Good Fortune At My Own Expense.

Never get the warranty. It's usually a rip-off. The salesman will try to convince you that the second you walk out the door, the product is going to explode in your hands, and the only recourse you'll have is that warranty.

(Whenever they're doing this, I can't help but wonder if they really think their product is so bad they really, really need to sell me on a promise to fix it.)

Well, four years ago, I got the warranty for my video camera. I don't know why did it, except that I was stupid. If my four-years-younger self wasn't stupid, there wouldn't be a need for a turnaround.

So for about the last year, this video camera hasn't worked right. It works fine if it's plugged in, but if you try to run it off the battery, you get nothing. I kind of need a video camera, so I figured that would be one of my first purchases once this debt payoff thing's done.

Except as I was going through my desk looking for index cards, I discovered this fortuitous gift from my stupid past--a full, four year warranty from Best Buy from November of 2001--two months after my first daughter was born, and she was starting to do cute stuff I figured I'd want to see years and years later.

Apparently I wasn't a total moron--based on the last four digits of the card on the receipt, I didn't go into debt for the camera--I just let the guy bully me into an $80 warranty. Which means I now don't have to pay for a new battery that probably doesn't cost half that.

Either way, it was a nice bit of luck. Look for some of the results of my working camera to pop up soon over at mildlyamusing.com.

Now if I can just discover I left $5,000 in a good growth stock mutual fund and forgot about it.

Friday Mythbustin': Gatorade Is A Diet Drink

Myth: Gatorade is a good drink to have if you're trying to lose weight, because it's for healthy people.

Truth: Gatorade is sugar water.

Yup. You read that right. Gatorade is specially formulated Kool-Aid.

I'm not saying Gatorade is bad. It works. It does exactly what it's meant to do. But it's not meant to make a person healthy.

What it's meant to do is give you energy, and Gatorade does this really well.

There are several kinds of sugar, each of which your body processes at a different speed. Some can be absorbed into the bloodstream directly from your stomach. Some have to be processed by your kidneys first.

Gatorade contains a special mix of these sugars. By giving you some of each, it creates a "time release" effect, where by the time your body has finished processing one set of sugars, the others are starting kick in.

Now, as with all energy, if your body doesn't use it, it stores it. Which means if you aren't running around or working hard or somehow giving your body things to do with that energy, it's going to store it--and to your body, stored energy means fat.

So if you aren't up and moving when you have It in you, it will stay in you, on your waistline.

Which leaves you with two options. Either stop drinking it or go out and give yourself a reason to need it. Both should help a lot.

And it's not just Gatorade, by the way. Lots of so-called "healthy" drinks are basically sugar water, and just as bad as soda. I stopped drinking Sobes when I noticed the ingredients list was exactly the same as Mountain Dew, except the water wasn't carbonated.

Be careful when the first ingredient in your juice says "High Fructose Corn Syrup." Fructose is the sugar your body processes instantly. That means it spikes your blood sugar levels, and unless you're doing something to burn it, your body will instantly start pulling that stuff out of the blood and storing it as fat in order to get your levels back to normal. Not even Gatorade, the stuff designed for athletes who are giving 110% every moment, tries to pump that much sugar into the body right away.

3 Miles A Day

So somewhere a few days ago I got the idea I should start moving 3 miles a day. At this point, I don't care if I walk it or run it or crawl it, just as long as I locomote, under my own power, three miles every day.

This was due in part to watching Supersize Me. In that, the guy tries real hard not to move much. Not moving much is one of the secrets to gaining weight.

So I'm thinking, if this guy can create a "perfect storm" for weight gain, why not work a little harder to create a "perfect storm" for weight loss?

In essence, that's what I've been doing, but I knew if there was one category I was lacking in, it was the cardio. So I decided to give myself this goal of three miles to get me going on cardio.

So I've been doing it. It's been entirely walking, so far. Yesterday it was at the mall. Today it was just around a neighborhood. And you know what? It feels great. One of the coolest part was seeing how loose my clothes fit--I don't realize sitting around the office or driving my car all day that even with my belt on the tightest loop, it's not hugging my hips very well. That's really encouraging.

(There's a tip for you: If you want to feel good while you're walking, put on some of your "bigger" clothes, so you can feel like you've shrunk inside them as you walk. "Weren't these tight when I left the house?")

