09:36 – The prepping book is starting to shape up. I’m still in the random phase, where I write a sentence or a couple of paragraphs in one chapter and then jump to another chapter and do the same. Or maybe just stick in a header to remind me to write something about a subject. Some days, I add material to 10 or 15 different chapters. Within the next six weeks or so, I should be able to start posting draft chapters to the mailing list.
14:38 – UPS just showed up with the fleece-lined hoodie I ordered from Costco for $22. It’s an XLT, just like my old one from LL Bean, which would probably cost $60 now. The first thing I noticed when I unpacked the Costco hoodie was that it had much thicker cloth and fleece than the LL Bean hoodie and felt noticeably heavier. I just checked with my shipping scale. The LL Bean hoodie weighed 28.4 ounces, and the Costco hoodie 35.2 ounces. Now, granted, the LL Bean hoodie is several years old and has been washed many times. I’m sure it’s lost some of its fleece over the years. But it was never as thick as the Costco hoodie. I’m quite pleased with the new one, even ignoring that it cost only $20.
Hi Bob, how do you feel about MREs for long term food storage?
“China, U.S. agree to limit greenhouse gases”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/china-us-agree-to-limit-greenhouse-gases/2014/11/11/9c768504-69e6-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html
If you like your coal power plant, you can keep your coal power plant.
There just will not be any fuel (coal) for it. Just about all of the coal mines in the eastern USA have run out of coal to mine and none of the new mines have been allowed to open. Remember that when you are freezing in the dark in January.
Yeah, I love how Obama gave up everything in return for essentially nothing from the Chinese. What a moron, but we knew that. I don’t see this making it past congress, since even a lot of Democrats would vote against it. If by some miracle it does, the new congress will simply de-fund it.
As far as MRE’s, I think they’re great if you don’t mind the cost. In terms of nutrition per dollar, they’re right down there with freeze-dried foods.
My thoughts exactly on the USA – China greenhouse gas accords. China is reducing their coal plant usage already due to air pollution. They gave up nothing and may get some additional trade freebies. IMHO, anyone outside the USA should pay a 10% tariff in order to gain access to our markets.
I fully expect the new Congress and Senate to defund the EPA. It has 80,000 employees now, most of which are used to pass paper around and run useless environmental studies. I would like to see the EPA reduced in scope but I believe that there is no compromise point.
MREs are running about $5/meal on Ebay right now. BTW, I count an MRE meal as a full days ration for a person. They are 2,000 to 2,500 calories and consist of several packages that can be eaten throughout the day.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-SEALED-CASES-A-B-Military-MREs-meal-ready-to-eat-MENUS-1-12-13-24-/291292641330
My son brought back a case of 1989 MREs when he exited Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children in 2009. We sampled a couple of the meals and they were just fine for eating. He thinks that they are good for 30 years minimum.
Well, most or all of those $5 MREs on eBay are probably stolen property, not to mention near their expiration dates. I concur that most MREs will probably taste fine and have essentially all of their original nutrition well past their typical three-year expiration date, but there are exceptions.
My understanding of MRE’s differs from yours. I understand each MRE to have about 1,200 calories total, assuming you eat every crumb in there. A typical soldier in combat requires 3,500 to 4,500 calories per day, which leads me to believe that these are intended to be eaten at a rate of three or four per day per soldier. For prepping, I’m assuming 2,500 cal/day minimum, and 3,000 to 3,500 is a better goal.
Again, if Obamao were attempting to destroy the United States as a matter of policy, or as a matter of jihad, what would he be doing differently?
https://survivalacres.com/shop/content/8-why-do-we-not-recommend-mre
I’d been told, back in the long-ago days that I had the pleasure of eating several of them, cold, per day, that MREs were 3000 kCal each. This was before this intartubes thingy was invented, so the assertion couldn’t be easily checked. It seems that RBT is correct, or at least is getting the same wrong information as this and several other pages I just checked.
