Two of my Weight Loss Secrets

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Depending on what my "frame size" is - that is, whether I'm big-boned, small-boned, or in the middle - the supposed ideal weight for a man of my height is 155, 165, or 175 pounds. When I was at my peak weight of 260 pounds - not really all that fat compared to a lot of people, especially most truckers - I said to myself that I needed to lose 100 pounds, mostly because it was a nice round number which was close enough to the truth. I dropped 56 pounds the first year without any serious effort, but then the weight held steady, and what's worse, I decided to stop driving, mostly because I was tired of getting ripped off by my company, but also because I wanted to put the finishing touches on my novel and then get it sold. I'd need a lot of time to study up on how to do all that, and driving (especially without getting paid for it) was wasting that time.

So consequently, I started regaining some of the weight I'd lost. I knew what the problem was: I was starting to over eat and my activity level had gone down. Finally, I managed to get it under control by making some minor changes to my diet and my behavior and the weight started falling off again. Then we took a trip out west and I stopped the diet, thinking we'd be extra active to make up for it.

Tip: Don't take trips with people who can't walk more than 2 miles in a day and who want to start the day at 9:00 and give up on the day at 4:00. You won't see much and you won't lose much weight from activity. I expected the guy twice my age and weight to cause a problem, but not the guy half my age and weight.

But anyway, I regained about 15 pounds in just those 3 weeks, so I had to drop them again.


The morning of Christmas Eve was a Saturday, and was the day I allow myself to eat anything. And I do. I really need to employ a little more self-restraint, especially since I'm so good at it the rest of the week, but so far I haven't been able to do it very much. But anyway, Saturday mornings, before I pig out, are the time of the week I weigh the least. I've had all week to eat right and get in my exercise and such, and hopefully take care of my bathroom business before the weigh-in and before the eating contest.

My weight was down to 190, which means I was down a total of 70 pounds from my peak at 260. Sure, I'd lost about half of those pounds several times, but at least it was easy to do once I got back into my routine. A few weeks ago I bought some new pants at size 34, a size I haven't worn since high school - about 20 years. Everyone who hasn't seen me in a while says I'm skinny and don't need to lose more weight. I look at myself in the mirror and I look a lot better, but I still need to knock several more pounds off. I still haven't fully committed to a real body-building workout yet, but at least my walking levels have held steady or increased.At least I know that if I can find a way to make a habit of working out the way I've made a habit of eating right and walking, then I'll be able to do it just as easily.

Ok, so you're caught up on that particular soap opera of my life, and it's high time I tell you about those secrets I promised.

On Saturday, I typically eat a lot of chocolate and cookies and other stuff. I can put on anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds over the course of the day, but it's almost all water because I'm drinking a lot of extra water to keep myself hydrated. During the week I drink about half a gallon a day, maybe a little more, but on Saturday I typically drink about a full gallon. A gallon of water is 8 pounds. During the week, I - pardon any crudity - pee a lot. I seem to get rid of as much water as I bring in. But on Saturday, although I'm drinking more water, I'm in the bathroom less, and when I am in there, my pee isn't as mildly yellow as it is during the week. Mild yellow means it's mostly water, which means I'm drinking the right amount of water. Faint yellow or nearly clear means too much water, and deeper yellow means not enough water. If it's REALLY yellow, you REALLY need to drink some water!

I also noticed, while I was scarfing down some of those Reese's Christmas trees that I was not just drinking a lot of extra water as I lost nearly all self-control, but I was actually feeling VERY thirsty as I did so. It was then I realized, this was NOT the first time that had happened. I'm almost always thirsty on Saturday, particularly after eating a lot of sugar.

Well, the ingredients list has a lot of sugar, of course, but there's also a lot of sodium, which is essentially salt. Salt in your body retains water, which means the rest of your body isn't getting enough water, even if you drink a lot of it. It also means you're gaining weight. Every glass of water is a pound, and if you're not peeing it out, you're getting heavy and bloated. For a guy my size, it's not noticeable, but if you're a hot chick, or even a mostly in shape gal, you don't want to be holding on to all that water because it will make your slinky dresses a lot tighter and your face pudgier. And if you're in the military or you work at Hooters and have to do regular weigh-ins, all that water you're retaining will count against you.

The simple solution is to LAY OFF THE SODIUM! And the sugar, too, as I'm convinced it's a large part of the problem.

I've also noticed that on Sunday I don't lose the weight; it's not until my long walk Monday that I start to lose it, and that's because I'm sweating it out. Salt apparently doesn't leave your body through your bladder, it leaves through your sweat glands, so if you never work up a good sweat, you'll be holding on to that water for a few days.

So Secret #1 is: sugar and salt make you gain weight by making you retain water. And if you think you can be clever and drink something else, like pop or Gatorade, it's WATER your body needs, and those things don't contain enough of it, so you have to drink MORE, which means you're also adding a LOT of CALORIES. Water has no calories. Water helps you burn calories, if you have enough of it in you. Therefore avoid sugar and salt.

And Secret #2 is: once you eat salt, you can't get rid of it except by sweating it out, and this takes a bit of time and a lot of people don't enjoy the process of sweating unless the opposite sex is involved. But sweating IS a good way to get rid of the other salt your other food contains and which you can't avoid. Walking for a couple hours twice a week should do it, and I don't mean casually strolling. Sweat! Obviously you'll sweat more in warm weather than cold, but you don't want to sweat too much in the cold and then get sick, so practice and find what's best for you.

I guess I'm lucky in that my weekly diet is very low salt and low calorie. Even though I'm walking only 15-20 miles a week every other day, I'm still losing a pound or two every week... well, 6-12 pounds a week, but measured on Saturday mornings it's a pound or two. If you're not doing that, you'll have to be a lot more careful about the junk you're eating. Don't be especially surprised if dropping the pounds from that cake is hard; you're probably not drinking enough water and active enough to sweat it out, and you're probably eating a lot of other crap that's clogging things up too.

But hey, that's what you wanted to do. I've given you solid advice in the past, including the book which helped me finally get myself mostly under control, and I've also shown you that it works, so don't blame me. It's not too late. You can still do what I'm doing. Heck, you'll probably be better at it than me!

But you have to try it first.

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Sugar Rush

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Some friends of mine are discussing Skittles-filled doughnuts and I cringed at the thought. "Too much sugar," I'm tempted to scream as I run away. "I'd get one heckuva sugar rush. I prefer my sugar to be a little more subtle, like half a pound of chocolate, or candied peanut butter, or soft chocolate chip cookies. Skittles are pure sugar."

It then occurred to me that a good chocolate bar probably has as much sugar as a bag of Skittles, so what was the difference?
Well taste, obviously. I won't get a sour-cringe from chocolate. But I realized there are other sweet foods I prefer which give me less of a sugar rush.

For instance, I've always prefered clear soft drinks like Sprite and Slice over the darker ones, like Pepsi and Coke. Even root beer, my favorite, isn't as sweet as a cola. I've also never much cared for fruit-flavored drinks. On the Bataan, when I wasn't drinking water or paying for an overpriced can of pop, I'd drink Red from the galley. Not sure what flavor it was supposed to be, but it wasn't as tart as Orange, and much more appealing to look at than Yellow or Green. We sometimes used it for cleaning brass.

I've also never enjoyed death-by-chocolate desserts. You know, those things made with three or four (or more) types of chocolate treat (chocolate cake with chocolate icing and chocolate shavings, chocolate ice cream, and topped with chocolate syrup being the most common I've seen, but strangely can't find a picture of). Nope, I'll go for a scoop of vanilla on a warm chocolate chip cookie and some caramel on top. (Lines of chocolate syrup will do in a pinch - Red Lobster and Taste of Portugal have a dessert to die for!)

