The 365 Day Turnaround

Our Not Free, Not From Denny's Grand Slam

2009-02-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

Well, just a couple days into my "Perfect Month," and Denny's decides to sabotage me by giving away away free food.

I like free stuff. The two facets of this blog reflect my two big personality pushes--get healthy and save money. So offering a frugal, but wanna-be fit guy like me a big ol' plate of free, bad for you food is like telling Yogi Bear he can have a picnic basket as long as he didn't steal from anybody. Which idiosyncratic personality quirk do you let win?

Well, I guess we have to cop to actually getting in the car, putting on our seat belts, and then driving to Denny's with the intent of eating the food.

In our defense, I've always felt, and stated in this blog, that you can eat at crazy places and eat crazy food as long as you figure it into your calories. So we figured out the calories for the Grand Slam, figured that into our calories for the day, packed up our kids and headed out.

And you saw the news. So you know what we saw. So we got back in our car, turned around, and headed . . . to the grocery store.

See, I have this amazing wife. And while I'll be waxing poetic about her culinary skills later this month, she decided our best bet would be to create our own lower calorie version of the same meal. So using ingredients we had at home, and ingredients purchased at the grocery store for less than we probably would have given the frazzled, overworked Denny's waitress for a tip, she was able to create a better-than-Denny's Grand Slam breakfast plate, for about 2/3rds of the calories.

Just check out how you can break it down:

Denny's Grand Slam has 795 calories, 450 of which are from the 50 grams of fat, of which 14 grams are saturated. Is that bad? Well, just for comparison, a bowl of Cheerios in milk is only about 150 calories, with only 2 grams of fat, none of which are saturated. If you ate the Grand Slam instead of the Cheerios for a year, you'd be up 67 pounds at the end of the year.

Now, to be fair to Denny's, if you had two Sausage McMuffins with egg, you'd have had 900 calories, 54 grams of fat, and 20 grams of the dreaded saturated fat, and you wouldn't have even started on the hash browns yet, which I'm guessing you ordered, because, hey, combo meals are good deals, right?

So the Grand Slam is neither the best nor the worst thing you could eat for breakfast. But at $6.00 a pop for the things most days, you can probably do it cheaper and healthier on your own.

So that's what we did! Here are the components of the Grand Slam, with some tips for making it healthier:

Two Pancakes

For this one, my wife went with a lower calorie mix--I believe it was the Bisquick Heart Smart Pancake mix, but there are a ton of lower calorie, higher fiber pancake mixes out there if you just look.

Pancake Calories: 140
Calories So Far: 140

Syrup

There are tons of syrups out there. Sugar-free syrups, low calorie syrups, and Walden Farms even has a zero calorie syrup, although the three reviews on Amazon seem to be mixed.

I normally don't go for syrup, but when my wife pulled out a bottle of some sugar free syrup with only 30 calories in a quarter cup, I went for it.

Calories in Syrup: 30
Calories So Far: 170

Butter

It's part of the iconic image of the Grand Slam: that big ol' scoop of butter sitting on top of the pancakes like a blob of ice cream.

Gotta tell you, although I love butter, I recommend leaving this one out. All of us did, and we didn't miss it. I will say that if you do use butter, feel free to use real butter instead of margarine--it's probably better for you. Just go sparingly.

That doesn't mean I didn't dress them up, though--I use peanut butter instead. If that sounds gross to you, that's fine--don't try it. But if you're curious, give it a whirl. We use the natural peanut butter your grind yourself at WinCo.

It's completely an indulgence, though. It's still 100 calories per tablespoon, but some of those calories are from protein instead of fat, it adds a gram of fiber, and the fat is that good, heart-healthy kind.

Calories in (Peanut) Butter: 150
Total So Far: 320

Two Sausage

Okay, here's where the fit meets frugal. For a buck, you can get 8 Farmer John links, enough for two each for the four of us. It actually was among the better choices without getting into the more expensive stuff, but the two links came in at 140 calories, with 12 grams of fat, 4 grams saturated.

The trick here is to keep it to just the two sausages. If you had a second two, you'd be just 40 calories shy of just the sausage having as many calories as the pancakes, syrup, and peanut butter combined.

Calories in Sausage: 140
Total So Far: 460

Two Bacon Strips

We used two slices of Farmland Hickory Smoked Bacon, which came in at 80 calories.

The astute among you will notice two things:

First, bacon only has about half the calories of sausage. If you like bacon more than sausage, you could skip the sausage and have 4 strips of bacon and save 60 calories, or six strips of bacon and only have 40 more calories.

Second, we didn't use turkey bacon. Unless you're getting some kind of nitrate-free, organic, super-healthy turkey bacon that I'm just not ready to shell out for, chances are your turkey bacon is loaded with tons of nitrates, sodium, and chemicals that make it taste almost, but not quite, entirely unlike bacon. As Mitch Hedberg used to say, "Somebody should tell the turkey to just be himself."

Calories in Bacon: 80

Total Calories in Alternate Meal: 540
Calories in Grand Slam: 795
Calories Saved: 255

I'll be waiting for the call from the Nobel committee.

One Perfect Month: Day One

2009-02-01T20:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, so here's the deal.

We've got this short month, four weeks starting on a Sunday and ending on a Saturday.

So here's the goal--for the entire month, exercise every day but Sundays and eat right every day. Stick to the budget. And then come back here and say how it's going.

Originally, this blog was meant to chronicle one year. I think I can pull off a month.

Wish me luck.

How To Use The Eat This Not That Books

2009-01-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

David Zinczenko has come out with three books so far in the Eat This Not That series. There's the original Eat This, Not That! , Eat This Not That for Kids!, and the recently released Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide.

All of the books have the same basic premise--they show some simple contests between two foods, and say which one would be better to eat, with both health and weight in mind.

They're usually based on two options at the same restaurant or two foods of the same type. Which is better to eat, the Big Mac or the Whopper? Is turkey bacon really better for you than regular bacon? How big a difference does it make if you get a strawberry ice-cream cone instead of a chocolate ice cream cone at Ben & Jerry's?

These are great books.

But reading some of the reviews of it around the internet, I want to try to make a few things clear:

These are not "pure" healthy eating books. A lot of the gripes people have with this book is that it doesn't go far enough. How can a book that has, say, a quarter pounder on the "Eat This" side really be a book about healthy eating?

However, the book actually goes a lot further towards being a "healthy eating" book than most of the critics give it credit for, sometimes putting higher calorie foods above lower calorie foods because of issues like sodium or trans-fat. But ultimately, this book isn't about pushing people to the extreme of healthy eating as . . .

This book gives people real world food swaps. It isn't a list of "All the healthy foods in the world," versus "All the unhealthy foods in the world."

Instead, it simply breaks down, given two choices, which one of those two you'd be better off picking. For example, on the Taco Bell page, the "Not That" side features the Baja Beef Chalupa. On the very next page, Uno Chicago Grill's "Eat This" page features the Cheese and Tomato Flatbread Pizza. If the contest had been just between those two, the Chalupa would have won--the individual pizza has 50% more calories, double the sodium, and triple the trans fat.

But that's comparing a pizza to a taco. When you look at the actual comparisons being made, two grilled steak soft tacos, fresco style really do bump the chalupa to the "Not That!" side, and you should "Eat This!" pizza if your alternative is the Chicago Classic Deep Dish individual pizza they have at the same restaurant.

Now you probably could have guessed the flatbreat would beat the deep dish, but believe me . . .

Many of the winners in these books are surprising. Would you believe that the quarter pounder I said was on the "Eat This!" side actually beats out McDonald's Premium Grilled Chicken Club? (You just have to hold the cheese.)

You'd think that the multigrain bagel with the lite cream cheese would beat out a breakfast sandwich with egg, ham, and cheese at Dunkin' Donuts, wouldn't you? But it doesn't.

Or that the kids' mini turkey burgers at Ruby Tuesday would be better for your kids than the deep-fried shrimp? (Actually, the book rates the turkey burgers the worst kids' burger in America.)

The book isn't all restaurants and fast food. While the most recent book is all about the supermarket, the other two books both have supermarket sections. The other books also have general menus for categories of restaurants (like BBQ joints, Chinese restaurants, Italian restaurants, and so on) with explanations of what to look for and what to avoid.

The kid's book also features a scorecard for Halloween candy and some recipes for healthier versions of kids' favorites like Mac 'n Cheese and Nachos.

Look, bottom line is that if you're already eating an all-organic, grass-fed, phosphate-free diet, then yeah, these books would probably be a step backwards for you.

But if you're living in the real world, buying your food from real places, this thing might come in handy once in a while.

Last time I was in an airport and I couldn't decide what to get, I wandered over to the bookstore, found a copy of one of these books, found something that looked good, then headed over to the place it suggested. Couldn't have been easier.

These books help you avoid the landmines you'd think would be healthy because of their names, find the manageable options you'd never have guessed, and make a few little steps in the right direction for the health of you and your family.

Of course, if you're sort of in the middle, like me--counting calories, but not looking for the "certified stuff"--this book's perfect, too. All your calorie info is in here.

Change

2008-05-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Weight loss seems complicated. There are a ton of different suggestions. Do you eat meat or not eat meat? Are carbs good or are carbs bad? Is fat good or is fat bad? It seems like everybody says something different.

It all can be really complicated.

But the fact is, at its core, weight loss is simple. It's calories in VS calories out.

If you can burn more calories than you take in, you'll start losing weight.

It gets complicated from there, though. For example, if it was really that simple, then all we would have to do is fill up on water every day and not eat anything and we could lose all the weight we wanted. It doesn't work like that, though--starvation diets actually burn up your muscle instead of your fat, and cause hard rebounds.

Let that be good news! It's okay to eat! It's important to eat! In fact, it's vital to eat!

Isn't that great news? You don't have to run a fifty mile marathon this weekend. You don't have to walk around hungry all the time.

Extremes are bad. Moderate changes are good.

The message for this email is this:

You don't have to make huge changes to lose weight. You just have to start making changes.

Simple, right? You don't have to do crazy, insane things to get on the right track.

You just have to start doing something.

Tiny little changes will make a bigger difference in your life than talking big ever will. You can read and talk and study and wish and hope all you want, but if you're still doing the same things, you'll get the same results.

It's that moment you decide to make a change and do something different that you find power. The world changes because of action, not intention.

If an airplane leaves an airport a few tiny degrees off course, it can put it hundreds of miles away from where it would have been by the time it gets to its destination. In the same way, little changes you make add up over time and put you in a very, very different place than you'd have been if you'd kept on the course you were going.

It's not just true in weight loss, but in every aspect of your life:

You don't have to make huge changes to start seeing different results. You just have to be willing to make changes.

How A Beginner Can Learn About The Stock Market

2008-04-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, as of right now, you know next to nothing about the stock market. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You don't know Warren Buffett from the Home Town Buffet.

But you're interested. You'd like to know.