I’d go with canned food, if you need something you can open and eat. Cheaper than MREs and you know what you’re getting and there’s a century or so of experience with long-term usability of professionally canned food. Also, if you’re truly expecting the end of civilization, the cans will be more useful than the MREs’ plastic wrappers. (Though I saw Korean farmers carefully scavenging all of the heavy brown plastic wrappers they could find. I have no idea what they used them for.)
OFD, is your frequently-used “it would take a bile specialist” a quote with any particular provenance? I was going to use it elsewhere but wanted to provide a link to wikiquotes or wherever, but couldn’t find anyone in particular who said it.
Lynn, I think you’re thinking of FSRs and not MREs.
They used to sell surplus MREs at the base commissary. That was back in the late 1980s. I don’t know if they still do or not.
I suppose what you stockpile for prepping is somewhat dependent on whether you’re planning on hunkering down for the duration or if you’re planning on being on the move. Some things are more portable, durable, and weatherproof than others.
In a ZA/EOTWAWKI scenario I would probably be on the move South as I don’t think I want to live this far North in the absence of electricity and natural gas. Most modern homes aren’t designed in a way to allow for wood heat. I’d head somewhere warmer where food was plentiful and there was a longer growing season.
For more realistic scenarios, my butt would be firmly planted in my home. 🙂
That survival acres guy is full of shit. He’s trying to sell his over-priced freeze-dried foods (for which there is no reliable shelf-life data), and claiming that canned foods are unsafe after a short storage period. Bullshit, as even the federal government admits. Canned foods are safe essentially forever, or until the cans rust through.
Bob, you are very correct, 1250 calories per MRE:
http://www.mreinfo.com
However, the former USMC son maintains that Marine Corps MREs are smaller than Army MREs. He should know, they had to steal quite a bit of water on his first trip to Iraq from an Army base along with a few other items. Their freighter from San Diego did not have enough water for their 1,500 men so the First Sargent grabbed him and several other Marines with several 7.5 ton trucks, visited the big Army base through the back door and liberated several tons of bottled water. It was those Nestle’s 24 bottles water packs that you buy at Sam’s Club. Even palletized just like Sams.
And the son definitely concurs on the lack of fiber in MREs. There are also MREs for squads and they are just more of the same. Instead of eating MREs, they would stop in a village and buy whatever food they could find. Except sheep brains.
BTW, I suspect that half of the stuff on Ebay fell off the truck.
The survivalist blogger dude is pushing buying a 360 package of #10 cans:
http://www.augasonfarms.com/Kits-and-packs/Deluxe-4-Person-One-Year-Kit360-10-Cans-UPC-78716-07014?avad=162721_f7635251
in his advice on quick prepping:
http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/how-to-get-a-family-of-four-quickly-prepped-for-one-year-in-the-easiest-way-possible/
re Survivalacres: gah, you’re right. I did a search on “number of calories in an MRE”, saw about six sites said the same thing*, and just grabbed the URL of the page that happened to be current when I was satisfied the number was probably correct.
* In different words. A lot of
peopleworthless scumbags copy the content of other sites wholesale.I do know one thing. Anything food that you store should be in cans, which MREs are not. I just killed my third roof rat in the house last Sunday night. Apparently it really liked the cat food. I suspect those plastic buckets that some suppliers are using can be quickly opened by the varmints if you are not careful.
We are lucky, my parents have been fighting a mama racoon who had her babies in their attic. The babies all fell down in the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and laid there crying and scratching the wallboard. Somehow the wall header had large hole in it. Was a terrible mess to get them out. The mama coon was a whole nother problem to deal with.
BTW, I have decided that our 15 lb Siamese male cat is afraid of roof rats. He was watching the rat eat his food last Sunday morning! I have no idea how to fix this situation.
You shoot one of the roof rats in front of the cat, the look at the cat and say, “I shouldn’t have to do your job for you. Any questions?”
