Exercise Update #3

225 lbs, 41.75" circumference, 19mm fat pinch
These were taken Monday (it's now Wed).

I haven't been keeping up as well as I should have. I didn't do anything over the weekend, not even take the dog for a walk. Been spending too much time playing Mass Effect; feel like I have to "get my money's worth", since I bought it new. I worked out last Wed I think, then Monday. Yesterday, I told myself not jogging was ok, since it was nasty outside, and I took Matt to Wal-Mart instead.

What's really telling is that last Wed (01/27) was the last time I worked out, and last Thurs (01/28) was my best weigh-in yet, at 222.5 lbs. Then, I didn't work out at all till Monday, and my weight's been creeping back, sitting at 225-227 so far this week.

Monday was a shitty workout too; I took almost an hour to do my Pushup Challenge because I kept doing crap on my computer, then I only did 2 circuits of the NerdFitness beginner; When I finished, I really didn't feel worked out, but by then it was 8:45 or so, so I gave up.

After this weekend, I had to make a new rule for myself: I can't eat dinner until I work out. Ideally, I'd be getting into the morning routine, but between Mass Effect, and watching backlogged tv shows, I'm really not getting to bed at a decent hour.

Exercise Update #2

Thursday, I jogged 1 mile straight!
10:38 min, which is a little slower than I thought it would be, since I had a 10:54 on Monday, with only block #14 (of 16) walked, but I did it!
The local Sun & Ski didn't have the shoe in stock, but one up on Houston does, and I'm on my up there anyway.

Today (Saturday, January 23, 2010), I measured 42" circumference, 21mm caliper. That's still 20% body fat, so hopefully the additional centimeter is just from loose skin...

Exercise Update #1

So, I'm jumping into this in the middle of things, but oh well.

This is me at the beach for my 22nd birthday (2006):

     Aprilish of 2009, I decided to start working out. I started by doing the Hacker's Diet workout. Not the diet part though; I never read that far. It worked well for a while, but I started hating running in place; it felt very awkward.
    Instead, I decided I would jog around my neighborhood, in a 1 mile square. When I started, I jogged for a block, then "powerwalked" for a block. Within a few weeks I moved up to jogging 2 blocks, and walking 1. I kept this up intermittently, never really holding a tight exercise schedule down.

This is June 2009:

     October 2009, I discovered NerdFitness by way of Art of Manliness. Both are great sites run by great guys. Articles like this on AoM got me realizing how bad of shape I was in. (Apparently, all it take for me to want to learn something is to know that it could help me survive.)
     I can't recommend those two sites highly enough. Because of Steve Kamb at NerdFitness, I bought a pullup bar and actually started using it. If you compare the above picture with the ones below, you'll see the difference in my upper arms.

    By November I was doing NerdFitness's Fitness Challenge, which is a good workout, but not really meant as an every day thing.
    Beginning shortly before Thanksgiving (I think), I started doing NerdFitness's Beginner Bodyweight Circuits Workout, which is amazing. What makes this very cool is that it's entirely modifiable. I started doing 2 circuits, did 3 one time, but wasn't workout out regularly yet. As cliche as it sounds, I've set a New Year's Resolution to workout 5 days a week, and walk at least a mile the other 2 days.
    DailyBurn.com has really helped me with this. They have the best user-assisted food dictionary I've seen yet, and the ability to see the correlation between calorie intake and bodyweight is very powerful. They have a little thing on their main page, where each day worked out in the past rolling week is either lit or dark; same for calorie goals. Yesterday, I didn't do anything but walk, and only did that so that I wouldn't lose a day on those little lights. Seriously. Today I did 3 circuits for the first time, and added crunches into the circuit in place of pushups. Instead of doing pushups as part of the rotation, I'm doing the 100 Pushup Challenge after my warmups, and before I start the Circuits.

    A couple weeks ago, I discovered www.marksdailyapple.com, via NerdFitness. He promotes what he calls the "Primal Blueprint" diet. Apparently there are a few different 'paleo' diets around, but they're all based on the concept of eating what we evolved to eat. That means tons of vegetables, tree nuts, and a good number of fruits. Also, tons of meat, all kinds. Avoid grains and refined sugars. Go easy on dairy. Go here for a linklist of all his "Primal Guides to..." and here for a quick guide to his eating plan. I think this has really helped me out these past few weeks. I haven't been entirely strict, but have kept my carbs in the 40-80g range every day, and protein has been over 100g every day.