Well, here's my simple, six step plan to go from knowing nothing about stocks to knowing enough to feel comfortable buying a couple.

Notice I didn't say how a beginner can make HUGE money off the stock market or BECOME A MILLIONAIRE off the stock market. The stock market is not so simple that all those late night infomercial programs can make you a bazillionaire. If it was, day trading wouldn't be so hard.

It's just about how to get from where you're at now to where you can buy a couple of stocks and feel confident that you're not throwing your money away. Think of it as a way to do a home study course in the stock market and only having to buy books.

So alright--here we go.

Step 1: Register with an Online Stock Exchange game.

Yes, right now. Before you know anything. Go sign up for an online stock exchange game, set up a "Portfolio" (that's just a collection of the stocks you're going to buy) and buy a couple hundred shares of your favorite companies.

Whatever you like, you can probably buy it. Whether you like coffee and muffins (Starbucks goes by SBUX and Sarah Lee goes by SLE), fancy cars, (Mercedes Benz trades under Daimler AG, as DAI) or comic books and wrestling (Marvel Comics is MVL and World Wrestling Entertainment is, believe it or not, WWE), you can probably buy a bunch of pretend shares of it, or whatever company owns it.

I suggest the Virtual Stock Exchange. It lets you start with $100,000 in play money, and then see what the money does over time. It even lets you do stuff like buy to cover and sell short, which you don't understand now, but you'll want to be able to play around with in the virtual world before you do it for real.

But don't worry about any of that. Just set up an account, and buy, say, 250 shares of 3-5 things that are interesting to you.

See how easy that was? In truth, buying stock is just that easy. Even if you were really buying stock, it would basically be just like whatever you did. You register with somebody, you tell them how many shares to buy, and then you buy them. Like ordering off Amazon.

The hard part is making money at it. So in the next step, you're going to see how you did.

Step 2: Add your online stock game to your homepage tabs.

This is so you can look at it every day. If you started out with $100,000, like on the virtual stock exchange, watch as your money goes up and down. You're going to see that some stocks make you money, and some stocks lose you money.

By just watching some stocks for a couple of days, you'll probably see some of them go up and make you money, and some of them go down and lose you money. That's all you're trying to do at this point, is see how stock prices work.

One of my brothers made this comparison: The price of stocks are kind of like the price of gas. They can go up or down on any given day. By looking at some stocks for a while, you'll start to get an idea of what's a good price and what's a bad price. You know how you can tell when you see a really good price for gas, and you stop right then and grab it? Same thing.

Of course, after you've done this for a while, you'll start to wonder about what all the other numbers and terms and things mean. Or, you'll see one stock doing really, really well and wonder if you should buy it for real. That's when you'll want to go on to . . .

Step 3: Start Reading About Stocks

Yup. Can't get out of reading. But you're reading around on different blogs on the internet, right, so you can't be one of those anti-reading folks.

Of course, reading blogs is different than reading books. Books are often written by stuffed shirts who want to sound smart, not people who want to make stuff easy to understand. So finding the right books can be hard.

Here are some I reccommend:

These are all geared at people who are new to investing, but you should probably start with one of the Motley Fool books if you're feeling ready to dive in or the book "For Dummies" if you're feeling like a dummy. The Peter Lynch books are more about how to pick stocks, while the others have the basics of what they are and what all the numbers mean.

They're all well written books. All of them are written with regular people in mind.

Of course, while you're reading, you'll also want to . . .

Step 4: Try out what you're reading.

When you come across a suggestion or information, you can try it on your online stock games with your play money. When Peter Lynch says go to the mall and see which stores are crowded, you can really go to the mall, really see which stores are crowded, and then come home and buy stocks on your online game, safe in the knowledge that it's all just pretend.

Trust me, it'll be fun.

Step 5: Do this for a while.

One of the things you're going to find out as you start reading your books is that day trading is insane. If you think you can make big money on the stock market by guessing what stock is going to go up a bunch by Teusday (or, even worse, by two o'clock today), then turn those late night infomercials back on and have a good time. The rest of us have jobs during the day and we can't sit around sweating about whether we're going to miss the chance to hit that mark we were going for when it hits for 15 minutes in the afternoon.

Instead, where you're going to make your money is by buying companies that are doing well, and then keeping hold of them while they're doing well. This means you might not know for a while whether the strategies are paying off.

Now seriously, you don't want to play this game for 10 years just to see if your long-term strategies are paying off--those are 10 years your real money could have been making more real money in the market. So how long is good?

The answer depends on you. I'd suggest no less than three months and no more than a year. Three months represents a full quarter of a fiscal year, and you should have a chance to see a bunch of things happen to your stocks, including the effects of your company's quarterly reports. But of course, that depends on how confident you're feeling with where you're at--basically, repeat this until you have a couple of stocks you feel ready to go in on for real.

But don't wait too long--the stocks that you've decided are good probably aren't going to get that much cheaper if you wait.

Step 6: Buy some stocks.

Yeah, I know. You don't feel completely ready. Well, go ahead and dive in. Find a good online discount broker and make your first purchases.

I suggest you go with ShareBuilder. Not only do they offer cheap trades, but also offer something similar to "Drip." What this means is you don't have to have the full price of a stock in order to buy a share.

Most brokers simply sell you a number of shares. If a stock is selling for $360 a share, to buy a share you'd have to have $360. To buy, you'd have to buy in multiples of $360.

What Sharebuilder lets you do is buy shares based on the dollar amount, rather than on the number of shares.

Let's say stock X is trading for $40. If I had $100 to invest, most brokers would say, "I can get you two shares," and give you $20 change. With Sharebuilder, I can say, "Buy $100 of Stock X," and they'll just give me credit for 2.5 shares.

If I tell them to take $100 a month to buy stock X, I can also take advantage of Dollar Cost Averaging as my $100 goes in each month. (What's that? Nope, I'm not going to help you on that one. You got to read the books.)

There you have it!

Six steps to go from greenie to novice.

You don't have to follow these steps, of course. You could just go straight to sharebuilder and start buying up the companies you dig, literally going from average joe to stock market mogul in an afternoon.

But I think you'll find that with a little preparation, you can not only walk through those big golden doors of stock ownership feeling confident, but like the twin bouncers of Bull and Bear aren't going to kick you out on your kiester.

Follow these steps, and a few months from now, when your friends are complaining about their holiday credit card bills, you can ask them to fill out those checks carefully, because just a bit of it goes to you (Visa trades simply as V).

Why Fund Your 401k - Especially If Your Employer Matches

2008-03-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

(Note: The following is an email I sent out at work to encourage employees to start funding their 401k. I thought you all might fight it either motivational or informative.

I still feel that if you have a choice between a 401k and a Roth IRA, pick the IRA. The only exception is if your employer matches your contribution, and then you should fund it up to the max your employer matches before you start funding your IRA. My employer does match some, so here's what I said.)

In April, they will be having 401k open enrollment. The email with the details will be going out on April 1st.

This a great opportunity to invest all or part of your salary increase in a 401k.

Also, for every dollar you contribute to your 401k, the company will match 50 cents, up to the first 6% of your salary. If you contributed a full 6%, this would be like getting a 3% raise.

I believe anyone who started working before January 1st will be eligible.

For those of you who don't know, I'd like to explain a little about how a 401k works. If you're familiar with a 401k, and know how great they are, feel free to skip the rest of this Email. But if you don't know what they are or believe they're that good, read on . . .

Saving for the Future

The secret to building wealth is simple: Spend a little less than you earn.

In his book The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason explains it something like this:

If every day, you put 10 eggs in a basket and every day, you only take out nine eggs, what will happen after a year?

Your eggs probably wouldn't fit, no matter how big your basket was.

The same principle is true for money. If, for every dollar you make, you spend 11, you will dig into debt. If, for every dollar you make you spend 9, you will pile up money for the future.

The Power of Interest

If you saved 10% of your income for 10 years, how much would you have at the end of 10 years?

You probably said 1 year's salary. 10 years at 10% equals 100 percent of your salary.

But that's forgetting something important--your money can also work for you.

Think of every dollar you make as a seed. If you plant it in the right place, it will grow, and bloom other dollars. Your money can actually work for you, making you more money, instead of you working for it.

For example, when we plant $255 with one of our good customers, it comes back to us as $300 two weeks later. The same can be true of your money. If you plant it in the right place, it will grow.

Then, if you plant those new dollars, too, then all of that money starts working together to make you even more money.

So after 10 years, you'd have one year's salary, plus all the interest you earned.

How much is that?

Well, at 10% interest per year, you'd actually have a bit more than a year and a half's worth of salary. Pretty good, eh?

Well that's not the coolest part. Think about this: If you had a year and a half's worth of salary paying 10% interest, at that point, the savings would be making more in interest than you'd be paying each year. If you were putting in 1,000 dollars a year, the interest would be more than $1,500. The money in your 401k would now be working for you, growing itself more than you're growing it with your monthly payments.

In fact, in just a couple more years, you'd be earning twice in interest what you were paying in cash. And a couple years after that, triple in interest what you were paying in cash.

By the 20th year, you'd be making half your salary just in interest.

And then, if you're smart you're thinking this:

How much would it take be earning my full salary in interest? If I was making as much off interest as I get paid, I could retire and just live off the interest!

And the answer is, just five more years. By the end of the twenty-fifth year, you could live just off the interest, free and clear. You could quit your job and go to work where ever you wanted, because it wouldn't matter how much you got paid.

(In fact, if you were really smart, and only had a fifteen year mortgage on your home, now you would be receiving your full income, and have no house payment, all without working!)

Sound like it's a long way off? Maybe you're thinking "Erik, in 25 years, I'm going to be 55! That's too long!"

To which I answer: How old are you going to be in 25 years if you don't save your money?

Real Wealth

Now all that talks about is how to retire. What if you want to have real money?

The answer to that is: The longer the money is in the account, the more it grows.

Guess how much it would cost a 15 year old to retire a millionaire? To have $1,000,000 at age 62, how much would a 15 year old have put away?

Really. Guess. If he was to make a deposit on his 16th and 17th birthdays, and never put in another dime, how much would those deposits have to be for him to retire a millionaire?

The answer? $4,000.

If he put in $2,000 on his 16th birthday and $2,000 on his 17th birthday, the kid could retire a millionaire at 12% interest.

He doesn't have much money. What he has a lot of is time.

I said that at 10% savings at 10% interest, it will take you 25 years to save 10 times your salary so you can live the same as you live now. After that, though, it will only take another seven years to double that and have 20 times your income. Then, you can live off twice as much as you're making right now. During those seven years, you would only earn your salary seven times at your job. But would it would mean another 10 times your salary in the bank.

To make another 10 times your salary? Only another 4 years. Another 10? Only 3 years.

So working another 14 years meant the difference between living your same lifestyle and living off four times your income, and having 40 times your yearly income in the bank.