Re: that $10,000 instant prep article, the guy is an idiot as anyone can tell by looking at his first item. $4,000 for a 48 person-month food supply that considers 1,280 calories per day adequate? Give me a break. That’s more like a 20 to 24 person-month supply, at best. And although I have no problem with Augason Farms stuff (we have quite a bit of it here), buying any packaged food supply like that is stupid. What if you don’t like the stuff? What if one or more of your family is allergic to TVP? Well, I could go on and on, but the simple fact is that anyone who buys one of these so-called long term food supply kits is making a stupid and expensive decision. Much of what’s in this particular one is available much cheaper from an LDS Home Storage Center, and the rest is better covered by alternatives from Costco or Sam’s Club. And the mix is really bizarre, not even counting the fact that they’ll ship you whatever they happen to have rather than what’s listed. I mean, two #10 cans of white sugar for four people for one year? That’s about 10.5 pounds total, when the average American consumes about 152 pounds of caloric sweeteners per year. A reasonable storage system would include 600 pounds or thereabouts of white sugar to cover four person years. And they give you 10.5 pounds? Geez. And the stuff is very expensive. You can buy the identical #10 can of white sugar from the LDS HSCs for $4.35 (and it actually contains 5.75 pounds rather than 5.5) versus $11.29/can from Auguson Farms? Geez.
Well, I’ll stop now, but suffice it to say that this guy knows nothing about food storage as far as I can see.
Back when my dad was alive, I remember reading aloud the comment that the only real advantage of the MRE vs. the old C-Ration was that MRE’s don’t hurt if you fall on them. He, and several other guys in the room (who were all combat vets) simply broke out laughing.
What if one or more of your family is allergic to TVP?
What is TVP?
So, are you going to keep both of Costco and Sam’s Club memberships?
Textured Vegetable Protein
A girl I was very interested in back at university, was going to Purdue, studying nutrition. She told me way back then that McDonald’s milkshakes were not a dairy product, but modified TVP.
http://www.evolvingwellness.com/essay/what-you-need-to-know-before-you-eat-textured-vegetable-protein-tvp
Funny, some people have dairy intolerance and others have a soy intolerance.
I wonder since Obummer is killing fossil fuels and granting amnesty to millions, if all the illegals will just move to Texas for the warm weather. Houston, we have a PRC to build!
Everybody I know who wants to leave Hoosierland, has either already moved — or wants to move — to Texas.
I should note that the town of my Indiana alma mater was just listed as the #1 city for best balance of life by Forbes. Sure hope people don’t race there, as I have yet to purchase real estate there,
I doubt that the new Congress is going to allow roadblocks to either fracking or opening up to more coal. There is enough coal in Indiana and Kentucky to fuel those states far into the foreseeable future, and they are already building new ‘clean’ coal-fired electric plants in both states. It is going to be a while before coal is removed from the equation, and if new technology can truly clean the emissions, then I cannot see how efforts to stop coal will succeed.
Meanwhile, you had better not have a wreck in that new aluminum Ford F-150. Body shops are not at all ready to deal with what aluminum means to vehicle repair, and it looks like Ford is going to have to train them. And becoming aluminum repair-ready is going to raise the price of body work for everyone who chooses a shop that has to buy the necessary expensive new equipment.
And here is something I did not know: the Ford F-series has been the best-selling vehicle of any kind by any vehicle maker for the last 28 years.
They are now importing western coal for many of the eastern USA coal power plants that have not been shut down. The EPA was boasting the other day that over 100 coal power plants have been retired in the last couple of years.
http://content.sierraclub.org/coal/victories
The train costs alone of moving that coal from Wyoming to Ohio, New Jersey, etc are approaching $1 per million btus plus $2 per million btus for the coal itself. Natural gas is $3.50 per million btus and the transport cost is far less. Coal power plants with modern flue scrubbers are 30% efficient and natural gas combined cycle units are 60% efficient. The problem in building a new natural gas power plant is they are quite expensive to site due to the NIMBY nature of everyone nowadays.
The down side of natural gas is that the pipelines are oversubscribed in cold weather due to high demand from residential users. So, the power plants get curtailed since they should be responsible and keep a weeks worth of diesel on hand at the plant. But, few plants keep diesel on hand due to all the capital tied up in the fuel. Each 100 MW of capacity probably should have 20,000 barrels (not gallons!) of diesel on site. And that diesel is delivered at 180 barrels per truck so getting more diesel in quickly will not happen.