Of course, I blew my shot at a "perfect" storm--tonight was my brother's birthday, and once we busted out the meat at my folk's house, I didn't eat so hot. But at least it was grilled and smoked, even if it was pork and sausage. As penance, I passed on the cake.

Tomorrow, we shall make it all come together. Weightlifting in the morning, perfect eating all day long, and walking in the--well, walking sometime. Once I can fit it in.

And all shall be amazed at my powers of self-diminishment.

We won? Maybe?

A while back I mentioned "Dumb Stuff I'm Trying To Get Out Of Debt," or something like that. I said that in addition to all the smart things I'm doing, like coupon clipping and budgeting and debt snowballing, I was also trying some not-so-effective things like entering lots of contests.

Not the lottery, mind you. Not Vegas or online casinos. Just the free stuff. I use iwon.com for all my searches, that sort of thing. The way I saw it, at the end of the year, I'd be able to say, "Total raised by me: $____.__. Total raised by contests: $0.00."

Well, it looks like that may be wrong. But I say that with a caveat.

Over at the website of a local radio station, there's a contest page that shows all the contests Clear Channel has going on right now, and for the last few months there's been a contest for free Lasik, one free surgery a month, and I've entered my wife's name each month.

(While we both have vision problems, hers are far worse than mine. To get her Lasik has been a goal of mine for a while now, hence why I kept entering her in this contest.)

Well, she won. To be specific, she won a $2,000 gift certificate to Custom Laser Center in Los Angeles.

Now marketing is part of my job, too. So I have this underlying suspicion that while the ad says "contest" for "free" Lasik, this is really some kind of bait-and-switch technique, where it turns out surgery really costs $3,200 and they bring you all the way down there and butter you up and convince you to fork over the other $1,200.

When we asked them about it on the phone, they said procedures run from $800-$5,000, depending on your vision problems.

So I am extremely interested to see how this goes, and I will definitely be making a full report here. We're meeting the guy with the letters after his name a couple of weekends from now, so watch this space for exciting developments.

Erik on Supersize Me

I just saw Supersize Me for the first time. Yeah, I know that it would seem like the fitness-savvy half of this website would have been there on opening day, but the budget-savvy half of this side waits for most stuff to come out on DVD (the longer you wait, the cheaper, and all that).

Here's some of my thoughts. If you've seen it, you'll probably remember all the stuff I'm talking about. If you haven't, keep these in mind when you do check it out.

First, the biggest culprit in his weight gain and health problems wasn't the Big Mac, nor was it the Filet o' Fish he kept calling the "worst thing on the menu."

The burgers aren't health food, obviously, but if you remember the guy who's been eating two Big Macs a day since before he was married, the Big Macs weren't the problem. He was skinny, and his cholesterol was fine.

Plain and simple, it was the fries and the soda.

The guy knew this in the film. That's part of why it's called Supersize Me--he's paroding the company's willingness to give you a half a pound of fries and a tub of soda with your sandwich.

However, to claim that the company had an insidious plot motivating them do this is just crazy. In fact, it was Americans who were trying to be smart who motivated the whole "giant food" craze. They weren't trying to be smart about their health, though. They were trying to be smart about their money. Getting a ton of food for little money felt like a great value.

Fast food places were actually behind the curve on this one--they were copying gas stations. I remember when I was a kid, and you could get a 44oz soda at 7-Eleven or AM-PM for under a buck. You never got your soda at the fast food place. You got your burger there, and then headed over to the gas station for your tasty beverage. I would guess fast food places knew this was happening and chasing those dollars. The syrup for the extra soda probably only cost them a dime, and they got the business back.

Even in the movie, when they needed the really big soda, they headed to 7-Eleven.

So let's stop vilifying everybody. Let's stop saying it's the government's fault for letting McDonald's sell people a product they really wanted to buy. Let's stop saying it's McDonald's fault for producing a product that people enjoyed. Let's even stop saying it's the public's fault for trying to be smart about their money or their convenience or whatever motivates them.

Instead, let's take advantage of the new knowledge we have. Let's make smarter food choices and smarter reading choices (Googling "365 day turnaround" instead of "gossip about Justin Timberlake" is a good start, so I'm delighted you're here).

