Two weeks ago I began counting nearly every calorie I've consumed to provide some insight on the foods I eat. As I've told people I almost always get the, WTF you're a skinny bastard you're making me feel lazy look. Then I generally follow up the comment with a, this is just for fun, to see how many calories are in the food I eat, a learning event.
I recently upgraded my phone to one that accommodates apps, and I've been keeping my food diary on it. Having one of those on my phone makes it really easy to keep track of what I am eating because I always carry my phone around with me and it makes it pretty easy to quickly add the food I eat. The app has a database of thousands of food items with complete nutrition facts. It even has a bar code scanner which makes it really easy for finding packaged foods. During my two weeks of logging I wasn't able to find anything that wasn't at least close to what I was eating. The app even has a weight tracker and exercise log for accurate calorie counting.
What did I learn? First off as weird as you might find it, I found that the days that I ate more than my 3000 calorie 'limit' I found that the next day I weighed more. Duh. For some reason I never really thought about it like that, I think I just assumed when you eat unhealthy foods you gain weight. This taught me, I can eat a lot even relatively healthy food and still gain weight.
I also learned the unhealthy foods I ate really weren't packed with tons of calories. For example, yesterday Laura and I had ice cream cones for breakfast, 150 calories. Now compared to these other breakfasts it doesn't look so bad: 2 Eggs in a basket with a glass of OJ, 512 Calories, a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, 376, Calories, Oatmeal with brown sugar 330 Calories. Now I know you can't base your diet solely on calories for this reason, there are plenty of other qualities of food that are important. I would also say I stayed full longer from the ice cream than the cheerios.
Another thing I learned was when you go to a party and graze on delicious dips, chips, several beers, nearly a whole rack of ribs, a Daiquiri, and delicious red velvet cake with cool whip and fresh fruit on top for dessert, you can consume enough calories for nearly three days of eating. Which is what I did yesterday, my normal calories I 'should' consume in a day is around 3,000 yesterday I at 8,400. I now know how people can get fat so quickly. Hell two Miller Lites had more calories than my ice cream cone breakfast.
I think another thing I learned was if I ate enough fruit to get full off of I add so few calories to the count its almost felt like cheating. That was pretty cool.
Altogether if someone really wanted to get serious about losing weight a food diary is really a fantastic way to learn portion control and how eliminating your stereotypical unhealthy things from your life isn't the way to go but to limit the amount of everything.
I'm nearly back down to my college waist size and you can bet this has really helped me learn how much or little food I can consume to help me get back to where I was before.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Hows my little girly mag?
I will admit it. I really enjoy reading magazines for women. Honestly what guy doesn't get a kick from those ridiculous Cosmo quizzes? When I was much younger I used to read my mom's Redbook subscription even though I didn't quite understand what handling his manhood meant. They are perfect magazines for poops too because the articles are so short!
When I signed up to run the 5K I was asked if I wanted a few free magazine subscriptions so of course I said yes because I like to read. I signed up for Outside, Self, and Shape.
Self and Shape rock. They are full of nutritional information, real fitness success stories and lots of hot babes. Every now and then I get a sidways glare from someone who realizes what I'm reading and I just shrug. Call me a pervert or a man with a healthy appreciation for beautiful women, who happens to be interested in nutrition and exercise, whatever.
I've flipped through Men's Health and a few other similar magazines at the Y and other places before and compared to these, they Blow. They are full of pictures of men with giant and disgusting muscles and bodies that I have absolutely no desire to work towards. Not to mention every other advertisement is for some sort of protein shake or something similar. My Dad bought me a giant can of that in High School and I was against it then as I am now. Call me a purist but all I really want is to be fit, any muscle I put on is simply a byproduct of that goal.
Dark colors and bold fonts aside, the content is largely the same, Full of nutritional information, graphs and fast facts. The girly ones pile on the pastels and pinks and if I look past the pon ads and the Makeup articles I've got some seriously enjoyable and informational reading, and not to mention all of the attractive ladies in tight fitting exercise garb I don't see why more men don't read these magazines.