Since most coal power plants keep a minimum of three weeks of coal on site, they are not affected by inclement weather very much.
I have an extreme dairy intolerance. Two ounces of uncooked milk and I am upchucking for the next hour or so. I have to be careful with butter and sour cream also. Cooking that milk into pancakes makes it tolerable for me though.
But, I can drink soy milk all day long. And soynog (silknog) is awesome!
The economic vandals (aka The Greens) down here are calling for Australia to sign up for a deal like the US-China one. As far as I’m concerned they can FROAD.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-13/calls-for-australia-to-reduce-emissions-after-us-china-deal/5887474
There’s going to be a state election in Victoria in a couple of weeks. The Liberal Party (= moderate Republicans in US parlance) have decided to preference the Greens last, even after the opposition Labor Party. The Labor Party has said it won’t form an alliance with the Greens under any circumstances – having seen what happened to the Labor-Greens alliance in Tasmania.
BTW, we have mucho coal we can sell to you guys…
My elder niece used to work at Hungry Jacks (=Burger King in the US) and said that their milkshakes were made from pig fat, not much (or any?) milk – as if that was something against them. Since I happily eat pork I wasn’t fazed, but I guess that pig fat is cheaper. Why not mention that in the advertising?
What about margarine Lynn? Probably better for you too.
“UPS just showed up with the fleece-lined hoodie I ordered from Costco…”
Don’t go wandering around at night in any gated communities in Florida… 🙂
Hey Chuck, I thought you said the Germans were skinny…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-13/celebrity-chef-sarah-wiener-is-germanys-answer-to-jamie-oliver/5889488
“Germany is ranked as the fattest nation in Europe. Obesity rates are on par with other OECD countries, with almost 15 per cent of adults classified as obese, up from 11.5 per cent a decade ago.”
It has been some years now since I was there, but even my daughter commented on how lean the overall population was in Berlin on her visits to us there. Still, if 15% are obese, I suspect one would have to classify the Americans around me as 90% overweight — and way, way pudgy with many clearly 100 pounds too heavy. No one is lean — not even kids around here.
That article looks more like a press release for the business empire of that woman than serious reporting to me. Europe does not have to ‘go back’ to healthy eating, because prepared foods there are not ‘fat-free’, raw foods are not GMO-modified and are much fresher than what I can get here, meat products are not ‘fattened up for market’ like ours, and few natives eat candy, junk food, or at American fast-food places (of which there are very few compared to the US). My grandkids there are models of lean, as are their parents. I would link to some pics, but have been asked not to do that by the family for privacy and safety reasons.
I am back on track towards joining their leanness. At my visit to the doctor’s office last week, I was down 14 pounds from my last visit, which the whole office there hailed and asked how I was doing it. As I mentioned here before, I am continuing our practice while in Europe of eating the main meal at lunch, and — for the present — have given up supper altogether. If I get hungry around suppertime (about an every other day occurrence), then I have a tablespoon of olive oil (plain not extra virgin), which is 120 calories of tasteless fat that, within 10 minutes, kills all my hunger for the rest of the night. I am descending at just under 2 pounds a week. As I told my daughter, I can keep this up until I’m anorexic. I am aiming for being at my high school graduation weight, which 2 of my doctors over the years concur is the weight I should be at. Few people were obese back then. One of my friend’s grandmothers was the only person I knew who looked fat; all the rest probably were within 15 pounds of their graduation weights, which was what my childhood doctor (my dad’s best friend) insisted was the healthiest weight. In fact, he made weight the primary focus of his practice methods, and refused to continue with patients that remained overweight.
Same is true for most people. Lactose Intolerance isn’t the mutation. It’s Lactase Persistence that is. Mostly those of Western and Northern European descent carry the gene that allows us to consume milk into adulthood. For much of the rest of the world it’s gas, vomiting, diarrhea, and cramps if they consume anything with lactose. There’s a reason that China isn’t known for it’s dairy cheeses. 🙂
I have some friends that think drinking milk is disgusting and will give you a whole speech on how humans are the only animals that consume milk after being weaned. I have some other friends that find eggs as equally disgusting and cannot get past their reproductive use to ever eat them.
