke produced in anyone reading this) reaction I got.  Seriously, it was a joke.  Lighten up, broheims.  Animal parts should not produce this much outrage. Well, except amongst vegans.

Where I’m from, liver was always the thing eaten by the hillbillies who had three cars in their driveway.  All three of which would have cinder blocks where the wheels should be.  Not exactly highbrow offerings.  So, my natural coastal Georgia snobbiness, combined with the fact that I’ve never had a good experience with organ meat, made me conclude that organ meat was the worst.  And, I was right.  Sort of.

Now, any number of articles, both at high brow medical sites and shadier sites owned by supplement sellers and diet quacks, will insist that organs have plenty of nutrients.  Which is true.  But there are downsides.

So, let’s consider that awful thing known as liver.  Six ounces of beef liver only has about 300 calories, so that’s not bad.  And literally every type of protein your body needs for a day.  Which explains why the meat-eaters fetishize it so much.  It also has a full day’s supply of most of the assorted B vitamins.  In some cases, way more than a full day’s supply.  Over four times the Riboflavin Recommended Daily Allowance, and fifty times the Vitamin B12 RDA.  Also, a full day’s supply of iron, phosphorus, and selenium, and nearly a full day’s worth of zinc.  

But this is where it gets weird.  Beef liver has about 18 times the RDA for Vitamin A, and about 28 times the RDA for copper.  And, according to various medical literature I’ve seen on this, too much liver can lead to toxic levels of Vitamin A and copper.  The symptoms of which are…nasty.  I won’t bother to list them all here, but it’s pretty much a list of everything that would get someone sent to a leper colony in the Old Testament.

And the real kicker is the cholesterol.  I mentioned in my first piece that high cholesterol was one of the things I was dealing with when I started losing weight.  Six ounces of liver has over three times the cholesterol I should eat in a day.  And if I were to eat chicken or pork liver, I would apparently get lower levels of nutrients with the same (in the case of pork) or much higher (in the case of chicken) cholesterol.  So combine the cholesterol with the potential leper colony side effects (and, of course, the taste) and I think I’ll take a hard pass on liver until the end of time.

And what about that stuff my wife gave me when visiting the in-laws?  Guru (or tripe in Murrican) has about 150 calories per six ounces.  And a smattering of the nutrients liver has, although not in quite the same outlandish quantities.  But it also has more than my RDA in cholesterol.  So I can confirm that my wife was not trying to kill me with Vitamin A or Copper toxicity, but there’s still that cholesterol problem.  And tripe is also awful.

So this got me thinking about other things that one only sees in an autopsy room or a horror movie.  Some people eat lungs, hearts, and intestines.  So I’ll go through these one at a time, starting with lungs.   A six ounce portion of lungs has 150 calories, which is not bad.  It has all of the nutrients that liver has, only less so.  So you won’t have the leper colony problem.  The problem is, it has twice the RDA of cholesterol.  Eating this would anger my doctor.  Which I don’t want to do.  He’s Italian.  He literally looks like one of the hitmen from the Sopranos.  I’d better not touch this stuff.

So, what about hearts?  I remember from high school biology that heart muscle is different from organ muscle.  In certain ways, it’s more like arm and leg muscles.  I won’t bore you with the details.  Also, I forgot most of them, because I went into public accounting, not medicine.  But I thought maybe this would mean the nutritional info on hearts would not be so bad.  Sadly, that’s not the case.  Six ounces of heart has 300 calories or so, the same assortment of vitamins and minerals as other organs (to varying degrees, but who needs details), and (wait for it) way more cholesterol than I should eat in a day.

And as long as I’m on the subject of innards, let’s think about the one nobody in their right mind thinks is food.  Intestines.  Where the poo is made.  Certain people in my native Georgia eat this in swine form.  Pig’s intestines, also known as chitlins.  Which have 400 calories in every six ounce serving, and are surprisingly light on minerals compared to the other organs I mentioned.  And, of course, a ridiculous amount of cholesterol.  Noticing a pattern here?  Also, if you thought tripe was atrocious, just think about the terrible stuff you’d need to wash out of intestines.

And the story is more or less the same with the other organ known for producing excrement, the kidney.  The single worst thing people put in pies.  A six ounce portion has about 250 calories, pretty much the same types of nutrients as all of these other disgraceful things I’ve mentioned, and, depending on what type of animal the kidney is from, four to six times the cholesterol I should have on any given day.

I’m convinced that no one in their right mind would eat these things unless they had no other choice.  I think the obvious proof of this is my distant Scottish ancestors.  Who ate … haggis.  Which is a sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver (along with other horrible things) stuffed into the stomach and boiled.   Also, it’s often filled with barley as well.  Not that barley is bad for you, unless you’re someone who faints at the sight of carbs like keto/carno bros.  My problem with this is that it’s an abuse of barley.  Any barley not converted into beer is a crime against humanity.

Mike Myers once said Scottish cuisine is based largely on a dare.  Which would explain haggis.  But I have a different theory.  Given that the medieval Scottish were oppressed by the English, I think the only reason they ate this was out of desperation.  Apparently, Edward the Longshanks got the good parts of the sheep and Braveheart was left with the offal.  That probably explains why the Scots were so angry at the battle of Bannockburn.  Well, that and the whole “killing William Wallace” thing.

But there’s even weirder stuff.  Such as the least appetizing organ I can think of.  Apart from rectum, I suppose.  Brains.  An organ that looks like bloody, sweaty, cauliflower.  Not sure why anyone would think that eating this is a good idea.  And it turns out, it’s really not a good idea.  Pretty much any type of brains is going to have 250-350 calories for every six ounces and the usual collection of nutrients I mentioned before.  And about 20 to 30 times the cholesterol you should eat in a day.  You read that right.  I did notice that brains have a surprisingly high portion of Omega-3 fatty acids, which is something many of us need more of.  But it’s really not worth it.

I briefly thought about looking into the nutritional information on eyes.  Yes, eyes.  Some people eat that.  But I agree with what one of the lesser James Bonds (Roger Moore) said in Octopussy.  When his host began chowing down on a sheep’s head (eyeball first) he said “I don’t like to eat while I’m being watched.”  Or something to that effect.  I agree.  If I were to eat an animal’s eye, its dilated pupil staring me in the face on the way to my mouth, I would feel like I was being judged.  I don’t need more judgment.  I’m married.  I get plenty.

And I’ll spare you the info on the weirdest of all organ meats, euphemistically known as Rocky Mountain oysters.  That’s the….uh…. by-product you’re left with when you turn a bull into a steer.  Man-parts, in other words.  Some things should only be eaten by the desperate.  Don’t waste your time with the procreative bits.  

Now, some of the more socially conscious on the Internet will insist that eating organ meat is good for the environment.  Climate change would be slowed if we raised fewer animals, and we’d raise and eat fewer animals if we ate the entire animal.  Or so I’m told.  And it would definitely be good for the climate in another way, since humans would clearly die of cholesterol induced heart attacks more frequently, noticeably reducing the global population.  This is how Thanos would kill half of the population if he was a nutritionist.  I’ll pass.

One thing I couldn’t help but notice is that eating organ meat is totally unnecessary.  Most of the nutrients in organ meat are readily available in regular cuts of meat, without the downside.  And if we want to help the climate, we can do something else with the guts.  Maybe just feed them to the pigs.  Who cares if the pigs get high cholesterol?  They’re just bacon waiting to happen.  And a little pig heart disease won’t matter.  That’s not what’s going to kill them.  Besides, I have no intention of eating the heart after the deed is done, so who cares if it’s a little damaged?

One thing that occurs to me is that everything I’ve listed here is basically zombie food.  Imagine the most graphic scenes in The Walking Dead.  You’ll see zombies feasting on this stuff.  They’re connoisseurs of brains, livers, kidneys, lungs, stomachs, and intestines.  The latter of which they like to play with way too much before eating.  But they don’t have to worry about heart disease.  And they don’t care that innards are repugnant.  Because they’re dead.  But we’re not, and we should try to stay that way by keeping our cholesterol down.  So don’t be like a zombie.  Don’t eat offal.  Because offal is awful.

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America’s Added Fat Comes From Added Fat

I saw recently that the total number of obese people in the U.S. was approaching forty percent.  And if we include the number of overweight people, it jumps to seventy percent.  We’ve got some fatties in the U.S.  Of course, it’s mean to say “fatty” I guess (although I used to be one, so I should be allowed to), so instead I’ll borrow a phrase from the late great columnist and comedian Lewis Grizzard and call them “Abundant Americans”.  The problem is, Abundant Americans have become entirely too…abundant.  Which has me wondering, how did it come to this?

After doing a little research, I discovered that in the sixties, we ate way less.  Now, I realize that implying that we should be more like we were in the sixties is a strange thing to say.  That’s a time remote and bizarre by our standards.  I mean, really bizarre.  Horn-rimmed glasses and bell bottoms were considered fashionable.  Sally Fields (A.K.A. Gidget) was every young boy’s fantasy, instead of how it is now.  Which is, playing the grandmother of some other actress who’s every young boy’s fantasy.  Also, my parents were in their twenties and probably partying like rock stars.  Something I try not to think about too much.

Anyway, in those distant days of yore, I saw that the average American ate just over the recommended amount to maintain weight, which is 2,000 for men and 1,500 for women.  And back then, we exercised a lot more when we were playing (which I touched on in a previous piece), so even if we went over that, it didn’t make us fat.  People would, you know, go to the beach with Gidget instead of sitting at home all day.

We also exercised when we worked.  But now that we’ve outsourced our muscle jobs to various communists (which occasionally makes me question whether we truly won the Cold War), we have desk jobs that make us fat.  Like me, the CPA.  Gone are the days of laboring all day and coming home smellier than when you left.  Which is part of the reason we’re in lousy shape.  

But this piece is about focusing on what we’ve been eating.  These days, we eat an average of about 2,400-2,500 calories per day, according to various fancy people like Pew Research and the CDC.   And some men eat as much as 3,600 per day according to some sources.  Which is… ridiculous.  We eat what an army private eats, but don’t spend our days digging ditches.  So, we’re getting fat.  Really fat.  I’m sorry, “abundant.”.  Anyway, I was curious to know why.  

I thought we might be drinking too much.  I noted in a previous post that alcohol can blow a diet straight to hell.  But it turns out that drinking peaked in the eighties.  With the exception of millennials, who apparently drink too much wine.  Which is all because Game of Thrones.  It’s quite normal for people to mimic the behavior of what they see in popular culture, and I think Game of Thrones caused the spike in wine consumption.  See my Totally Scientific Analysis below that makes it abundantly clear that young people altered their drinking patterns based on key events in the show.