Two more years, and you'd have 50 times your income. That means that someone making a mere $20,000 a year could retire a millionaire if they put away 10% of their income for 42 years (From 20 to 62), even if they never got a single raise.

In fact, if you've got fifty years to save, you could save a mere $1,000 a year (that's less than $100 a month) and end the fifty years with $1,000,000.

Now I know, I know. You're saying, "Erik, I don't have 50 years!"

And you're right. But the moral of the story is, interest means that the longer the time you have, the less you have to save to reach your goals. How much is it costing you to wait to start?

The 401k

In order to encourage people to save their money so they can take care of themselves in retirement, the government wrote a plan to make it easier to save money. It's called the 401k, after the section of the code that made it into law.

A 401k works like this: The government agrees that if you put your money into a special account, you don't have pay taxes on it until you take it out.

That means that all the money you put into your account comes out of your check before you pay taxes. That means that all of that wonderful interest that you earn in that account is all tax free. It is free to grow without Uncle Sam taking any.

You only have to pay taxes on what you take out. That means that 25 years from now, when you retire and take out one year's salary to live off of, you'll just pay one year's worth of taxes, the same way you did before. Even though you have a ton of money in the account, all you pay taxes on is the part you take out to live on.

There only catch is this: You're not allowed to touch the money until you're 59 and a half.

If you take out money before you're 59 and a half, you have to pay a tax penalty. You can borrow against it, as long as you pay yourself back (so you don't have to borrow money from credit unions and banks any more for certain amounts), but to start fully accessing it with only regular taxes, you can't start until you're 59 and a half.

This is because the government knows how tempted we'll be, when we start seeing those dollars pile up in there, to take it out and spend it. But that would be like a farmer burning up all his seeds. To save us from ourselves, and make sure we have as much as possible when we retire, the government makes us leave it in there where it can grow.

Something To Pass On

No matter how much you pay into social security, when you and your spouse die, that's gone. If you work real hard all your life and die the day before you become eligible for social security, the government just keeps the money you would have been paid.

A 401k isn't like that. All the money in the 401k is yours. If you die, you get to decide who gets it--whether it's your kids or your church or your favorite charity. All that money is real, and it's a legacy you can leave behind.

You can even make stipulations about it in your will, like it has to be used for college or something else you determine.

But it gives you the chance to leave your kids something more than funeral expenses.

Not Just More Money In The Future, But More Money Now

The other benefit is that many companies (ours included) will match a percentage of whatever you put in. In our case, the company will match 50 cents for every dollar we put in, up to the first 6% of your salary. If you make $20,000 a year, and contribute 6% to your 401k ($1,200), the company will put an extra $600 in to match it. $600 that you wouldn't get if you weren't putting money in your 401k.

$600 that can start earning you interest and working for you.

Plus, you're paying less taxes, because you're not paying taxes on the money that goes to the 401k. So even though your check is smaller, part of that would have been going to taxes anyway! Why not let it go to yourself instead?

Plus, if you got a raise, if you only put in the amount the raise was for, then the amount of your check won't really go down much at all.

Take Advantage!

When you watch TV, all of the commercials are for things that are going to cost you money. Even the commercials that pretend to be about how to make money, are really just ways for their authors to make money.

Nobody's going to teach you about what will make you money. Those are things you have to start learning for yourself. A 401k is a good start along that road. With a good 401k program in place, you will have the peace of mind of knowing that your future is secure. It takes away a lot of worry and stress about the future. It can be very hard to tighten the budget to afford to put the money in, but the peace of mind that comes from knowing you're taking care of yourself is worth it.

I hope many of you take advantage when the email comes out next week.

You'll thank yourself later.

Back To School

2008-01-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

Sometime back in 1993, I remember waiting in a huge line in an old building to wait until someone could type my application information into a computer so I could start junior college.

Last Friday, I was back at the exact same college doing the exact same thing.

It wasn't the same building. The old administration building had been torn down. The building I was standing in had been a parking lot when I was there last.

There wasn't a line to stand in. I took a number and waited for it to come up on a digital display. (My number was 84. When I took it, the numbers were just turning back over to 01.)

But it still felt, in some ways, like a huge step backwards. Like a 15 year step backwards.

It's not, of course. It's the step forwards that I haven't taken since I stopped going to school after my wife became pregnant with our first child.

So it's the step I haven't made for six years.

And it's what's got to be done.

There's a great old quote that I always think about whenever I'm tempted to put this off any longer.

This guy is complaining about why he can't go back to school. "I can't do it! It would take me at least five years to finish, since I'm working full time. In five years, I'll be forty!"

The other guy nods. "How old will you be in five years if you don't go back to school?"

Whatever the elephant is you gotta eat, that's what you got to think about. If it's going to take a year, or two years, or ten years, don't you still want to get there?

Chances are you've got about 70 or so trips around the sun before you check out. Don't you want to spend a few of those where the goal you have is done?

That's what I've told myself. So that's why I'm on it.

It's already been three years since I started this blog and started telling the world I was going to do something about the elephants I gotta eat. It's about time I hunkered down with the fork and knife.

I still plan to blog, but haven't quite figured out how to incorporate it into the schedule. But blogging keeps me honest, so I got to keep coming back.

Anyways, best of luck with your elephants and wish me luck with mine.

Short Term Effects Of Eating On Weight

2008-01-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, if you saw the Biggest Loser last night, you may have noticed the way Jillian and Bob were going on about the contestants who gave in to the temptation the night before the weigh in.

Especially regarding the man from the Yellow team, who had enough calories left for the day that he didn't go over.

What was the big deal about it being the night before the weigh in? Wouldn't it have gained the same amount of weight no matter which day they did it?

And didn't the man from the yellow team stay under his calories for the day? Why the freak out?

I'm sure Jillian explained this, but the producers didn't show it because they wanted to have more time to show phone calls home.

But here's the deal:

What you eat affects your short-term weight fluctuation.

Here's an example:

Did you ever see that episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse where the little bully puppet jumped up and down on Pee-Wee's hand, and made him put too much chocolate syrup into the Ice Cream soup? And Pee-Wee thought it was a crisis, until he realized he could just add more ice cream?

It's the same way with your blood.

If you eat too much sodium, that all goes into your blood stream. If your body just left it that way, it would make your blood too high in sodium. Even dangerously high in sodium.

But your body wouldn't allow that. It wants the blood to always have about the same degree of selinity. So it dilutes the blood, with water.

So the more sodium you eat, the more water your body retains. The more water your body retains, the more you weigh.

Same thing with carbs. Excessive carbohydrate intake causes the body to retain extra water to process the carbs. The cheesecake, the M & M's, the peanut butter cups--the contestant's bodies all had to retain extra water to process the simple carbs in the sugar in those foods than it would have if the contestants had eaten their normal meals, more balanced between complex carbs and protein.

This is part of why people lose so much the first week on the show. They're not losing all those pounds of fat. They're losing the fluids the body maintains in order to deal with their unhealthy lifestyles.

Keep this in mind if you're doing any kind of weight loss contest for work or something--as it starts getting close to the final weigh-in, stay away from simple carbs and cut back on the sodium.

Please, please, please, don't abandon the carbs altogether or starve yourself--that stuff is bad for you, and just makes long-term weight loss harder.

But know that the eating decisions you make today can affect your weight in more ways than just the fat it might put on you.

No Good News, And Some Thoughts On That

2008-01-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

If I haven't been blogging a lot here, well, it's because things haven't gone well.

I've never really shaken the infamous New Year's Cold, and I've had a hard time putting myself in the right mindset to do this.

It's an interesting position to be in. I think I blogged before about the whole mind-over-matter thing.

It's a lie, of course. Mind-over-matter is really just you-against-yourself. Or in this case, me against myself. There's no mystical "matter" out there that my inner self is struggling to overcome. It's all just me. The part of me that wants to do something, the part of me that wants something else, the part of me that's afraid of something, the part of me that doesn't want to give something up.

I used to write fiction. Can you imagine a fictional character who circles problems as much as we do in real life? Nobody would respect him. A fictional story about a guy who starts out with goals like the ones I outline in this blog and, years later, is even heavier than he was when he started?

Not exactly Jack Bauer.

I love the jokes about the hyper-competent Jack Bauer. Here's one of my favorites:

Somebody once tried to tell Jack Bauer a knock-knock joke. Jack found out who was there, who he was working for, and where the bomb was.

We laugh, because on some level we understand that even though Jack's competence makes us love him, it also makes him a wee bit unbelievable. None of us are that are that capable. All of us screw up, second guess ourselves, second guess each other, and often spend way more time justifying why whatever we have decided to do is okay than we do trying to convince ourselves to do what would be great.

And it's crazy. The principles for happiness are simple. Eat fewer calories than you burn. Spend fewer dollars than you make. Do more for others than you ask them to do for you.

And even though we all know that, intellectually, there's still this part of us on some level that fights that, that doesn't really believe it, or that, if it believes it, believes that it will take long enough to manifest itself in reality that it wants to get in a few last kicks for before settling in for that long draught that will come before the harvest.

Farmers call this "Eating the seed corn."

And I've been doing it, on and off, for years.

I mean, if we want to extend the metaphor, there are times where I'm digging the seed corn up out of the dirt, just to get another handful.

But I think the "No Good News," in the title may be a little misleading.

Because today I did sit down with a counselor at a college and start going over the plans to get me finished with my degree.

This is not an easy thing for me to do.

I remember college. I remember working two jobs, one in the middle of the night, while I had classes at all hours of the day, including morning and evening classes, as well as volunteer hours at the campus TV station. I remember sleeping in snatched moments here and there, always having to set my alarm for a different time before I'd go to sleep.

The prospect of going back to school as a man in his 30s with a full time job and a family is downright terrifying to me.

But I'm going for it. Because ultimately, I can't just sit here, planting and digging up, planting and digging up, planting and digging up.

It's time to leave some stuff in the ground for a while.

Friends With Goals

2008-01-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

Her Frogginess, who often graces this blog with her wisdom in the comments section, has started a year-long turnaround blog of her own.

And vlog.

There is also, to quote her categories, "Jibber-Jabber."

And all kinds of other cool stuff, because she's just cool.

Check out The Year Of The Frog.

How Was Your New Year?

2008-01-03T18:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't intend to wait until the new year to start exercising and eating right. I really, really intended to start it all those weeks ago when I started blogging on here again.

But you know how the holidays go.

And then, I did intend to start back up again, both on the fitness as well as the debt, on the first of the year.

And then I got sick.

On December 31st, I started coming down with something. And by the time the New Year was rolling in, even though I had covers over me and the heater on, I still was shivering like Sam McGee. I just couldn't keep warm. Or sleep.

But I still did it! I got up (around one in the afternoon) and popped in one of the two new Biggest Loser DVDs. And guess what?

They're hard.

Especially when you're sick.

So it came back out. And I ended up doing a workout that owed a bit more to Leslie Sansone than it did to Jillian Michaels.

