Useless Conversation

[ghost]

I like how asking for light ice in a drink results in the cup only being half full of ice instead of 3/4 full.  Fast food places are making bank on their drinks.

Drink water.  It's much cheaper and healthier for you too.

[Salamok]

I appreciate Excel much more this afternoon, having imported the data into Access this morning.

That Ruby response isn't looking too much like a joke anymore.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yes, I do drink water - at work and at home.  But this morning I felt like a McD sweet tea.  I've even worked damn hard on giving up my beloved Dr Pepper, because while I enjoy it so, so much, I could use those 4 points for something else during the day (points = WW points system, which the husband and I have been doing since November now).

[Paelos]

I only go to FF joints that have a freestyle machine now, or let me pour my own fountain stuff.

[RhyssaFireheart]

I only go to FF joints that have a freestyle machine now, or let me pour my own fountain stuff.

Doesn't work in the drive-thru?

And the local Noodles & Co put one of those freestyle machines in.  Those are seriously cool, especially if you like mixing flavors.

[Paelos]

Sure Freestyle works in drive through. I just say I only want a 1/4 cup of ice.

That doesn't work with other drivethrus though, only the freestyle ones because they are making your drink special instead of just the assembly line machines they normally have.

[Sky]

(points = WW points system, which the husband and I have been doing since November now).

The fiancee just got back on the system, she had stopped when they changed to points plus because it threw all her stuff out the window. I'm not on the system, but I do like it as the one who makes the meals, to see relative values and help her stay within her daily bounds.

She still doesn't eat enough veg :)

[Salamok]

She still doesn't eat enough veg :)

That's just crazy talk, points taste better and are way better for you.  There is even a book about it.

[RhyssaFireheart]

That is one thing that's really changed for both of us - we eat a lot more veggies than we used to.  And we're starting to cook more, even if it's simple meals.  Lately we've taken to sitting down and trying to plan out what we want to eat for the upcoming week and then going to buy just those items we really need instead of buying a bunch of stuff and seeing what happens.  And we're far more aware of what's in the food we're buying instead of just grabbing something that looks good.  If there are too many points in a serving, no matter how good something sounds, we'll usually skip it.  Or we make sure the ingredients aren't full of chemical names.  It's become more of a lifestyle change rather than a "diet" to be on.

The husband recently hit the 40lbs lost milestone.  I.. have not and aren't even close to that yet.   

[Merusk]

The husband recently hit the 40lbs lost milestone.  I.. have not and aren't even close to that yet.   

You're not alone there.   One of my co-workers and her husband did the WW system through one of the local hospitals last year.  She lost 20# before it triggered her gall bladder and she had to have it removed.  He lost something crazy like a hundred and twenty.  He's seriously thin now and she still gives a jealous fist shake if it comes up.

[Sky]

Streaming services are cool. I like my Prime membership, lots of good shows and movies. LOVE my Google Music, 7k and counting of my music collection available anywhere there's internets.

Do not love stereo audio.

Pfft.

[JWIV]

The husband recently hit the 40lbs lost milestone.  I.. have not and aren't even close to that yet.   

You're not alone there.   One of my co-workers and her husband did the WW system through one of the local hospitals last year.  She lost 20# before it triggered her gall bladder and she had to have it removed.  He lost something crazy like a hundred and twenty.  He's seriously thin now and she still gives a jealous fist shake if it comes up.

For whatever reason, men tend to have an easier time in losing weight - the wife and I had a similar experience as well.

[Ironwood]

It's because women are lazier.

[Minvaren]

The husband recently hit the 40lbs lost milestone.  I.. have not and aren't even close to that yet.   

You're not alone there.   One of my co-workers and her husband did the WW system through one of the local hospitals last year.  She lost 20# before it triggered her gall bladder and she had to have it removed.  He lost something crazy like a hundred and twenty.  He's seriously thin now and she still gives a jealous fist shake if it comes up.

For whatever reason, men tend to have an easier time in losing weight - the wife and I had a similar experience as well.

I've heard (and observed) similarly.  The anecdote I've heard is that while men can usually lose weight by just dieting, women often have to add exercise as well.

Also, one thing that can stymie any weight loss plan is hypothyroidism - simple blood draw at the GP to check for it.

[Sjofn]

Ingmar dropped more weight than I did when we dieted, but when we gained some back, it was more obvious on him than me, so I'll take it.

[Salamok]

I have decided to take a different weight loss tactic this time around, instead of focusing more on diet and losing lbs I have decided to crush my inner fat man with muscle.  So far it seems like I am winning the war and I feel great.  Of course it helps that I spend from 6-7:30 at the gym and this was prime face stuffing time before.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yeah, he seems to be able to do it with simple diet change and a quick walk in the morning while I'm going to have to add some serious exercise.  I did have a slightly low thyroid and the doctor put me on 50mcg of medication.  When I started that I almost immediately lost 5 lbs and then.. nothing.  While it wasn't every day, I was going got the gym to do Zumba on Sundays and pushing myself and still.. nothing.  I have the entire month of July off and in addition to making an appointment to followup about the thyroid stuff (it's been 6 months) I plan to hit up the gym for some serious work. 

And it's no fair how easily men can lose weight.  No fair at all!   

[Yegolev]

Some days I think you have a masochistic streak.   Other days you confirm it.

My sense of adventure is often mistook for other things.

I don't know Ruby, but I do have Cygwin installed.  If it becomes important, I will just export to CSV and write something in bash or perl to sort it out, then import into Something.  In reality what I am doing is just occasionally filtering the main sheet and copying the pertinent data into the manager sheets.

[Zetor]

At one point in my previous job (govt IT) I had to maintain a report generator program that used a mixture of Access and Foxpro databases. The program itself was a 'fancy' collection of Excel tables and macros... its core was written in VBA.

Staring into that abyss once was enough.

[Morat20]

For whatever reason, men tend to have an easier time in losing weight - the wife and I had a similar experience as well.

I wonder if it's hormonal? I know PCOS can cause a series feedback loop between insulin resistance and testoterone levels. Each one makes the other worse, which means a lot of calories go straight to fat because your body's making out of whack claims as to metabolic and sugar needs.

[Selby]

I wonder if it's hormonal?

Women have less testosterone than men, which means they don't build muscle mass as easily and more muscle == easier weight loss due to it taking more calories to maintain that same amount of muscle vs. fat.  There is also something to do with blood hemoglobin levels and other things, but I hardly know much about that.

I do say I have to exercise a LOT harder to lose weight and keep it off now vs. 5 years ago.  I practically had to cut out all of my favorite foods too and reduce myself to a 1700-1800 calorie day otherwise the weight just piles on.

[Morat20]

I keep an eye on the science of weight gain and loss, and I've started to think that it's a hell of a lot more individual than people tend to assume. Genes and hormones play a hell of a lot more role than people thought, for one.

It's weird watching people follow the same diet and exercise plan and come out the other end with massively different results.

Eat less and exercise, right? Doesn't seem to work for some people. Seems to be like riding a bike for others. The body also seems to be a real dick at times, packing on fat and eating muscle (or vice versa) because it's got some damn preferred state that it doesn't want to switch from.

Of course, it should be complicated. It's important -- right up there with breathing! Your whole body runs on turning food into energy, storing it and releasing it and using it to repair or build stuff. It'd be weird if it wasn't so varied.

I suspect as doctors, nutritionists, biologists and everyone else digs into it that you'll see more targetted diets ("With your genes and hormone levels, stay away from X and eat lots of Y. You metabolize Z in such a way that you get plenty of energy, but still feel hungry. I suggest this and this instead"). What makes you feel full. What makes you hungry, even when you don't need it.

Like I said above, I watched someone get treated for PCOS and shed 10% of her bodyweight in less than a year. Without changing her diet much at all -- when strict diet and exercise programs had done jack. 20 years ago, all they'd have said was "Eat less and exercise" even though she'd have needed to practically be on a starvation diet before her body started eating fat reserves. (At which point her body would drop her metabolism).

I'm not saying there's a fat gene or anything like that. Just that while we'd like to think it's simple math ("X calories in, Y calories burned") in practice it's often more problematic than that. Your body adjusts, toys with it's metabolism, fucks around...well..some shit works for some people, not for others. Different shit works for them.

[ghost]

Eat less and exercise, right? Doesn't seem to work for some people.

It doesn't work for most people, as is evidenced by the fact that 70% of our population is overweight and 1/4-1/3 are obese.

[Merusk]

While I'm sure hormones link in to it.. 70% of our population also eats way too much meat, not enough vegetables and stuffs its face with Soda & fast food.

It's not complicated. People cheat.  People cheat more than they themselves realize because we'd rather lie to ourselves than admit our meals are too big because we're hungry.  We're built for a starvation -> binge cycle due to scarcity of food across our history.  Instinctual triggers tell us "there's food, you must eat" and so we do.  No matter how big the portion.

Ever try eating the actual recommended serving size? You'll be amazed how unfilling it is because you're used to gorging.

[ghost]

Huge sugar bolus -> increased insulin on continual basis -> decreased effectiveness of ghrelin and increased hunger relative to other foods.  It is indeed a vicious cycle that leads to obesity. 

[JWIV]

While I'm sure hormones link in to it.. 70% of our population also eats way too much meat, not enough vegetables and stuffs its face with Soda & fast food.

It's not complicated. People cheat.  People cheat more than they themselves realize because we'd rather lie to ourselves than admit our meals are too big because we're hungry.  We're built for a starvation -> binge cycle due to scarcity of food across our history.  Instinctual triggers tell us "there's food, you must eat" and so we do.  No matter how big the portion.

Ever try eating the actual recommended serving size? You'll be amazed how unfilling it is because you're used to gorging.

Yep. It's definitely an adjustment.

[Nebu]

Not to be a dick, but the reason that diet and exercise don't work for many people is because those people don't stay with the plan.  They cheat and lie about it.  Medicine suffers the same problem, specifically one of non- or partial compliance.  If you were to keep patients in a controlled set of conditions, they would lose weight just fine.  I'm not saying that this is 100%, but it certainly works for 93% of the population that don't have some metabolic condition related to hormones or genetics.   

The US has a high population of obese and malnourished people.  They eat because they are depressed, insulin resistant, and nutrient starved.  All you have to do is go grocery shopping at a store that serves the lower - middle class to see the problem in real time.  Look in the carts of people.  That tells the whole story.  Americans eat poorly, they eat too much, and they don't exercise enough.  I had no idea just how bad it was until I started shifting my research from cancer over to nutritional biochemistry.  Most people just can't fathom eating a 2000 Cal per day diet. 

[RhyssaFireheart]

Portion control has probably been the hardest part of all this so far, because like was said, eating the actual serving size leaves you hungry until you get used to it.  I have kashi and yogurt for breakfast every day during the work week, and even now, I still get out the measuring cups for one cup kashi and if I'm having a dried fruit with it (cranberries or cherries, usually), then I measure out the 1/4 cup serving of that.  I don't trust myself to just guesstimate it and it's just as easy to simply measure it and be sure.  Same with going out to eat.  I've gotten into the mindset that I don't have to eat everything on the plate, it really is okay to leave food and/or split the entree to have a doggie bag to take home.  That was a mental adjustment to make, along with learning to estimate restaurant portion sizes (plus I'll order smaller entrees).

As for grocery shopping, it's amazing how the contents of our shopping cart has changed over the past few months.  We rarely get chips any more and if we do, they are baked or we got for something like veggie chips.  We consider the serving size of items, the points value, and in general, spend more time in the produce section or the frozen foods section (to get frozen veggies).  Heck, I've even gotten the husband preferring to have rye bread over white and sometimes he'll even eat wheat.  We go through the stores now and just look at what other people have in their carts and it's crazy thinking we used to get stuff like that as well.  We're not perfect, no one is, but we've gotten tons better.

[Paelos]

Not to be a dick, but the reason that diet and exercise don't work for many people is because those people don't stay with the plan.

Glad you said it. I was thinking the same thing.

[ghost]

Not to be a dick, but the reason that diet and exercise don't work for many people is because those people don't stay with the plan.

That's not being a dick, but you're assuming that it is possible for people to stay within "the plan".  The evidence that is laid before us suggests that they cannot.  Food companies know that dumping massive amounts of sugar into foods is addictive and people cannot control their urges to eat when given that sort of food over a lifetime.  That allows them to sell more food, make us fat and keep us on the chain. 

[Draegan]

I was in the best shape of my life right before I got married last year.  Then I got lazy and fat.  So I need to lose 20 pounds or so.  Last time I did it with kickboxing.

I can lose weight pretty easily as long as I'm disciplined with my food and drinking.  What works with me is just moderating portions and stop eating garbage (surprise!).  My wife has already gotten me on the organic/natural ingredient kick a few years ago so I avoid all fructose corn syrup and all other bullshit chemical stuff.  So I eat a lot of vegetables (wife is a vegetarian) and fish.

No candy, no sugar, no soda.  My only unhealthy intake is drinking beer.  I also make sure I exercise 3-4 times a week for at least 30 minutes.  Right now without a gym membership, I'm just running 2-4 miles.

Lunch is my hardest meal since I go out to eat every day with the people at work.  But dinner is easy since I do all the cooking.  Last night was grilled eggplant, couscous, and an assortment of veggies and beans cooked in crushed tomatos with spices and flavoring (I used some sweet BBQ sauce).

Best way to prepare meals is to go to Costco or whatever bulk food store and purcahse a package of individually frozen chicken breasts and salmon/tilapia/scrod and eat one of those with steamed vegetables every night.  Cooking fish is easy though.  Go find some rubs at your grocery store and use those to flavor the fish.  All you need to do is toss the fish on a george forman grill if you don't want to use an oven.

[Sky]

Look in the carts of people.  That tells the whole story. 

I'm always shocked by this. I almost want to compliment people who have a better cart than I do, and I'm pretty average in my opinion 

Scrod and tilapia are a bit tougher to make flavorful imo, they won't take an easy maillard like salmon or steelhead trout (pink fleshed). For the latter, I just put on some S&P and put them in a hot pan. I hate frozen food though, I buy in fresh at the butcher or fish counter every night on the way home from work. I get better deals, get to pick the cuts, and get to know the person buying in the stock. We've almost stopped eating chicken, it's hard to find good chicken that's not outrageously expensive (free range organics, something like $10/lb) or plumped out to hell and back and bland. Doesn't help that I'm neurotic about freshness, so most of those giant packaged trays of chicken are too smelly for me. We mostly eat turkey or salmon these days.

To bring it back around to the topic, most people at the fish counter buy breaded, deep-fried halibut. My mother won't eat my fish because it's not 'fish fry'.

Stay out of the middle of the grocery store.

[ghost]

One of the best ways to lose weight is to do two things:  1)  stop feeding your body so many sugar carbs, i.e. HFCS, cane sugar (this means your beloved Dr. Pepper), and 2) feed your body something that will make it feel full when you are hungry-  a nice thing to do is keep a big bag of almonds or pecans around and when you feel hungry have a handful of them.  Have you ever tried to eat a ton of almonds or pecans?  It's impossible.  They're too filling.  But they have to be raw, unsalted nuts.  The salt will drive you nuts if you get the salted ones.  The other nice thing about nuts is that they are reasonably high in fiber which means your body isn't going to get to all the calories in them.

Another nice food to eat is beans.  They are extremely high in fiber and should probably be eaten with every meal.  

[Nebu]

I tell people to a) eat complex carbs instead of simple carbs, b) eat more veggies, c) never drink their fruits/veggies, d) never eat a portion of anything larger than their fist, and e) drink adequate water.  Avoiding condiments also helps.  

For the record: I lift weights 5 days a week, run 6 days a week, and have a host of other activities (bike, golf, basketball, hike, etc).  Most people are aghast at how little I eat, yet I'm usually near 2500 Cal and often higher on active days. 

People have no concept of a proper portion nor do they eat enough fresh fruits/veggies. 

[Lantyssa]

I don't know Ruby, but I do have Cygwin installed.  If it becomes important, I will just export to CSV and write something in bash or perl to sort it out, then import into Something.  In reality what I am doing is just occasionally filtering the main sheet and copying the pertinent data into the manager sheets.

You're really better off converting it to text and using something else sensible to process it.

If you want to compromise, use AutoIt to grab the data from the excel sheet, manipulate it, then create a new workbook with the results.