But for the rest of us, it’s not alcohol.  Besides, if alcoholism was the primary cause, Scotland and Australia and basically every former Soviet republic would be worse off than us.  Way worse.  So I looked into it a bit.  There are a variety of things that caused the increase, so I’ll spread these out over several pieces.  For today I’ll focus on added fats and oils, such as seed oils.

Now, anyone who spends any amount of time on diet and nutrition related forums and also has a modicum of critical thinking skills probably just gasped when they read “seed oils”.  Because there’s a lot of nonsense online about the things seed oils are responsible for.  Especially on Twitter.  Twitter is not the place to go to get a dose of reality, as shown by my Also Totally Scientific Analysis Below.

Also Totally Scientific Analysis

Fortunately, since I’m an auditor and spot BS for a living, I’m quite capable of navigating around the faulty info.  So rest assured, I’m not some seed oil crank who spreads random pseudo-science in a cheap attempt to sell vitamin supplements and gym memberships.  What I’m relying on is info from the USDA (which was analyzed by the Washington Post, amongst others) that shows that a significant portion of that increase in calories is because of added fats and oils.  Of which, seed oils are a part.

And these can be very high in calories.  One tablespoon of almost any seed oil typically has 100 or so calories.  Which means one tablespoon has as much as an apple.  This is also true of non-seed oils, like olive oil.  Since it’s common to use more than one tablespoon, this can add up quickly.

But one thing occurred to me when I discovered this.  Who cooks with seed oils?  Or any other oils.  Or Crisco or lard or any other added fat.  I almost never have.  And there is a certain group that I’m a member of (which represents about half of the human population) that, for the most part, can’t be bothered with this stuff.  We don’t want to spend all day “seasoning pans” and prepping food.  We want to burn our food quickly and eat it.  Or buy stuff that’s already made.  And yes, I’m talking about…dudes.

But then I remember all of the bizarre ingredients we see in the premade stuff from the grocery store.  You know the ones I mean.  The ones called “Partially hydrogenated scientific words” and so forth.  A lot of the preprocessed foods we get (but shouldn’t get) have seed oil (or other oils) in them, which tends to add to the calorie count.  This is a problem for dudes who don’t like to cook.  Which is most dudes.

And members of the dudestaff sex like to order in and eat out a lot too.  The problem is, restaurants use added fats and oils too.  This makes the meals we eat at a restaurant a bit more fattening than anything we might cook at home.  Especially when we eat the non-pretentious, manly stuff.  I.E. everything that is unhealthy, like burgers and fried food.

Actually, I’ve noted before that the burgers themselves aren’t so bad.  It’s the sides that get you.  French fries and onion rings and so forth tend to be fried in oil.  As is the greatest fried chicken on the planet (Publix fried chicken), which makes it crazy unhealthy (As I’ve noted before.  Twice).  Publix fried chicken has twice the calories of a chicken that’s not been breaded, drenched and fried, it’s easy to see how this can add up to massive, pants-splitting girth.

Now, seed oils are not necessarily bad for you, as the cranks may imply.  They have a decent chunk of Vitamin E (which can be hard to come by, as I’ve mentioned before), and certain kinds also have a decent helping of the vaunted Omega-3 fatty acids that prevent heart attacks and reduce triglycerides.  So I’m not saying to avoid these entirely.  But keep it to a minimum.

And one easy way around this is to cook for yourself.  My assorted dudebros in the world who eschew cooking would be wise to start doing this.  If you avoid the preprocessed stuff and the precooked stuff and the constant eating out and ordering in, and cook your own food, you could cut your calorie consumption significantly.  Odds are, even if you do use a little seed oil, you won’t go overboard the way the restaurants and soulless corporate food processors do.

And this goes for women too.  We don’t want you to get fat either, ladies.  Or die of a heart attack.  Or get cancer.  Or the other things that come with being obese. Cooking for yourself may take a little time out of the day, but it will probably add years to your life. It also makes it easier to attract a man. Which is totally sexist and now I’m ashamed of myself. Except that this is a totally true statement.

One thing I’ve discovered as I’ve been losing weight and researching what to do and not do is just how unsurprising the results are.  Yeah, we’re eating more added fats and oils, which is not necessarily the intuitive cause of weight gain.  But the reason we’re eating more is we’re eating preprocessed stuff.  And eating out too much.  And eating the wrong kind of things when we do.  This is all stuff I kind of knew already.  But until now, I didn’t realize how bad it was for me.  

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to identify specific ways to lose weight, but everything I’ve found just reinforces things I already knew.  So, for someone who isn’t interested in doing a deep dive into the details, the moral of this story is this: The way to lose weight is just to stop doing so much of the stuff you already know you shouldn’t be doing.  Such as, don’t eat garbage.  Because the thing that appears to make them garbage is added fats and oils. And these are one of the main reasons we’re all getting fat.

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Good Habits #7 – Mom Was Right About Keeping The Doctor Away

Any one of a certain age remembers the health propaganda one liners we were fed as a child.  I’ve written a whole piece on how a secret cabal of mothers feeds these into our brains.  Well, one of those one-line indoctrination pieces was “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”  Although I still take umbrage at being doused in dietary agitprop from an early age, I have to admit that this one, like many others, has an element of truth.  Despite my natural resistance to the brainwashing from insipid public service announcements I was inundated with as a child, I have to admit that apples, and other fruit, are really good for you.

Now, any keto bros reading this are cringing at the thought of someone encouraging others to eat something with (gasp) carbs or (double gasp) sugar in it.  But occasional natural sugar isn’t that bad.  Fruits are good for you.  And some other people reading this might be chuckling at how obvious this statement seems.  But the point of this piece is to explain how fruits are good for you.

Let’s start with those apple things I mentioned.  Nutrient wise, one apple has a little bit of just about everything.  Various nutrients, usually in the range of 2-5% of my Recommended Daily Allowance.  And for the carb obsessed (e.g. keto bros), they only have about seven percent of my daily carb RDA, or 19 grams.  Which isn’t bad.  And they only have about 100 calories.  Which really isn’t bad.

Apples are not exactly superfood when it comes to vitamins and minerals.  More of a jack-of-all-trades food with a bit of everything.  As is the case with the apple’s cousin, the pear.  But there is a hidden benefit for those of us trying to lose weight: They leave you feeling full for a long while.  This makes them a great afternoon snack.  Eating an apple or a pear when I get home from work is a good way to make it to dinner without binging on potato chips or other less healthy things.

Another fruit worth eating is the delectable delight of my home state, Georgia.  Peaches, which are much better than apples as far as nutrition goes.  They have a decent chunk of Vitamin A and C, and a smattering of various other nutrients.  They have fewer carbs (12 grams) and only 60 calories.  So these are an even better option than apples and pears.  Unless you have them in a peach cobbler.  I’ve pointed out the dangers of desserts before.

The unfortunately phallic fruit known as bananas are even more nutritious than peaches, apples, or pears. They have a third of my vitamin B6 RDA and over 10% of my vitamin C, potassium, manganese, and copper needs.  Also, a decent amount of magnesium, which is hard to come by, as I’ve noted before in a previous piece.  Meanwhile, they only supply 11% of the recommended carbs (24 grams), and only a 100 calories.  

I also discovered in my younger, more dangerous years, that they’re a really good hangover remedy.  I’ve written before how too much alcohol can ruin a diet.  But if you do go too far, and are regretting things the next morning, a banana can ease a soured stomach.  The brown water of life (coffee) also helps.

Speaking of alcohol, when it comes to fruits there’s unprocessed wine to consider.  And by that I mean grapes.  30 of these gets me a big slice of my daily vitamin B6, vitamin K and copper, and sundry other nutrients.  All for only 100 calories and 11% (25 grams) of my daily carbs.

For slightly more exotic fruits, the results get better.  For example, one cup’s worth of honeydew melon has 70 calories and 7% (10 grams) of the daily carbs limit.  It also gets me about 40% of my vitamin C requirements, 12% or so of my vitamin B6 and potassium needs, and various other things.  

It’s cousin the cantaloupe is better.  One cup has 55 calories, 5% or my daily carbs (or 11 grams), two-thirds of my vitamin C, 12% or so of my potassium, and more than the daily requirement of vitamin A.

As for kiwi (not the weird looking New Zealand bird, the fruit) one fruit yields 42 calories, has 4% of my daily carbs (8 grams), nearly three quarters of my Vitamin C requirements, nearly one quarter of my Vitamin K requirements, and 10% of my copper needs, amongst other things.

These are all very good for you, with low cost in calories and carbs. But, there’s one major drawback.  They lack…taste.  I mean, I’m sure they taste better than cardboard (I’ve never tried it), but the epic, Pat Sajak levels of blandness in these things makes eating them a chore.  I really only eat them when they’re free, or at least come with a hotel room (such as “free” breakfast at Hampton Inn or whatever).  But I prefer to spend my own money on stuff with a bit more flavor.

Exotic things with actual flavor exist, though.  Mangos are heavier on calories than the other things I’ve mentioned, with 200 total. They have 20% my daily carbs (about 44 grams), so this is a bit more than the other fruits I’ve listed. Enough to make the Adkins/Keto/Carnivore/Low-carb types balk at this.  But it’s worth it.  They have a decent chunk of several B vitamins, vitamin K, and potassium, 20% of my vitamin E needs (another vitamin that I’ve noticed can be hard to get enough of), 40% or my copper, and more vitamin A and C than I need all day.

Papayas are good too. A decent sized one has 160 calories, and 13% (35 grams) of my daily carb limit.  They are heavy on B vitamins, have more than the needed A and C, and 20% of my copper and magnesium requirements. Exotic fruits that actually taste like something appear to be among the most nutritious options. So even if they are a little heavier in calories and carbs, you kind of get what you pay for with these.

I’ve also discovered some new fruits that can provide good nutrition.  One thing I discovered using the Cronometer app is that it can recommend foods based on what nutrition goals I haven’t met.  It analyzes my remaining needs and recommends something that will fulfil what’s left.  Oftentimes, a single fruit of some kind will fill the gaps.  The problem is that it suggests things that are awfully…outlandish.  Things I’ve never heard of, and wouldn’t be sure where to find.  But I guess I’ll list a couple of the most commonly recommended obscurities just for laughs.

One thing Cronometer likes to suggest is a Santa Claus Melon.  I have never in my life seen a Santa Claus Melon.  Nor had I ever heard of one.  No local supermarket carries them.  I have a hunch that the only place I could find them is if I went to some hard to find specialty market and bought them from some beardneck in a baha who smells of cannabis.  Fortunately, as it turns out, they’re about the same as honeydew in terms of nutrition.  Honeydew are readily available at stores where the staff have good personal hygiene.