I’d die without eggs and cheese. Not much of a milk drinker (never was), but love cheeses.
Mr. Chuck, congrats on your weight loss. I’m also shooting for my HS weight and hope to get there by Xmas. Do you add any exercise to your daily routine? Or go the Dr. Bob route of as little as possible.
Any progress on the “ripping” tome for the radio project (and us)?
No one? Oh, come on. My BMI puts me right in the middle of the so-called normal range, which is actually underweight.
As to exercise, I’d guess that I get more than 90% of Americans, and not just for people in my age group. I walk Colin several times a day and play ball with him (which involves me throwing the ball and him running over to it and standing there waiting for me to come and get it to throw it again). I’m up and down the stairs many times per day, often carrying heavy boxes.
Of course, I’m not nearly as strong as I used to be. We had to move a bookcase in the living room when we got our windows replaced last week. It’s six feet long with two shelves. The right side of it contains a complete Encyclopedia Britannica. When we were trying to move it back into place, I wanted to lift it to avoid scratching the hardwood floors. So I grabbed the encyclopedia end, intending to lift it. It wouldn’t budge. There couldn’t have been more than 200 or 300 pounds on that end and yet I couldn’t even lift it far enough off the floor to slide a towel under it. So Barbara came over and lifted it off the floor while I slid the towel under it. How embarrassing. As a sop to my male vanity, I told her that I’d loosened it for her.
No added exercise at present. At my age and weight, I need to get down some before starting any serious exercising. Unfortunately, life in the US does not even involve enough walking to be useful exercise. I had to walk a minimum of 70 minutes weekdays to and from work in Berlin. I realize now that was keeping me in amazingly good shape.
I have longer than Xmas to go. Probably past spring before I get to where I want to be. A work colleague went on a similar diet, and no one thought he was overweight, but he lost 60 pounds and it took well over a year to do that. Actually, he looks amazing, and it has eliminated back problems for him, as he has a congenital spine/disc problem that was part of the reason he wanted to lose. He has not had a back incidence since losing the weight.
He holds down more than one job, and said he had no time to add exercise; whatever weight loss method he used had to work without exercise (he is active in his job, but only a few days a week; the rest of the time it is desk work). His method was to cut down to below 2,000 calorie intake, principally by eliminating supper. I took his lead, but added the olive oil trick when I got so hungry I could not stop myself from eating at supper.
I am about halfway through the ripping tome. Lots of life is getting in the way. Power went out at the radio transmitter yesterday (did not affect us on-air, as we are on heavy-duty commercial grade UPS and power conditioning that will last 80 minutes now), and it was necessary to go out there to turn the heaters back on (there is no way to make them turn on by themselves, as it is a ‘safety feature’). That problem is being resolved by a new heater/air-conditioner that will replace an old wall air-conditioner that failed during the summer. When we had the old tube transmitter, it generated enough heat to keep things warm with no other heating needed. It was about 60% efficient. The solid state transmitter is over 90% efficient, and would not melt an igloo. The new heater unit can be programmed to turn itself on after a power failure, so trips out there after every power failure should become a thing of the past. The sudden cold plunge was about a month ahead of our efforts to get the new heater installed.
We are getting lots more short power failures this year than ever before. Yesterday’s was 5 minutes, and 2 weeks earlier, there was one for 2 minutes. The heavy-duty UPS/power conditioning has been a good decision.
No one?
Okay, there are 3 high school kids down the alley that are trim, but the fireman across the street says there is drug activity in the house they live in, and it is not likely that the grandmother that is raising those kids is the user. The fireman is lean, but he also has congenital back problems and purposely stays very lean because of that. He has had over 30 back surgeries. My second cousin (girl) on the corner is slightly older than me and about as overweight as I am currently. Her son is lean, as is mine. People who own the house across the street are morbidly obese. They both drive Chrysler PT Cruisers. Ever notice how the drivers of those cars are really, really heavy?