   So, here I am as of Wednesday, January 13, 2010:

     I calipered myself the following day, got 20mm, which comes out to 20% fat. I want to get down to 10%, just so I can see those magical abs.
     I measured my circumference (real waist, at the belly button) sometime back in the early fall, and had 52". Measured it Thurs, had 44".
     Today (the 15th) I weighed in at 228.5 lbs, having lost 0.5 lbs every day this week! I also dropped a belt notch today.

My Goals for 2010:

1. Have no more than 1cm of gut "pinch" by the end of 2010
1. Continue to cut refined sugar and sugar substitutes from diet
1. one soda/sugary snack per month MAX
2. Focus on more fruits and vegetables, lean meats
3. Exercise 5 times a week MINIMUM
1. Jogging 1x a week; Sprint Intervals 1x a week, Body Weight Circuits 3x a week
2. Jog 1 mile straight
1. Bring intervals/jogging into workout routine, at least one each a week
2. Work on maintaining a manageable speed, don't run too fast
3. Do 25 Pushups straight by birthday
1. Do 100 Pushup Challenge in place of pushups during Body Weight Circuit Routine
2. Sub Crunches in, to keep a spacer between Squats and Lunges

... So there you go. In 4 months I've gone from a 240 lb vegetarian, to a 230 lb omnivore.
I plan to post weekly updates, on "Measurement Day" most likely, so see you then!

Whole Wheat No-Knead Bread

http://www.breadtopia.com/no-knead-recipe-variations/#SteelOats

This sat in the firdge an extra day due to lack of time. Doesn't seem to have affected the quality!
It's not truly whole-wheat... That's an experiment that will be tried before too long though.
The steel-cut oats were purchased over a year ago from HEB's bulk section, but are still good. I don't know if that's normal...

Marriage Equality

This started as a reply to a forum post about xians/supers vs athiests/brights; I went off on a tangent on marriage equality, and posted it here instead:

I'm all about living and letting live. I define myself as a skeptical agnostic; I have yet to experience evidence of God, but am open to it. I honestly respect all my family who are Baptists, and my friends, who run a gamut of Catholic and Protestant faiths. I'm a "bright", you're a "super"; it's not a judgement of intelligence or rightness, it's just a definition of one part of my person.

The problem I have is when people attempt to place their moral definitions on others. First of all, I understand that you believe it's wrong, and therefore it's natural to you, and arguing it is pointless. I also agree that some "morals" are universal (it's generally unacceptable to murder someone).

To use a topical example, some people are trying to enforce their religious definition of marriage into our secular legal definition of marriage. I think every faith has a right to refuse to marry anyone they want to, just as any business has a right to refuse service to anyone.

Whether or not our country was founded on Christian principles (I think our founding principles fall in the 'universal' category), and whether a majority of our Founding Fathers were Christian or Humanist or whatever, we are *not* a theocracy, and our laws need to be founded in the Constitution and the Declaration, not the Bible, Torah, Qu'ran, or any other religious document. The Declaration calls for the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The Constitution was written to "secure the Blessings of Liberty". I think that if anyone or legal age wants to marry anyone else of legal age, it's their Liberty to live their Life that way, and that precluding that precludes their Happiness.

I think that the laws preventing marriage equality are on par with the laws against inter-racial marriage of the early 20th Century, and that restriction of these rights is on par with Jim Crow laws.

I know it's a trite comparison, but many people who are against marriage equality state that it disgraces the institution of marriage. I think celebrity short-term marriages disgrace it more than a gay couple who've been together for many years who want to let the world know they are committed to each other. It's not about tax breaks or financial privileges, it's about common decency.

I look forward to the day that I get to marry a woman that I love, to show the world that I love her, and to have that bond. I cannot bring myself to not allow someone else that feeling anymore than that I could take a child away from their responsible parent.

Baked Tilapia

So, I'm leaning away from vegetarianism, starting with this dish.

I read 21 Great uses for Beer, and one of the ideas was for replacing beer for water when making rice. This started the idea, then I thought about tilapia (or another white fish) fillet. Luckily, tilapia was on 'sale' (I haven't bought it in forever, so I don't really know how good a deal it was) for $4.49/lb. They also had zucchini for $1.59/lb, so I figured that would make a good side, and I spotted the avocado, and bought them to layer on top of the fish, though I ended up making a guacamole instead.