Another thing Cronometer occasionally suggests is cherimoya, a bizarre looking fruit that looks like an apple and an artichoke had a horribly deformed lovechild which they abandoned in a ditch.  Although I hear they’re actually good.  The greatest American author of all time, Mark Twain, swore by them.

And they are nutritious.  Fill up a cup with hunks of this and I get 120 calories, 16% of my carbs (34 grams), about one fifth of my thiamine, potassium, and copper needs, one quarter of my riboflavin needs, one sixth of my vitamin B5 RDA, almost half of my vitamin B6 needs, one third of my vitamin C, and 85% of my selenium requirements.

There’s a reason I’ve never found either of these in stores, though.  These (to my knowledge) don’t exist on my continent.  The Santa Claus melon is from…Spain.  Of course it is.  Who doesn’t immediately think of Spain when they think of Santa Claus?  The figure who is a conflation of a Turkish saint and a figure from Norse mythology clearly screams “Spain”.

And the cherimoya comes from…South America.  Which is less surprising than Santa Claus melons being from Spain.  But it’s a pretty long trip there, and I gather that we don’t spend a lot of time shipping them north.  So unless you have some hippie grocer nearby who specializes in exotics (the aforementioned beardneck), these are hard to come by.  Or you could buy them on Amazon.  Of course they’re on Amazon.  For $16 a pound.  Which is an affront to human decency.  I won’t even buy steak for that much.

Fortunately, since I’m now a Florida man, there are certain other options available closer to my home.  There are always certain citrusy type things around.  Such as oranges. Of course.  Each of these gives me a mere 60 calories, 5% of my carb RDA (12 grams), three quarters of my vitamin C, a decent serving of vitamin A and folate, and various other stuff.  Lemons and limes have the same stuff, but proportionately less, since they’re smaller.  Grapefruit, on the other hand, is more nutritious. It has decent vitamin B and potassium, lots of vitamin A and C (almost 100% RDA) for 100 calories and 10% (23 grams) of my carbs. 

But… it’s gross.  As I’ve mentioned before, I believe they are a cruel joke cast upon the Earth by dark, sinister, elder gods of Lovecraftian origin to cause suffering amongst humanity.  Basically, Cthulhu’s primary goal was to give humanity permanent “bitter face”.  Obviously.

Anyway, apart from citrus, Florida is also known for strawberries.  A cup of these yields 50 calories, 4% of my carbs (8 grams), all the vitamin C I need for the day, and  one quarter of my manganese.

And lastly, another thing you can get in Florida is pineapple.  Yes, certain parts are warm enough for it to grow.  A cup of this has 80 calories, 9% (19 grams) of my carbs, 88% of my vitamin C, 11% of my thiamine, 67% of my manganese RDA. and a decent portion of vitamin B6 and copper.  And, of course, a smattering of other nutrients in smaller quantities. 

This is obviously not an all inclusive list, but the overall point is that fruits are low calorie, and generally nutrient dense.  So I would encourage my keto bros to bag their carbophobia and occasionally eat one. A few carbs won’t kill you. Lack of certain key vitamins and minerals might. And those who don’t have irrational fear of carbs would also be well advised to add one or two of these to your daily diet.

So will an apple a day (or any other fruit) keep the doctor away?  Not necessarily.  They aren’t a miracle cure.  And you could get hit by a bus.  Fruits don’t help with that.  But they do offer some good nutrition at low caloric cost and are a good way to avoid curbing your appetite between meals.  So eat plenty of fruits.  Between meals or as part of one.  They’re an easy way to get healthy without getting fat.  And keeping your weight down and your micronutrients up does keep the doctor away.

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Why the Holidays Don’t Have to Be That Bad For Your Health

Last year, in one of my first blog posts, I explained why people obsess too much about gaining weight over the holidays.  People spend entirely too much time worrying about the impact of a few days in November and December.  But the last month of the year can’t cancel out your good behavior for the rest of the year.  It’s not a problem to overdo things occasionally.  Your habits determine your outcomes, not your occasional dalliance with debauchery over the holidays.

This year, I proved why it’s not a problem.  And proved how it’s possible to celebrate over the holidays and still stay in shape.  I’ve just eaten all sorts of rich, holiday food for Thanksgiving.  But I won’t gain a pound.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s how it works.

The night before Thanksgiving we typically gather together with a slightly less excessive meal than the gala of gluttony that commences at midday on the fourth Thursday of November.  This year, the main course was glazed ham.  That’s right Keto bros.  Glazed.  With sugary stuff.  Imagining your looks of horror while reading this gives me great schadenfreude. 

The sides were green bean casserole and seven layer salad and broccoli.  These may sound healthy, but they consist heavily of things involving butter or mayonnaise or cream cheese.  Also, there was sweet potato casserole, which has both sugar and butter.  So we added fattening stuff to make sure these things weren’t too healthy.

I mean, there’s good stuff in there.  The green beans have a good all around assortment of vitamins and minerals.  And the casserole included red bell peppers, which have plenty of vitamin A and C.  Broccoli, like most green things, is very healthy.  And when you dig under the layers of mayonnaise in the seven layer salad, you’ll find peas, celery, and lettuce.  These have a decent collection of nutrients too.  Well, the peas do.  Lettuce and celery are mostly just water in a slightly crunchier, greenish form.

Even the sweet potato casserole (which excludes marshmallows, because we’re not heathens) has a healthy chunk of ground pecans on it (because we’re celebrating Thanksgiving in at my parents house in Georgia, so of course it does), and the truth is, sweet potatoes are actually sort of healthy.  They are heavy on vitamin A, and have an assortment of other nutrients.  And as I’ve pointed out before, nuts can bring all sorts of good things to your diet.

So the real problem is not the nutrition.  It’s the calories.  This was a 900 calorie meal.  I’ll be metabolically healthy (I.E. have all of the vitamins and minerals), but I’ll potentially be fatter.  And the next day I went even further than this.

Thanksgiving dinner consisted first of all of….leftovers from the night before.  Of course it did.  Southerners are known for their frugality.  This is the part of the country where we reuse pickle jars as drinking glasses.  Also, we had more food leftover than normal since several people didn’t arrive thanks to the Captain Trips Plague of 2020 That Emerged From Wuhan And Laid Waste To The World.  Or at least the economy.

But in addition to every calorie heavy item from the night before, we had: White and dark turkey meat (Thanksgiving, duh) and cranberry salad (Thanksgiving, also duh).  These are also sort of high calorie, but not unhealthy.  The turkey has a good chunk of B vitamins and various minerals (like iron, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, and selenium), and the cranberry salad (which has apples and coconut in it), has a nice chunk of various non-B vitamins.  But also sugar and cream.  So again, nutritious, but high calorie.  Especially because I got seconds.  

This was a 1,300 calorie meal.  Normally, anything over 700 calories per meal is something we should be cautious of, and over a 1,000 is not a normal habit we should have.  But there is a rather obvious way to offset this.  Do active stuff.

I’m always a bit shocked by how many people focus on food or “The Food System“™ when discussing the problem of obesity.  But as I discussed in my very first post, exercise is a huge part of the equation when it comes to calorie burn.  Perhaps the biggest part.  So getting out and getting a little nuts is how I fight down the side effects (and belly and butt and thigh effects) of holiday carousing.

The obvious way is tooling around with my brother’s kids.  My nephew has the energy levels of a hyperactive kid who snorts cocaine.  He doesn’t snort cocaine, obviously, because my brother isn’t a felon.  But I occasionally wonder about his sugar intake, since his energy levels seem…unnatural.  And my niece is his biggest cheerleader, and gleefully participates in whatever chaotic games he invents.  

This typically involves running around like a lunatic and randomly inventing rules to a game which state that whatever he is doing at any given moment is how to score points.  This capriciousness in making rules proves that my nephew is basically an autocratic fascist waiting to happen.  Anyway, this inevitably results in him scoring somewhere between 1010 and 10400 points (and my niece maybe getting three points) due to his arbitrary rule-making.  He’s a fascist.  Your future overlord.  It’s virtually guaranteed.

This also results in one very exhausted uncle.  Now, there’s no option in Cronometer for an exercise entitled “Playing With Psychotic Children”.  But given the level of exhaustion I feel after an hour, I imagine this burns 400 – 800 calories.  So this usually works off the extra food I had at lunch.  Unfortunately, thanks to the Creeping Doom Born Of Winged Rodents From Hubei Province, the kids couldn’t come this year.  So this wasn’t an option in 2020.

Of course, there is another thing that always happens when I go home.  One thing I suck at, but like to do, is golf.  I’ve pointed out before that these seemingly light exercises are actually good exercise.  My dad loves golf (retired Army guys are almost as fanatical about golf as doctors), and we play every time I visit home.  Which normally burns 800 – 1,000 calories over a four hour round.  But I probably burn more, because I miss.  A lot.  Which results in me swinging the club a lot more than normal.

Another option is to work it off on Black Friday.  I’ve never subjected myself to the wild pandemonium that is Black Friday shopping, but eight hours of just walking is over 2,000 calories burned.  And if you fight and shout with rando strangers over the latest toy or video game that your kids absolutely must have, the burn increases.  And if you do it at Wal-Mart, it’s even better.  Black Friday at Wal-Mart is a combination of a shopping spree, a street brawl, and civil unrest.  I pointed out in my last piece that civil unrest and brawling can be very good exercise.  Even though it has certain felonious downsides.

When all else fails, I can just take a walk.  Rather than collapse on the couch in a carb-induced coma, I go out and walk for an hour or so.  This year, I took walks around the neighborhood with my wife, admiring the Christmas decorations (that were already up), waving to the friendly neighbors (who are much nicer than the people in my adoptive home of Florida, which has a lot of cranky people who immigrated from the frozen wastelands north of Virginia and brought their strange, rude manners with them), and dodging the ubiquitous full-size pickups, jeeps, four-wheelers and dune buggies that zip up and down the streets.  It’s rural Georgia, after all.  It comes with certain hillbilly hazards.

We took a seventy minute walk the day before Thanksgiving, resulting in a calorie deficit of 300 for the day when combined with what I ate and my normally basal metabolic rate.  Not as good as the 500 calorie deficit I normally aim for, but still good.  On Thanksgiving, we took an eighty minute walk, which burned off 400 calories.  This brought my calories eaten to about the same as I burned.  So I broke even on a day of the year known for binge eating.  Which is not bad.  

