Low Cal Honey

I like honey. It’s natural. It’s sweet. And best of all it has zero calories. I mean, how could it not? Why else would they have replaced all the sugar cereals with honey equivalents?

What? You mean it’s not a low calorie sugar substitute? Sheesh! You’d think it was some sort of miracle diet food the way Super Sugar Crisps were suddenly ditched in favor of Golden Crisps. They even renamed Sugar Bear to Super Bear. What’s up with that?

Well, today I have a honey of a story for you. I wish I could claim this as my own, but it’s something I heard on the radio. Still, it’s too good to not share.

Apparently a woman walked into a store one day and asked the shopkeeper about some low calorie honey sold there. The shopkeeper, puzzled, said they didn’t carry any. The customer insisted. “My roommate bought some and I know she got it here!” This did not change the shopkeeper’s mind about her inventory. “In fact, not only do we not have any, I don’t believe that even exists. Honey is honey, plain and simple.” Undeterred, the customer disagreed. “I saw the jar. I had some and it tasted just like real honey. I’ve got to have some. It’s around here somewhere!” So they marched around the store and low and behold the customer found it.

Click here for the real-life punchline.

Almost Like Magic

I wholeheartedly believe one tactic to help a floundering diet is “mixing it up” a bit. If you’re stuck in a rut and can’t seem to get the needle moving down again, it’s probably time to try something different — even if for a short while.

For those of you just tuning in, let me summarize my last thirteen months:

• I dropped twenty pounds in two months.
• I survived the holidays–barely.
• I got stuck at 212 pounds for what felt like a decade.
• I went up to 224 halfway through the summer.
• I finally got back to 212, which was good in that it was less than 224, but bad in that it was right back to that point where I was stuck for what felt like a decade.

Not to spoil the ending, but if you look at the bottom of this post, you’ll see I’m miraculously back down to 210. It’s been six months since I’ve been that low. So what did I do this week to give myself a boost? I mixed it up! Let’s take a look:

• Monday. Had four bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast; one half of a deep dish pepperoni pizza for lunch; and McDonald’s for dinner.
• Tuesday. Pancakes and sausage for breakfast; eight Long John Silver’s chicken planks for lunch; spaghetti & meatballs with garlic bread for dinner.
• Wednesday. Four bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and pancakes and sausage for breakfast; just a Diet Coke for lunch; and three chili dogs for dinner.
• Thursday. Egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam.
• Friday. An entire box of Cookie Crisp cereal, pancakes, sausage, spam and pizza for breakfast; one deep dish pizza, topped with pepperoni, crumbled Big Macs, and chopped up Long John Silver’s chicken planks for lunch; two quarts of Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream and an entire sleeve of Thin Mints for dinner.

See how I mixed it up? I had a Diet Coke on Wednesday. I’m positive that’s what caused me to get back down to 210 this week.

Okay, okay. For those who still believe I stumbled upon some junk food miracle diet, I have to fess up. I didn’t eat any of that this week. What I did — for once — was stick to the stupid plan. You see, once one gets a couple of months into a diet, it’s very easy to let “just this one bite” turn into “just this one serving” which then turns into “just this one quart of Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream.” Calories, hidden or blatant, add up. This week, I decided to double my watch and things worked out well. Even Saturday and Sunday went well, and that almost never happens.

My advice to you this week: write down what you’re eating each day. I use The Daily Plate. It has it’s quirks, but overall it’s done remarkably well for me. And if you’re already writing it all down, go back and look at your data. It’s easy to write it down then never look back. Never forget that the reason you’re writing it down in the first place is to go back and use the data to your advantage later.

I forgot that for a while myself.

Onederland Update

I’m pretty happy with this week’s results. I mean, I know my target is supposed to be the standard “1-2 pounds per week” but after nine weeks, that’s gets to be a bit difficult to sustain. And the best part? I’m right on the edge of another weight ‘decade’. Nothing like changing the first two numbers of your weight to keep you going.

Eating Out Tips

Dieters face few challenges greater than a trip to a restaurant. Eating out is (or should be) an occasion and therefore, by definition, isn’t the place to hold back. Unfortunately, eating out is sometimes a necessary evil and you’d be hard-pressed to find greater temptation anywhere. (Yeah … nothing like paddling against the current for a week and then trying to use willpower to not climb on that motorboat.)