So, first the rice. The darkest stuff we had on hand was two bottles of Shiner Black, but they were not mine technically, so I used 1 bottle of beer, and 1.5 cups of water (Total 3 cups) for my 1.5 cups of rice. Made it the normal way.

I sliced 2 medium zucchini not-quite-paper thin (1-2mm), and sliced up half an onion. Layed out the zucchini on the bottom of the casserole dish, and just kinda tossed the onion on top. Then a good sprinkling of curry powder, garlic powder, and salt, and a drizzle of olive oil. I covered this with aluminum foil, and baked it at 350 for about 10 minutes, or until it looked about halfway done.

Layed the tilapia out on top of the zucchini and onions, gave it a gentle sprinkle of cajun seasoning (tilapia is a light fish), and a good couple shakes of lemon juice. Recovered, and put in the now-370 degree oven, for what endedu p being 20 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through.

While the fish was cooking, I made of the guac. diced the other half of the onion, the 2 Roma tomatoes I had on hand, and the 2 avocados. I don't have any cilantro - fresh or dried - so I used a handful of fresh sweet basil instead. I know it sounds strange, but it really works, especially against the spicy of everything else. Chop that, a bit of salt and pepper, and just the act of stirring it all together mooshes the avocado just enough for hold it all together.

I know the vegetables don't look very appetizing, but everyone liked them, even Kris the veggie-hater.

All Things Wise And Wonderful, Next

All Things Wise And Wonderful, James Herriot - A good finale to the series. Overall, I'd have to say this was the least-good of the books, but it was still quite a good book. The only faults were that the individual stories seemed much shorter, and there was some repetitive nature of the types of stories, when compared with the other two books.
In the first two books, while there were lots of 'funny' stories, and plenty of 'touching' stories, the details were always different. In this final book, there was a lot more "injured animal recovers and teaches me a life lesson", and such, where the specific story is almost the same, just the name, specie, and lesson have changed.
All in all though, it was a decent book, and I feel good to have finished the trilogy.

Next, Michael Crichton - Though he takes some steps that I'm pretty sure are beyond our current level, such as successful retroviral gene-slicing in an adult organism (though the rats/people all eventually die), the overall message is really good, and amplified by the Author's Note at the end, where the content of the judge's ruling is recited and expounded upon.
Crichton's basic argument is that genes can't be owned or patented, because they are a fact of nature, and not anybody's invention or idea in any form. It'd be akin to me patenting the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, and thereby demanding royalties from everyone for using a product derived from my patent (sunlight).
The many narratives are very interesting, and all relate to a different facet of the coming social and legal problems. One short one that stuck with me was a woman who was birthed using donor sperm tracks down her supposedly-anonymous donor father, and accuses him of giving her her heroin addiction, because his genes included ones that promoted that behavior, even though he had donated in the 70s, when such a thing was unknown.
The two aspects of the sciene that I think Crichton glosses over too much are that - first the general problem - genes have been proven to only cause a predisposition, or an increased likelihood of any correlated factors to occure. I can't give the Dalai Lama gene therapy and give him the "murder gene", and have him start running around killing people. Nor can I give someone the (actually discovered) "heart attack" gene, and know that that's how he'll die. You can have all the genetic markers for - and family history of - heart disease, but if you run a mile a day and eat no HDL, especially if you take that to extremes to counteract the predispositions, you might never have a heart problem, and die from a pedestrian-car accident instead.
The other issue specifically relates to one of the storylines, so if you're actually planning on reading this based on what I've actually read, stop here. A company previously won a court ruling saying that Mr. X's cell line belonged to them, not him. The cells that the company possessed ended up getting destroyed. Mr. X has mysteriously left the country. They decide to have a bounty hunter arrest his daughter and/or grandson for "stolen property", since they have the same cells as Mr. X.... only they don't! they share some of the same genes, but as even one of the attorneys pointed out, they don't own the genes, just the cells. Mr. X's daughter has approximately half of his genes, and his grandson has approximately one quarter. As such any cells they developed would be unique from his own. It seemed as though Crichton - or at least all of his geneticist and lawyer characters - had never heard of basic Mendelian genetics.
Is it weird that my two favorite characters were the two non-human ones? Gerard just because he was such an alien intelligence; it took me a while to realize how smart he was supposed to be. Dave was just awesome, doing both the cute, poor-speech little-kid thing, and also the bad-ass defensive monkey-attack.