And since what we eat for Christmas is more or less the same, I already know how I’m going to survive the holidays with the same pants size.  All I have to do is take the time I would normally spend hibernating after dinner and instead get outside and exercise.  This is all it takes to keep the weight off during the holidays.  Of course, New Year’s is a different story, but I’ve written before about how to avoid getting fat from alcohol.

So the secret is not a secret.  Go ahead and eat like a fool for the holidays, but then get out and go nuts.  Exercise for an hour every day.  And eat that turkey and pumpkin pie and everything unhealthy (including egg nog) with no guilt whatsoever.  You can have a happy, merry time this year no matter what holiday you celebrate.  If you keep exercising, you’ll have a guilt-free and gluttonous, wondrous time.

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Exercise #7 – Patriotism Is Really Good For You

So, the dumpster fire that is the 2020 election is awful for mental health.  My Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of all sorts of rants, rage, and meltdowns.  This is compounded by the fact that many of us are frustrated being stuck in our homes due to the imminent end of humanity due to the Black Plague of Hubei Province.  But I’ve discovered election season can have the opposite effect on physical health.

One example is how I chose to drop off my vote.  Florida allows mail in votes, but I was a little leery of dropping into the mail.  Now, I’m not some nut who thinks massive voter fraud is in the works.  But there is an easy way to guarantee that there are no problems with my vote.  I jumped on my bike and rode down to the local elections office and dropped the ballot off in person.  That was a thirty minute ride each way.  My patriotic exercise burned off about 600 calories.

On the way back, I saw various activists and volunteers engaged in their assorted electioneering type stuff:  Holding signs, chanting assorted pre-chewed slogans, and so forth.  And you know what I didn’t see?  Fat people.  The crowds of various volunteers seemed universally skinny.  I’m not saying they had the bodies of Greek gods or anything, but I certainly didn’t see any giant, sloppy blobs of flesh.  It occurred to me, some of these exercises in democracy are also just generally good exercise.  Getting out the vote requires you to leave the house and move around.

Even if all one does is cast their own vote, it can burn off some excess.  For example, if  you’re one of the suckers who stood in line to vote, you’re burning calories.  I made that mistake when I first moved to Florida and voted early in the 2008 election.  I stood in a rather ridiculous line on a Saturday.  For FIVE HOURS.  When I finally voted and saw the option to have my ballot mailed to me, I checked “Yes”.  I would’ve checked “HELL YES!” if it was an option.

As irritating as it was at the time, I now know that standing for five hours burned 600-1,000 calories.  The actual burn from standing in a line varies a bit, depending on how much moving around you do.  So as intolerably dull as it was, it was actually good for me.  If we all burned that much every day, we could eat almost anything we wanted.

And the chumps like me waiting in the seemingly interminable line weren’t the only ones getting a side benefit for our health.  As I stood in line, there were various candidates and activists trying to engage with the voters and get their vote.  That’s how long the line was.  You’re not supposed to campaign with 100 feet of a polling place.  But the line was so long that there was plenty of room for campaigners outside of that radius.  They could happily harass those of us who were just there to vote without getting fined or arrested or whatever.  And they had clearly been there longer than I had and stayed longer than I did.  Which is probably why there was not a single fattie among them.

These hardcore campaign pavement pounding types burn lots of calories.  Take these clipboard toting people who keep knocking on your door.  People who walk throughout the neighborhood going to every house trying to explain why Bob Jones and Joe Blow are the perfect choice for property appraiser and dogcatcher.  I realize they’re irritating (less so than Jehovah’s Witnesses, but still irritating) but imagine how much they burn off.  Walking for five hours burns 1,500 calories.  And they obviously spend most of the time walking, given the number of doors that get slammed in their faces.

And these aren’t the only people that lose weight while annoying you.  Inevitably, crowds of this or that politician’s supporters congregate near the corners of major intersections.  You know, the really busy ones where they’re most likely to hold up traffic.  I’m sure they think that this “increases visibility”, but if you slow people down on their commute, I don’t see how that wins you their political support.  And there’s the off chance that one of them will get flattened by a semi, so it generally doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Having said that, just standing there can burn 100 – 200 calories per hour.  And they do it for hours.  If they’re holding signs, the encumbrance actually burns a little more.  And if they’re spinning the signs they’ll burn a lot more.  And yes, I’ve seen this happening.  It seemed a bit strange, since normally a sign spinner is advertising things like pizza or transmission service.  Using it for politics seems undignified.  But then, politics in general have seemed undignified for quite a while.

And then there’s the people who go to hours-long political events.  Not only do they often wait in interminable lines just to get in, but spend hours milling around while this or that candidate spews carefully polished talking points.  Or just randomly riffs about this and that.  And milling about may not be the best exercise, but it’s better than planting your posterior on a couch and watching the same candidate bloviate through a television screen.  

People who go to major campaign events and mill about cheering at candidates also burn 100 – 200 calories per hour.  Sure, you might be spreading the Scourge of Wuhan all around, but at least you’re keeping the fat off the waistline.  And I guess obesity is statistically worse than the ‘Rona.  And by that I mean, more likely to kill you.  Still, it never hurts to mask up.  Trust me, it doesn’t make you a wimp.

And since this rather complicated election is inevitably devolving into a courtroom brawl, the result has been lots of people in the streets yelling at each other.   Waving signs, marching around, and yelling unimaginative slogans like “Hey, hey, ho, ho [FILL IN THE BLANK] has to go!”.  Since this is basically just walking, it can burn a good 200 – 250 an hour.  And it also clears the sinuses if you get tear gassed or pepper sprayed.

And if you’re one of the more rambunctious protestors who likes to put on makeshift body armor and hit people, that’s great exercise.  Fighting burns about 250 calories in fifteen minutes.  The downside, of course, is that people might get hurt, killed, or arrested.  And the country might plunge into a fratricidal civil war.  So I don’t recommend this.  If you want to burn calories while fighting, go join an MMA club.  Still, I don’t remember the last time I saw a fat anarchist.  All of the pugilism may explain that.  Although I’ve seen more than a few mugshots of battered and bruised anarchists.  So there’s a downside to getting carried away. 

So, getting involved in the election burns off things.  Just don’t burn anything other than calories.  I didn’t find an entry for “arson” in Cronometer, but I doubt lighting fires is good exercise.  And it also results in death and arrest and so forth.  The same goes for breaking windows.  Besides, this sort of thing can hardly be called patriotism.

But the more positive activities of electioneering are actually a good way to stay healthy.  So get out and get involved.  Even if you’re unthrilled with your options, which is all too common, getting out in the street in election season can keep the pounds off.  I’ve noted before that getting in shape is really patriotic.  So go do that.  Besides, a little exercise is a good way to calm the mind.  If we all did that, maybe we could tamp down some of this excess crazy in the air.

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Bad Habits #6 – Why Georgia is So Obese

I spent most of my life (even the portion where I kicked around a lot because the Army would relocate my dad every year or so) somewhere to the south of the Mason-Dixon line.  And the overwhelming majority of it was in Georgia, either during the time my father was at Fort Stewart, or when we moved to Savannah after he retired.

Georgia.  The land of pine trees and magnolias.  Of gorgeous Appalachian trails and magnificent coastal salt marshes.  A place where the weather never got too cold, and I could spend my days hiking nature trails through swamps or mountains, swimming in the Atlantic, rafting down majestic rivers (including that one the filmed Deliverance on), or hitting golf balls in one of many world class golf courses (I’m lying, I couldn’t afford Augusta National to save my life), or just traipsing around the historic district of Savannah if there was nothing else to do.

But it’s a wonder with all of the things there are to do that Georgians are such giant fatasses.  And our neighboring states have high obesity rates too, frequently higher than Georgia’s.  Make no mistake, the South is by far the fattest part of the country.  Part of it is that we suffer from the same problem most Americans have, and that (as I’ve pointed out before) is not getting nearly enough exercise, because we have increasingly sedentary lifestyles.  But a huge part of it is the food we eat.

Southern food is a captivating mix of European, African, and Native American cooking styles.  Various exotic sauces and spices and meats and vegetables combined in a heavenly, rapturous blend.  Food so good that it makes the spirit sing and engenders feelings of great joy and contentment.  The problem is, it makes your gut expand rather rapidly, and can lead to hypertension, high cholesterol, blocked arteries, and early, painful death.

Now, I’m never giving up the glorious cuisine of the South.  I’m convinced that the same way God dropped manna from heaven on the Hebrews, he dropped pan-fried and slow-smoked food on the South.  This diet of the American Holy Land will always be a part of my life.

But I am going to need to be a bit mindful of what the cost of eating these things are.  One thing about the calorie counting diet I’ve been on is that I don’t have to worry about “cheating”.  If I eat something a bit heavy, it just means I have to work it off, or eat less heavy things at the next meal.  So I can occasionally indulge in the diet of the Bible Belt, as long as I’m willing to run a lot.

So, let’s not bury the lede here.  Let’s start with the most obviously unhealthy thing we eat in the South.  The oil soaked Ambrosia of the Gods.  Fried Chicken.  The one food that makes all others seem meagre and pale by comparison.

The problem is, a typical fried chicken breast has about 350-400 calories.  A thigh will have 300-350 calories.  And wings and drumsticks tend to range between 150 and 200.  So any two of these will be all of the calories I should eat in a single meal, even before I eat the side dishes.  Unless I were to just eat a drumstick and a wing.  But I’m not a degenerate.  I would never do that.

It’s not all bad news.  The oils provide some Omega-3 fatty acids (if cooked in the right kind of oil) and there’s plenty of B vitamins and such.  But there’s also plenty of cholesterol and sodium.  So the bad outweighs the good.  So, sadly, I’ve realized the need to limit this most tempting, but least healthy, of Southern fare.

This is easier said than done.  I live in the Tampa Bay area, home of Publix supermarkets.  I’ve noted in a past post that they have the absolute best (and most unhealthy) fried chicken.  I occasionally succumb to the temptation, but I’ve learned to do it rarely.  This is something to do on special occasions.  It’s no longer a staple of my diet.

Fried chicken isn’t the only thing we fry.  We also like dead pigs.  Specifically, pork chops.  A six ounce fried pork chop can have 400 – 450 calories.  Then there’s the peculiar dish known as “Chicken Fried Steak”, which in no way involves chicken.  I guess we just call it that to confuse foreigners and tourists.  Anyway, this precursor of bypass surgery can have 450-500 calories.  And that’s when we don’t put gravy on it.  Which is…never.

