For the last couple years I’ve been on this health kick. Our local family network hosts a presentation every other year by Dr. Dana McPhee. I would say his view points could spark quite a controversy - for example, he states that cows milk is for cows - which I pretty much agree with. We are the only wacked-out mammal that drinks the milk from another mammal - but, I still buy skim milk for me and my family - only buying soy milk as a treat (yum!). Dr. McPhee says something to the effect of, the protein cows milk contains actually leaches the calcium from your bones and outweighs the calcium that it contains. However, the main point I took from his presentations have been to look for the keyword, “whole wheat flour,” and to avoid, “enriched flour,” when evaluating bread products.
So, I’ve been happily buying varieties of whole wheat breads the last couple years. I love the taste now, and can easily tell if something that enters my mouth is enriched or not. However, it wasn’t until I recently read a sub-article of a column of an article of a book excerpt in bicycling magazine. The excerpt is from, “5 Essentials for a Winning Life: The Nutrition, Fitness and Life Plan for Discovering Within.” I was hoping for more words in the title, but thats all they had. In any case, they pointed out kind of an obvious point. “…avoid products with corn syrups and HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup], and instead look for cereal, juices, pasta sauce, salad dressings, and so on that have no added sugar.”
So, I recently put two and two together, and re-examined the label of my usual loaf of whole wheat bread. Whole wheat flour, high-fructose corn syrup. WHAT THE?! I had to examine about 10 different brands of whole wheat bread at the local Price Chopper until I found the $4 loaf of organic bread - the only one that didn’t have HFCS (it had honey instead). When I got home I looked at the loaf I already had from Trader Joe’s - no HFCS, and only about $2.50. I guess I’ll be buying all my bread from Trader Joe’s now.
So, the moral is - look beyond the whole wheat flour, find the sweetener, and make sure it doesn’t suck.
More info:
Fall and Winter have been a fun time so far. Ever since biking season ended and eating season began, I’ve been having fun managing my exercise and intake. Here’s the events:
-
September: School started, biking went from 25-30 miles per day to 15. I did get my big bike trip in though, 312 miles.
- October: Started getting cold, stopped biking - but didn’t start my winter exercise! Halloween hit with a bang, lots of chocolate.
- November: Was able to exercise more, but still didn’t have all the kinks worked out. Then Thanksgiving - about a week of solid overeating - coffee, beer, turkey and chocolate.
- December: Weighing in a 155, I started a 21 day cleansing - no coffee, no chocolate, no beer, half the calories. I dropped 10 pounds down to 145 - just in time for the holidays. Made it through Christmas and New Years without overindulging too much.
- Now: I’ve been keeping up with exercise, at least 40 mins per day alternating biking and lifting. I’m up to 152 now, which is a darn good place to hold until next April - outdoor daily biking!
I’m starting to think about my daily bike routes to work. If I can get up and leave before 6 I should be able to go out to Worcester and back to Framingham before 8:30. I’ll probably alternate that with trips up to Maynard, and then also using my routes from last year (Berlin, Northborough, Sudbury).
With improved memory, decreased fatigue, improved mental functioning and sped up reaction time - Superben Returned on Monday with a pot of Wintry Blend coffee and banana/date breads laced with dark chocolate M&Ms.
This sudden intake of caffeine had a profound effect. It started out as a few simple shakes, and then turned into an ultra fast vibration. This vibration caused my body to become super aero-dynamic - allowing me to traverse the distance between my mug and coffee maker at light speed. Talking about light speed, the vibration also had an effect on my sight - I was able to see faster than the speed of light! This gave me super zoom vision, seeing far distances, around corners, through walls and slightly into the future.
