Monday, May 28, 2012

The Starch Solution

A friend has been on a diet for 30 days. She has lost 30 pounds. She's feeling much better and her caloric intake is 500 calories/day. Her diet is called the HCG Diet.

I don't mean to give her bad news, and I didn't. I keep my mouth shut in these matters. But she will gain all her weight back shortly after the diet is over. And here's the reason why:

The food we eat in America is making us fatter. It's a fact. It takes no doctor or registered dietitian to tell us that. Plain ol' common sense tells us, eating the food we eat is going to make us fat. So when she goes off her diet, and eats the way she ate before, she will end up looking like she did before.

If diets are meant to lose weight, going off the diet is meant to put all the weight back on. I don't think that is difficult to understand.

Now if she were to choose foods that were healthy and continually eat those foods, she would lose weight and she would never have to worry about gaining the weight back.

But unfortunately, in America, we don't know what healthy food is. Carbohydrates are considered bad, not healthy foods. So my friend is eating 50% of her calories in meat, which is composed of protein and fat, no carbohydrates. So not only is she eating a low calorie diet, her body is in ketosis.

I will not mention to her that she should eat carbohydrates. Even though indigenous peoples around the world prosper on a high carbohydrate diet, and have throughout history, we've been sold a bill of goods that is incorrect. We believe we need the calcium from drinking the milk of another species. That meat alone will supply us the necessary protein. We never think where does the cow get the calcium from. Where do the animals get their protein?

So, we'll be like the little hamsters, spinning around on our wheels, getting nowhere. Eventually getting fatter and sicker as time goes by.

But if you want to try to pry yourself away from your current beliefs and at least give it a chance that carbohydrates might be the answer to great health, Dr McDougall has just written a great book called "The Starch Solution".

BTW, my friend might want to take a look at this.


Thursday, May 24, 2012

No More Harvard Debt

This guy has a blog detailing how he paid off all his college debt within a year.

 It's very inspirational and educational. In fact, in one of his posts he talks about another of one of my favorite personal finance blogs, Mr Money Mustache.

While we're on the subject, let me throw out another of my favorite blogs, Early Retirement Extreme, (though the writer of the blog has pretty much quit writing any more posts)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Mayor Marion Barry

I love Marion Barry. Nothing would be more fun than doing a line of coke in some crack house with da mayor.

 If you've been following the story, Mr Barry said something to the effect that there's too many asians in Washington and that they stink. Now Mr Barry had a blood clot and it was the Filipino nurses that saved his life. He went on Twitter and said how sorry he was for his previous comments.

 Now I don't mean to be prejudiced but I'll take a wild guess and say da Mayor belives Zimmerman killed Trevon Martin in cold blood. When the facts come out, will he have the courage then to speak up? Knowing da mayor, I certainly hope so.

Olive Garden Salad

I went to the Olive Garden tonight for dinner. It may sound boring but I wanted to write a post about their salad.

 I ordered their salad with no dressing. According to this website the salad is 120 calories. On the Olive Garden menu, if I remember right, it says 130 calories. But how can a dry salad with no dressing, mostly consisting of lettuce, which according to this website only contains 8 calories? I'll tell you how. They add croutons. Now you ask, why would they want to make something and try and make it higher in calories? And I say the reason is this, though of course I may be wrong, because their salad with dressing is 350 calories. And if it really is 350 calories, and let's say (being generous) the salad started with 50 calories, minus the croutons.

 So the salad increases 7 fold in calories with just the dressing. And what does the wonderful salad sounding name "Italian Dressing" actually contain? Almost total fat containing saturated fat that is responsible for causing heart disease and diabetes. Eating the regular salad at the Olive Garden is not by any means a healthy choice. And I'm not even counting the other calories that are added when cheese is added. What, perhaps 500 calories? So something that started at 50 calories is now over 500 calories.

 So this is what it gets to. Eating a salad by itself would contain no more than 50-100 calories per pound (CPP). Adding salad dressing is 4000 CPP. Yet oil is considered heart healthy and carbohydrates are considered a bad food in today's dieting America. And Americans are getting fatter and sicker, and we wonder why.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Walmart and Solicitors

I loathe going in and out of Walmart. Pretty much it's getting to be just about any store I go to. The person outside wanting donations is always there to welcome you, not asking for anything.

 But it's all dishonest and bullshit. In the book, "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion", the author gives several examples of persuasion. One of those is giving someone something. When someone initiates a smile, or a greeting, that is giving something. Our society is built upon these unspoken rules that if we are given something, it's natural to give something back.

 By the solicitor welcoming you on the way in to the store, he is giving you something without asking anything in return. But wait. Does he want something in return? Of course he does--your money. And by him welcoming you, a contract is implied between you and him. You get all the time to think about it while in the store, and you can bet when you walk out he'll be asking for a donation.

 Not to give it goes against the social contract. But in today's society, we must look at the rules of the contracts and see how they are used to manipulate us. It's perfectly fine to not give, in fact I would bet most of the money, if not all, is for the solicitor and him only.

 That's why I like Trader Joe's policy: No Solilciting.

 I know when at Trader Joe's I won't be given a phony "Good morning" and other bullshit by these unwelcoming fucks. Oh yeah, at Walmart, just try to go through the other door--they got your ass surrounded. That's why I duck out the plastic door they use to bring in the carts. I have nothing but contempt for those fuckers and if we didn't give, they'd leave.

Don't Donate.