All the kids in the other direction are quite noticeably overweight, and there are a bunch of them ranging from 6 to high school. Even the shelf-stocking girls at Aldi are overweight enough to be called obese.
Up in Muncie, I will admit that a great many of the kids going to school at Testicle Tech are trim. But the malls, restaurants, clerks, and shoppers are overwhelmingly obese — not simply a little overweight.
Somebody here once linked to some historical pictures of kids playing in the neighborhood lots of Brooklyn in the late ’60’s/early ’70’s. There was not a single overweight kid in any of the pics. Then there were pics of kids today hanging out on street corners (kids apparently do not play outdoors anymore), and nearly all were noticeably overweight.
I have to look hard to find trim people around me, although admittedly there are some. In Berlin, it was the opposite: one had to look hard to find someone who was overweight. Jeri thought obesity was a sin, but when we were out together and she pointed to someone overweight, I used to make a bet with her that they were American. Sure enough, with rare exceptions, within moments we heard English coming out of their mouth and I won.
I also find the assertion in that article that Germany is the most obese European nation to be hard to swallow. Certainly, in my frequent trips to London while we lived in Europe, there were a LOT more overweight people walking the streets than thin ones. Not quite as bad as around me now, but definitely far more than I saw in Berlin.
A brief Google finds a couple of charts on worldwide obesity. I didn’t look into the details at all, but they do show Germany at 15%. The US is at 35‰. In Europe, Germany is way behind the UK, and a bit behind Iceland, Greece and Spain.
Chuck wrote:
“The heavy-duty UPS/power conditioning has been a good decision.”
Care to tell us what you got please?
What about margarine Lynn? Probably better for you too.
The wife buys Smart Balance Light with has no dairy in it per the container.
http://www.smartbalance.com/products/buttery-spread/smart-balance-light-original-buttery-spread-flax
As I mentioned here before, I am continuing our practice while in Europe of eating the main meal at lunch, and — for the present — have given up supper altogether. If I get hungry around suppertime (about an every other day occurrence), then I have a tablespoon of olive oil (plain not extra virgin), which is 120 calories of tasteless fat that, within 10 minutes, kills all my hunger for the rest of the night. I am descending at just under 2 pounds a week.
I have seen several people mention that they do not eat after the sun goes down. Actually sounds like a good idea. But, the implementation sounds tricky. And, is direct olive oil good for your digestive tract other than greasing things up real good?
Do you eat anything in the late afternoon?
UPS is Eaton brand in their commercial/industrial product line. We have 3 units strapped together, each one was around $3,000, so just under $10k total, to power a 3kw transmitter and associated audio equipment (about another 150 watts), for 80 minutes. We can power the transmitter down to 2kw and stretch that to a little over 2 hours. Car accident in the middle of the summer took power down for 4 hours, and we were off for 2 hours, having run the Eatons dry. Each of the 3 units is about 200 pounds. High grade stuff. Zero trouble with it, and we are coming up on the 1 year anniversary. Batteries are supposed to be good for 8 years minimum. It is power conditioning, too, so it is between the power company mains and our equipment. The transmitter never sees even a microsecond of outage, no matter what happens to the power line input.
The Eaton sends emails/SMS when it senses trouble and turns itself back on if it expends everything it has got. The CE wants to get another smaller UPS to power only the Internet and the Eaton control circuitry, which is very minimal current draw, so he can monitor things even when the power is down and the batteries in the Eaton have gone dry.
Generator is next on the list, but there is a bunch of abandoned Nextel equipment on the concrete pad next to the building, and that has to be cleared by the tower owner before we can put that in. Probably a next summer project.
The olive oil does not seem to do anything unusual to my digestive tract. I imagine it would be the same as eating a tablespoon of lard. The Germans put spiced lard on toast, and that is considered a delicacy and darned good eating it is, too! And since some of the fake butters on the market are basically whipped olive oil, I doubt there is any danger at all.