When I signed up to run the 5K I was asked if I wanted a few free magazine subscriptions so of course I said yes because I like to read. I signed up for Outside, Self, and Shape.
Self and Shape rock. They are full of nutritional information, real fitness success stories and lots of hot babes. Every now and then I get a sidways glare from someone who realizes what I'm reading and I just shrug. Call me a pervert or a man with a healthy appreciation for beautiful women, who happens to be interested in nutrition and exercise, whatever.
I've flipped through Men's Health and a few other similar magazines at the Y and other places before and compared to these, they Blow. They are full of pictures of men with giant and disgusting muscles and bodies that I have absolutely no desire to work towards. Not to mention every other advertisement is for some sort of protein shake or something similar. My Dad bought me a giant can of that in High School and I was against it then as I am now. Call me a purist but all I really want is to be fit, any muscle I put on is simply a byproduct of that goal.
Dark colors and bold fonts aside, the content is largely the same, Full of nutritional information, graphs and fast facts. The girly ones pile on the pastels and pinks and if I look past the pon ads and the Makeup articles I've got some seriously enjoyable and informational reading, and not to mention all of the attractive ladies in tight fitting exercise garb I don't see why more men don't read these magazines.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Hows my little terd?
1 Green poop is really funny, sometimes hilarious, three days of Green poops gets a bit concerning.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Hows my little redesign?
My big-mac was giving me some funky business, so I got a new design started. Give me a few weeks to get it looking all nice and me. I am enjoying this orange and blackness so get used to that. In the mean time enjoy this photo of Jim Beam. And following story
This weekend I went camping with Laura and 4 friends. After a couple of bags of wine and several pulls of Jim we slept. The next morning for whatever reason I awoke at 5ish unable to get back to sleep. So I got up and wandered around the site and decided I needed to drop the Cosby kids off at the pool. I was walking to the ca-mode not feeling at the top of my game and realized between the six of us we ate nearly 10 pounds of meat the night before, this was going to be epic.
I sat down on the old can which was just inside the main door, but with no door in front of the stall I could have been in a great position to shake anyone's hand to welcome them to the shitter. Since I had no interest in doing such a thing I pushed with all my might and will.
Before sitting down I noticed that this happened to be a deep toilet, 10 feet or so. Maybe its newer?
With a great relief to my colon I relieved myself what was probably 2 pounds of protein and a soft bloop! I heaved a sigh of...disgust. I got a splash back.
Uhhhhgghh...
What do you do!!!??!?!
Imagine this, you're hung over, the nearest body of water is a flooded river capped out and your at leat 2.5 miles from the nearest bit of privacy, it is also between 5 and 6 am.
I sat on the box completely disgusted with myself and nearly wept. Not only did I have an epic poo of the year. But anyone else's epic disintegrated poo of the year was now in liquid droplets on my rear. What do you do!? I whimpered, wiped my cheeks and in between while briefly considering washing my rump in the public water fountain. With my pride swallowed I drizzled hand sanitizer on my fingers and made pancakes a broken and privately humiliated man.
This weekend I went camping with Laura and 4 friends. After a couple of bags of wine and several pulls of Jim we slept. The next morning for whatever reason I awoke at 5ish unable to get back to sleep. So I got up and wandered around the site and decided I needed to drop the Cosby kids off at the pool. I was walking to the ca-mode not feeling at the top of my game and realized between the six of us we ate nearly 10 pounds of meat the night before, this was going to be epic.
I sat down on the old can which was just inside the main door, but with no door in front of the stall I could have been in a great position to shake anyone's hand to welcome them to the shitter. Since I had no interest in doing such a thing I pushed with all my might and will.
Before sitting down I noticed that this happened to be a deep toilet, 10 feet or so. Maybe its newer?
With a great relief to my colon I relieved myself what was probably 2 pounds of protein and a soft bloop! I heaved a sigh of...disgust. I got a splash back.