So to help you out through this difficult time, I’ve compiled this list:

1. Look the menu over carefully. If you simply cannot find anything to suit your diet, just order water with a slice of lemon. Because, yeah, that’s the same thing as the burrito supreme.
2. After the maitre d’ seats you and your waiter comes over to list the specials, stop him and ask, “Where am I?” If he replies, “McDonald’s” then you should go somewhere else.
3. Today’s portion sizes are large. Find out if it’s okay to split the cheeseburger between you and your twelve friends.
4. When ordering a salad, always make sure you get the dressing on the side. If you’re asked specifically which side, I recommend the side of the road.
5. Pizza can actually be a healthy food! When asked what toppings you’d like, be sure leave off the pepperoni, sausage, chicken, ham, bacon, pineapple, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, cheese, and sauce. Ask about their low-fat, low-carb crusts.
6. Restaurants delight in hiding bad foods behind frilly words. In the dish descriptions, steer clear when you see terms like, fried, crispy, creamy, juicy, wonderful, delicious, tantalizing, heavenly, savory, etc.

There you go. You’ll thank me later.

The Mystery of Weight

I’ve always found it odd that the one thing we obsess over more than anything — our weight — is the one thing we seem to know the least about. Oh sure, we understand the basics. Eat too little, and we lose weight. Eat too much, and we lose our skinny clothes. That’s the basic premise, but the reality is a bit more complex. After all, we’re talking about a machine with trillions of moving parts.

First off, how do we gain weight? In simple terms, like this: if you weigh 150 pounds and you eat a five-pound monster cheeseburger, you’re now 155 pounds. But are you? Well, not really. You can’t actually count the weight change until processing is complete. Food is fuel. Your body breaks it down into the parts it can use and the parts it can’t. The parts it can use become energy for your body’s cells. If it needs all of it, then when all is said and flushed, you’ll still be 150 pounds. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. However, if you can’t burn the usable fuel, the body thinks, “Hey, you know what? My ass just isn’t big enough. Let’s send some of this extra energy down to those fat cells. I’m sure we’ll be using it Real Soon Now.”

Now, how do we lose weight? The most obvious answer is we pee and poop. I mean, it’s hard not to notice how it goes in one end and out the other. But it’s easy to forget that stuff is just the parts the body doesn’t want. What it does want, as mentioned above, becomes food for your cells. And their waste products make up the bulk of weight loss. Yep. We’re talking cellular poop. And what they poop out is primarily carbon dioxide. Believe it or not, most of the weight you lose is done so via exhaling. This is the main reason you generally weigh less in the morning than you do in the evening. This is also the main reason you should sleep alone. You don’t want to inhale someone else’s weight loss.

Anyhoo … enough of the biology lesson. Now what about the real mystery? You know the one I’m talking about. It’s happened to all of us. Things are going along normally day after day, and then one morning — bam! — you’re suddenly three pounds heavier overnight. Three pounds! How the *bleep* does that happen? You quickly count up everything you ate yesterday… Let’s see… the muffin… coffee… there was that fried rice for lunch… um… a bag of Doritos… hmmm… chicken for dinner… . But as hard as you try, you simply can’t come up with any reasonable result that remotely adds up to three pounds.

The reason you can’t is because you aren’t the USDA. And the USDA estimates that the average American eats 4.7 pounds of food each day. If you drink your eight glasses of water (and by “glasses of water” I do mean coffee, tea, soda pop, beer, wine, and prune juice.) then that’s an additional four pounds. So if you mysteriously gained three pounds overnight, all that really means is that you didn’t use the full eight pounds you took in.

So don’t let it get you down. Eventually, as long as you’re doing things right, it all works out in the end. At least that’s what the USDA tells me.

Music These Days

I seem to recall some decades ago my dad complaining about the modern music scene. I mean, all parents do that, right? It’s laser-etched into their DNA. They wouldn’t be card-carrying parents if they actually liked the same music as their children.

“It all sounds the same! There’s no variety! There’s no real musical value in it.” In short, “It’s nowhere near as good as the music I listened to when I was growing up.” If you think I’m quoting my dad, you’d be wrong. Those lines were found on a 4,000 year old copper scroll dug up in the Alps about forty years ago. (Ironically, though, my dad said something quite similar.)

That’s because we’re genetically programmed to believe that whatever happened to us between the ages of twelve and nineteen are the greatest things that ever happened. Nothing before and nothing since will compare to what hit us in those formative years. I understand that and so I truly believe that my music was better than my dad’s, and his was better than my grandfather’s, and so on back to the bronze age.

Except for today’s music of course! Have you listened to it? It all sounds the same! There’s no variety! I swear, kids these days don’t know what good music sounds like. They wouldn’t know a good tune if it came up and bit them on their iPods.

Okay, I’m kidding. Sort of. I’m unlike my dad because I actually do like some of today’s pop music. I will readily admit that during my daily commute, from the privacy of my car with its tightly rolled-up windows, I’ve let my fellow drivers know in no uncertain terms that I ain’t no Hollaback Girl. They also know that they can look (but they can’t touch) My Humps. I even believe I’ve invited them to Crank dat Soulja Boy — even if I have no idea what that is.