Of course, we do have healthier options in the form of seafood.  On the coast, we have shrimp, oysters, and scallops, as well as various fish from the Atlantic or the many freshwater lakes.  The only problem is, we tend to fry those too, adding on serious calories.  A six ounce fried catfish (or almost any other fish) has about 400 calories.  Six jumbo fried shrimp will have 300, and six fried scallops will have 350.  Six fried oysters, on the other hand, only have about 200, so those aren’t bad.   And make no mistake, all of these still have the nutrient benefits of seafood.  But our tendency to add Southern Heart Attack Sauce (I.E. some sort of oil or grease, in excessive portions) and fry them makes the meal a bit more costly than it otherwise would be.

And just to maintain the unhealthy theme, we like to fry a lot of our sides too.  Like fried okra and fried squash and fried zucchini and fried green tomatoes.  A side of any of these (say, half a cup) in raw form would normally have maybe 15 calories.  But by applying Southern Ingenuity, we’ve managed to give these sides about ten times the calories they would normally have.  Happy artery hardening.

And this is just the stuff normal, sane people eat.  In the land of cacti, cowboys, and overly large hats (Texas), they will actually eat fried butter.  It’s as if the butter alone wasn’t unhealthy enough, and they had to add to it.  I’ve always found this strangely redundant, since they’re effectively just taking fat and frying it in…other fat.  I’ve never had this (it sounds gross) but I encourage a hard pass by the entire human race.  Just don’t.

So I guess the short version of all of this is that fried stuff is to be avoided.  I know, it’s the best stuff there is.  Magnificent flavors that make your soul rejoice.  And also hastens its departure to the great beyond.  Apart from a periodic splurge, we should try to have healthier things.

And then there’s the other type of heart attack inducing awesomeness that the South is known for.  The slowly cooked celestial magnificence known as barbecue.  Mesmerizing fatty, smoky goodness.  Which, like it’s fried cousins, can also cause an early trip to the pearly gates.  Or the infernal reaches, if you’re the type of person who might deserve that.  Such as people who think that tofu counts as food or that hockey is a real sport or that bourbon should be mixed with… anything.  Anyway, the point is, too much barbecue can be bad for you.  Even if you don’t end up in perdition.

We’ll start with the most heavenly of all things barbecue: Ribs.  Of course, ribs are truly divine.  I mean, Eve was made out of one (duh).  But I guess that’s beside the point.  Ribs can be a bit heavy on the calories.  Six ounces of pork spare ribs (which tends to be about four ribs) will get you 600-700 calories, depending on how fat the pig was.   This is an entire meal.  Pork back ribs are a little better, netting 450 to 500 calories.  And beef ribs are actually about the same as the pork ribs, spare or back. Long story short, any day you eat ribs, you should probably have at least one light meal.  And run.  A lot.

But ribs aren’t the only barbecue selection.  No self respecting barbecue place would fail to have smoked sausages.  These aren’t noticeably better than the ribs, though.  Six ounces will get you about 600 calories.  And there’s also smoked beef brisket, which comes in between 350 to 550 for each six ounces, depending on if it came from the fatted calf, or his skinny cousin.  

Fortunately, there are healthier alternatives.  Six ounces of pulled pork (a staple of barbecue places everywhere) only has about 300 calories.  That tends to be because they tend to not pull the fat with the pork.  And there’s always barbecue chicken, which only has about 250 calories for a six ounce portion.   So, unlike the fried deliciousness the South is most known for, barbecue doesn’t have to be unhealthy.  Just choose wisely.

Of course, there are a variety of other things that tend to be unique to the South.  Such as those from the Blessed Lands of Marshes and Mosquitoes along the Atlantic Coast, where I grew up.  The area of the Georgia and Carolina coasts also known as the Low Country.  Fair warning, there are some in South Carolina who will insist that they’re the true Low Country, and the neighboring states are pretenders.  But they’re just bloviating to compensate for the fact that they’re married to their cousins.  Don’t be fooled by these lies and heresies.

Anyway, in this Holiest of Holy parts of the Holy Land, you can get a Low Country Boil.  This is a tempting mix of sausage, shrimp, corn, veggies, and various other things, spiced and boiled to perfection.  And it only has about 200 – 300 calories for six ounces.  So, I tend to have more than that, because I can get away with it.  

There are a lot of people who consider the inhabitants of this part of the country to be snobs.  Now you know why.  We’ve managed to make a dish that is a delectable addition to Southern cuisine without the heart attack part.  So we’re not snobs, we’re just better than you.   

Another fairly healthy option common in this part of the country is shrimp and grits.  I know that some of you may think grits are disgusting and runny grossness.  It’s not my fault you worship the Devil.  Sure, grits are just corn meal, which is sort of bland.  But if you add shrimp and butter and other awesomeness, it’s quite tasty.  And one cup of this delight is only 250-300 calories.  So stop hating on grits.

As for the common Southern breakfast staple, biscuits and gravy, it’s…not so healthy.  Two biscuits slathered in gravy tend to offer 400 – 500 calories.  Unless that’s the only thing you eat for breakfast, there’s not much of nutritional value there.  And it should not be the only thing you eat for breakfast, unless you just want to be hungry again in an hour.

And then there’s the toothless hillbilly classic, liver and onions.   Six ounces has 300 calories.  So that’s not bad.  Just make sure you put enough onions on it to cover up the flavor.  Because liver is gross.  And liver is a cholesterol bomb.  But mostly, it’s gross.  I mean, there aren’t many calories, but did I mention it’s gross?

Sometimes, even the stuff we have on the side is too much.  I know what you’re thinking.  Don’t you inbreeders eat collard and turnip greens?  Well, yes.  And both are very good for you, as I’ve noted before.  And, by themselves, they have very few calories.  But we tend to add butter and bacon.  By the time we’re done, it’s over 300 calories.  And this is just a side dish.  No wonder we’re such blimps.  

Sometimes we’ll have our main course with a serving of Southern style mac and cheese.  Covered in mustard and cheese and other awesomeness.  But this tends to also be on the fattening side, as I’ve written about before.  This has about 200 – 250 calories.  Which is not great for a side dish.

And those little doughy things we call Hush Puppies can add to the waistline too .  Three will get you 200 calories or so.  They’re basically just cornbread, which also has about 200 calories for a medium sized square.  And that’s if you eat it without butter.  Which would never happen, because it’s another thing that can result in you being condemned to pandemonium.

You might be thinking, don’t you ever just have vegetables on the side?  Yes.  I already mentioned how we’ve problematized greens.  But when it comes to carrots, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc, we eat those as well.  But apparently everyone in the South went to the Paula Deen school of cooking.  Which means you douse everything with butter.  Which adds 100-200 calories with no real benefit.

Fortunately, there are some healthy options.  One common side dish is southern style creamed corn.  A half cup of this (standard side dish size) only has about 90 calories.  And I know, eating creamed corn seems like you’re eating baby food.  But the upside of eating creamed corn is that when your body digests and…uh…eliminates it, you won’t recognize it when it…comes out the other side.

Then there’s always Brunswick Stew, which is tomato soup with beans, corn, okra, chicken, and shrimp, or any number of other things.  With a healthy amount of spice to jazz it up.  It was made originally in Brunswick, Georgia.  Unless you believe those lying liars who lie in Brunswick County, Virginia who claim they did it first.  A half cup of this only has about 60-90 calories.  

But even if we are smart with our side and main course choices, there’s a problem.  Another thing that adds to the Georgian waistline is that when we get done with our frequently (but not necessarily) unhealthy food, we go on to have unhealthy dessert.  Like pecan pie or peach cobbler.  A single serving of these tends to have 500 calories.  And if you plunk a blob of ice cream on it (which I always do, because I’m not an animal), it’ll add a couple hundred more.  I’ve noted before, dessert is not your friend.

So the point is, I’ve learned to limit the excesses of Southern cuisine.  I’ll occasionally splurge, though.  Instead of regularly eating fried things at my house, I’ll let it be a treat on a vacation instead.  For example, on our annual camping trip to the mountains (As I’ve mentioned before, camping is a good way to burn calories), we can’t avoid a trip to the world famous Dillard house in Dillard, Georgia (hence the name).   They serve literally everything I listed above.  Which we wolf down like condemned prisoners eating their last meal.  The problem is, they then bring more when we finish the first round.  It’s basically a trip to Golden Corral, only way more classy.  After hours of eating until I hate myself, my soul sings. Even as my arteries protest.

But I can get away with doing this once a year.  The problem with Georgia (and the lesser Southern states), is that we have a bad habit of eating like this year round.  We should not.  If you’re truly interested in not dying young, Southern food must be an occasional treat, not a staple.  I’ll never give it up, but I make a point of eating things that are good for the body, even if it makes my soul cry in despair.  Like kale and other things eaten by fancy people who only shop at Whole Foods.

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15 Ways To Avoid Getting Fat (Or Get Un-Fat) That I’ve Discovered in 15 Months

I’ve been dieting for 15 months and am down nearly 65 pounds.  It’s been surprisingly easy.  As I mentioned in my first ever blog post, I discovered that I was really only doing a few things wrong.  I was able to identify what needed work by using Cronometer to measure calories and nutrients.  It’s a very helpful app, although it’s not the only one.  In fact, I appear to be the only person I connect with on Twitter or Facebook that uses it.  Everyone else uses other stuff, like My Fitness Pal.  I guess I just have more refined and esoteric tastes than everyone else.  At least, that’s what I tell myself.

Anyway, the basic strategy I’ve employed using the app is to eat 500 fewer calories per day than I burn off, and get all of the recommended vitamins and minerals, plus the necessary omega-3s.  This would result in losing a pound per week, and would ensure that I have the necessary nutrients to fend off various chronic diseases.  

This approach naturally translates into exercising more, and generally eating more dead plants than dead animals.  And it’s been extremely effective.  By tracking my intake, I’ve been able to add some discipline to my diet that wasn’t there before, and the results are rather astonishing.  Because none of my clothes fit anymore.

But it occurred to me from the beginning that this approach may not work for everyone.  I’m a CPA, and measuring and counting things precisely is what I do for a living.  Measuring and counting calories and vitamins and so forth is not that different from measuring and counting dollars and assets and so forth.  So it comes very naturally for me.  I’m basically just accounting with calories.  But not everyone is wired the way I am.  So for those who are not mathematically inclined desk jockeys, I’ve decided to put together a list of basic tricks and hacks that will allow those who don’t care for calorie counting to achieve results without having to keep all of the receipts.

#1 – Exercise 40 minutes a day – I discovered early on that regular exercise is the thing that increases my basal metabolic rate (fancy talk for the number of calories I burn when I’m doing nothing) by forty or fifty percent.  Forty minutes of moderate exercise not only burns 300 – 400 or so calories, but causes my resting metabolism to increase from 2,000 per day to 2,800-3,000 per day.  This, plus the exercise, means I burn 3,100-3,400 calories per day.  And it’s a lot easier to eat less than 3,100-3,400 calories than it is to eat less than 2,000 calories.