Uhhhhgghh...
What do you do!!!??!?!
Imagine this, you're hung over, the nearest body of water is a flooded river capped out and your at leat 2.5 miles from the nearest bit of privacy, it is also between 5 and 6 am.
I sat on the box completely disgusted with myself and nearly wept. Not only did I have an epic poo of the year. But anyone else's epic disintegrated poo of the year was now in liquid droplets on my rear. What do you do!? I whimpered, wiped my cheeks and in between while briefly considering washing my rump in the public water fountain. With my pride swallowed I drizzled hand sanitizer on my fingers and made pancakes a broken and privately humiliated man.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Hows my little gamer?
Hello my name is Tony I am addicted the dumbest simplest video games ever.
That felt good.
My computer game addiction started at a young healthy age when we played number munchers in elementary school.
I loved and hated that game because I was so bad at math it was too much of a challenge but that frog thing that ate the numbers was worth it. Oregon trail was really my vice in those days. 
I used to buy as many bullets I could and skimp on the wagon wheels and food and I would just hunt buffalo the whole time, it wasn't until I saw someone dodging rocks in the river that I found out there was actually a point to the game other than to hunt.
At home when we updated to our new windows 95 computer I was crazy addicted to this game called Ski Free.
My sister and I would sit at the computer and make this guy go off jumps and dodge trees and then eventually the abominable snowman would attack and eat the skier, and then we would repeat.
After a while we outgrew that game and got turned onto Cosmo, Commander Keen, and Lemmings.
While my friends were busy figuring out where the 1-ups were in Mario 3 I played on my computer, forever banned from a childhood Nintendo.
So for whatever bad influence my parents thought a little plumber jumping around would cause, my big brother Dan turned me onto Doom II and Wolfenstien.
With the internet at school we were able to find cheats and shoot/explode/maul aliens and Nazis until big red pixels poured over the ground.
It wasn't until we got Sim City 2000 that I found out I had a problem, I would turn off the disasters and turn the speed up and eat dinner, after I would have tons of money and would build Arco's all around town and highways and terraform the land destroy churches and power-plants just to see what would happen, then I would turn the disasters back on and riots would burn the city down or aliens would attack and I was forced to repair and start over, awesome. I'm sure I can easily attribute at least a week of my waking life playing this game.
In middle school I was finally allowed a PlayStation, as long my grades stayed up. Sure enough they did. Which aside from the Tony Hawk series bore no addictions.
High school brought my graphing calculator games, which were AWESOME! I rarely actually graphed things on it but god did I play games on it.
It was probably a result from never playing Tetris on a Game Boy as a kid.
One day at basketball practice someone said, have you ever played Snood? Its awesome!
Many of you know how much of my life snood took up, but I'm sure few of you know just how much snood I used to play. I think easily I could say I have played Snood for at least two or three weeks my waking life. I took a nice break from it after high school but eventually got myself a laptop and equipped it with snood in college and it got me through countless hours of boring lectures while taking notes. Since I could listen to the instructor and play at the same time.
But in between there I stumbled across the addicting game of all games, I'm still too scared to play the newest version of it, for fear of getting sucked back into it. I spent so much of my time playing my first senior year of college I earned a certificate. The game:
Line Rider. Probably the most fun any one person could have by just drawing lines on a computer screen. The object of the game was easy, your character is a little sledder and you draw lines and he sleds on them, if he goes too fast and hits a bump he falls off. You could make loops, jumps, half pipes, and even little decorations if you were really good. Sometimes it was just as fun to see what you could make the little sledder do after he fell off. There are some pretty awesome youtube videos with some people's amazing feats with line rider. My certificate of suck was awarded by Miz Fuller, because I was playing that instead of working my homework for the millionth time.
My latest addiction, and the inspiration of this post:
FarmVille.