But I’m also like him in that I wonder: where’s the good music? And by that I mean the truly and musically good music. Sure, there was a lot of crap during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. (And that’s essentially the stuff he was complaining about.) But I also know of songs that never made it within ten megahertz of Casey Kasem’s charts. While we endured Donna Summer, at least Sweet was there with the eight-minute version of Love is Like Oxygen. I can understand not finding much merit in Funkytown but what about Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding? Where is today’s Stairway to Heaven, or Bohemian Rhapsody, or Yes’ fifteen-minute epic masterpiece Awaken?

I’m not saying there aren’t catchy tunes out there, but where are the songs we’ll be listening to in thirty years, still pouring out over the airwaves as we step out of our Deloreans into the clocktower square? They’re either not out there or they are, but just not reaching these aging ears of mine.

I will say one thing, though, about today’s charts. Check out Madonna. She’s fifty and she’s still got it. I’m pretty sure there weren’t any edgy, pop, female singers on Casey’s show in 1978 who were born in 1928. Love her or hate her, you have to admit, she’s doing something right.

Now, where’s my copy of Going for the One? I’m going to mail it to Ryan Seacrest and make sure he understands what a good album is supposed to sound like. Oh, there it is. I left it right next to my hearing aids.

Delimex Taquitos

Unlike most diet blogs, I can’t guarantee that every single food item I bring up is going to be taken from the “it’s good for you” files. After all, this category is called, “You Know What Sounds Good Right Now?” and not “You Know What Kind of Vegetable I Should Be Eating Right Now?”

So today’s little healthy tidbit is the Delimex Chicken Taquito. I don’t know what’s in them and I don’t want to know. After all, it’s just a cardboard box from Sam’s Club containing some sort of food product wrapped in plastic. These could be soylent green taquitos for all I know. The important thing is that you can pull a small handful of these puppies out of the freezer and in less than five minutes, you’re scalding your tongue with the most delicious quasi-Mexican food the Wal-Mart family can provide.

I won’t tell you how many of these our family goes through in a week. But I will tell you that buying Delimex stock wouldn’t be the worst financial decision you ever made.

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In other random news, I watched Star Wars last night (the original 1977 film … er, well, the strange 1997 version of the original 1977 film) and something occurred to me. At the end, when they’re piling into the X-wing fighters to destroy a “that’s no moon” sized space station with two little balls of light, I thought to myself, “What the heck is Luke doing in there?” I mean, he was a farm boy like six days ago. Sure, maybe he bullseyed womp rats in his T-16 back home, but isn’t that like putting a crop duster pilot inside an F-16 and saying, “Good luck with the intense air battle ahead of you.”

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What’s Really Amazing

We tend to overlook the little things, which is unfortunate, because oftentimes it’s the little things that matter most. Whether it’s a crisp fall morning, a beautiful flower, or simply matching six tiny numbers on a lottery ticket: the small things make a difference.

Take, for example, the calorie. It’s little. In fact it’s so little, it’s very easy to overlook. I would even bet most of you don’t even realize that a real calorie is actually 1,000 times smaller than the thing we call a “calorie” in everyday use. No joke! First, a quick definition: a calorie is a unit of energy. Precisely, it’s the amount of energy need to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. When we talk about food, however, we’re actually talking about kilocalories. That’s the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water by one degree.

As Ben Stein would say, “Wow.”

So what does the tiny, overlooked calorie have to do with my Return to Onederland? Well, everything. It’s the small, slow build-up of these guys which is specifically preventing me from reaching this goal. And do you want to know where calories like to hang out most? Well, I’ll tell you.

In peanut butter.

I have a particular fondness (er, weakness) for peanut butter. I love peanut butter on sandwiches. I love peanut butter on apples. I love peanut butter on cashews. I love eating peanut butter straight out of the jar using special spoons made out of peanut butter. I’m an addict.

This would be all perfectly well and good if a single jar of peanut butter didn’t have enough energy in it to launch a small missile into sub-orbit. One breakfast a few months back, after slathering yet another apple with enough peanut butter to blanket eastern Canada, I decided to see how much I was actually eating. So the next day I weighed the jar, ate my normal apple with flavor, then weighed the jar again.

As Keanu Reeves would say, “Whoa.”

Let’s just say the peanut butter energy consumed would have been enough to raise nearly 1,800 pounds of water one degree. In more close-to-home terms, based on the human body being about 80% water, that would have been enough energy to raise me about ten degrees. That’s when I realized I had a problem.