Over-sugaring gives me a headache, and has been known to make me sick. (Fitting, since caffeine is slightly poisonous and sugar is very acidic.) Even the Cadbury Creme Eggs are getting to be too much sugar. That said, I can eat a half-pound milk-chocolate bar or bunny with ease.

For the most part, I've given that stuff up. I've been restricting my junkfood intake to Saturdays only, and lost about 15 more pounds without too much trouble. I ate less junk last Saturday and this week lost three more pounds because of it. I don't normally brag about three little pounds. After all, two Saturdays ago I put on eight pounds in a single day. Most of that was water - I drank about a gallon over the day - but I also ate a lot. I've also had days where I've LOST five pounds in the space of 5 minutes. No, really. Guess how I did it.

I will continue to eat less junk, though I'm not going to cut it out completely because I still feel like I need an outlet for my chocolate and pizza cravings and there's no sense setting myself up to feel like a cheater. Having an anything goes day once per week is genius! I need a good calorie spike on Saturdays, but that doesn't mean I have to eat a week's worth of calories on Saturdays.

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Three Miles, Island not Included

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This morning I ran three full miles.

Ok, jogged. Whatever.

My previous record was 2.1 miles. My record before that was 1.5 miles, then 1.2 miles, then 0.7 miles, and then 0.3 miles. These are jogs, with no break. They're rather slow jogs, yes, but they're jogs. Finding the proper speed is important.

Last Friday, my 80 year old walking partner and I walked 7.5 miles. Our previous record was 6.6 miles. He didn't feel like walking today, so I decided it was time to see how far I could run, and you see the results.

I'm not doing intense training here, folks. I'm just getting out there and doing it, putting in practice some techniques and habits I've developed over the years, and which are finally paying off. Here are some of them:

Habit 1: Eat breakfast, no matter what. Even if it's just a handful of peanuts (unsalted, of course) on the way out the door, eat something within 30 minutes of waking up.

Habit 2: Drink water. I've trained myself to reach for water every time I feel thirsty OR hungry. For one, most people mistake thirst for hunger; downing a glass of water will almost always eliminate the feeling of hunger. For another, it takes 20 minutes for food hitting the stomach to register and for your brain to tell you you're full. Quickly downing some water not only prepares your stomach for food, it also sends this signal so that when the food does start coming, you won't need to eat as much of it to feel full. When you feel full (BEFORE you're stuffed), stop eating. An easy way to improve your digestion and drink more water without noticing is to have a glass before, during, and after each meal.

Habit 3: Eat something approximately every 3-4 hours. It doesn't have to be a full meal; snacks count.

Habit 4: Avoid sugar, salt, bleached flour, and starch. I've finally broken my habit of ordering pop at restaurants - thank you guys for jacking up the prices to obscene levels - and I avoid things like bread, potatoes, salt, and sugar. Not all calories are created equal. If you eat 1000 calories of sugar a day and I eat 1000 calories of green vegetables, who do you think is going to feel healthier after a month? Who do you think is going to lose weight, and who is going to gain it?

Habit 5: Eat vegetables. I'm terrible at this. I hate a lot of vegetables, especially the best ones. I get mixed vegetables and stir them in with the rest of the food so I don't notice them as much. I also have been drinking  lot of vegetable juice. I have to get the Great Value brand from Walmart because V8 tastes awful and costs twice as much. I drink a glass or two a day.

Habit 6: Stay active. When I worked on the ship, I could walk a few miles a day on my routine to go fix computers, up and down stairs, back and forth to the shop, and so forth. Plenty of activity. When i was a truck driver, I had to climb in and out of the truck a lot and do some walking. I had to keep my head from bouncing all over. I'd park in the farthest spots and stop frequently for bathroom and walking breaks. Now, as a writer, staying active is a little tougher. You have to take the time to actually do it. I walk about 15-20 miles a week, I ride a motorcycle wherever I need to go (weather permiting), which does take some effort. My friend plays a lot of basketball with his kids. If I loaf, I soon look like a loaf.

Habit 7: Cheat once a week. ANYONE can put off their favorite sugary, carb-loaded, starchy junkfoods (and fruit) for a few days. Get in the habit of telling yourself, "I'll eat this in five minutes," and then go do something else for a while. Get in the habit of walking down the most evil aisles in the grocery store and JUST check the prices, then walk away. Get in the habit of eating whatever you want on one specific day of the week. Eventually, you'll be able to push away any temptation, because ANYONE can put off eating crap for a few days. And then don't buy the junk until that day, don't even have it in your house. If you have others in the house who don't love you enough to support your decision to lead a healthier life, you can still get them to hide the worst stuff so you don't notice it. Or move out. And make sure you're active during your cheat day to keep your metabolism up.

Habit 8: Don't beat yourself up. You're going to make mistakes. Don't take it as a reason to kill yourself, or to give up, or as proof that you can't do it. Accept it as part of yoru record. Do you think that when I told myself (and all of you) last year that I wanted to be able to jog 2 miles, that when I wasn't immediately able to do so, I gave up? Heck no! I kept track of what I did and noticed that each time I made improvements. I patted myself on the back for getting closer to my goal. And when I achieved it, I set a new one: to be able to do 3 miles, which I achieved in one stroke.

Those are just EIGHT of the habits I now use to improve my health. And I developed them by asking, "What's the smallest, measurable change I can make?" Try it. What's the smallest measurable change you can make to improve your health?

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Put the Cat Down

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A branch of my family just lost their cat. Seems she was getting old and it was time to put her to sleep.

Hidey, as she was known, because she liked to hide when she was a kitten, was a very nice cat. Big and fluffy and fat, and very happy to let you pet her all day long if you wanted. She didn't know how to not purr.

But as she got older, she started showing signs that she hurt too much, and they didn't want her to suffer, so they took her to the vet and stayed with her until the purring stopped.

Now she's in kitty heaven.

Most people don't want an animal to suffer needlessly, and so when there's not much hope of relieving that pain, when the animal's life is obviously at an end, most people have no qualms about putting that animal to sleep. But for some reason, when a loved one wants to die with dignity, their family often becomes selfish and won't let them go. Why is it that sometimes ending suffering is justified and sometimes it's not?

Let's think about this. In the first instance, we have an animal, which is in pain, and is going to die. And even if it wasn't going to die any time soon, the pain this animal is suffering is great enough that we feel justified to put it to sleep.

Now imagine someone you care about is also in great pain and no longer wishes to suffer. Usually we think of old people whose bodies are shutting down, bed-ridden or otherwise immobilized, crippled by arthritis or who have had their minds or bodies robbed of them by Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. We're talking about a person who knows he or she has little to live for except knowing he or she will be a burden on their loved ones, who may be in a tremendous amount of pain, and who WANTS to die. Yet, to allow this person to take their own life, or in the case they're so debilitated that they need someone's help to do it for them, is somehow against our code of decency.

Since when are animals more important than people? Since when is it all right for people to suffer needlessly? Since when do we condone torturing our old and infirm just so we can have them around for another day? How selfish and unempathethic does one person have to be to do that to another? And what happens when we're put in the same position and through the miracles of medical technology, we continue to survive through such agony for years instead of mere days?

I love my parents a hell of a lot, and can't imagine the world without them. But I love them enough to let them go if they decide that's what they want to do. Can you say the same about your loved ones?