So, in celebration of returning to the land of coffee, chocolate and caffeine:
Food/drinks and the milligrams of caffeine they contain:
- Espresso coffee, brewed, 2 fluid ounces: 126
- Coffee, brewed, 8 fluid ounces: 85
- Red Bull (8.2 oz): 80
- Coffee, instant, 8 fluid ounces: 62
- Lemon-lime soda (Mountain Dew), with caffeine, 12 ounce can: 55
- Tea, brewed, 8 fluid ounces: 47
- Cola, 12 ounce can: 37
- Dark chocolate, semisweet, 1 ounce: 20
- Milk chocolate bar, 1.55 ounces: 9
- Hot chocolate, 8 fluid ounces: 5
- Chocolate milk, 8 fluid ounces: 5
- M & M milk chocolate candies, 1.69 ounces: 5
- Coffee, brewed, decaffeinated, 8 fluid ounces: 3
- Tea, brewed, decaffeinated, 8 fluid ounces: 3
- Coffee, instant, decaffeinated, 8 fluid ounces: 2
- Tea, herbal, brewed, 8 fluid ounces: 0
- Lemon-lime soda (Sprite), regular or diet, 12 ounce can: 0
- Ginger ale, regular or diet, 12 ounce can: 0
- Root beer, regular or diet, 12 ounce can: 0
Important links:
I am on day 17 of my cleansing, 4 more days to go. I checked in today at weight watchers, down to 145.8 (an all-time low). In the last 17 days I’ve lost 9.2 lbs. I’ve got 4 days left, so I expect to lose another pound or two.
In preparation for next Monday (the first day off my cleansing) I’ve already bought a big package or dark chocolate M&Ms and some Hershey’s dark chocolate miniatures variety pack. I’m going to use the M&Ms to make a few banana breads, one for the family at home, and the other to bring to work. I’ll also get some good coffee to brew at work, which will set up Monday to be a fantastic day. The afternoon is jam packed with a Yankee Swap and then a department outing to a really good restaurant.
And moving on to technical stuff:
I was able to get my Ubuntu box to backup a DVD - but I cheated. I could not get DVD decrypter to detect the DVD burner under wine. And, DVD Shrink would run under wine, but ended up locking up and killing my master boot record! I think my problem with the drive detection may be that I installed wine before installing the DVD burner, might need to refresh some configurations or just re-install.
In any case, I was able to get DVD decrypter and DVD shrink to work fine inside my WinXP vmware virtual machine. I mounted a previously ripped ISO and used DVD shrink to shrink it, then DVD Decrypter to burn it. I then used DVD Decrypter to rip a DVD to image, then shrank and re-burned.
The ripping and burning are much faster on this 18x burner than on my 3 year old winxp notebook with a 2x drive. However, the shrinking is much slower, running in a virtual machine, and my processor is a AMD ~1ghz. My notebook is an Intel ~2.2ghz. I could speed things up a lot by buying double layer media - no shrinking needed. But, double layer media are still at least three times the cost - which makes some fairly expensive coasters. Might also be faster to re-author, splitting into two DVDs - not as much compression going on, but losing menus and fancy stuff.
One of the first things I learned on weight watchers was how their point system works, and how to calculate points in my head without the “slider.” Their formula is “top secret” - although you can find it everywhere. Here it is on Wikipedia.
Their formula is:
Calories / 50 + Fat / 12 - Fiber / 5 (where Fiber is no more than 4)
My formula changes the fat divisor to 10, and the fiber limit to 5 - making it easy to remember and calculate in your head.
Example product:
Nature Valley Chewy Trail Mix Fruit & Nut Bar
140 Calories
4g Fat
1g Fiber
So, here it is:
- Take the calories, move the decimal point over by two, then multiply by two. 140 calories, move the decimal point to become 1.4, multiply by two to come up with 2.8.
- Take the fat, move the decimal point over by one. 4g fat, becomes .4. Add that to the calories = 3.2
- Take the fiber, move the decimal point over by one, multiply by two. 1g fiber, move the decimal becomes .1, multiple = .2. Subtract that from total = 3.
My calculation, done in head = 3 points.
WW calculation = 2.933, round up to 3.
Yay.
For the last couple years I’ve been on this health kick. Our local family network hosts a presentation every other year by Dr. Dana McPhee. I would say his view points could spark quite a controversy - for example, he states that cows milk is for cows - which I pretty much agree with. We are the only wacked-out mammal that drinks the milk from another mammal - but, I still buy skim milk for me and my family - only buying soy milk as a treat (yum!). Dr. McPhee says something to the effect of, the protein cows milk contains actually leaches the calcium from your bones and outweighs the calcium that it contains. However, the main point I took from his presentations have been to look for the keyword, “whole wheat flour,” and to avoid, “enriched flour,” when evaluating bread products.