Also, even light exercise (which only bumps your BMR by about 30%) is good for your health.  I’ve seen studies before that show the difference between the completely sedentary, and those who engage in light, moderate, and heavy exercise.  Even light exercise can noticeably reduce mortality.  So, y’all move around more so that you don’t die.

Lastly, for those of us that have (or used to have, in my case) high blood pressure, exercise is a good way to unload some sodium.  Too much sodium contributes to hypertension, and a ton of it comes out in the perspiration.  Especially for those of us that live in a sweltering, outdoor sauna.  And by that, I mean Florida, my adoptive home state, the land of heat waves, hurricanes, and crazy news stories.

#2 – Eat greens with every meal – One secret to getting all of the nutrients I need is to add leafy greens.  I’ve noted before that these have all sorts of benefits.  And researching what has the most nutritional value has caused me to eschew some of my food prejudices.  For example, I used to think kale was only eaten by people who think that a fanny pack is a fashion accessory.  But I now know that it’s very good for you.  So I don’t fear the loss of my man card when buying kale anymore.

I use the country/bourgeois/Popeye combination: Collards, kale, and spinach.  I have a helping of each every day.  Spinach with the eggs in the morning, collards and kale with either lunch or dinner.  Mixing these last two with meat in a stir fry can make something you normally consider gross quite flavorful.

#3 – Get outside – Getting outside is really the only way to get Vitamin D.  Unless you live up in the frozen wastelands north of the Mason-Dixon line, in which case you must eat fish to get your vitamin D.  Just make sure you don’t stay outside so long you burn or become so leathery that you’re bulletproof.  Also, vitamin D is good for the immune system, which is important in the COVID times, as I’ve noted before.

#4 – Average six ounces of meat per meal – I noticed early on that meat was the biggest calorie source.  Although this varies a bit depending on which meat I eat.  Fish is low cal, chicken higher, beef even higher, and pork even higher.  But in general, if I eat no more than six ounces of meat per meal, I’m able to stay under my goals.  Diversity and inclusion interlude:  I’m a dude.  Women may want to eat less.  They usually do, which is why my wife always gave me her leftovers.  Which is probably why I got fat.

Keep in mind, this is on average.  If you only have meat with one meal, or you’re a hardcore OMAD (One Meal A Day) type, you can go ahead and have an 18 ounce porterhouse.  If you’re an intermittent faster (I.E. go 16 hours without eating) then you can have a bigger hunk of meat with your meals too.  

But I’ve only been able to fast when I’m hungover, since eating in that condition just results in unintentional bulimia.  And OMAD only worked for me once when I ate entirely too much at  Golden Corral.  I’d rather not eat until I’m miserable.  So I stick with three meals a day.  Call me old fashioned.  Or boring.  It’s better than being hungry.

And yes, for anyone reading this who doesn’t live here, I know Americans are weirdos who still use the imperial measurements.  If you’re a furriner, click here to convert ounces to grams or whatever.  And stop judging us.  Now.  We have nuclear weapons.

#5 – Cook for yourself – Cooking your own food with healthy ingredients is key.  Not only is it healthier than precooked or packaged, hyper-processed stuff, but you burn calories just standing in front of the stove.  And more if your wife makes you do the dishes.  I spend an extra hour and a half on my feet because of this, which burns off an extra 300 calories or so.

And even a hapless food burner like me can eventually figure out ways to cook.  There’s plenty of free recipes online.  Although you usually have to read through an endless origin story for the recipe.  Usually an unnecessarily verbose tale about how some guy or gal’s grandma used to make this or that meal during the Depression.  It’s usually a good four or five pages before you get to the actual recipe.  I mean, normally I’m fine reading five pages (and I usually write that much) but it’s not something I want to do when I’m hungry.

But despite the quirky recipe bloggers who feel an urge to bury the lede (I.E. the actual recipe) with their life story, this is much better than just buying junk.  You only think you’re saving time eating that pre-prepared unhealthy stuff.  You’ll realize you’re wrong when you die young.

#6 – Eat out less – The stuff at restaurants, as I’ve noted before, is out of control.  They seem to add extra fat, and God knows what else, to add at least 50% more calories to something I could make for myself at home.  I mean, the stuff at restaurants usually tastes better (way better) than what I cook (a low bar to clear, assuredly), but it’s usually not worth it, health-wise.

And the portions are pretty outrageous at most of these places.  And since I was never the guy who got a doggy bag, I couldn’t resist cleaning my plate.  So a night out is by definition a night where I’m off my diet.

If you cook for yourself, you can make sure you don’t eat too much, and get all of the right nutrients.  So save those nights out for special occasions.  Oh, and one other little bit of accounting advice.  It’s way cheaper to cook for yourself.  So you can lose weight and save for your retirement or kid’s college tuition at the same time.

#7 – Don’t sweat the holidays – Ignore the diet advice you hear about the holidays.  Far too many people obsess over possibly gaining weight on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.  But if you behave for 362 days out of the year, three days of excess won’t mess it up.  Hell, if you behave eleven months out of the year, the entire month of December won’t be enough to mess it up.  

Just have fun.  Spend time with friends and family.  Behave the rest of the year.  Being healthy does not preclude you from having fun.  And I’m convinced cutting off fun entirely to militantly adhere to a diet actually increases your chance of failure.  Go ahead and have the turkey, pumpkin pie, eggnog, and excessive amounts of alcohol that naturally comes with the holidays.  

If you get back to your diet on January 2nd, you’ll find you didn’t lose much ground and it’s easy to get back on track.  If you miss time with your family, you’ll regret it far more than packing on a pound or two over the holidays.  Even if you’re a misanthrope like me.

#8 – Be careful with dessert – As I’ve noted before, some desserts, like cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory, have ridiculous calories.  Most desserts do, without a lot of benefit.  And they rarely leave you feeling full, which just leads you to eat more later.

But some are OK.  The best I’ve found is frozen yogurt with some fruit on it.  It’s low cal, the yogurt has calcium and vitamin A and other things, and the fruit is good for you because it’s fruit.  But take a hard pass on the pecan pie, cherry pie, cake, shortcake, and so forth.  Unless it’s the holidays.  I already made that exception for you.  You’re welcome.

#9 – Snack on nuts, not chips –  Binging on chips used to be my downfall.  I still occasionally indulge, but only a little bit.  Chips aren’t heavy on nutrients (you’re better off just eating potatoes), but nuts are a different story.  They’re a good afternoon snack, and can be a great source of nutrients, including vItamin E and magnesium, which can be hard to come by.

The trick is to just have a handful in the afternoon to tide you over until dinner.  But don’t have a whole can.  Binging on nuts is just as bad for your beer gut as wolfing down potato chips.  But when done sensibly, they balance out your diet quite nicely

#10 – Coffee is your friend – Coffee (and teas and other stuff) have lots of nutrients and few calories.  And they keep you awake if you have an extraordinarily dull job.  Like accounting.  Although it’s best not to have more than four per day, since caffeine can disrupt sleep.  Unless you drink decaf after lunch.  Which I used to think was for wimps, but I’ve warmed to it.  Especially since I now sleep a lot better.

There is one added bonus with the peculiar percolation commonly enjoyed by the non-Americans of the world.  That would be tea, and not the drink of raw patriotism known as coffee.  In addition to the nutritional benefits, Tea is also pretty good at easing the symptoms of a cold.  Even The Horror of Wuhan, The Black Plague of 2020, can be eased somewhat with tea.

#11 – Go easy on the sauce.  And dressing and cheese – It’s easy to blow up the calorie count with too much in the way of condiments.  I realized this when I discovered that the calories in your average salad mostly come from the dressing, not the veggies.  And topping things with cheese and sauces can also make the count go out of control.

It’s easy to fall into this trap, since sauce and toppings are the go to solution for bad cooking.  A culinary calamity can be eased by dousing it in barbecue, buffalo, alfredo, or any number of other sauces.  This was another thing that caused me to pack on pounds.  So if you end up making an atrocity so horrid it may be a sign of the apocalypse, throw it out.  Try again.  Don’t douse it in a deluge of sauce or other things.  

#12 – Go easy on the other sauce (alcohol) – Alcohol has almost no nutritional value.  Except wine, which has some.  But the amount you’d have to drink to get significant nutrition would be a liver-death defying feat.  Any two drinks, depending on what you have, can add 200 – 500 calories (totally or mostly empty calories) to the diet.  A significant amount of alcohol can blow a diet if you’re not careful.  This is why real life alcoholics are also usually giant fatties.

This is not to say you can’t drink.  You can live a little.  And the holiday exception still applies.  Just be careful.  To keep calories low, go with liquor sipped slowly over time.  One shot has under 100 calories.  And make sure it’s bourbon.  Because America.  Or you could drink pisswater (light beer) which also has 100 calories.  If you’re ok with losing the respect of the rest of humanity.

#13 – Sleep.  A lot. – Well, not for 10-12 hours.  7-8 hours is ideal.  This is important, and not only because of the arcane effects of sleep deprivation on metabolism presented by fancy schmancy doctors.  

Lack of sleep produces stress.  And stress often produces an urge to eat in order to cope with the stress.  How many times have you seen women downing a bowl of ice cream to deal with stress or depression?  I know it’s a stereotype, but stereotypes don’t just fall out of the sky.  And men do it worse, because we tend to pound libations when we’re stressed, which, as I’ve noted before, is really bad for you for a lot of reasons.

#14 – Watch out for scammers – A lot of diet people are just selling supplements.  Some of us are so desperate to lose weight we’ll try any harebrained idea.  And Twitter and Facebook are replete with screwy schemes. It’s best to be careful of this.

Rather than sift through the dubious information on the Internet, I chose to review the results from someone whose agenda is known.  But that’s not the only way.  When looking for diet advice, it’s best to stick with sources like the CDC, NIH, or similarly reliable sources.  Ignore the shady online conspiracy theorist types.  And remember, there are no tricks.  It’s just about diet and exercise.

#15 – Figure out what works for you –  I know this seems lame, like when Letterman would get to Number One on a top ten list and it would be anti-climactic.  But I, unlike him, am not just filling in the last one with something kinda weak.  There’s a reason I’m saying this.

One thing I’ve had to figure out is fitting all of this into a busy schedule and within a budget.  Balancing time exercising with work and home life and figuring out what foods are healthy but within your budget takes practice.  But even people of little means can find ways to exercise (you don’t need to go to the gym or spend money to exercise) and can find ways to make healthy meals on a budget.  Figure out a time to exercise (morning or night) that fits your schedule, even if it just means riding your bike to work, and find time to cook healthy meals.