When I looked up Jack Kervorkian, the well-known advocate of human mercy killing, I noticed that not all of his suicide assistances were clearly for terminally ill patients. Several are questionable, in that they may have been done to ease someone who was merely depressed, and who could have recovered. Which begs the question: assuming there are times when it's right to kill, when are those times?

Few people would agree that a depressed teenager should be allowed to kill themselves, right? A lot more would agree that someone terminally ill, regardless of their age, should be allowed to do so, right? Being terminally ill seems to be a good dividing line, but what exactly is terminally ill? Aren't we all expecting to die some day? Isn't it possible a bus could run us over unexpectedly at any given moment? If someone is depressed enough to make a serious attempt at suicide, isn't that a pretty good working definition of terminally ill?

And what other dividing lines are important? Quality of life? What else?

Tell me. Use the comments below.

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Additional awesomeness you can't do without:
Do Bald Men Have More Sex Drive?
The Happy New Year Philosophy
Nikie St. Giles - 2000

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To Your Health - Part 5

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I hadn't expected to write a fifth part to this series, but with the recent developments, I think it's a good idea, and I feel like I have to share the good news: Over the past two weeks, I lost eight (8!) pounds by eating all the junk food I wanted!

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking my calendar broke and I still think it's April 1st and you're still upset that Mopjockey.com isn't actually the official website of Florida (yet). I couldn't possibly have feasted on chocolate and Doritos for the past week, could I have?

After you've petitioned Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio on my behalf, check this out:

A month ago, I clued you guys in on Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Body. I spent a bunch of time reading it and thinking about how to apply the precepts, and remembered key parts of my own weight-loss story in which I lost over 50 pounds throughout 2009. A lot of the ideas in Tim's fat-loss section meld nicely with my own experiences from that year. During that time, I ate basically the same, reasonably healthy meals over and over, and occasionally sucumbed to my craving for chocolate.

That's exactly the way Tim suggests you eat: the same meals, over and over, and then once a week go nuts without any guilt. For maximum fat-loss, he gives a handy list of the most effective foods you can choose from. Follow the plan for six days, and then on the seventh you get to eat anything and everything you want!

Two weeks ago, I assembled my particular choices of foods (which I'll tell you in a minute) and mostly stuck to them. I wanted to see how well I'd like them, and how hard it was to stick to the diet. I was pleasantly surprised to find it tasted okay, and it wasn't too hard to stick to it. I did "cheat" a couple times, but largely kept to it. And then on Saturday, I ate like a total pig.

I started my day with two huge candy bars, totalling nearly a pound of chocolate, and that was just breakfast! Over the course of the day, I had about half a package of peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie dough, some cookies, half a bag of Doritos, some pizza, and some other stuff. I was full the whole day, practically forcing myself to overeat. I didn't quite take it to the point where I got sick, or felt any pain from having too much food in my belly, but it was a heckuva gluttonous day! I ate enough that Sally Struthers will no longer speak to me.

Then this past week, I stuck strictly to my diet, straying only once because I had to have something for breakfast and didn't have time to peel a couple eggs, so I had a cup of fruit. Here's my diet:

Breakfast: Two hardboiled XL eggs, topped with cinnamon and a variety of spices to combat the blandness.

Lunch: A can of tuna, half a can of black beans, and half a can of mixed vegetables, again topped with cinnamon and a variety of spices to combat the blandness. Adding tomato sauce helped a lot, but it's okay without it.

Dinner: Three slices of chicken or turkey lunchmeat OR some low carb peanut butter, on half a low-carb lavash bread wrap, plus 8 ounces of Vegetable juice and sometimes a few bites of raw broccoli.

Second Dinner: Repeat one of the above smaller meals, or 2-3 handfuls of unsalted peanuts.

And, of course, all the water I needed to feel full, generally about 12 ounces or so during each meal and probably another 24-30 between them. There's a small amount of variety to the above, but that's pretty much the whole menu for me. I've had some carrots to fight off between-meal hungers, which are recommended. Tim's list is bigger, but I took his advice to keep things as simple as possible and just stuck to these. I did basically the same thing the year I lost 56 pounds.

There aren't a whole lot of calories in the above, but more importantly, there aren't a whole lot of carbs, nor a whole lot of the "white poisons" (sugar, salt, flour, potatoes). I'm not being super-strict, because each meal is supposed to have a protein (meat, fish, or egg), legume (beans), and vegetable (mixed vegetables being best), but I'm not eating the forbidden foods either. (Not counting this particular bread, which is super-low carb.)
 
Each meal is somewhat boring, but they're also no-brainers to heat up or make and eat in a couple minutes.
 
I initially tried three eggs in the morning, but oddly, that was too much, and even with two I feel full enough for hours afterward. I eat about every five hours too. I also tried red beans, which were okay, and tried green beans as my vegetable, which were also okay, but decided to stick with the black beans and mixed veggies, and went to the veggie juice for my third meal.
 
And then, yesterday, I once again pigged out. I had lost eight pounds, and it was BECAUSE I had eaten so much crap the previous Saturday!
 
See, my diet is low calorie and low carb, and eating that way consistently will slow your metabolism. Going wild once a week keeps the metabolism high, so that you can continue to burn off the fat on the days you behave. Between a week of loose experimenting to see what I'd like and a week of strict adherence using what I did like, I lost eight pounds.
 
What makes this even more incredible is that I'm NOT exercising much at all. I walked five miles Monday and Friday, and two miles Wednesday. Otherwise, I've been chained to the computer.
 
But what's going to keep the pounds off? I lost over 50 pounds in 2009, and regained about a third of them very slowly over 2010. How to make sure the weight lost isn't found again, and retain the no-brainerness? You have to kill off the bad fat cells. Tune in next time to find out how.
 
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More awesomeness to whet your dhrystones:
To Your Health - Part 4
In my Quest to Offend You
Hey baby, what's your sign? (Updated!)

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Tim Ferriss - Four Hour Body, Four Hour Work Week

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Tim Ferriss, my new hero, has released his second book.

The first one, Four Hour Work Week was filled to the brim with fantastic, practical advice on how to get more out of your time, reduce your workload, and enjoy life. Unfortunately, even though millions of people have read it, only a sparse handful are mentally ready to accept its truths.

His new one, Four Hour Body, makes 4HWW into a jealous older brother. Want to lose 20 pounds in a month while eating all the junk food you want, and no exercise? Tim tells you how. Want to build 20 pounds of muscle in a month? Again, Tim's your man. Become a body builder, even? Tim Ferris has you covered.

You'd think with information like this, everyone would want to carry the book. However, Costco yanked them off the shelves. Why, you ask? Because the book also tells women how to achieve a 15-minute orgasm.

We don't want them doing that, do we? Nay! Women must never realize their capacity for unlimited enjoyment of sex! The horror! God help us if they were to start exposing their ankles!

Whether you want to drop fat, add muscle, learn how to enjoy sex, get better sleep, reverse injuries, or just run faster, if it has to do with improving your body in a simple and easy way, Tim Ferriss tells you what nobody else wants you to know, including straight talk about anabolic steroids and other drugs. (Hint: You can build muscle faster WITHOUT illegal drugs than you can WITH them.)

There's something in this book for everyone who wants to take their health seriously. It's important. And Costco doesn't think you're adult enough to handle it. (Which, unfortunately, is true for about 80% of the population.)

Some of the incredible, easy tips for weightloss which you can try out RIGHT NOW include:

1. Putting an icepack on the back of your neck and upper shoulders for half an hour when you're relaxing during the evening. Couch potato heaven!