What a god damned waste of time. Seriously, there is nothing to this game yet I sat down nightly for 7 months harvesting my digital crops and celebrating mediocrity. I still can't pinpoint what really kept me hooked. In the end after I built my Villa and got a groovy barn and a house on a hill I decided there was nothing left and gave it up. It might have been that it was something fun to do on Saturday and Sunday mornings while I waited for Laura to get up but, that still doesn't explain my during the week play time. What upset me the most while playing it was there is no challenge to the game, none! The hardest part of the game was to make sure you harvested your crops on time, which is nuts because after you plant them the game says you need to harvest these between a few hours and several days from now! Thats it! After that the hardest part is avoiding Zynga's attempts at getting you to spend real money on the game. I'm happy to say I'm done and I'm not looking back.
Its hard to say what the future has for me. I know I'm looking forward to Diablo 3's release and beyond that its just going to be something I stumble across. I do have a decent amount of will power, I have thus far managed to avoid all contact with apparently one of the most addicting games of all time, World of Warcraft.
Wish me luck, I'm slowly conquering my addiction...for now.
That felt good.
My computer game addiction started at a young healthy age when we played number munchers in elementary school.
I loved and hated that game because I was so bad at math it was too much of a challenge but that frog thing that ate the numbers was worth it. Oregon trail was really my vice in those days. 
I used to buy as many bullets I could and skimp on the wagon wheels and food and I would just hunt buffalo the whole time, it wasn't until I saw someone dodging rocks in the river that I found out there was actually a point to the game other than to hunt.At home when we updated to our new windows 95 computer I was crazy addicted to this game called Ski Free.
My sister and I would sit at the computer and make this guy go off jumps and dodge trees and then eventually the abominable snowman would attack and eat the skier, and then we would repeat. After a while we outgrew that game and got turned onto Cosmo, Commander Keen, and Lemmings.
While my friends were busy figuring out where the 1-ups were in Mario 3 I played on my computer, forever banned from a childhood Nintendo. So for whatever bad influence my parents thought a little plumber jumping around would cause, my big brother Dan turned me onto Doom II and Wolfenstien.
With the internet at school we were able to find cheats and shoot/explode/maul aliens and Nazis until big red pixels poured over the ground.
It wasn't until we got Sim City 2000 that I found out I had a problem, I would turn off the disasters and turn the speed up and eat dinner, after I would have tons of money and would build Arco's all around town and highways and terraform the land destroy churches and power-plants just to see what would happen, then I would turn the disasters back on and riots would burn the city down or aliens would attack and I was forced to repair and start over, awesome. I'm sure I can easily attribute at least a week of my waking life playing this game.In middle school I was finally allowed a PlayStation, as long my grades stayed up. Sure enough they did. Which aside from the Tony Hawk series bore no addictions.
High school brought my graphing calculator games, which were AWESOME! I rarely actually graphed things on it but god did I play games on it.
It was probably a result from never playing Tetris on a Game Boy as a kid.One day at basketball practice someone said, have you ever played Snood? Its awesome!
Many of you know how much of my life snood took up, but I'm sure few of you know just how much snood I used to play. I think easily I could say I have played Snood for at least two or three weeks my waking life. I took a nice break from it after high school but eventually got myself a laptop and equipped it with snood in college and it got me through countless hours of boring lectures while taking notes. Since I could listen to the instructor and play at the same time.But in between there I stumbled across the addicting game of all games, I'm still too scared to play the newest version of it, for fear of getting sucked back into it. I spent so much of my time playing my first senior year of college I earned a certificate. The game:
Line Rider. Probably the most fun any one person could have by just drawing lines on a computer screen. The object of the game was easy, your character is a little sledder and you draw lines and he sleds on them, if he goes too fast and hits a bump he falls off. You could make loops, jumps, half pipes, and even little decorations if you were really good. Sometimes it was just as fun to see what you could make the little sledder do after he fell off. There are some pretty awesome youtube videos with some people's amazing feats with line rider. My certificate of suck was awarded by Miz Fuller, because I was playing that instead of working my homework for the millionth time.My latest addiction, and the inspiration of this post:
FarmVille.