But I'm still on track! And not only that, but I went ahead and did what has worked for me the last couple of times I've tried it--I made it a competition.

I went to the person I knew who, quite frankly, is the stupidest person I know to get into a weight loss contest with. My brother who used to work at Vitamin World and who has a workout bench and recumbent bike in his garage.

What am I, nuts?

Maybe. But it will work. You'll see.

Now excuse me. I need to go find a blanket.

How To Make The Holidays Last. In A Bad Way.

2007-12-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

I work in the financial services industry. I give credit.

That might surprise you if you're a long time reader of this blog--you know how staunchly opposed to debt I am.

I sometimes dream of getting out of my current job and finding one more in line with my personal beliefs. A job where I don't make anyone more unhealhty, and I don't add to anybody's debt.

Well, I was standing in the customer service area of a major retail chain today. Five days before Christmas, and the customer service station was bustling. The crowds didn't surprise me. I normally avoid stores around the holidays precisely so I can avoid that kind of scene.

What did surprise me was this: The masses of people weren't exchanging gifts or returning broken merchandise. They were all, almost to a person, there to apply for credit.

I listened as all around me their new credit limits were announced. The kid who couldn't have been more than 20, but who had a two year old in his cart got $2,000. The middle aged Hispanic couple got $2,300.

All of the normal tricks of the credit card companies were being employed. The young man was careful to make sure he'd been approved for the 0% APR--it was only afterwards they told him it would only apply to some of his purchases. The middle-aged man wanted to cancel the free trials of magazines that would automatically renew onto his card after a few weeks, but the salesgirl mostly ignored his broken English, and his wife really wanted to get home.

And in my mind's eye I could almost see all of them being lured into a pit by the salespeople, clutching the products their credit would purchase, telling themselves they needed them, that they were necessary, that the things would make life easier or happier or calmer or somehow just better, and with a better life it would be so much easier to climb out of the pit.

Well, it's not true. Climbing out of the pit is never easy. Every farmer and fruit grower knows there's not a thing in this world that is created from nothing--you've got to put labor in for whatever you get. Blood, sweat, and tears.

And the price of having it now is even more blood sweat and tears than if you'd just worked for it first.

Many retail chains are now at a point where they operate their store fronts at a minimum of profit, or even at a loss, because the value they get from all the financing is so great. Who needs to make a profit now when there's 10, 15, or even 20% to be made off that purchase for possibly years to come?

Other chains realize they no longer have to charge what people can afford. They can charge what people are willing to charge. So they're not having to keep prices down to what people can pay for something, since they can always swipe their cards.

So while I might wish to become not just debt-free, but to separate even my livelihood from being connected with that gnawing monster, I know I'm cutting myself off from huge swaths of occupations at one swipe.

In fact, what I really want to do most is teach and train--not a very lucrative proposition in a society that's been taught to value having more than knowing.

So here's to you having a holiday where the memories last longer than the bills, retail stores getting back into the business of selling stuff, and me finding a job that doesn't leech off people.

Ho ho ho.

Biggest Loser Season Finale

2007-12-19T21:53:00.001-08:00

So, the twins won it.

That was pretty exciting.

You could tell Julie really, really wanted it, and she did pretty well. But the fact is, it's just hard for women to lose more weight than men. Men are inherently more capable of losing weight simply because their bodies carry more muscle and aren't as naturally inclined to store fat. When a woman does win the Biggest Loser, it will be a huge deal. And she will probably be coached by Jillian.

Jillian did great this season, with all four finalists being from her team, and both winners being from her team. According to the stats on NBC.com, her team also lost the most weight total, by over 100 pounds. Her team lost 822 pounds, while Bob's blue team lost 711 pounds and Kim's red team lost 666 pounds (No, I won't make a "mark of the beast" joke about Kim, though I'm tempted).

I was really expecting that either Brian or Neil to win it for the folks who went home--they both looked great.

But no, the twins sailed through.

Now we've got the new season coming up, with the couples in lots of different colors. Not sure how that season is going to play out. I originally thought they were doing "couples" as a way of evening out that guy/girl divide that's always been a big deal in the finale, but looking at the teams for this season, they've got guy/guy teams and girl/girl teams, so that gives those guy/guy teams a huge advantage.

We'll see how it comes out.

Eating At Restaurants

2007-12-17T07:39:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting article over at MSN about secrets the restaurants don't want you to know.

With it being the holiday season, I've been eating out for work. A lot. The highlights were Duane's Steakhouse at the Mission Inn in Riverside, and Ten Asian Bistro in Newport Beach.

The damages, weight-wise, haven't been horrible--I weigh exactly what I weighed when I started doing the tale of the tape thing again.

Of course, I try to avoid some of the biggest restaurant calorie bombs:

Soda I never drink anything but water. I've gone on before about the bad effects of soda. To sum up, basically it's pure sugar, meaning pure fast-absorbed calories. Even diet soda has problems, my favorite being that the carbonation acts like an anti-fiber, making your body absorb calories and things faster than it would without it.

Fried Stuff Yeah, throwing stuff in the deep fryer is easy for restaurants, and there's a reason they call it golden brown and delicious. But it's oil on top of whatever simple carb they use in the breading--it's calories on top of calories. Plus, recent studies have shown that the Maillard reaction--the chemical process that browns fried foods--may interfere with your body's ability to absorb protein. So you may not be getting all the nutrients from the shrimp or calamari under there, either.

The Free Stuff They Put On The Table Whether it's bread or chips, that complimentary stuff they put out there does have calories. If you choose to much, be mindful and consider it part of the meal--if you do go in for the bread, than maybe opt for vegetables instead of the potato with your entree.

Of course, since I was actually trying to lose weight, still being at the weight I was isn't really all that much of accomplishment. However, it does give me hope that once I do get my weight back down, there will be plenty of delicious options that can help me stay that way.

(At least, that's how I'm trying to spin it . . .)

The Second To Last Biggest Loser

2007-12-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

Well, feelings were mixed at our house after the second-to-last Biggest Loser last night.

My wife and I are both fans of Bob and Jillian, but like them in opposite order. She likes Bob more than Jillian, and I like Jillian more than Bob.

So you can guess how our feelings went after the finale last night (Spoilers ahead, o ye Tivo users!).

I was thrilled to see Jillian win the whole thing. I think the girl came back this season with something to prove, and I was excited to see her prove it.

I think only half of that was how much I liked Jillian. The other half was how much I disliked Kim.

Kim's problem is obvious: Kim never stops thinking about Kim. During every training session, during every interview, during every moment on the show, all Kim can talk about is Kim. How Kim feels. How things are affecting Kim. How people going home make her feel.

In this way, she's sort of the anti-Bob. Bob is all about trying to get inside the mind of the person he's working with, seeing the world from their point of view, and then channeling whatever energy they have inside of them.

Kim's the opposite. She thinks about the effort she's putting in, and when things get tough, she tries to make sure everybody else understands how she feels.

So it was nothing against the red team when I delighted in seeing them picked off one by one. Kim was practicing a coaching style I don't believe in, and I was glad to see it fail.

Bob didn't deserve to lose--I think that if it were work we were talking about, I'd rather have Bob as my boss than Jillian.

But this is exercise, and I think Jillian has the style of coaching that I would thrive under. And coming back after being gone, picking up the unchosen, underdog players--all of that just stacked up to have me rooting for her above anybody else.

I've also been a fan of her radio show--yes, I even called it once, if you can find me in the show archives--and agree with nearly every philosophy I've heard her express in the show, aside from her love for Caffeine.

So having an all-black team finale--that's just great news. And it looks like her new DVDs on Amazon are going to be called the "Black Pack," in honor of her victory on the show. Apparently, doing some research, they don't have anything to do with the show, but are a 3 pack of her two "For Beginners" DVDs and the Cardio Kickbox DVD that wasn't in either of the "Frontside" or "Backside" packs from her Biggest Winner! series.

So congrats to the Black Team, and I look forward to the finale next week. I'll post my thoughts on it then.

Get Off Your Duff And Lose Weight

2007-12-04T19:58:00.000-08:00

Get off your duff and do what, you may ask?

Whatever. If you got up, you already did the part that a recent University of Missouri study says matters.

The study, which was reported by ABC news said that standing up may be more important to fat loss than exercise.

I'm always skeptical about studies like this--when my brother first told me about this article, I was thinking that what they were actually observing wasn't the results of standing, but the results of people getting up and moving. In other words, they were seeing the results of getting additional exercise.

Instead, this study was way more complicated.

They weren't just tracking results. They actually injected fat laced with radioactive tracers into people and animals, and then watched what happened to it. And what happened to it is that when people sat down, this fat didn't make it to the muscles. It just found places to gather.

Same thing when they'd monitor fat-burning enzymes. When people sat down, these went down to a mere 10% of normal. Can you imagine if your car engine suddenly became 90% less efficient?

So what does this mean for you?

It means that all that stuff you used to think wasn't really helping you lose weight, because it wasn't burning that many calories--things like grocery shopping or wandering around the mall or taking leisurely walks at the park--all those things really were helping, since they were keeping the levels of those fat-burning enzymes up, and helping fat circulate into the muscles to be burned as energy.

Personally, think that's great news. Here's to a future of a slow move away from sedentary lifestyles, and into leisurely-paced strolling lifestyles.

Monday - Tale Of The Tape

2007-12-03T21:18:00.000-08:00

As long time readers of this blog know (and, yes, there are some of those!), Monday used to be "Tale of the Tape" day. Basically, it was weigh-in day. The day when I would measure myself and weigh myself and then humiliate myself by posting it all on the blog.

There's a number (Ha!) of reasons for this, the main ones being accountability and responsibility. If everyone's going to see the number, I've got to bring it down to establish credibility (because otherwise, I'm left trying to dazzle people with my ability to use words that end in -ility).

The other thing to notice is that I didn't wait until the first of the year. This blog started on the first of a year, and it would fit the spirit and name of the blog to have waited another month and started it then.

But I can't do that. As you can see, I let myself go, dangerously. Just a few months ago, I was in the 230s for weight, and now I'm back above 250. In just a couple of months. You think you're doing well, and then wham. The weight can just pounce back on you. It's ridiculous.

But it's also the way life works.

Actions have consequences. It's always harder to build something than it is to tear it down. And getting results always requires effort.

So here I go. December 3, 2007, starting another 365 days.

My Kryptonite

2007-11-29T19:57:00.000-08:00

We've all got it, right? That thing you think leads to your downfall?

For some it's chocolate, for others it's donuts. For some it's chocolate donuts.

I don't have a lot of those. I don't drink soda. I don't really go for sweet stuff. Most foods I really crave are fried or some form of meat, and those aren't just things you grab in a bag and plop down on the couch with. They actually require a little preparation, so my laziness usually overcomes my craving and I do okay (Let's hear it for weight loss through laziness!).

But for some reason, I can't keep my hands out of the cereal boxes.