2. Taking pictures of what you eat. You don't have to count calories, you don't have to stop eating it, you just have to take a moment to take a picture of it. For greater effectiveness, show the picture to other people.

3. Sprinkle some cinnamon in your coffee before you eat a meal. (No more than a teaspoon a day!)

4. Simply eating slower and drinking plenty of water as you eat. Scarfing down your food sabotages your weight loss attempts, as does inadequate water in your stomach for digestion.

5. Make a "cookie log". You don't have to stop eating them, just mark down on your calendar every time you eat a cookie, or whatever other bad-for-you thing you're trying to eat less of.

One guy lost weight by simply tracking his weight. That's right, every day he weighed himself and wrote it down and charted it. He didn't change anything about his diet, and over two years he lost about 25 pounds.

That's six tips right off the top of my head that ANYONE can do RIGHT NOW.

For dieting fans, Tim also has what he calls a "slow carb" diet. You try it out for a week, and then you get a cheat day when you can eat anything at all you want. You only have to have enough willpower to delay eating your favorite junk foods to that one day a week. Anyone can put junk food aside for a few days, knowing they'll be allowed to eat as much as they want later, right? And better still, it's important to your weight loss that you DO eat as much junk food on that one day as you can!

But that's just for starters.

Tim Ferriss takes a minimalist approach to the hassles of life; he's always looking to do the most with the least effort, and you'll find so much useful information in his books, you'll wonder why they aren't the size of an encyclopedia and why they don't teach this stuff in Kindergarten. Tim experiments constantly, and he has tons of connections to get things done. Tim gives you what no one else does because no one else has investigated as much as he has. No one else questions the "facts" so thoroughly, nor has the resources and determination to find out what the real facts are.

I've spent the last few days digesting the first parts of the book, which are about weight loss and muscle gain. I've been putting ice on the back of my neck each night and trying to get myself in the habit of eating slower. I already drink a lot of water. I haven't started tracking things, and I haven't gone on the diet yet, but I plan on doing so soon. Last year I managed to hold back on regaining the 50 pounds I lost the year before, but so far this year, I've been slowly losing my battle because I haven't been as active while it's so cold.

That's going to change, and real soon. And the Four Hour Body is going to help me.

A little bit of the information in Tim's book, particularly the muscle-gain ideas and some of the sex stuff, I already knew from other reserach and experimentation I'd done last year, so I'm pretty confident that the rest of the book is solid gold. Meanwhile, get your copy now and have the pride of knowing you have a banned book in your hands!

(Note: other than the pittance Amazon gives me when you buy something from them through one of these links, I have no ties to Tim Ferriss.)
















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More articles you'll find interestiong or entertaining:
New Year's Resolution Policy
You know you feel good when...
Nikie St. Giles - 2000

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New Year's Resolution Policy

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In conjunction with our Happy New Year Philosophy, there is also a New Year's Resolution Policy, which is to be implemented immediately.

Heretofore, when you wish to make a resolution to do something, and you want to wait for some landmark event to start it (end of the year, end of the pack of cigarettes, end of the piece of cake you're eating, etc), I hereby declare that the landmark event is NOW, and you may begin acting in accordance to your new resolution.

Surely you're not the only person who has wanted to make some sort of change in their life, and then decided to wait until something happened to make the change, right? Several people I know who CLAIM to want to stop smoking have this particular habit: they say, "I'm going to stop smoking. This is my last pack." Because, you know, they don't want to waste the $2-worth of cigarettes left in the pack because that's SO MUCH MORE VALUABLE than avoiding the hospital bill for emphysema, nevermind the cost to your personal honor when that moment comes and you engage your habit to go get some more, thereby breaking your word.

We're people of our word, aren't we?

So how can we quit smoking, quit eating junk food, quit wussing out of whatever change we're wanting to make in ourselves? I'll tell you.

It's called "Immediate Action". When you decide you're going to do something, IMMEDIATELY take a step toward accomplishing it. Put out the cigarette NOW, put the pack in the garbage NOW, get rid of the ash trays NOW, look up cures for smoking NOW.

Because if you wait for the pack to run out, you have a program running in your head that tells you, "I'm out of cigarettes, I have to go get more." This is one time when "finish what you started" is a bad idea. You wouldn't drink an entire gallon of sewage just because you started to drink one, would you? The only way to break a habit is to take immediate action against it, so that every time you catch yourself engaging in the bad habit, you get into the GOOD habit of stopping and doing something else.

My dad quit smoking almost 30 years ago. He quit cold turkey. He didn't make any lame excuses about how hard it was to quit, or complain that they laced cigarettes with addictive substances. He just decided he wasn't going to smoke any more because he wanted to be healthier, he wanted to smell better, and he wanted to be around when his grandkids started showing up. Did he have powerful cravings? Sure. Did other people around him continue to smoke? Yup. Does he still get the occasional craving? Uh-huh. Did he wait until the end of the pack? Nope.

When he felt the urge to smoke, he had some very powerful tools at his disposal, which he used properly. Most people don't use these tools, or if they do, they use them improperly.

First, he reminded himself of the anguish he'd gone through in the first few days of quitting, and told himself that if he started smoking again, he'd just have to go through that hell again. Second, he knew that the urge to smoke would pass, and continued to tell himself that it would. Third, he did other things to get his mind off his urge! Fourth, he knew that he had a choice. He didn't forbid himself to smoke, instead he CHOSE to smoke LATER. Fifth, he's a man of his word. He'd made a promise that he was going to quit, and going back on that promise would mean he was untrustworthy. All we have is our reputation. And sixth, he felt cigarettes were getting too expensive for what they did anyway. Unfortunately, he only had a few cheerleaders on his side (myself included), but he managed to beat the nicotine monkey anyway.

When you've got a tough, ingrained habit, you have to catch yourself, stop doing it immediately, and immediately do something else. Don't wait to finish the pack, just quit now. Otherwise, you'll be just another loser who continually promises to do things and never carries them through. You don't want to be one of those, do you?
















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Other articles you'll find interesting or fun:
You are What you Consume
Site Metrics Unveiled
Maps are freakin' awesome

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Breaking personal records is fun!

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It's fun to break personal records. It's downright awesome to SHATTER them!

Last week, when the temperatures came tumbling down, I took a run around the block in the evening. A few months ago, I was able to run about 3/4 of a mile. Then last month, I made it to a mile and a quarter, which was a pretty darn impressive improvement. But last week, I shattered my record again and made it to 2.1 miles!

Upon reflection, I recall that this isn't actually the best I've EVER done, if you don't count that one time about 12 years ago at Keebler Elf Force Base (aka, Keesler Air Force Base) when I was just "in the zone" and I did about 2.5 miles. (And no one believed it, since my previous best wasn't even a mile.) So if I get to three miles, I'd definitely beat it. Which I will, possibly by the end of the year at the rate I'm going.

Then today, I got to the gym again. I've been slacking on that score because I've been so busy, but today I went and made some serious gains from the last time I went, which was two months ago. I didn't break my personal lifting records today, but I did a lot better than last time, which had a delay of about three months since the last time I went.

I did break one record, which was the leg press. 120 reps at 765 pounds definitely shatters my previous record, which was only 100 reps at 675 pounds (90 pounds less). I also nearly tied my best shrugging weight, lifting 410 pounds today. It was a lot of fun watching everyone watch me put all that weight on the bar. One guy was completely flabbergasted at my leg press, and when I told him 765 pounds was the max I could put on the machine, and that I'd like to get a couple girls to climb onto it to make an even 1000 pounds, his jaw dropped. Really, I probably could do 1000 pounds, although I'd work up to it, because 765 today felt heavy, regardless of the 120 reps I did.