I stop eating much sooner than sundown. I think the sundown thing comes from the people on the Circadian Diet. Supposedly, your body needs the night hours for the elimination process, and you should not be throwing more down there for it to deal with, as that screws up your sleep cycle. I usually eat lunch at 12:30 and do not eat anything after 2 o’clock. Occasionally, I have tea time at the official British hour of 4 o’clock. If working at home, that is when I switch from work to doing personal stuff, but I probably have that only a couple times a week, and never when working away from home.
lol! War on what?
Afghan Opium Cultivation Rises to Record Levels
Thinly sliced lard, usually smoked, and with salt and pepper. Yum. What do they call it in Germany? Here, it is just called “lardo”, which comes from the italian word for…well, kind of obvious…
If one buys that animal fats are actually healthy (I am semi-convinced, but it’s hard to know which studies to trust), then this kind of thing is likely better for you than processed vegetable fats or things like coconut oil. My compromise is that I make zero effort to avoid animal fat, and put some small efforts into reducing carbohydrates. Not dead yet, I’ll let you know if that changes 🙂
Schmalz! and speise Schmalz.
My parents taught us about balanced diets when we were growing up, my dad having learned from the Mayo Clinic people in Rochester, MN. Meat, potato (or substitute), 2 veggie servings, 2 slices of bread with butter, fruit, and (back then) milk, all twice a day. Dieting was cutting the meat in half and eliminating potato once a day.
Mayo does not give such specific diet advice these days except for special medical problems like diabetes (my dad had booklets with sample meals for normal people), but they had many pages listing substitutes. Things like corn and peas are not vegetables, but potato substitutes, while around here everyone thinks they are low calorie vegetables that are good for you. It is quite common for diner-type places here to serve you meat, mashed potatoes, and corn, with no vegetables or fruits at all. Nice high starch, high carb diet.
The old Mayo advised 4 oz servings of everything (equivalent to an average male’s fist they used to say), but now they recommend no more than 2.5 oz of meat per day, not 4 oz. per meal. Using the 4 oz size, the above is a LOT of food. I make sure I get the veggies and fruit, but not always the meat, and bread only for my breakfast of buttered roll and salami. It is difficult around here to avoid potatoes and pasta, as most restaurants here use that to fill you up. Interestingly, in their current recommendations — which are largely based on the USDA food pyramid — Mayo does not recommend milk at all. They do not say refrain from it, but it is no longer on the list of recommendations. BTW, the above is the recommended allotments for men; the advice for women was about half the men’s quantity.
It is the hunger thing that made dieting difficult for me, but the olive oil works perfectly. This comes from the late Seth Roberts’ experiments on himself, and people have added to his compendium of advice by creating whole low calorie but high fat tasteless meals for even quicker weight loss. I am satisfied with slower going and do not need the extremes some of his aficionados have created. Unfortunately, Roberts died of coronary artery disease. He was a smoker, and I do not believe his diet advice was unhealthy at all, or the cause of his death, although there has been virtually no examination of that, and many assume his unusual advice thus had to be responsible for the death. His diet advice was formed from psychology experiments on animals, which was his field of expertise, which he then tried on himself.
In any event. I have been practicing my methods since July, and my recent very thorough blood tests came through with flying colors. I did not change anything to fiddle the blood test around, because I wanted to know whether what I am doing was messing me up. Only one factor — a measure of water hydration — was lower than it should be, and only by a tiny factor, which, indeed, is common for people losing weight.
I do not use any other of Roberts’ many recommendations — only the hunger killing olive oil. Which, by the way, is supposed to be separated by at least an hour from any other food that has an attractive taste.
Butter and olive oil (especially on good sourdough) are good enough. I see no need for lard unless we’re talking bacon, flavored with lettuce, tomato, mayo and avocado (you know the good fats).
A year ago I was obese, per BMI… which is further demonstration that BMI is bullshit when applied to individuals. Between a reasonable amount of dense muscle, bones which seem to be the density of cinderblocks, and low fat, I couldn’t float in fresh water.* But I was “obese”.