When I'm frustrated, bored, deep in thought, or aggravated, I tend to wander. And let me tell you, in a two bedroom apartment, wandering doesn't get you far.

For some reason, if I'm not thinking about it, I can't seem to wander through the kitchen without grabbing a handful of breakfast cereal.

We're not talking Kashi here. No, way. I've got kids. This is real breakfast cereal. I think the last handful I grabbed was Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp. Yeah, I guess I was the Cookie Crook.

And yeah, you read that right. By the handful. I just stick my big fat hand in the box and yank out a handful of starch and sugar the same way I'm sure my caveman ancestors pulled the Frosted Sugarcane Yak Back cereal they fed their kids out of the box.

(This was before they started putting milk on breakfast cereal. You ever try to milk a wild Yak? I'd rather kill one any day.)

So yeah. That's a big part of my downfall. Handfuls of kid's breakfast cereal I don't even really remember eating, but was just looking for something to do while I thought about something else.

Maybe I should take up knitting.

Then I could make myself a cool black Cookie Crook sweater.

How To Make Exercize More Fun

2007-11-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

So I'm reading this book, and I'll just be upfront with you and say that it's not a fitness book. It is a work book. As in, the place you go work 9-5 and make money.

It's called The Game of Work, and the premise of it is basically this:

People will pay money for the privilege of working harder than they'll work if you're paying them.

You know what he's talking about--it's the way the same guy who grumbles about getting up at 7am for his 9 to 5 job, and about his 45 minute commute will get up at 4 am to drive 2 hours to go skiing in the freezing cold or flyfish in frigid waters.

So if we can make work more like a game, then it should make work both more motivating and more enjoyable.

One of the main things he talks about is how in these types of recreation, there's usually some kind of goal. Whether it's to win the game, catch a fish, improve your score over last time, or something else, there's usually something you're going for that's pushing you to give that extra effort.

I posted a list of all the qualities he feels that goals should have at work in order to make it feel more like play on my new blog, How To Manage People.

But it got me thinking--I think that, recreationally speaking, exercise is probably the one thing we do that feels the most like work. That's probably why we're often as reluctant to do it as we are to go to jobs we hate.

So I thought, why not incorporate some of the ideas Coonradt had about making work more enjoyable through goals, and adapt them into daily exercise?

So here is Erik's list of ways to make exercise more like a game, very loosely adapted from Chuck Coonradt.

1. Really make it a game. What sport did you used to like to play? Or what game have you been interested in, but never tried? Why not do that for exercise?

Often people say, "I know I need to exercise more, but I just hate to go on the treadmill." I think that's because you're sane. The treadmill is like that scene in the bad dream where you're running and running and not getting anywhere. If an exercise is literally something out of your nightmares, you're not going to get excited about it.

So think about what activities, if any, you do get excited about, whether you've done it before or not.

2. State your goals in positive terms. This one is straight out of Coonradt, and I like it.

Goals should be something you think about all the time, that you focus on. What happens if you state your goals in negative terms?

When we state the goal in terms of something we're trying to get rid of, it means when we think about our goals, we're focusing on the things we don't like all the time.

No basketball coach worth his title tells his team, "Go out there and don't miss baskets." The coach doesn't even want to put the picture of missing baskets into their minds. Instead, he'll talk about making baskets. He'll even have his players visualize themselves making baskets.

Similarly, if we make a goal like, "I'm not going to eat fast food," then as we think about the goal, we find ourselves thinking about fast food all the time.

Or if we say, "I don't want to be so heavy any more," we're still thinking about how much we weigh.

Instead, we can find a way to say the same things in positive terms. "I eat perfect portions of healthy, delicious foods." "I am achieving a healthier body."

Those are much nicer things to think about all they, aren't they?

3. Track stuff. The more stuff you track, the more things you have to me motivated by.

Didn't lose as many pounds as you wanted this week? You can look at the inches on your waistline.

Didn't lose as many inches as you'd have liked on your waistline? You can look at how you managed to go a full minute at level 6 on the treadmill today instead of just for 30 seconds.

Didn't go the full minute? Well, maybe you hit 1.4 miles in 15 minutes instead of 1.2.

You don't have to look like the football coach with a big huge clipboard--just a small, pocket sized spiral bound notepad is perfect.

4. Challenge yourself. It's 6am, and you're under your nice, warm covers, trying to decide whether to hit the snooze button again. If all you're doing is getting up to exercise, those covers might just hold you in.

But if you know that the last time you exercised, you came up just 15 seconds shy of getting around the block in less than 20 minutes, and you think today just might be the day you hit that mark--well, that just might make the difference.

And if it isn't enough--well, what goal would matter enough to you that it would get you out of bed? Work on that goal instead.

5. Always keep at least one goal close. Yeah, you've got that goal weight, but that's probably a good three to six months off, right? What is it you're going to see this week?

The closer the goal can be to your heart and to reality, the more it will motivate you today.

It's the thing you think you might be able to do by Friday that will get you out of bed on Monday. It might be figuring out that little quick step on your Dance Away The Pounds video that you've been stumbling over, or it might be cutting 30 seconds off the time it takes you to walk a mile.

Whatever it is, try to make it matter, and try to make it achievable.

*

Even if all of these don't work for you, I hope at least a couple of them help. And even if you're not sure about a couple, find a way to incorporate them, and see if they don't make a difference.

Which TV Show Motivates You?

2007-11-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

Which TV show motivates you the most?

Here are the choices:

The Biggest Loser on NBC

I Lost It! on Discovery Health

Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic on TLC

The Biggest Loser is the show that does the most for me. And not just any episode--I get bogged down in the weekly show, and the vote-offs aren't that interesting to me.

My favorite episodes are the specials, the ones where there are just two couples or two teams or two families against each other. Nobody voted off and nobody forming alliances or stabbing people in the back. It's just people working hard and losing weight. And on the specials, it's nice because it all happens in one episode. People start the episode heavy and end it healthy.

But it still shows the part that I need to see the most--the part where they're working hard. Seeing people start out the show dying every time they exercise and then pushing through the pain and making themselves stronger by the end of the show. I need to see that.

That's the biggest thing that's missing on I Lost It! That show basically shows two people in each episode. Each person is shown in two segments--one is the "fat" segment, where they show pictures of how heavy the person used to be, and they talk about how miserable their life used to be when they were heavy, and what the big moment was when they decided to lose the weight. It's generally something embarrassing or health related.

Then, after a commercial break, they do the "skinny" segment, showing video of how they look now, holding up clothes that used to fit them, and showing how far they've come. They generally mention how the person lost all the weight, but it's generally just a mention.

For me, it's not the hardship of being heavy or the joy of being healthy that's the most motivating, but watching people hang in there during the day-to-day struggles of the time it takes to lose weight. That's what's missing from this show.

As for Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, my wife has said that's the show that motivates her. Not because she has anywhere near the amount of weight those people have to lose (The show features morbidly obese people at up to almost 1,000 pounds, and my wife has far less to lose than even I do), but because of the things coming out of the people's mouths.

For example, one episode featured a man who was so large, he had to have holes cut into the walls of his house and be hoisted out by awkward cranes. Rather than come to a realization of how far gone he was, the man spent his on-camera time complaining about how no one had developed better technology for moving extremely heavy people.

My wife said seeing people so brazenly dismissing their own role in creating their problems motivated her to do get up and do something more than any of the other shows we've watched lately.

How about you? Which shows keep you motivated?

What's Up With Goals?

2007-11-26T23:03:00.000-08:00

Why are goals so hard?

I mean, they shouldn't be hard. It doesn't make sense, rationally.

I mean, think about it. A goal is where you write down something you want, then write down the steps you need to take to get that thing, and then you go through and do the stuff.

There's no downside in there. It's about you figuring out something you want and then doing the stuff it takes to get it.

And yet goals are, generally, absolutely, unbelievably, excruciatingly hard.

It's not like that in other things. When Jack Bauer is on the phone with the guy back at CTU who's telling him which wires to cut to defuse the bomb, it's not a major issue. It's not like Jack feels any need to stop and question the guy or think about if he really wants it or put off a certain step until he feels more like doing it. He just goes through the step the guy gives him over the phone, and he diffuses the bomb.

Isn't that how all goals should be? After all, generally goals are about things we want almost as bad as Jack wants to diffuse that bomb. Shouldn't we just whip through the steps, happy as clams, and then enjoy our post-goal touchdown victory dance?

But maybe it's just because it's TV. Maybe in real life, bomb squad guys do lose focus. Maybe they do want to take a break in the middle of diffusing bombs to go read Ann Landers and have a couple of Little Debbie's cakes. Maybe they do give up halfway through because they made a little mistake and just don't know if they can ever recover from it.

I know that's what they'd do if they ever called diffusing that bomb a goal. At that point, it would become, somehow, psychologically impossible to do.

But of course, I exaggerate.

I actually read a really good book about the answer to this question once, and maybe sometime I'll tell you about it.

But for right now, as I start back down this path again, I just toss that question out into the ether of the interweb, and ponder the unjustness of it . . .

Why are goals so hard?

Back To Blogging

2007-11-25T21:34:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm coming back.

Those of you who used to be delighted by this blog's mix of information and personal history, and have missed it since it's been gone will be delighted to know that it is coming back.

It will be back to what it used to be--a chronicle of my own efforts to get out of debt and lose weight, spiced up with (hopefully) fun explanations of principles of finance and fitness.

The goals have actually gotten a little more ambitious. Stay tuned for more details.

Also to be returning is the "Tale of the Tape," the counter that chronicles the decline in my debt, my waistline, and my poundage. All values will be reset and start over effective the 1st of December.

I look forward to rejoining you all and sharing with you some of the fun stuff I'm going to be working on for the next 365 days.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned!

Oh, You're Wondering About That Other Thing?

2007-02-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

Things are moving forward. Keep watching.

FitTV's The Craze

2007-02-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

In sort of a sequel to yesterday's post, I want to talk about a TV show on FitTV called The Craze. This show features The Artist Generally Known As Joan River's Daughter buying different fitness products for people, then letting them "test" them for 30 days. At the end, they bring someone from the company who makes the product to meet the person who used it, and get a "grade" on the product in a bunch of categories, ranging from ease of assembly to quality of any accompanying videos.

The buzz around the internet is that the show is crap. That it's basically an hour long infomercial paid for by the makers of the products being demonstrated. This is backed up by the fact that the "grades" at the end of the show have been almost invariably enthusiastic.

I don't know if that's true or not. Here's what I do know:

This show teaches, well, what I was preaching yesterday. That in the end, it's not the tool that matters. In the end, it's not going to matter whether you were using a thighmaster or a bowflex or a total fitness home gym or if you were going to bally's or 24 hour fitness or were just jogging outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

What's going to matter is that you made the decision that, no matter what, you're going to get healthy and get to a healthier weight. That you were fed up--either with not having energy, or with your knees hurting (a big one for me), or with something.