It's pretty cool to be able to lift that much weight now. A couple years ago, I tried picking up my favorite niece, who is 100 pounds soaking wet, and I couldn't quite do it. Since then, I've lost 50 pounds (and kept it off) and boosted my strength. Now I barely notice her weight when I pick her up.

Unfortunately, I don't look as strong as I am or as light as I am. I'm getting more and more serious about my fitness, being able to run 2 miles or walk 6 miles without too much difficulty, so eventually I'll start looking as good as I feel.

But let me tell you guys something: what's important is that you FEEL good. Being healthy and being fit are two different things. There are plenty of very fit long distance runners who have health problems, and there are plenty of very healthy people who aren't fit but are old. Being healthy is more important, but being both is even more awesome, as it turns the clock back on your age and means you'll likely live longer and better. And it feels GREAT!

And now I've got a question for you guys. I've been calling myself "Jaycee" for a while, and I'm starting to get used to it, although I don't always automatically rememeber to introduce myself that way. Yesterday morning I attended a business group meeting, and one of the guys there misheard me. Most people, if they mishear me, think I'm "Jason", but this guy somehow heard "Juice". I kinda like it. I'm not yet SO famous that a stage name change would really hurt that much, but I also don't want to get into the habit of changing my name every time I hear something really cool. Juice Adams sounds pretty cool, and it's almost unique. There are a lot fewer Jaycee's than there are Jim's, and I'm about 15 of the top 30 Google results, but there seems to be only two Juices, so that means I'd take the top spots pretty quick. 

But what do you guys think? Juice or Jaycee? Use the comments, or send me an email.

While you mull that over, here's a couple things that I saw for sale and thought you'd like to check them out. They don't have any bearing on the article, but you might like them anyway.

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More articles you'll find interesting or informative:
You know you feel good when...
Imagining the Tenth Dimension
It's Official: Asus doesn't Honor its Agreements

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Chumming the Waters

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Yesterday, I took my first deep sea fishing trip in about 25 years. My dad fondly remembers he and his dad going out on the ocean to fish, and I recall going out there one year with them and being somewhat bored. I've never been that interested in fishing, but it's good time to spend with my dad, so I was happy to do it.

The ride out there took the better part of two hours, and I ALMOST made it before I had to chum the waters.

I don't get motion sick that much, unless I'm riding something really violent, like three roller coasters in a row, and lately I've been able to read in the car, so I didn't think a measly boat trip was going to affect me much. (I used to could ride rollercoasters all day, but of late, 3 is my limit, with a break in between.)

As soon as the boat stopped, it wasn't rocking as bad as it was while we were traveling... it was rocking A LOT WORSE!! So there was no chance I could catch up, and I spent the rest of the trip alternately hurling over the side, rushing to hurl over the side, and trying not to hurl over the side. I think I lost about 10 pounds in the toilet (because when I get queasy, my bowels get loose too) and another 5 pounds of stomach acid, plus a LOT of sweat. I was definitely dehydrated by the time we got back to shore, because drinking water only makes you puke it right back up.

And my throat was pretty sore.

So if you take a deep sea fishing trip, be sure to take some dramamine a couple hours before you go out, and DON'T eat very much beforehand, and DO be sure you bring along some Pepto and some Saltines, just in case. I didn't have a big meal, but I was surprised how much of it managed to come back up, even seven hours after eating it.

I'm feeling fine again now that I've drank about a gallon of water and eaten enough pizza to restore my wieght and the contents of my intestines, but let it be a lesson to you: just go to the store and buy fish there. Much cheaper, and easier on the throat.

At least I can still whoop just about anyone at Cribbage or computer games.

In other news, I finally updated my Civ4 contributions page to reflect that Episode 100 of Polycast was released, on which I got a considerable amount of air time, most of it in the last hour or so. It took about 3 hours to record the show, and the tape lasts about 2.5 hours, so almost everything got left in.

Here's everything you'll need for your own fishing trip. Buying anything off these Amazon links helps support the site and my amazing lifestyle and ability to write these fascinating status reports.
















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Other articles that will interest and amaze you:
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My high-scores are Better than Yours
Hey baby, what's your sign? (Updated!)

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Up to 5.5 Miles, and a Computer Store in a Hairdresser

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We've been walking a lot more. Last week, my buddy and I walked what I thought was 5 miles over the course of 100 minutes - that's a good walking speed of 3 miles per hour. I finally got around to measuring it on my map and discovered we'd actually walked half a mile farther! That's an even brisker 3.3 miles per hour.

I walked on the treadmill the other day and found out I burn 330 calories per hour when walking at 3 miles per hour, so for that walk I burned about 600 calories.

That's about one bowl of cereal with almond milk, which is what I have for breakfast. Free breakfast! Calorie-wise, anyway.

An hour of walking is good for your circulation and helpful for your heart and lungs, but if all it negates is a bowl of cereal, it's not a fat-burning tool. By that I mean you can't go eating tons of cookies and crap and think you're going to burn them off with an easy hour or two of walking.

Jogging at a comfortable pace of 5.5 mph burns off about 650 calories per hour for me. My jogging has gotten up to about a mile and a third at that speed, for 14 minutes, then filling out at least half an hour with walking, for about 3.5 total miles those days.

If you do the math, you'll see that you don't have to run twice as fast to burn twice the calories. If you can go faster, you can burn disproportionately more calories while you're doing it, and save time too. Higher intensity is better.

Matt Furey, noted physical trainer, agrees with me about intensity. In fact, he takes it a couple steps further by saying you should run all-out for as long and far as you can - essentially go as intense as you possibly can. I haven't tried it yet, but he says it's the best thing you can do for your heart and lungs, in that it does the most to build them up. I think I may give it a try for a few days and see if it improves my speed and endurance for my jogs.

In other news, if you live in Bunnell, I've discovered a great computer repair place - slash - beauty parlor and barber. Get your hair done and a facial while you get your computer fixed! Head to 4751 E Moody Blvd and look for the computer sign on the salon, and I guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised!


View Larger Map

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Curse cookies!
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The Great Organic Myths

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The great organic myths: Why organic foods are an indulgence the world can't afford

I wasn't especially convinced of the value of "organic" foods to begin with, but I was trying some out to see if they made me feel any different. Nonetheless, I'm a little unhappy about this article.

What's next? Will they declare that chocolate isn't good for you any more too? Is there anything left to enjoy eating?

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To Your Health - Part 4

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Just in time for Memorial Day, I've got the 4th leg of the table I built my effortless weight loss on. In the first three articles, I talked about things you can eat and how to eat them to get effective results. You've probably already got your weight closer to what you want just from doing that, but there's one more thing that must be done to get your weight to the level you want.

If, like some people, "exercise" is a four-letter-word for you, then I've got good news: you don't have to "exercise" to lose weight. I didn't. BUT, if you sit around on your butt all day, it's going to be hard. I lost 50 pounds without doing any exercise routines, and I've kept it off without doing them too, but if I was also sitting on my butt all the time, I wouldn't be able to keep it off. I don't do what most people call exercise or working out, and I lost and have kept off 50 pounds for several months, but I'm at a plateau and I have to do something about that to get rid of the last 30 pounds I don't want.

That something is called "being active". It's not exercise, it's simply avoiding total laziness.