So there’s fifteen pearls of wisdom to help you lose weight.  They’ve all worked for me.  I’m down 65, and I’ll lose another ten before I’m done.  Even if you’re not counting every calorie and every macro and micro nutrient, do these things and you’ll see progress.  And your doctor will finally stop yelling at you.  I know mine did.

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Good Habits 6 – My Diet is Totally Based

I’ve occasionally followed assorted carnivore foodbros and low-carb types on the Internet (where all every piece of information you find is true, clearly) who insist that veggies and fruits and things are bad.  Foods from plants are evil and make you fat.  Because they have carbohydrates, which make you fat.  Obviously.  At least, according to these guys and gals.  Since I’m an auditor by trade and trained to treat things with a bit of skepticism, I’ve always seen this as just a tad suspect.

Of course, those who rend animal flesh in their teeth aren’t the only ones who do this sort of thing.  For example, there are vegetarians who will spend all day reminding us that meat causes impotence.  Which isn’t quite right.  What’s actually true is that cholesterol can cause impotence. Which is certainly common in meat, but how much cholesterol you get depends on which kind of meat you eat, how much you eat, how much you exercise, and various other things.  

Now that I’m tracking my food and vitamins and minerals and so forth, I’ve seen that they’re both wrong.  You can eat meat and be healthy and lose weight, and you can eat carbs and be healthy and lose weight.  My results at my last three doctor’s appointments prove this.  And some of those carbs that the keto types scoff at have plenty of good nutrients.  So I ignore both of these food fashions.  I’m “based” like that, as the young folks say these days.  Which apparently refers to someone who resists the latest fads and just does whatever they want.

Neither one of these dietary philosophies works for me.  I’ve noticed that I often feel hungry again shortly after a meal if I don’t eat meat.  And the same happens if I don’t eat carbs.  If I have both, I feel satisfied and stay that way for some time.  This is what diet gurus call “satiety”.  Which I think is an asininely pretentious and trendy word.  I prefer to say “full”.  Saying “I’m full” sends the message clear as day, while saying “I’ve achieved satiety” makes me feel like a part of my soul withered away along with some or all of my man card.  

Anyway, this is why I take a hard pass on low-carb or vegetarian diets.  And I could talk at great length about the meats I love and all of the ways they are good for you.  But that would probably take several posts, so I’ll save that for another time.  For now, I’ll go into all of the various things I add to my food that would set a keto/carno acolyte’s hair on fire.

Some of my favorite dishes are served over something carbalicious.  Like jambalaya, the sumptuous cajun dish served over rice that pleases taste buds and clears sinuses with bioweapon levels of pepper and spice.  Or assorted Italian things that bury noodles in cheese and tomatoes and meat and things.  Although I have mentioned before that the cheese can be a problem if you’re not careful.  And then there’s always plain old beef stew, a meat and potatoes dish (usually served over rice) that pleases the Irish genes I have.  The point is, my meals need to be served over some kind of base, or else I don’t feel full.

Anti-carb fanatics on Twitter would be horrified by anything involving rice, noodles, or potatoes.  And I’ve heard all sorts of lectures about how these are bad, which are then challenged by equally fervent insistence from others that this is not the case.  I’ve also seen many fanatical keyboard warriors engaged in brutal conflicts around why meat is good or bad.  So, as usual, the Internet is a blood-soaked battle ground of warring ideas that seems to get nowhere.  Two sides firmly entrenched and barely making any progress.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are just confused.  So I ignore this stuff and do what works for me.

I’ve mentioned before that some of these diet bros will swear up and down that their way is the One True Diet, and all who fail to conform to their ways will suffer and die.  But none of their ideas work for me.  And what does work for me has been panned by many of the ecclesiasts of eating healthy, whether they follow the Way of The Meat Eater or are high priests of The Church Of Cruelty-Free Eating. 

I’ve heard tell that calorie counting doesn’t work, but tell that to the gut I don’t have any more.  I’ve heard that carbs cause you to get fat, but my test results say otherwise.  I’ve heard that meat is no good, but my blood pressure and cholesterol and weight are fine.  Meat over a based of carbs is getting great results.  So let’s dive into why the carbs are not to be feared.

Let’s start with the two fundamental food bases: Rice and pasta.  I went over the advantages of rice at great length in a previous post.  And as for pasta, a cup of cooked pasta (of almost any kind: spaghetti, angel hair pasta, orzo, etc.) has about 200 calories.  It’s also high on folate (vitamin B9), and certain other B vitamins.  But those aren’t hard to come by for any decent omnivore or carnivore.  The meat we put on top will probably provide more of the vitamin B types than the pasta we put it on.  So that, in and of itself, isn’t all that impressive.

Fortunately, that’s not the whole story.  Pasta also brings with it a decent chunk of copper, iron, manganese, and about two thirds of the daily selenium requirements.  These not only help me feel full, but they’re not empty calories at all.  Pasta isn’t bad for you at all, no matter what the Dark Lords of Adkins tell you.

And if you’re inclined for the all-natural, less processed stuff that’s popular amongst people who wear love beads and bathe infrequently, that’s actually even better.  Whole wheat is always better than white, whether it be pasta, bread, or whatever.  And whole wheat pasta has the same stuff as regular pasta, just moreso.  In addition, a cup will have 18% of my daily magnesium requirements (which is relatively hard to come by, as I’ve noted before) and 17% of the zinc I need.  And this shouldn’t come as a surprised.  One thing the assorted diet bros and snooty vegetarians do have a point of rare agreement on is that overly processed food isn’t so great.  So the less processed whole wheat stuff is way better.

And then there’s ramen noodles, the go to of poor college students or the culinarily hopeless who can’t cook anything else.  They’re not so great, though.  Nutrition wise, they have the same stuff as white pasta, but less.  Except for sodium.  They have way more sodium.  It’s a wonder the Japanese aren’t constantly dropping dead from heart attacks.  For those of us who don’t care for high blood pressure and can afford to pay more that 25 cents or so for a serving of noodles, we should avoid ramen noodles and have some other kind.

And there’s always the fancy super food loved by highfaluting people who think a latte counts as coffee and that mimosas count as alcoholic beverages.  And that is quinoa, the South American grain (Yes, I know it isn’t really a grain) that is currently in vogue with people who shop too often at Trader Joe’s.  Quinoa has 220 calories or so and a smattering of B vitamins, much like rice and pasta.  Except vitamin B12.  You can’t get B12 without being a murderer under vegan law.  Unless, as I’ve noted before, you eat the seaweed Japanese wrap sushi in.  Or take a supplement.  But taking supplements is cheating.

I digress, though.  Quinoa also has about 40% of my daily copper allowance, a third of the iron I need, a quarter of the magnesium, half of the manganese, and 40% of the phosphorus RDA.  Brief diversity and inclusion interlude here, though.  The RDA I use applies to a man who is…of a certain age, of average height, and weighs about 195 pounds.  Your own requirements may vary based on sex, height, weight, age, etc..  I suggest using an app like Cronometer to figure that out.  But my main point is quinoa is pretty good, even if it is pretentious as hell.

But if you are a vegan who is also of the low-carb variety, you need not despair.  There is a way to have based food without murder or carbs.  And that is, spaghetti squash.  When you tear the guts out of this living thing (which is totally not murder, I guess) the innards come out in spaghetti-like strings.  Hence the name.  This adds some bulk that makes you feel full (or makes you “achieve satiety” if you’re feeling overly ostentatious), but isn’t overwhelmingly nutritious.  It has a little bit of everything, usually in the 5-10% range.  Except there’s no D and B12, since it contains no fish fat or dead animals or sunlight.  On the other hand, it only has 40 calories.  So overall the nutrients you get for the price you pay in calories are a bargain.

And there’s another grain that I was always quite familiar with, but only in liquid form.  Which contributed significantly to my weight gain.  And that is barley.  A steamed cup of this has 193 calories, the usual assortment of B vitamins, maybe 40% of my daily selenium, one sixth of the phosphorus and iron I need, about 10% of my magnesium requirements, and a quarter of the copper I need.  So that’s not bad at all.  The only downside is that every time I eat it, I realize I prevented beer from happening.  So the shame makes it almost not worth it. 

And for people who think that Pabst Blue Ribbon (the only beer for which steamed barley is a preferable substitute) counts as beer (I.E. weirdo hipsters, not to be redundant) there’s the grain known as farro.  Much loved amongst virtue signallers of the world who like to find ways to remind everyone of their superiority.  But despite it’s absurd grandiosity, farro isn’t bad.  For a price of only 170 calories, I’ll get 90% of my manganese RDA, a sixth of my magnesium, 20% of my iron, two-thirds of my selenium, about a quarter of my copper needs, and the usual trace bits of B vitamins.  Except B12.  You’ll need a dead animal on top for that.  Or the aforementioned Japanese nori. 

One thing my wife introduced me to recently was sadza.  Which is cornmeal.  Where she’s from, they steam the stuff and serve it with meat and veggies.  Then they’ll grab a hunk of the cornmeal, shape it into a cup, and dig up the meat and veggies with it.  When I want to annoy her (which is often) I call it “African nachos”.  Which is more or less what it is.  The only difference is that in Zimbabwe they steam the cornmeal instead of frying it.  The manner of eating is the same.  And so is the overall messiness.

Anyway corn meal (or sadza, or whatever) has about 220 calories in a cup.  It includes about 20% of my daily magnesium and phosphorus, about a quarter of my iron needs, and the usual panoply of B vitamins. Except B12, obviously.  You’ll need to commit vegan murder for that.  So overall, not bad.

In response to my wife’s sharing of sadza, I chose to share the southerner’s equivalent of sadza; grits.  Thankfully, she didn’t divorce me.  Yet.  I keep having to explain that grits are supposed to be slightly runny and…not have flavor.  Grits are not something you eat for flavor, they’re something you add flavor to.  Like eggs and bacon and cheese and hot sauce and sausage and peppers and onions and bacon and more bacon.  Sadly, my wife still doesn’t understand this, no matter how much extra bacon I add.  So, I’ve concluded that she must simply hate America.

Anyway, grits brings about a third of my daily folate requirements, roughly half of the thiamine I need (that’s vitamin B1 for the great unwashed and uninitiated), 15% of the selenium RDA, one sixth of the iron and most other B vitamins come in at 5-15%.  Not bad for 180 calories.