In other words, what's going to lose the weight isn't something you can buy at a store or get in a box or a bottle.

All of those things are just tools. And like all tools, it's fun to find which ones are right for you. Which ones you enjoy, which ones you don't, which ones don't suit you, and which ones fit your personality.

When you really mean it, anything you try will work. Until then, nothing will.

SparkPeople: Go. Sign Up. Or Not.

2007-02-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

When last you were really hearing from me, I was praising SparkPeople.

Sparkpeople.com is a great site. I still encourage you to go there. I still encourage you to tell them docmagik sent you. I encourage you to have lots of clicky fun getting points.

Part of what I dig about tools like SparkPeople.com is the way it makes me feel in control. There's something nice about not "guessing" what I'm eating, or how many calories I'm eating, or how many calories I'm burning, that makes me feel in control and relaxes me.

But it's not that way for everybody. I was talking to a dear friend this week who says that something like SparkPeople would just add to their stress and guilt. Now, not only would they not be exercising, but they would not be logging the exercise they weren't doing on the website.

I understand that completely. See, I firmly believe that what works for one person doesn't work for others.

I also believe that just about anything can work when you want it so bad you have to it. So at that point you can just pick the thing that's fun for you and go for it with everything you've got . . .

I Saw This Guy On The TV

2007-01-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

No, this isn't about an infomercial.

I was watching this special on the food network:

And there's this guy, John, the guy in the last picture. He's just a guy, you know? Balding, heavy set. Not some "former athlete" who's gone to seed or some other guy with some big story about how he beat cancer or something. He's just a guy with high blood pressure who enjoys food.

But he starts doing it. He starts walking to work from the subway instead of taking a cab. One day he's late, and has to take a cab, so he walks a little longer during his break to make up for it. He and his kids start dividing up snacks into little baggies for him to take to work during the week.

He's not climbing mountains like the folks on Biggest Loser or doing any big, dramatic things. He's just eating less and working out more.

And the clincher, for me, comes when he's standing in this deli. This deli where he likes to eat all the time, and he's looking over the menu for something healthy, and all he's seeing are all the things he loves to eat, all the things that got him where he is. He's just got these big puppy dog eyes as he looks at all that food, and you know he wants it so bad.

But he finally pulls his eyes away from the menu and asks the guy behind the counter if they've got any turkey burgers.

It wasn't dramatic. It certainly wasn't a big deal. But that was the point. Most days, this isn't a big deal. It's just doing it, simple, non-dramatic things, day after day.

John, you didn't move your body weight in sand bags or lose 15 pounds in a week. But in that deli, you were as much an inspiration to me as anybody ever has been.

Thank you.

For anyone who sees this . . .

2007-01-07T17:46:00.000-08:00

Watch this space!

I have a little something I'm trying to work out for this year--a more elaborate attempt to do what I did with this blog, only on a bit of a broader scale.

I'll post about it here when I get it going. And I might post some fledgling attempts here.

Tell your friends, but don't tell "them."

What am I talking about?

Stay tuned . . . .

Oh, and . . .

2006-10-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

Oh, and my wife trounced me in the Fitness Challenge.

Thoroughly. Trounced.

Thought you ought to know.

Hmm...

2006-10-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

I can't believe no one commented on my BRILLIANT analysis of Netwinner. That deserves a Pulitzer, man.

Online Contests: Netwinner and Math

2006-09-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

So after doing some searching and seeing that their spyware only affects Internet Explorer users, I fire up Firefox and check out Netwinner.

It's no secret that I use Iwon for my internet searches. It's based off google, and it's part of a point I'm trying to make--I enter a bunch of contests in order to prove I accomplish way more by myself than I do off the contests I enter.

So I check out Netwinner. It's basically a Keno game, or a lotto. You pick four two digit numbers and a one digit number. You click "WIN!!" It tells you if any of your numbers came up.

You get points. 10 points for the one digit number, and 25 points for a two digit number.

Get three or more balls, and you get cash right away, from $25 up to $50,000, with a jackpot of over a million dollars.

And while you're playing, ads--full-on video commercials--are playing off to the side of the screen.

So how many points get you a prize? 25,000 points = a $25 gift certificate.

With the speed of the game, you can play about 3 times a minute. Statistically, you can hit the one digit number about ever ten tries--about once every three minutes. You can get 25 points about every 7 tries--the odds are 1 in 6.86.

The odds of hitting both go up 10x--they'd be 1 in 68.6, so you'd hit that and get 100 points on about every 69 plays--or about once every hour and ten minutes.

You'd get 500 points for matching 2 balls about once every two and a half hours--odds of 1 in 143.32.

You'd also hit the bonus ball on that and get 5,000 about once a day--if you played straight for 24 hours.

So if you put all of that together, mathematically, how long would it take to earn $25?

Man, I would never have believed you needed algebra in the real world. Okay, here goes.

Here's the algebra, if you care:

X=number of turns to win

25,000=(1/10)10x+(1/6.86)25x+(1/143.32)500x+(1/1433.2)5000x
25,000=x+3.64x+3.49x+3.49x
25,000=(1+3.64+3.49+3.49)x
25,000=11.62x
2,151.46=x

If you can play three times in one minute, it would take you 717 minutes, or 11.95 hours to win $25. That's about $2.10 an hour.

You might as well just get a second job. Your time would be better spent.

But here's the thing--I've played the game, and it seems that, despite the odds, you hit the two digit numbers less often than you hit the final 10 digit number.

Which makes me think this isn't a keno-style lottery. In other words, that the numbers can repeat in the four digit sequence. This, of course, would make you win less and make winning the $25 take even longer.

This would explain why, on their forums, most players report it takes longer than 40 hours to get to the $25. (And yet they still play.)

Oh, and how long would it take to jump straight to a $25 payout?

Well, the odds would be 1 in 10,211.52, or 56.73 hours, even in a straight Keno lotto.

And the big money? The million dollar jackpot?

The odds of hitting that would be 1 in 39,212,250.

If you had a team of 100 people playing 8 hours a day, at three tries a minute, it would take you 272.31 days.

If you paid them five dollars an hour, that would have cost you 1,089,229.17 to pay for their salaries. You'd have almost broke even.

But then there's rent on the buildings, the T1 lines for the computers, workmen's comp insurance, sick days . . . .

New Milestone!

2006-09-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

I have reached an important milestone in the history of the blog!

That last post was the first time I've used the word "exercise" without getting flagged by blogger's spellchecker.

See, I am capable of making progress!

Sparkpeople: Better Than Fitday

2006-09-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

If you want a good calorie/exercise website, in the past I have recommended Fitday.

I now revise this, and recommend Sparkpeople.

A completely free site, it can be whatever you want it to be.

Do you want a site that gives you diet plans? It can do that.

Do you want a site that lets you pick your own food, thank you very much? It can do that.

Do you want a site that gives you communities of people you can work together with for support and help? It can do that.

Do you want a site where you and your friends can all go together and make your own little group to monitor each other's progress? It can do that.

It's a good site. Check it out.

And if you do, say DocMagik sent you. I don't get a dime, but I get "Points."

Points are another way SparkPeople helps you track progress--you can get points for entering what you've eaten, points for reading articles, points for exercising--it's a way for you to feel like you're progressing even if you're not losing weight.

I first signed up for it months ago, but didn't realize until about the end of last month how cool and helpful it is.

And the good part is, between the food log and the exercise log, if you're not losing weight, you'll know exactly why.

The Secret To My New Success

2006-08-29T21:14:00.000-07:00

Yup.

It's The Fitness Challenge.

Game's simple:

Pick an opponent. A spouse, a co-worker, a friend, an enemy, whatever. Even your kid.

Pick "prizes." The game comes with suggestions, but it's up to you. (The game calls them "wagers" but you all know how I feel about gambling.)

Start on a Monday. You get a point for every day you exercise a certain amount of time that week. Third day you exercise that week gets you three points, giving each week the possibility of up to 9 points, but if you get to five points (three workouts) you technically "won" the week.

Play for eight weeks.

You win if you get to 40 points and your opponent doesn't, or if you both get past 40, but you beat your opponent by more than 8 points.

Otherwise, everybody wins and you find a prize you'd both love.

It's a great game, and it's well made--the board can be mounted on a wall or stuck to your fridge. It's quite re-usable as well, which I'm counting on.

I know what you're thinking--what if one or the other players get sick? What do you then?

We found our answer for that--when one person gets sick, the other usually gets sick right afterwards, so just keep playing. It will all balance out.

If you're competitive, and have someone else to challenge who's just as competitive, this might kick-start your exercise routine.

It's like a reality show in a box.

Call Off The Search Dogs, They're Chewing On My Fatty Legs

2006-08-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

Due to the barrage of comments questioning as to my whereabouts--yes, I live in a world where just one is just one, and two is a barrage, at least when it comes to feeling people care where I'm at--I am making an appearance. I would say it would be the first of many, but that always curses me and I never post again.

However, I have also found that not posting causes me to lose focus on my goals.

Also, changes in my lifestyle cause me to lose focus on my goals.

Pretty Butterflies flapping by cause me to lose focus on my goals.

In fact, pretty much anything can cause me to . . . doesn't the cursor look cool when it sits there blinking?

The bad news is, I am, once again, obese.

But the good news is despite the ups and downs of certain lifestyle changes, I am back down to one pound above my last logged tale of the tape weight of 238. And I'm headed towards getting back down below the 232. In fact, I've been exercising consistently for the past few weeks? What's my new discipline secret?

Tune in tomorrow (or so), and I'll share my secret.

Not that it will matter, now that this blog's readership has probably dwindled down to four spammers and a couple of Bam-Bam fans, and none of them care.

But what the heck. There's room over the rooftops of the world for the sound of my barbaric yawp.

Vitamin D

2006-04-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

Alright, so we've got all this conflicting data on sunlight. On the one hand, if the sun ever touches our skin, we're going to die of skin cancer. On the other hand, recent studies are linking digestive cancers in men and breast cancers in women to a lack of vitamin D.

Vitamin D. The sunshine vitamin.

So which is it? Sunshine? Suntan Lotion?

Like all things, the answer is moderation.

See, here's how vitamin D works. The vitamin is not actually carried in the sunshine. Instead, sunshine causes the "previtamin" D3 to be created in our skin, which our kidney and liver then turn into the vitamin D our Moms told us about when they wanted us to go outside and leave them alone.

It's possible to get some Vitamin D from food, but it's vitamin D2, the sloppy inferior sequel in the vitamin D trilogy, kind of like how most people feel about Back to the Future 2 compared with Back To The Future 3.

So get to the point, Erik. What's the happy compromise?

Well, according to some, the answer's about 7-8 minutes on a sunny day. And it doesn't matter really how much skin's exposed, so you don't have to take your shirt off. That's short enough that you're okay, skin-cancer and sunburn-wise. And your body doesn't produce that much extra Vitamin D if you go any longer.

So our answer is to wait until we've walked to the park or pool or wherever we're taking the kids and then put on the lotion. That's long enough to give them the Vitamin D goodness and yet still keeps them safe from those harmful UV rays in the long term.

I Am Not Obese

2006-04-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

While I probably won't do a full tale of the tape until next Monday, I do want to proclaim from the rooftops that I am not obese.

I am still overweight, but what the heck. I take what I can get.

At 232 pounds, I would have to gain two whole pounds in order to be obese.

Yup. Two pounds and I would be headed for heart failure, various types of cancer, and who knows what all dangers of obesity. But fortunately, my two pound cushion is intact, and I am safely overweight, like most Americans.

We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

My BMI is 28.8. This is 0.2 points below the level that would make me obese.

To get an idea of how fit this makes me, check out this picture of Duane "The Rock" Johnson, whose BMI is 31.6:

So if my BMI is 1.8 points lower than The Rock's, this means, logically, that if BMI is a good indicator of health, that I am 1.8 points fitter than the Rock.

Poor fat guy.

Now I really don't want to make anybody feel bad, but tubby over here on the left has a BMI of 41.3. Sure, he's Ronnie Coleman, eight time Mr. Olympia, and he can bench press my apartment, but my BMI is more than 10 points lower than his.

Look, let's get real here. BMI might sound like some fancy super-advanced way of measuring your health, but it's not.

BMI is your weight averaged out for your height. That's all.

So ultimately, it tells you exactly the same thing as the scale. And so that's why all the other measurements are so important. Because you can have a BMI over 40 and look like Ronnie over there, but you could also look like Bam Bam Bigelow.

So by all means, learn your BMI. Track it. Use it. But don't worry--it's not magical.

Unfortunately, your health and life insurance companies do not read this blog (Yet!) so they still rely heavily on this number. It may save you in the pocketbook to know this number and get it somewhere reasonable, if for no other reason than that.

And really, let's be honest. Since I'm not going to be winning Mr. Olympia anytime soon, having my BMI under 30 probably is a good thing.

Dave Ramsey On Car Loans

2006-04-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

Like the title says.

Nutrition Labels Will Soon Bug You

2006-02-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

At least, they will according to this.

(Nod to Dave Barry's Blog.)

New Tale Of the Tape

2006-02-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

New tale of the tape for tonight, which I have mixed feelings about.

Excited feelings: Come from the fact that I lost six pounds this week. Whee! That's as much as I lost the whole rest of the month put together.

Worried feelings: My waist still came down by the same amount, which has me worried that it didn't come from fat. Also, it looks like my biceps went down. Am I losing muscle instead of fat?

I was shooting for four pounds of weight loss last week--double what I normally did. To do this, I was adding cardio on my strength days. In the evening, I would do a kickboxing video--pop it in the laptop and put it by the TV while a movie or show was on. I was tickled when I saw my weight--but got worried when I saw the measurements. It might mean I need to eat a little bit more each day to keep muscle loss down. We'll see if the results continue this week or not before we mess too much with something that's working.

Later this week in finance: The envelope system!

Post 200! New Tale Of The Tape!

2006-01-24T21:58:00.000-08:00

Here, with post number 200, I post my new Tale of the Tape.

Not much to say about the weight numbers. They have continued to stay consistent--half an inch of my waist again, quarter inch on my biceps again, two pounds down, which is the average I've lost each week so far, yadda yadda yadda. Good progress, and I'm pleased.

I'm going to focus on the finances, since I haven't said much about that this year.

Last year, I started that turnaround with just shy of $20,000 in debt. It was $19,689.22. By the end of the year, I paid off about a third of it--32.78%. I started off this year with $13,235.64 in debt. That consists of what's left of my car, a student loan, and the debt consolidation with the four credit cards I blogged about at the start of last year. At the start of the year, over $10,000 of my debt was still wrapped up in those four little cards.

Unfortunately, we had to pay the minimums on everything this month. However, the circumstances surrounding it are something I'm proud of.

My work decided to do one of those crazy things that employers sometimes do--mess with your pay schedule. I've never understood that--we work the entire month for an employer in exchange for those handful of magical days we call paydays. When an employer messes with those, it makes us question everything we're doing for them the other days.

In this case, not only did they move us from a twice-a-month schedule to a every-two-weeks schedule, which really messes with my ability to budget for the month, but they also took the opportunity to move us from being paid in "real time"--meaning the paycheck I get today represents the work I did up to yesterday--to having a one week delay in our pay--meaning the check I get today represents the work I did up to one week ago.

In other words, one two-week paycheck was only half the size of a normal paycheck. Which means a 25% drop in income for one month. Which isn't counting the additional drop in salary that comes from having your annual income divided up into 26 paychecks instead of 24.

But we got through it. Paying minimums on all our cards and using that ever-important emergency fund, an event that would have broke us a year ago was a minor event, a bump on the way to financial freedom, but not a complete financial crisis. When I think of what that would have done to me a year ago, it makes me glad I've been doing what I've been doing.

Tale Of The Tape

2006-01-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

Well, the story so far:

Four pounds in two weeks. That's nearly 1/10 of the way to my end of year goal of reaching 200 pounds, and around 13% of the way to my July goal of reaching 220 pounds.

The progress on the measurements was surprisingly consistent for both weeks. A half an inch of my waist each week and a quarter of an inch on my biceps each week.

I've also added another measure: BMI. I have mixed feelings about BMI as an actual measure of health. I'll probably blog about that at some point. But for right now--what the heck. Since I'm only 1.7 points away from being "overweight" instead of "obese," that's as good a motivator as any.

(Actually, do you want to know the frustrating part? Do you want to know the weight that is the lightest someone my height can be and still be obese? 234 pounds. Those of you who read this blog last year know that's the number that sat on this blog's tale of the tape the whole last half of the year--234 pounds. I got down to that on my birthday, and that's when things kind of fell apart. Just one extra pound would have dropped me out of the "obese" category.)

Also, this year I'm actually tracking my numbers week by week in an Excel spreadsheet, so I'll be able to post all kinds of fun graphs in a few weeks each time I do the tale of the tape, since blogger supports pictures now.

Graphs that show a marked downward trend.

Healthy and Energized! -- The Final Answers!

2006-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

T - F If you're active and exercise, it matters less what you eat.

False! It matters more what you eat. That's like saying if you drive your car a lot it matters less that you take care of it.

It's easier for an active person to create nutritional deficiencies than a sedentary person. The more you do, the more you need.

T - F Having more muscle gives you more energy.

True! Muscles are where your body stores the sugars it uses for short-term energy. The more muscle you have, the better the short-term reserves of energy you have to draw on.

T - F When making healthy eating choices, seeing the word "salad" is always a plus.

False! I blogged about this before here.

T - F If you have more energy, it means you don't need as much sleep.

False! It always matters how much sleep you get. The right amount of sleep maximizes your energy throughout the day, not vice versa.

However, the "right" amount of sleep means a specific amount--not too much, and not too little. Both can be a problem, and both are different for different people.

I encourage you to experiment to try to find your sleep "zone." I know you won't--you're a human being, and how much sleep you get is determined by when people finally leave you alone--but I still encourage it, because I want to sound smart and responsible, and I still hold to the belief that the blogs of smart, responsible people get more hits. Or should. Or something.

I'm going to go get some sleep.

Healthy And Energized! -- More Answers

2006-01-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

T - F Eating right means not eating bad foods.

False! Eating right means avoiding bad foods and eating good foods.

The two modifications to that answer that make it true are:

First, as they've come to rap and sing on Sesame Street, rather than calling them bad foods, it might be better to call them sometimes foods. Most foods are fine in moderation, and infrequently.

Second, it's just as important to get good foods as it is to avoid the bad foods. Are you getting nutrients from the foods you're eating? Energy boosting B vitamins? Cancer-preventing antioxidants? Fiber?

Third, although this isn't mentioned, it's important to know which is which, and many people don't. Check out this short article on diet food impostors from Prevention magazine.

T - F To avoid retaining water, only drink water when you're thirsty.

False! You're body's not going to feel free to let that retained water go until it knows water is flowing in.

Not soda, not juice, but water.

Now while it is possible to overhydrate, it is difficult. The benchmark minimum has long been 8 glasses a day, but if you're active, feel free to pass that.

But do get your water.

T - F To lose weight and get healthier, skip meals.

False! In fact, I would say if you want to gain weight and lose health, skip meals.

Here's how it would help you gain weight and lose health:

First, to balance the fact you hadn't eaten, your body would lower your metabolism. Hence, less energy. And isn't energy the reason you want to lose weight? Plus, less energy means less movement. Less movement, less calories burned. Less calories burned, less weight lost.

Second, you'd be losing energy because you didn't have food in you, which would have all the same effects.

Third, this would help convince your body you were starving. And the more your body thinks you're starving, the more inclined it is to sack away the calories from the food you finally do eat as fat, since it doesn't know when the next famine's going to hit.

Fourth, when you finally do eat, your body's going to do what it can to get you to eat all you can, so that it can have more to store up for the next famine. Meaning you're going to be inclined to eat the most at the time when your body is most prepared to convert everything you eat into fat.

Instead, eat less, but it eat it more often. The more you spread out small meals (emphasis on small--you're not going for six four-course feasts here) throughout the day, the less inclined your body will be to store fat, and the more it will be inclined to give up the fat it already has.

T - F The longer you exercise, the better.

False! As Bill Phillips points out in Body For Life, and as research shows, too much training can actually prevent results.

You do not actually get stronger or healthier while you're exercising. You get stronger and healthier while you're recovering. Your muscles get broken down while you exercise, but it's while you're recovering that more grow back. During aerobic exercise, you push your heart, and during recovery your body makes your heart stronger.

So instead of having super-long workouts, it's better to scatter a couple of short (say, twenty minute) intense workouts throughout the day. Or one twenty-minute intense session in the morning, and another lower intensity session (say, a brisk walk) for longer in the evening.

If you absolutely have to be doing something athletic for longer than an hour (say, while playing a sport), don't try to do it without eating something. This is when gatorade or something similar is useful--to replenish those sugars in your blood and your muscles that have been depleted by all the exercise. This will help prevent injury, fatigue, and other stuff that you don't need to have going on during the fourth-quarter crunch.

More to come!

Healthy and Energized Quiz--Answers!

2006-01-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

First off, I wanted to take a moment to thank the fine folks at Beachbody. Not only are they a sponsor of this blog, but they granted us permission to use one of their "Walk Away Pounds" DVDs at this activity. Check them out--they've got lots of great programs.

On to the answers!

T - F Your body gets energy from the protein you eat.

True! Your body's a machine, and like any other machine, it needs fuel for energy.

Your body gets energy from the protein, carbohydrates, and fat that you eat. The stuff your body doesn't get energy from is called fiber. Having a little fiber in your meal means your body has to work around it to get to the good stuff. That's good--because it means the energy you get from what you eat will last longer.