As is oh-so-briefly mentioned in the film, often times we don't care as much about health care as we do about "sick care." We notice our bodies only insofar as they stop working, and only then are we dragged kicking and screaming to see a physician. We don't live healthy, we "diet." We don't live healthy, we get gym memberships we never use.

That's part of why this website talks about a "365 day turnaround." I'm not looking to toss some pounds off and then go back to what I was doing. I'm trying to completely modify my lifestyle into one that makes my body healthier and healthier and my finances more and more solvent, rather than slowly getting fatter and fatter and getting myself into a deeper and deeper financial mess.

So I'm grateful for the movie, mostly because I think it imparts a whole bunch of really good knowledge, and knowledge is always power.

But as far as singling out McDonald's specifically--he also wasn't exercising (wasn't moving much at all), wasn't drinking water outside of what he got from them, wasn't monitoring his calorie intake--he was creating a perfect storm of physical neglect that went beyond just the food he was eating. I could probably get similar effects if I did all that stuff and ate his wife's vegan menus.

Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea.

Healthy is a lifestyle, not a boxed product from a fast food place.

Alton Brown On Supersize me

Here's what Alton Brown, host of TV's Good Eats--the show that got me interested in cooking--had to say after he saw Supersize Me.

I just saw the movie “Supersize Me” and I have to say that I liked it. It was fun, irreverent film making on a shoestring and it’s good to know that filmmakers can still pull that sort of thing off.

What shocked me about the movie wasn’t what it said, or. Heck I already new most of that stuff. What shocked me were the gasps I heard from the audience, most of whom seemed generally surprised that big business could be so…well…business like.

Here’s what it comes down to kids. Ronald McDonald doesn’t give a damn about you. Neither does that little minx Wendy or any of the other icons of drivethroughdom. And you know what, they’re not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you. They are not going to laugh with you on your birthdays, or hold you when you’re sick and sad. They won’t be with you when you graduate, when your children are born or when you die. You will be with you and your family and friends will be with you. And, if you’re any kind of human being, you will be there for them. And you know what, you and your family and friends are supposed to provide you with nourishment too. That’s right folks, feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Feed yourselves.
Feed your loved ones.
And for God’s sake feed your children.

Don’t trust anyone else to do it…not anyone. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go out to dinner every now and then…that is after all one of the great joys of life…but it isn’t life itself and that’s what I’m talking about.

Is MacDonalds food bad for you? What do you think? Does that mean you shouldn’t eat it? No, it just means you shouldn’t live on it or anything else made by someone you wouldn’t hug.

Burgers don’t kill people.
People kill people.
Don’t be one of them.

A

More on The Artist's Way

This isn't really a review, since I'm only 1/6th of the way through this book, but I have to say, I absolutely love it.

The book's subtitle is "A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity," but honestly, it is neither as New Age or as artist-centric as the title might make it sound. In reality, it's a book for people who are, for some reason, finding themselves unable to do something they really, really want to do. Maybe it's the mythical "writer's block," or maybe it's taking up a hobby you've missed for years, or maybe it's quitting your job for one you actually enjoy.

Whatever it is, if you're blocked--especially if you're painfully blocked, I recommend The Artist's Way.

It's certainly not for everybody. As you can see in the reviews, people either love this book or they absolutely loathe it.

Some may find Cameron's tone too dreamy and poetic--if you are such a get-down-to-business type, you probably just get-down-to-business and do it anyway, and don't need the book. But if, perhaps, you know you should get-down-to-business, but can't bring yourself to do so, this book might help restore some of the sense of "play" that is, in the end, what makes any "serious" business worthwhile.

The book--at least so far--could be summed up as the counter to the worldly idea in this quote, taken from the book's margin:

We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. -- Susan Jeffers

This book strives to restore the position of the "positive" as not only realistic, but, ultimately, the only thing worth bothering with.

It's set up as a twelve week course, apparently mirroring an actual twelve week class the author used to teach. The two primary features of the course are "Morning Pages"--three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing about anything you do each morning--and "The Artist's Date"--a date with one's proverbial "inner child" each week, where you do something you know you would enjoy but wouldn't normally have the chance (or allow yourself!) to do.

If all of this seems too "group therapy" for you, you might want to steer clear. But if it sounds intriguing at all, go do a "Look Inside This Book!" thing over at Amazon and see what you think.

Anybody reading ever finish it?