What’s Really Amazing? I actually did something about it. I quit. Cold turkey. Just like that. And I did it without the use of vast quantities of alcohol. I’m going on about two months now without the butter (save for once or twice where it’s found its way into a normal dish). I’m sure I won’t be able to keep it up forever, but so far I’m doing okay.

As I would say, “Woot.”

Onederland Update

Down another pound from last week. (And for the third week in a row I was actually lower the day before the Sunday weigh-in.) Still, as usual, I’ll take what I can get. Here’s hoping the overall trend continues. Have a good week, all.

Watch those hidden calories!

How many articles have you read about hidden calories? The idea is that we go out to a restaurant, order something “healthy” off the menu, but unbeknownst to us, the plate is absolutely peppered with calories too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Take this article from — you guessed it — the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They looked at restaurant food (again) and have produced yet another gripping, eye-opening piece of journalism. Here are three of many foods they reviewed:

• Ruby Tuesday Colossal Burger (two large patties, bun, and melted American and Monterey Jack cheese): 1,940 calories and 141g fat.
• Romano’s Macaroni Grill Twice-Baked Lasagna With Meatballs (six layers of pasta stuffed with meatballs, three cheeses, and Bolognese sauce): 1,360 calories, 38g fat.
• UNO Chicago Grill Pizza Skins (deep-dish pizza with mozzarella, mashed potatoes, crispy bacon, cheddar, and sour cream): 2,050 calories and 48g fat.

And they’re complaining about hidden calories? Now, if they had discovered a green salad with a spritz of vinegar containing two thousand calories, then yes! that would be newsworthy of the title “hidden calories”. But come on. Did anyone out there actually believe ordering a deep-dish pizza with mozzarella, mashed potatoes, crispy bacon, cheddar, and sour cream was a diet food?

Okay, I’ll grant that most people probably wouldn’t have guessed two thousand calories. But none of us would have deluded ourselves into thinking we “did good last night.”

Their idea for fixing this horrible problem is to put the nutritional data on the menu. Don’t hold your breath, people. The first restaurant to do that will drive customers away to the nearest restaurant who doesn’t do that: even if it’s the exact same food. Who would order from a menu that essentially said:

• Ruby Tuesday Colossal Burger (poison)
• Romano’s Macaroni Grill Twice-Baked Lasagna With Meatballs (poison)
• UNO Chicago Grill Pizza Skins (poison)

And what exactly do they expect? That every restaurant in every country on the entire planet will serve nothing but green salads with spritzes of vinegar? Of course not. Most of the time the whole reason we’re going out is because of the unnecessary calories. Yes, our nation is overweight. Yes, we have some fundamental underlying problems. But it’s not because Ruby Tuesday sells a big hamburger.

If you feel the need for a 2,000 calorie meal, go ahead. Once or twice a year is perfectly okay. Heck, you’re probably already doing it on the fourth Thursday in November anyway. However, if you find yourself eating the Colossal Burger five nights a week, well, then we have another issue. Either way, I’m not going to blame Ruby Tuesday.

Now, who’s up for some pizza?

Not That Funny

The Michael Phelps Diet skit was pretty good. (If you didn’t see it, click the “Previous” link below.) I laughed when I saw it and just had to share. But it only took a few minutes of mild pondering to realize it’s not as “out there” as it seems.

Like a lot of humor, it’s an exaggeration. Not fantasy. Not a twist. But simply an enlarged reflection of something we routinely experience in the real world.

Let’s pick it apart. He says, “Eat 12,000 calories a day and you’ll have a body like mine. The fine print says based on 4000 laps a day at world-record pace.” Is this really a joke? Not at all. He eats a lot of calories, he burns a lot of calories. This actually works.

In fact, that’s no different from every other infomercial I’ve seen on the topic. Your basic NutriSystem ad tells us the exact same thing: eat the right amount of calories and you’ll lose weight. Yet somehow we laugh at the absurdity of the Phelps diet but think nothing of picking up the phone and calling NutriSystem. Sure, one is a Saturday Night Live skit and the other is an actual commercial, but strip away the exaggerated claims and … well, you get the idea.

Today’s take-away wisdom is this: find out what works for you and don’t base if off what worked for someone else. If you’re swimming 4000 laps a day, then go ahead and wash down lunch with a pitcher of Hollandaise sauce. If you’re like me, and sit at a computer keyboard eighteen hours a day, I’d recommend a pitcher of lettuce instead.

Even NutriSystem gets that. Their fine print says it’s just “a portion and calorie controlled diet plan.” Real amazing breakthrough, isn’t it?

The Michael Phelps Diet

Brilliant: