Livestrong, Die Hard

On my ongoing weight-loss journey, I am learning so much.  In case you didn’t realize it, there are a lot of diet / exercise trends out there.  Some of them we can look back on and laugh now.  Some of them we will look back on and laugh later.  You know, if they don’t kill us first.

Some friends of mine use the Livestrong website.  Livestrong was started by Lance Armstrong (get it?), the cyclist who won the Tour de France several times and pissed off a bunch of French people.  So a total win for the U.S. there, except that recently they finally caught him drugging and he sort of lost all his titles and stuff.  Whatever your opinion on the guy, I have to give him credit because there are NO drugs that could make me cycle more than a few blocks without falling over, much less that many miles.

You’re not actually gonna make me ride with her, are you?

Anyway, there’s a calorie counter on this site called MyPlate and you can enter your height and weight and how much you want to lose per week and it calculates how many calories you get.  Then you can enter in every morsel you eat and it goes POP and shows the calories.  It also takes these calories away from the total number of calories you get for the day.  I think you can already see where the problem here is.  At first, I had all these calories left over and was like, wow, and I even had a milkshake.  This is GREAT.  Then I realized that I had put in that I wanted to gain 1.5 pounds a week instead of losing 1.5 pounds.  Whoops.

Calorie Counter From Hell

So the next day I fixed it; and things changed, my friends, and not for the better.  I realized I had eaten almost half of my calories for the day and I hadn’t made it to lunch yet.  And I didn’t have any freaking pancakes, either.  We’re talking Raisin Bran and skim milk and some freaking fruit and stuff.  But you do get an out.  If you exercise, you can burn some calories, so you get some of your “points” back that way.  One problem with this.  You have to do a LOT of exercise.  None of that “stand up” stuff for Lance.  So I’m thinking I’m not quite ready for MyPlate yet.  I went back to Superbetter.  It’s kind of like going from Jeopardy to Wheel of Fortune.  Suddenly I’m a genius again!

I’d like to buy a vowel . . . a C!

Superbetter says “add fiber” so I add some fiber.  There are actually some tasty things with fiber.  I don’t recommend All-Bran, though, unless you like eating twigs.  My favorite fiber thing is a Bran muffin. I know, I’m not 80, but I think those things are seriously yummy. The thing about fiber is that it fills you up better, so the idea is that you won’t eat as much.  The idea is anyway.  It’s a great idea.  It might even be working a little.

Hint: Your cereal should not resemble twigs.

Superbetter says “add a veggie”, so I try to remember to throw one in my meal.  One thing I figured out was that the Evil Empire Wal-Marticus has these single servings of green beans you can carry with you.  This is nice for when you don’t have time (or energy) to make a whole pot of them, most of which you will put in the fridge as leftovers and forget about until they achieve sentience.  You can also easily add them to your lunch you’re bringing to work.  And unlike some veggies, these actually taste pretty good.  This is my opinion, of course, because I don’t care for most vegetables.  Unless they are coated in cheese or have bacon added to them.  Which tends to negate some of the nutritional aspect there.

I would like to bite the heads off of some of these guys.

So that’s my adventures in nutrition for now.  But what about exercise?  Well, I know I’m going to have to do more than just standing, even with Superbetter.  Just the other day, I finally dragged my butt to the gym.  This gym is open 24 hours a day and is located a block from my house, so talk about a huge hurtle getting there.  I will tell you about the gym, and some other fun new exercise techniques in future posts.  Think Goofy on those old Disney cartoons and you’ll be pretty close.