What a god damned waste of time. Seriously, there is nothing to this game yet I sat down nightly for 7 months harvesting my digital crops and celebrating mediocrity. I still can't pinpoint what really kept me hooked. In the end after I built my Villa and got a groovy barn and a house on a hill I decided there was nothing left and gave it up. It might have been that it was something fun to do on Saturday and Sunday mornings while I waited for Laura to get up but, that still doesn't explain my during the week play time. What upset me the most while playing it was there is no challenge to the game, none! The hardest part of the game was to make sure you harvested your crops on time, which is nuts because after you plant them the game says you need to harvest these between a few hours and several days from now! Thats it! After that the hardest part is avoiding Zynga's attempts at getting you to spend real money on the game. I'm happy to say I'm done and I'm not looking back.
Its hard to say what the future has for me. I know I'm looking forward to Diablo 3's release and beyond that its just going to be something I stumble across. I do have a decent amount of will power, I have thus far managed to avoid all contact with apparently one of the most addicting games of all time, World of Warcraft.
Wish me luck, I'm slowly conquering my addiction...for now.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Hows my little runner?
What fun!
This weekend was my first timed race in like 6 years and naturally I am running something completely different than what my body may have been used to back in the day. A 5K (3.106856 mi) Vs 400M Hurdles (.24854848 mi). I started running in the middle of March to get all ready for it and have had some good success. My original goal was to finish around 25 min, but then during my training I realized that was probably not going to happen and figured I would probably finish in about 30 minutes. In all honesty the goal was to finish in general, with the ultimate goal of running the entire time. Both were accomplished, with a time of 27:22, not bad! I now realize why my Dad said he started off in the slow group, because you can definitely see some better scenery as you advance in the pack, I think I'll remember this for future races.
Yesterday while I was picking up my info for the race I had the opportunity to measure my vital stats by taking off my flip flops and sanitizing my hands, I think it is a fun thing to share so here you are:
Weight: 199.4
Height: 6'4.7"
BMI: 24
Fat Index: 16%
Fat Mass: 31.9 lbs. (!)
Body Type: Athletic
Overall body health: Good-Excellent
Hurray! Its been fun (doing some extra) running for this 5K because I have actually been able to notice my body thinning up quicker than from just swimming, which sort of confirms my learning that swimmers have a harder time losing weight, for an unknown reason. Ten boxes of girl scout cookies threw quite a wrench in that process as well.
Attending marathon events is also great because of the density of fit and attractive people in such a small amount of space/time. I hope to do another one.
This weekend was my first timed race in like 6 years and naturally I am running something completely different than what my body may have been used to back in the day. A 5K (3.106856 mi) Vs 400M Hurdles (.24854848 mi). I started running in the middle of March to get all ready for it and have had some good success. My original goal was to finish around 25 min, but then during my training I realized that was probably not going to happen and figured I would probably finish in about 30 minutes. In all honesty the goal was to finish in general, with the ultimate goal of running the entire time. Both were accomplished, with a time of 27:22, not bad! I now realize why my Dad said he started off in the slow group, because you can definitely see some better scenery as you advance in the pack, I think I'll remember this for future races.
Yesterday while I was picking up my info for the race I had the opportunity to measure my vital stats by taking off my flip flops and sanitizing my hands, I think it is a fun thing to share so here you are:
Weight: 199.4
Height: 6'4.7"
BMI: 24
Fat Index: 16%
Fat Mass: 31.9 lbs. (!)
Body Type: Athletic
Overall body health: Good-Excellent
Hurray! Its been fun (doing some extra) running for this 5K because I have actually been able to notice my body thinning up quicker than from just swimming, which sort of confirms my learning that swimmers have a harder time losing weight, for an unknown reason. Ten boxes of girl scout cookies threw quite a wrench in that process as well.
Attending marathon events is also great because of the density of fit and attractive people in such a small amount of space/time. I hope to do another one.
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