I'm 6 feet tall. My "ideal weight" is about 175 pounds. I got up to 260 because I sat around all day doing very little, and the only thing that kept me from getting even heavier was because I drank so much water in place of eating and the computer often distracted me from snacking so I didn't eat much. Once I improved my diet and started driving a truck again, I lost 50 pounds over the course of 2009, even though I ate MORE.

That's right, doing a job normally associated with grossly overweight men - truck driving - helped me lose weight. I don't eat a lot of truckstop and fast food, but I do eat some about three times a week. I stop every 2-3 hours and get out to circulate the blood. I park far away from the rest area so I have longer to walk. I get in and out of the truck several times a day. I take a walk in the evening before bed.

I'm probably still less active than the majority of people, but I lost 50 pounds.

For those of you who sit in front of a computer all day, totally engrossed in it, you've got to break away from it once in a while. Practically any job will allow you to stop and stand up and stretch a little every hour, or park in the farthest spot in the parking lot, or walk around the building to get your supplies instead of asking someone else to do it for you.

I've got a list of things you can do to burn off a few extra calories every day and keep your body in reasonable condition. It won't make you a super-athlete by itself, but if you're one of those people who can be described as "sedentary", it WILL improve your health and fitness. This is what helped me, once I incorporated them into my life, and now I don't even notice doing them.

1. Get off your butt every hour. When your watch does its hourly beep-beep, stand up and stretch the kinks out. This takes less than a minute, but it keeps your blood circulation good throughout the day.

2. Fidget. I can't sit still for more than 5 minutes unless I'm really engrossed in something, and even then it just doesn't happen. This developed out of being nervous, and you don't want to do it during a job interview or important presentation or a date because it does convey that you're nervous, but it's great for circulation and burning a few extra calories each day.

3. When driving for long periods, don't drive more than 3 hours at a time. This meshes well with eating about every 3 hours. Don't eat while driving, even if it's just a snack. You can snack and stand or fidget, accomplishing two goals at once.

4. Don't send an errand boy after something on the other side of the building, go get it yourself. If your time is worth a lot of money, this might be a little harder. While I worked as a computer tech in the Navy, I lived on a huge ship (LHD5). A lot of trouble calls could be handled over the phone, but instead, I went to the problem. I probably walked 5 miles every day because of that, up and down several flights of stairs, and it held my weight down before I learned how to eat better. My time was valuable, but the new guys needed to learn the ship and learn their jobs, so it was worth it.

5. When you go to the store, park in the far spots. The farther walk is good for you, and you get another minute or two to think about other things. I often take a walk when I've got some heavy thinking to do.

6. While at the store, go up and down all the aisles, as this is a non-boring way to get a lot of extra walking in.

7. I wore some ankle weights for a while last year. I figured that since I couldn't get a lot of walking in every day, I might as well multiply what walking I did get. It strengthened my legs and helped me lose a little weight. On the downside, I've heard a few people saying it's bad for your knees and ankles, and the weights get torn up pretty easily. I wore boots all the time to protect my ankles from friction, and the weights and boots both got torn up after a few months, so YMMV.

8. If you absolutely must play video games all day, play something that requires a lot of thinking or a lot of moving. The Wii is supposedly good for exercising without realizing you're exercising, but a really deep wargame gets your brain pumping too. Plus, if it's a frustrating game, like Civilization 4, you might get worked up yelling at the computer players backstabbing you or finishing a Wonder you were 2 turns away from finishing.

9. If you play sports, be a go-fer. My dad plays baseball. He can play the outfield (so he walks farther to get there) where it's busy (so he has to chase the ball a lot more). When his team is up at bat, he can play the bat boy, fetching used bats from the field. And he can hit the ball and run around the bases. You can do stuff like that too.

10. When you do any kind of regular exercise routine, make sure you also do something to distract yourself from focusing on how "hard" it is. I find I can jog a lot further on the treadmill if I'm distracted by a TV, even when I can't hear it, than when I'm focused on what I'm doing. When I'm jogging around the block, I focus on telling myself to get to the next driveway, and when I reach it, I tell myself that was too easy and I need to get to the next one. I can about double my jogging distance just by doing this.

The most important thing you can do is put your mind to it. Ask yourself, "What can I do to use up more energy? How can I burn more calories and keep my circulation good?" When you ask your mind the right questions, you'll get better answers, and then you need to put those answers to work for you.

Make a decision to prioritize your health and then stick with it. Make it as important to walk a mile or five miles or jog every day as it is to chat away your life on Facebook. Make it more important. No one's going to make you healthy. Only you can do it.

That's my four pillars: drinking plenty of water, eating better food and less bad food, eating small amounts of food every 3-4 hours, and increasing your level of activity. I'll continue giving out tips now and then because there's TONS to know. I'll also keep you updated on how I'm doing and what I'm learning and be here to encourage you to improve your health and life too.

The next time I'm going to talk about something called "intensity" and how, as I head into this new year, it has helped make improvements to other areas of my life than just my basic health.

Be your best!
- Jaycee Adams

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Winning the Aussie Way and the Scottish Way
To Your Health - Part 1

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To Your Health - Part 3

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Welcome back, sorry for the delay, but I'm here now, so fret no more. Last time, I talked about improving what you put into your body, because when you build your body out of crap, it tends to turn your body into crap. And before that I suggested you drink more water to help lubricate the machinery. Now I'm going to complete the trifecta of input by discussing HOW to eat.

"I figured out how to eat when I was a baby," you cry. Ah, but you learned wrong, and because you're eating the wrong way, you're triggering your body's starvation reflex, which makes it almost impossible to lose weight. The "traditional" way to eat was developed back when we had to do lots of work and sometimes had to worry about whether we'd miss meals; it allowed our ancestors to pack on fat when they needed it and burn it off when they didn't. Ever wonder why so many Renaissance paintings and sculptures are of overweight women? Back then, being fat meant you were wealthy and could afford to miss work; you never missed a meal. Today, though, it means you're not working enough and overeating. So let's change the way we eat to get rid of the unneeded fat.

The "traditional" way of eating is 3 meals a day, spaced about 5-6 hours apart. Breakfast is usually big, then a moderate lunch, then a big dinner, including dessert. Maybe a sugary snack here and there, and maybe a midnight snack. Some people skip breakfast, which is even worse! This is bad because after about 3-4 hours of not eating, the body starts to think you're starving, and so starts conserving energy. It gets rid of the "strong" muscle in favor of the "weak" muscle and the fat.

By simply getting a small snack between your meals and right before bed so that you're eating something no more than about 3-4 hours apart, you stop the starvation reflex. Breakfast is especially important because you've been asleep for 6-9 hours, and you wake up in starvation mode!

We don't want to increase our total caloric intake, we just want to spread it out. Doing this will help out a lot.

To help you figure out how much food to eat, I've come up with a little guide. This will require you to feel out what's needed, because we're all different.

The first meal size is the "Full" meal. When you eat, take note of when you first feel full enough that you could stop eating. Ignore what's on your plate, you want to figure out what it feels like to be full.

I eat a Full meal as my 1st and 3rd meals of the day. For breakfast, this is usually 1-2 bowls of cereal (depends on the size of the bowl). For lunch it's usually a lunchmeat sandwich and some chips.

The next meal size is the "Snack" meal. A Snack is just enough food to kill off your hungry feeling for a couple hours. For me, it's a little less than Full, often about half to two-thirds that size.

I eat a Snack as my 2nd and 4th meals of the day, and sometimes my fifth. Usually I have a banana as my mid-morning Snack and my mid-afternoon Snack will usually be a fruit cup and some crackers.