One brief pro-tip here with the grains.  These are the nutrient counts for one cup of cooked stuff.  The way these work is you add water and steam them, and they grow in volume.  I used to make myself a full cup of raw rice, add water, and end up with two cups of cooked rice.  I thought I was eating 200 calories or so, when it was more like 400 to 600.  This was back when I was a bachelor, and as I’ve noted before, I had stupid habits back then.  But you should pay careful attention to the portions.  One half (or even one third) a cup of dry grain can result in a much greater volume of cooked grain. 

Anyway, there’s one last thing to cover.  The staple food of the diet that some of my distant ancestors ate regularly.  Not the ones who ate haggis and threw telephone poles around.  I’m talking about the ones who drank too much whiskey and routinely engaged in fratricidal civil wars and have a disproportionately high number of soulless people (Read: Gingers) among them.

I’m talking about the Irish, of course.  And potatoes, obviously.  Potatoes, in diced, mashed, or otherwise form, make a good base for anything.  A cup of this carries a chunk of various B vitamins (noticing a pattern here?), including a big chunk (30% or so) of vitamin B6.  This much also has a sixth of my copper and iron requirements, not quite 10% of the magnesium, just over 10% of the manganese and phosphorus I need, and maybe 20% of the potassium.  All for just over 100 calories.  Overall, pretty healthy.  Although there’s a downside if you fry them in oil or mash and douse them in butter, though, as I’ve noted before.

So anyway, those are the bases I use in my food which would drive an anti-carb activist up a wall.  Now, I don’t think the keto types are crazy, since I know many people have cured or treated various diseases and conditions with it.  After all, the keto diet was designed to treat epilepsy.  So it’s always useful as a medical treatment. But I just can’t do low carb myself, and don’t think anyone should feel obligated to avoid these things.  If I don’t get some carbs with my meat and veggies, I’ll just want to eat again.  

I’ve been told I’m “based” for eschewing the diet trends, but I have no choice.  Because my food has to be based to keep me satisfied.  Based on rice, noodles, potatoes, or some other things that would cause an anti-carb bro to quake in abject fear or rage.  My food is based.  Based as f*ck.   So apologies to my low-carb, keto, carnivore pals.  Rice and potatoes and noodles will continue to be a part of my diet.

And to my vegan and vegetarian pals, I’ll continue to have meat on top of the carbs.  Because that makes me full too.  I know you have all sorts of data about how terrible meat is.  It’s not, though.  And I know there’s all sorts of reasons that killing woodland creatures is terrible.  I’ve seen you tweet endlessly about them.  But I come from a long, proud tradition of omnivorism (not sure that’s a word), and I’m perfectly comfortable with my position at the top of the food chain.

But that’s beside the point.  The point is, we should not be afraid to eat carbs.  Let’s be clear.  I am by no means pushing a high carb diet.  But there’s no need for a low carb diet.  I’ve always pushed for broadly low calorie, high nutrient diets, because that’s what works, and tends to be what’s supported by mainstream science.  And we can all do that with a diet that includes rice, pasta, and potatoes.  So for those of us that just want to lose weight and be healthy and don’t want gimmicks, make sure your diet is based like mine.

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Exercise #6 – Salt Life Ain’t Nuthin’ But Beaches and Sunny

You can’t go ten feet in the Tampa Bay Area without seeing at least one “Salt Life” bumper sticker, denoting someone who spends a disproportionate amount of time on or near the water.  And it’s usually not too difficult to match the bumper sticker to the owner, since all one needs do is scan the immediate vicinity for someone who’s been tanned to the point where their skin is so leathery it will likely deflect sharp objects and projectiles.  I’m not quite so obsessed with the ocean, since spending time in the sun typically makes my skin look less like leather and more like slow roasted pork.  But I still spend a lot of my time off on or near the bay or the gulf. 

When you live thirty minutes away from the Gulf of Mexico and one hundred yards from Tampa Bay, an occasional trip to the waterside is inevitable.  When you have friends visit from all over, blatantly using your humble abode as a temporary summer home, a daily trip is inevitable.  But when I started my diet, I was worried that our trips to the beach might disrupt my daily regimen.  Because our hours at the beach usually consist of snacking on assorted things and imbibing various adult beverages.  But I recently discovered that it wasn’t so bad.

Even if we spend most of the time imbibing and eating, we periodically find our way into the water.  Every thirty minutes to an hour or so, we’ll grab our beers (or whatever) and wade into the brine.  Then we’ll drink more while bobbing up and down in the waves.  And I’ve always found it remarkable that we spend hours drinking and wading, but for some reason no one ever has to leave to go relieve themselves.  The ocean must have peculiar effects on people which just shuts down their bladders.  Truly astonishing.

Anyway, even the simple act of treading water can burn about 200-250 calories per hour.  And if you have to do it vigorously, like when my wife occasionally climbs on my shoulders in an obvious attempt to drown me, it’s as good as running.  This vigorous activity comes at a cost, though.  These aquatic episodes in domestic abuse perpetrated by my wife inevitably result in me inhaling salt water.  And although this may be good for clearing the sinuses, it tends to irritate the nostrils a bit.  Sometimes I wonder why I married her.  

But there is one way to get back at her.  And that is, put on a snorkel and harvest conchs.  I realize this seems like an unlikely way to exact revenge, but let me explain.  Once I have twenty or so, I’ll drop them at her feet, basking in the look of horror she gives when the shells start writhing as the alien tentacles snake out onto the sand.  She really isn’t fond of slithery, tentacled things.  And it turns out that snorkeling is about the same level of exercise as running or biking.  So annoying my wife is really heart healthy.  Although it can result in loneliness (from the silent treatment I get) and backaches (from being forced to sleep on the couch for a week), so I have to weigh pros and cons here.

Of course, when we’re not having briny domestic disputes, there are less contentious things we can do.  A leisurely swim works off 450-500 calories per hour.  So does paddleboarding.  Unless you’re me, in which case it uses much more.  Because when I do it, it frequently results in rather unleisurely swimming (that is, desperately trying not to drown) when I fall off.  Which happens rather often.

If I’m feeling a bit lazy, a not uncommon condition when spending hours lying in the sun, I may break out the old innertube and just ride the waves.  But as I’ve noted previously, sometimes things that don’t feel like exercise are actually decent ways to keep the weight off.  Simple inner tubing uses up 100-150 calories per hour.  That’s not great, but if you do it for several hours (like at Florida’s iconic Ichetucknee Springs), it adds up in a big way.

If I’m feeling a bit more ambitious, I’ll break out a kayak and ride the waves that way.  I’ve mentioned in a past piece that kayaking is a decent way to keep the flab away.  Kayaking will eat up about 350-400 calories per hour.  And it’s easy to social distance when kayaking, which is good if I’m trying to avoid the Rapture in Virus Form that is COVID-19.  I can use the paddle to either swiftly move away from any infected schmucks that get too close, or give them a whack if I’m feeling pugilistic.

If I’m feeling super rad, I’ll do some surfing.  Surfing is about as good as kayaking in terms of calorie usage.  It’s pretty good for you, as long as you’re not bitten by a shark.  I mean, I guess a shark bite can produce weight loss, because some excess fat (or even a limb) is torn off of you.  Sort of a primitive form of liposuction.  But there is the off chance you might die, which is a bummer, dude.

The problem is, the Tampa Bay Area isn’t known for it’s huge waves, so surfing can be sort of lame.  But there is wind in here, especially during the summertime.  And windsurfing is about the same calorie drain as regular surfing.  Unless there’s a hurricane, in which case you work off a lot more, because you’re basically flying in that situation. 

Of course, one of these days (Read: Never) I’ll get around to getting a Scuba license.  Diving off the coast around various wrecks is about a 550-600 calorie per hour undertaking.  The downside is I’d have to be careful to avoid the shark liposuction and the bends and drowning.  On second thought, I can think of way better ways to have a midlife crisis than scuba diving.  But for anyone reading, this is actually a pretty decent way to lose the poundage.   

I do occasionally see some rich guy sailing by the beach.  And I’ve learned this can actually be a decent workout.  Now, this is probably something I’ll never do, because I’m not a high-powered investment banker or a drug dealer.  These appear to be the only people that can afford to buy a fancy sailboat and sail it around.  I, like most people, can’t afford it.  But on the off chance there is a Wolf of Wall Street or an incarnation of Pablo Escobar reading this, sailing is a decent way to stay in shape.  

You’re not just lying about.  Sailing involves fooling around with the rigging and steering against currents and waves and not losing your balance.  It melts off about 200-250 calories per hour.  And people who do it competitively and constantly churn that bizarre “coffee grinder” device to raise and trim sails burn 350-400 per hour.

For those of us that are not rich, but have friends, there is always volleyball.  A match with 6-9 player teams will make about 150-200 calories disappear every hour.  And even more, for people who suck at it.  Like me.  When you shank the ball out of bounds on a regular basis, you’re the one obligated to go chase it down.  Volleyball for me is just lots of unintentional jogging.  But if you don’t suck, and can play hardcore, two person beach volleyball, that’s even better.  That burns 650-700 per hour.

And even if you do literally nothing at the beach, there are benefits.  And I don’t just mean vitamin D from the sun.  You ever wonder why you’re sleepy after a trip to the beach?  Just being in the sun makes your body work to maintain your internal temperature.  From what I’ve been able to research online, the calories burned per hour equals your body weight divided by four.  Well, roughly four.  Very roughly four.  By that I mean, somewhere between three and four.  I’m an accountant; we like to round things off.  “In the ballpark” is fine for us.  Remember that in horror next time you see the stock market crash.  It was probably caused by one of us deciding something was “close enough.”.

Anyway, for a 200 pound man, just sitting in the sun cooks off about 40-50 calories per hour.  It’s not much, but it’s better than the exercise you get by sitting on the couch binge watching Game of Thrones for the tenth time.  Which is zero.  And since that activity usually involves trying to drink more red wine than Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey combined, the calories (and liver damage) add up very quickly.  So even a lazy day at the beach is better than being in the house.

And beachgoing is not a bad idea if you’re trying to avoid the Viral Horror of Wuhan.  The beaches here are big, and the tourists are staying home.  So social distancing is a snap.  And if there are a few too many people there, my wife’s best friend can bring her monstrous bull mastiff to scare off anyone who gets too close.  If we go to a beach that allows dogs.  If not, she’ll play Taylor Swift songs, which will scare people off better than the dog.  If you’re looking for a way to stay trim and stay away from the creeping doom of the coronavirus, a trip to the beach is probably a great idea.

So if you live near the ocean, or even a large body of water, a day at the beach is a good way to get your exercise.  There are a lot of things to do. It’s an excuse to get out of the house.  It’s a great way to see friends you haven’t seen in a while and still not risk infecting each other with the Pathogen That Shall Not Be Named.  And, unlike going to the gym, it can be a party and a workout at the same time.

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