Conceded, I’m kind of squishy now, but I’m still rehabbing my shoulder and knee. I’ll start going to the gym in the mornings pretty soon, see if I can handle the stair stepper or cross trainer and still be able to walk afterward.
* Wasn’t able to since I was a teenager. My inability to float caused trouble with various Red Cross lifesaving certifications and such, because the requirements included doing the jellyfish float for a few minutes. Fortunately, the instructor was savvy enough to see the problem and flexible enough to ignore the written requirements.
Cinderblocks are not that dense as they have two huge holes in them. Now if you are talking about concrete…
I forget, what did you do to your shoulder and knee?
re bone density: oh, whatever. A couple docs and technicians have commented in passing that my bones are higher density than normal, so whatever I’m doing, I should keep it up. This includes a regimen of impacts, such as slamming my forearms against iron support pillars, running up and down stairs, and other martial arts training, as well as heavy weight lifting from time to time. Not lately, though.
My one knee has taken a fair amount of abuse over the years — car accidents, smack with an axe handle or something, jumping out of an airplane with a parachute that didn’t work quite as well as expected. Mostly I’ve healed up from the mishaps, but a year of running (and I do mean running, and carrying 40 pounds up the stairs and about 30 down) up and down 146 concrete steps between where I parked and where I worked seems to have been a bit too much.
As for the shoulder, beats me what I did to it. One day I was barely able to move it. No accident, no heavy weight lifting, no nothing. It took a month or more before I could lift the elbow over the shoulder, strength is still down and mobility is limited.
Regardless, I can’t run, have trouble with stairs, can’t do meaningful weight lifting, can’t do martial arts except Tai Chi Chuan. I can do sit ups and walking, not much else.
I want to know what SteveF is carrying that requires him to leave 10 pounds behind at the top of the stairs!
Ha. Lunch and coffee — I went up the stairs with a thermos and a mug of coffee, 20 oz of milk, 20 oz of juice, and usually three plastic containers for lunch. Total weight of food and drink was ten pounds or a bit more.
Regardless, I can’t run, have trouble with stairs, can’t do meaningful weight lifting, can’t do martial arts except Tai Chi Chuan. I can do sit ups and walking, not much else.
Mr. OFD has an opening for “apprentice fashion blogger” if you can’t find work in your decrepitude.
I managed to stick my left knee through a tempered glass door about 27 years ago. I broke two of the metal strands on one inch centers in the glass but the two outer strands tried to dekneecapitate me. The ER doc put 100 stitches into the knee, 35 on the inside, trying to put it all back together. I managed to cut all the electrical lines around the knee so I cannot feel the knee anymore. Two of the cuts were 270 degrees around the knee cap.
I walk two miles, five times a week, to exercise and to keep the knee strong. Otherwise I fall quite often due to the knee collapsing on me. And since I cannot feel the knee collapsing, my only clue is “going down”. It is disconcerting at best.
At the moment I’m just over the line between being overweight and being obese. The bulge around my midsection makes it obvious that the the completely arbitrary BMI is accurate in my case. I’m currently doing the South Beach diet which cuts out the worst of the fats and carbs. I’m leaning toward carbs being worse than fats based on current research. I’m tempted to go Atkins if this doesn’t work. A few days ago I had the brilliant idea to stop drinking beverages with caffeine when we ran out of diet soda. Yesterday I drank the last of the diet soda.
This seemed like a brilliant idea a few days ago, now it’s starting to seem like having Papa Johns deliver a pizza and two liter of my favorite diet beverage would be a good idea.
“OFD, is your frequently-used “it would take a bile specialist” a quote with any particular provenance? I was going to use it elsewhere but wanted to provide a link to wikiquotes or wherever, but couldn’t find anyone in particular who said it.”
That’s from the late Ezra Pound, who uses it here:
“It would take a bile specialist to discover why the Oxford Book of Verses includes the first five strophes (of John Donne’s “The Ecstasy”) and then truncates the poem with no indication that anything has been omitted.”
From his “ABC of Reading,” a blast to read.
But he used it in several other places, too. It describes my reaction perfectly to stuff like this. More than bile, actually; outright homicide.