The third meal size is the "Handful". It's what I can loosely fit in my hand. Usually this is a few dried apricots or a box of raisins or some pretzels, maybe a 1 oz bag of chips. This is usually my fifth and sixth meal of the day, before I go to bed, but sometimes I have a Snack from the truckstop instead. I eat these at the end of the day when I'm settling down and don't need much energy, and their only purpose is to put a little bit on my stomach so I don't trigger the starvation reflex. Occasionally I'll have something like this after I wake up if I know I can't have breakfast soon enough. It's a good way to break the fast.

And the last meal is the "Stuffed" meal. This is any amount of food you eat after you're already full. Most people eat to this point for their supper, during holidays, or if they go to a buffet or a restaurant. That need to clean our plate isn't just something to blame on our poor, starving parents and grandparents, it's built in.

I do occasionally eat this much, but not nearly as much as I used to. Overeating a little bit once a month is tolerable, even 3-4 times a month is okay if you're not having to unbutton your pants, but more than that and you're going to gain weight.

Because I've gotten used to eating less during meals, if I overeat, I'm usually still full 3-4 hours later. In that case, I keep drinking plenty of water, and sometimes have a Handful, usually peanuts or sunflower seeds.

There's a little bit more to this, though. It's called drinking water. While you eat, you should also be drinking water. I don't generally do it while I'm eating cereal, but I have water before and after. The water does several things. It takes up space in your stomach so you feel full sooner. It helps dilute and break up the food so it's easier to digest, meaning you're not as tired after eating. And it slows your eating. You know how when you go to a buffet, if you eat fast, you can eat more, but if you eat slow, you can't eat as much? Use that effect. Eat slow, drink water.

Between meals, drink cold water as often as you feel like. Since your body has to maintain 98.6 degrees, if you drink cold water, your body has to spend energy to warm it up, meaning cold water actually has negative calories!

Here is my typical meal schedule. It's kind of a default for me, but it varies a lot.

In the morning when I get up, I have some water first thing. Then I make a bowl of cereal. I now eat Kashi Go Lean almost exclusively, and I've just tried almond milk with it and it's pretty good together without being ridiculously expensive.

About 3-4 hours later, I usually have a banana, sometimes some peanuts or crackers or pretzels as filler.

About 3-4 hours later I have a sandwich. This is usually 3 slices of Turkey Balogna (3 oz), a slice of cheese, and two slices of Honey Wheat or Whole Grain bread. Sometimes I put some honey on it. I also have a 1 oz bag of chips since I can't eat out of a bigger bag without eating half of it. Occasionally, maybe once a week, I'll have a can of pop with it, but I'm almost off the pop.

About 3-4 hours later I have a cup of mixed fruit (4 oz) and usually a box of raisins or some peanuts or crackers as filler.

And my last meal is usually a handful of peanuts or sesame sticks, or maybe another bag of chips.

Right before bed, I'll usually have a few nuts.

I eat unsalted foods as much as possible. Nuts are especially salted, so you have to be careful and get the unsalted kind. The taste grows on you. If you can learn to like something that looks, tastes, and smells like it came out of a dog's bladder (aka beer), then eating unsalted nuts is a breeze.

While this is the default for me, it's hardly all I eat. I make a point of about twice a week eating lunch at a restaurant, usually a fast-food joint or pizza place, but sometimes a real restaurant. I also make a point of having eggs for breakfast once a week. Eggs have good things you want, but not too much. Once or twice a week seems just about right to me. I also try to make a point of having seafood once or twice a month, usually shrimp.

And of course there's Mongolian. Can't get enough of that. I'll talk about that in a bit.

So, in summary, about every 3-4 hours you should eat SOMETHING. One or two meals should give you a "Full" feeling, and the rest should be smaller, and you can knock out some hunger pangs with a couple mouthfuls of food. Also, drink plenty of water with your meal to improve digestion and give you a fuller feeling sooner. And don't eat a large meal before bed, but DO eat a little bit of something that won't keep you up.

I've got one more leg of the table I built to effortlessly lose 50 pounds last year and have so far kept it off, and I'll tell you all about it next time.

Stay awesome!


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More articles of interest or amusement: 
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What you should know about the military before you join
To Your Health - Part 4

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Happy Birthday to Me!

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So a week ago I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my 25th birthday, and what did you all get me? Anything? Gee, all I wanted was the most popular personal website of all time, and maybe for a few of you to click on some ads and buy something at Amazon so I could pay for it. That wouldn't have cost much!

For my birthday, I received a few phone calls, I got to work pretty much all day (a treat, considering the company I work for and the state of the economy), and I ate what might be my last chocolate. A few months ago, just to see if I could, I went 3 whole months without any chocolate or heavy sugar. No cookies or ice cream or cake or anything like that. I've had my pop-drinking down to about 1-2 cans per week for quite a while now, and that was the only real sugar I had in that 3 month period.

Well, after getting to eat my annual Cadbury Egg, which they started selling at the beginning of this month, I decided that they were WAAAAYYY too expensive to ever get again. The truckstops are charging a dollar or more for them, and even Walmart wants 50 cents. So, like I always do when I get disgusted at the price of something, I quit buying it. I buy pop only when I can get it for $6 or less for a 24 pack of 12 oz cans, I don't buy Doritoes unless they're $2.50 or less per bag, and unless I'm really weak, I won't pay more than 50 cents for a candy bar. Anything higher is a rip off.

The problem comes when they put them "on sale" for the normal price. If your tactic to stop buying crap is to get disgusted at the price, and then the price comes down, your disgust goes away. That's what happened with my previous candy strike. I quit eating it, they dropped the price, then they dropped it again. Then they introduced a new type of candy that I really wanted to try, and so I gave in. But now, even though they're putting the stuff "on sale" again, I've decided I'm going to do without it.

This time, I've got a little more than my disgust at the prices to help me out. I'm also disgusted by the way it robs me of the body I want to have. I lost 50 pounds last year, DESPITE eating candy once in a while (and binging on it a couple times), but so far this year, I've held pretty steady, fluctuating over about 10 pounds up and down. I'm eating better, too. More fruits. I can't hardly stand vegetables, but vegetable juice is surprisingly tasty. My sister turned me on to Kashi cereals, and that's about all I eat for breakfast now. (I'm still working on the next installment of my health series, and I'll tell you more about that then.) But the point is, I've decided that if I don't make my health a priority while I still have it, I'm going to lose it. I've been lucky I haven't gotten sick hardly ever, and that can last forever if I take it seriously.

I've seen the results of my new strength-building workout, and they're unbelievable! An average performance gain of 35% in just 4 sessions spread out over about 8 weeks! If I can find a way to burn fat that fast, I'll be unstoppable. Seeing these results gives me far more substantial hope for the future than I've had in a long time, and if I'm going to be around 200 years from now, I may as well be able to enjoy it, you know? I'll see you when we get there, okay?

One final note: I noticed some sort of browser hijacking going on recently, but I was under the impression that it was the wifi connections I was using. After all, this site is run off of a major internet company, and the chances of them getting hacked are infinitesimal. But that seems to be what has happened. The interesting little plug-ins I had - the interesting things to ponder and the pick-up lines you should never use - seem to have been hijacked, and that was what was screwing up the site. Man, I'm so sick of those hacker/spammer bastards ruining the internet for everyone. If they'd put 1% of the energy they consume into trying to make the world a better place instead of trying to destroy it, we'd probably all be rich by now.

I want to thank that guy I know from one of those Swedish countries for helping me figure out what was going on. When he said the site was trying to send him a trojan horse virus, I knew something wasn't adding up. Thanks, T-bone!

Oh, and hey, could someone please buy something from Amazon through one of these links for me? Please?

To Your Health - Part 2

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Would you like to get your weight at the right level, have more energy, look and feel better, and live longer, without radically changing your lifestyle or going on weird diets and boring exercise routines? Then I've got good news for you: I lost 50 pounds of fat in 1 year without really trying, and I'm going to tell you how I did it so you can try it too! But since I'm not a doctor and not in any way responsible for your actions, reading any part of this article constitutes your agreement not to hold me responsible in any way for anything.

In Part 1, I revealed to you a miraculous, cheap chemical that, if you add more of it to your life, you'll feel a lot better. By itself, this one chemical can boost your energy, improve your health, soften your skin, keep your weight under control, and it even tastes great! And if you started drinking more of this amazing stuff called water - drinking it during meals and replacing some of your sugary drinks with it, then you probably started feeling the difference almost immediately - like in just a few days. But you want more than one secret to better health the easy way, don't you? Well that's why I'm here again.

Replacing the majority of what I drink with water was a no-brainer, and it made a huge difference. That, combined with a moderate increase in my daily activity, and the near-elimination of pure-junk food led to a loss of about 30 pounds in only 4 months. To lose the next 20 took a little more time and effort, but not much more.

Getting rid of pure-junk food is a huge way to right-size your weight. Most people are worried about losing weight, but there are some people who need to gain it (and some people who THINK they need to lose weight when they really need to gain it - consult a BMI calculator or better yet, a doctor). Right-sizing your weight will go a long way toward improving the quality of your life. So first I'm going to tell you what some of thee incredibly bad foods are and then I'm going to give you an easy way to get rid of them.

First and worst is, you guessed it, sugar. Sugar is in almost everything we eat because it makes things taste better. However, sugar is what's called "cheap energy". It gives you a rush of energy for a very short time and then it's gone and you feel a crash. I've heard people are giving their kids sugar right before bed so that when the crash comes, the kid feels very tired and goes to sleep quickly. What a great way to ruin your child's life! As any diabetic will tell you, too much sugar isn't good for you at all, and giving these kids sugar rushes before bed teaches their body to crave it, plus it gives them a ton of calories with nowhere to go but fat cells.

Take a look at the ingredients list of the things you eat, and sugar is almost always one of the first 3 ingredients. If you are eating food like that, put it down and pick up something else. Breakfast cereals are especially bad about this. Even some of the "healthy" cereals, like Honey Nut Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats are loaded with almost as much sugar as Super Sugar Crisp and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Recently I discovered a cereal called Kashi which is a whole lot better for you simply by virtue of having no added sugar. There are two varieties of it I like, which I now eat almost every morning.

The next really bad food is called MonoSodium Glutamate, or MSG. Near as I can tell, the only use for MSG is to make you feel hungry. It's like nicotine for corn chips. Take a look at the Doritos and other flavored chips you eat, and you'll find they have MSG. Now you know why when you open a bag of Doritos you can't stop until you've eaten half the bag. But look, don't be like smokers and alcoholics and blame a chemical for your addiction, because you can manufacture your own chemical that will counteract that. I'll tell you more about that later.

Instead of picking up chips and candy with MSG and sugar, pick up chips and crackers without them. Pick up fruits like dried apricots and raisins, or try sesame oat bran sticks and cocktail peanuts. There are a lot of great alternatives out there that are much better for you than the junk you eat now, and it's not a radical lifestyle change.

The third bad food to avoid is bleach. Yuck, who eats bleach? White bread has been bleached. It doesn't matter if it's whole grain white, it's still white, and that means it's been bleached. And that includes most hotdog and hamburger buns too. Avoiding bleach is pretty easy, just choose bread that isn't white. I like whole grain honey wheat bread myself, and when I'm at the burger joint, well, they don't give me the option to have healthier bread, so I don't go there that much. But if you're making your own burgers, the store does stock non-bleached buns nowadays, so get these instead. Also, a lot of crackers and pretzels are bleached. And if you're thinking of going on the subway diet, don't get your sub on white bread; they've got a lot of good non-white breads.

The fourth thing you should avoid is artificial sweeteners. These are worse than sugar! That's right, those diet colas and no-sugar health foods that use artificial sweeteners instead of sugar are actually worse for you. And let's face it, they don't taste that good anyway. Many artificial sweeteners break down into things like formaldehyde, which they use to preserve dead creatures against decay, and that's the least of the problems they cause. Sure, they might not spike your blood sugar as bad if you're diabetic, but that doesn't mean they're good for you.

The fifth and final thing that's really bad for you is fried foods. I know, I know, they're so delicious, how can you avoid them? But you should try to eat less of them. Most seafood menus nowadays have an option to have your order broiled, which is better than frying, and you don't have to fry your chicken. Frying foods obliterates any health value they may have had, so don't pat yourself on the back for eating fried chicken strips or fried okra.

Completely eliminating all these bad types of food is almost impossible, but by making better choices and substituting good foods for bad ones, you'll find that you can eat less of the bad foods, and if you want, you can still have them once in a while without having to feel guilty.

Don't reach for a candy bar, reach for raisins, dried apricots, a banana, an apple, a granola bar (not the sugary kind!), sunflower seeds, an onion, a stick of gum, some watermelon, or any of a number of other things that are, if not good for you, at least not as bad. You can have as many green vegetables as you want; try to find ones you'll like. Try eating cucumber halves as a replacement for a candy bar. Or onions. Or broccoli. Broccoli has a lot of good stuff in it. Just be sure you eat these vegetables raw; cooking them ruins their health value.

I understand that you're not going to succeed at this every single time. It's okay, you don't have to. I'm HARDLY the picture of strict dieting. I still eat pizza, candy bars, ice cream, Doritos, and drink pop, but I don't eat them every day. Sometimes I don't even eat them every week. Sometimes not even every month! I'm at the point now where I don't feel like I HAVE TO eat that stuff. I have so many more opportunities to eat interesting things that I simply don't get around to eating the bad stuff so much.

If you can make a deal with yourself to pick something good instead of something bad every other time you have a craving, that's a good start right there. Small steps, not big ones. Remember Secret #1.

Have you, or would you, pay $100 for a diet that was sure to work? If so, then why not spend a lot less than that trying out some new foods to see how you like them? Many people pay thousands of dollars dieting, and it usually doesn't work, but this has worked for a lot of people, and more importantly, it's worked for me. I've found some new foods to eat instead of the junk I used to always eat, and I'm a lot better for it.

If you heard there was a food ingredient that was a poison that was GUARANTEED to kill you, would you start checking your food ingredients to make sure that wasn't in there? So start checking your food labels for the kinds of ingredients I've mentioned, because these things ARE poisons, they DO increase your chances of getting cancer, and the less of them you eat, the better you're going to feel.

So take the small step of buying some new foods that are better for you, and every time you have a craving for something, flip a coin. Heads, you try the new food, tails, you can eat the junk food.

And be sure to drink plenty of water with it.

Until next time,
Be your best!
- Jaycee

Hey, if you feel I've done you a favor with my site, do me a favor in return and take a look at some of these products from Amazon, maybe even buy some of them. Every purchase you make through one of my links goes to support this site, even if it's not exactly what I linked up, and keeping this site running will benefit many more people. Thank you for giving back!

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More articles of interest or amusement: 
To Your Health - Part 1
Christy Brinkley, Terry Bradshaw, and many more - 1999
To Your Health - Part 3

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