How much energy does your body get from these? Well, when we talk about calories in food, we're actually talking about kilogram calories, the energy it takes to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree C.

For every gram of carbs, there are 4 of this type of calories. Ditto for protein--4 calories in a gram. Fat's got more than double that--9 calories in one gram.

Now, the other nice thing is that your body processes each of these at a different speed. Carbs, for example, are the easiest for your body to convert into energy. Proteins can take a while. So if you eat a meal balanced with carbs, fats, and proteins, you'll create a "time release" of energy, as each of them gets processed at their different rates and your body starts using them.

T - F Sugar drains your energy.

True! And False! Mark yourself right whatever you put.

Here's the deal with sugar--sugar gives you energy. It's a carb, so it gives you 4 calories of energy per gram.

However, it's a carb that your body can process super fast, since it's already so close to being in the state your body uses it to carry it through your bloodstream. So it gets into your bloodstream quick, and your blood becomes full of sugars. If you eat or drink a whole lot of sugar, then it's going to be a whole lot of sugar in your blood.

This is like all-you-can-eat night at the Sizzler for your cells, and you'll probably see a big spike in energy. Your cells are getting more energy than they probably need, and they're trying to find something to do with it.

Your body, worried that more sugar may be coming and figuring it's a good idea to get things back to normal anyway, decides to get some of that sugar out of there. It sends a message out to all the cells--"Stop using that sugar, and start turning it into fat for storage!" Of course, it speaks by way of chemicals instead of English of course, and the chemical that means "Store the Sugar!" is insulin.

At least, that's what insulin says to the cells. Insulin says something different to the brain--it says, "Hey, let's calm down up there, big guy."

So if you've had a moderate amount of sugar, the body will release a moderate amount of insulin, and you'll probably feel pretty okay.

But the more sugar you've had, the more insulin will be unleashed, and the more insulin is unleashed, the stronger your brain's going to pull back on those reins. In other words, the bigger the energy dip will be.

So sugar gives you energy, but too much can cause you lose energy.

T - F Fruit juices are a delicious, healthy energy source.

False! Four words: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Remember how I said sugar is so fast processing? Well, of the main types of sugar, Fructose is the fastest processing of them all. Fructose gets into your blood stream faster than shoppers into a department store after Thanksgiving. Which means it's one of the easiest ways to spike your insulin levels.

Of course, there is a way to do it faster--if you carbonate the sugar water, the carbonation accelerates the rate your body absorbs nutrients. Which of course would give you soda.

But I hear your thoughts, even through the computer. "I only drink diet soda!"

Okay, here's the deal with diet soda:

First, most of them have sodium--salt, which dehydrates you and only makes you need more water.

Second, they're still carbonated, which means that they're acting like an anti-fiber, speeding up the pace your body absorbs the other things you're eating (like those fatty fries).

Third, they usually contain phosphates, which coat your fat cells. Your body ends up having to burn them off before it can start burning the fat. In other words, rather than protecting your fat, you're building up a protective layer around them. (Believe it or not, there are actually products sold to drug users to help them pass drug tests. By sealing up all the bad cells with the chemicals in them days before hand, they try to increase their chances of passing the test.)

So don't bother with the diet soda. It's still working against you.

If you want the nutrients of fruit, check your labels carefully. Look for "fructose," and look to see whether or not there are any vitamins in the juice.

Ultimately, if you want the benefits of fruit, eat fruit. You get all the vitamins, all the minerals, plus all that helpful fiber.

More answers to come!

Quiz!

2006-01-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

I'm doing a talk tonight for the teenaged girls at the church we attend about healthy living and having more energy. Here are the True/False questions from the handout I'm passing out. Answers tomorrow!

(Although, if you've read this blog at all, you know the answers.)

T - F Your body gets energy from the protein you eat.

T - F Sugar drains your energy.

T - F Fruit juices are a delicious, healthy energy source.

T - F Eating right means not eating bad foods.

T - F To avoid retaining water, only drink water when you're thirsty.

T - F To lose weight and get healthier, skip meals.

T - F The longer you exercise, the better.

T - F If you're active and exercise, it matters less what you eat.

T - F Having more muscle gives you more energy.

T - F When making healthy eating choices, seeing the word "salad" is always a plus.

T - F If you have more energy, it means you don't need as much sleep.

(Why is it that even though we know some of the more obvious false ones are false, we still act as if they were true?)

Review: 10 Best Fitness, The Biggest Loser DVD, and The Abs Diet DVD

2006-01-10T20:38:00.000-08:00

If you've been in the fitness DVD section of your local mega-mart, you've no doubt seen both of those DVDs that I've got up there, and wondered what's inside.

Let's do the second one first. Looks tempting, doesn't it? TEN big fitness DVDs in one box. And for the same price as any other one DVD. Boy--that's got to be a winner, right? Even if there's just two winners in there, it's like getting two DVDs for the price of one.

Here's my verdict: Don't do it. Don't even bother being tempted.

Here's what you're getting: 10 videos from the 1980s.

First off, by videos, I do mean videos. While this is a DVD, it's a DVD of transfers from videos. Videos from the 1980s. With all the subsequent loss of quality, picture problems, and even tape hiss that accompanies an old VHS tape. This is sort of the fitness DVD equivalent of those dollar movies and cartoons you can buy of old movies that have entered the public domain.

As for the content--if the idea of a guy with a perm in neon spandex and a smoky room going, "Let's blast this workout to a whole new dimension--with weights" sounds like your idea of a serious fitness video, and if Shirley Jones and Jerry Hall are people you want to take fitness advice from, then you're in luck! This is your series!

Otherwise, just look for deals on newer stuff. Because the other problem you've got is that many of the videos on here are designed for different audiences. For instance, "Back in Action," is designed for people who are having back problems but trying to work on building back strength. But "Lite Aerobic Workout" is designed for active elderly people. And "Yogacize" is, apparently, designed for the clinically insane. (The box says that one was a "Bestseller in Europe.")

The kickboxing workouts probably aren't that bad, and I'm sure the aerobics, if you squint to block out the brightness of the day-glo outfits (or maybe just wear sunglasses?) are probably fine, but if you're the kind of person who buys exercise videos anyway, it's not going to add much to your routine. I say don't bother.

I do, however, say to bother with the Biggest Loser DVD. My wife picked it up because the description sounded similar to the Abs Diet DVD, which I'm fond of and have been using for my weightlifting so far this year, and for a good part of last year.

The Abs Diet DVD is not an aerobics DVD. It's a weightlifting DVD, a circuit training routine designed for dumbbells. I like it a lot, and have had good results with it. It leaves you free to do some other cardio routine--maybe another DVD, or maybe running or jogging--whatever you want.

But unfortunately, the DVD I've been losing is not actually mine, and I probably should return it someday. So when my wife went to go pick us up a copy and couldn't find it, she picked up the Biggest Loser DVD instead.

The Biggest Loser DVD looks like it may be the bargain we expected the 10 pack to be. Because it contains both a beginning and advanced circuit training routine, like the Abs Diet video, as well as a beginning and advanced cardio routine. So you're getting your weightlifting and your cardio on one DVD--and alternating days between weightlifting and cardio really is the smart way to go.

Now, for safety's sake, both of these videos contain a ton of stretching. On the Abs Diet DVD, the stretching is spaced in the rest time between exercises, meaning that during your workout, you spend as much time stretching as you do lifting. On the Biggest Loser DVD, they move all the stretches to the cool-down, meaning there's 20 minutes of cool-down. I personally can't abide stretching. But that probably explains why I'm so inflexible, and probably need every minute of it.

Both of these DVDs take full advantage of the DVD format. The Abs Diet DVD, for example, allows you to choose between three levels of ab workouts and three levels of full-body circuits for those portions of the workout. The Biggest Loser DVD not only lets you chose between two levels of both cardio and circuit training, but it lets you pre-program what elements you want to do, so you don't have to reach for the remote during your workout.

And while I'm sure the fashions in both of them will be eye-crushingly hard to look at 20 years from now, for now they won't be all you can think about when you watch them.

1 down, 49 to go

2006-01-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

You know, I preach that you shouldn't shoot for more than a pound a week in your weight loss, but that doesn't mean I don't hope for more than a pound a week.

Still, it's a start. It's the step that begins the proverbial 1,000 mile journey, and I'll take it.

In related news, I got three free months of NBC's "Biggest Loser Club" by telling Verizon they could send me e-bills. It's normally $19.95 a month.

I'll tell you what--I'm glad I didn't pay for it. While the daily eating suggestions are fairly interesting, and the shopping lists are convenient, the daily exercise suggestions are remarkably vague, and there's not a way to track planned vs. actual performance. The strength training is just a full-body circuit training routine that's the same every day, and the cardio is just an interval cardio routine that's the same every day. It's moderately useful, but probably just pulled from the pages of the book, which probably isn't that much more than 19.95 anyway, and then I wouldn't have to access the website every day just to read it online.

While you can't post, you are free to peruse the message boards as a non-member if you want to get some idea of what's going on in there.

And the articles, while helpful, are nothing you can't find elsewhere. Lots of the articles come straight from Prevention magazine, in fact.

If you're looking for a way to track your calories eaten and calories burned, check out FitDay.com's free one. If you want the information from the Biggest Loser, maybe get the book and the DVD--I don't know; I haven't seen them yet. But I can't recommend the website, really.

Sorry, guys.

Changing The Budget

2006-01-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

Yet another change that we're facing in 2006 is with the household budget. My company is switching from paying us twice a month from paying us every two weeks.

Most of the employees are excited about it. The way they see it, it means they're getting paid more often, which, in their minds, equates with being paid more. Plus, the faster they get their money, the faster they can pay those bills.

Only when you stop and think about it, it really isn't so hot. Because if you're not careful, and you get really excited about that paycheck you get on the 20th, and go buy stuff with it, you're forgetting that you won't be paid again until the 4th--the day your landlord considers your rent late.

So we've had to mark the calendar for the entire year--what days we're getting paid, and whether that paycheck needs to go to rent or bills.

Of course, getting paid more frequently also doesn't really mean getting paid more. It actually means getting paid less. This is because you're getting 26 paychecks a year instead of 24--in other words, your paycheck is being spread thinner.

So it's great the two months you get three paychecks, but in the meantime, it's like getting a monthly pay cut, because the two paychecks you get are smaller in order to pay for the two extra checks on the bonus months.

It's like what your mom had to do to your dinner when those unexpected guests go up to get the food to go around.

This means we get to change the budget to get by on less. And it means we get to change the budget to get by differently because of the different way the paychecks fall.

Not only that, but as I mentioned before, a lot of the difficulties we had the last half of the year came from our having been a bit overzealous in our budget. In our anxiousness to pay down debt, we (well, mainly I) failed to adequately budget for those oh-so-slightly important things like car repairs and clothes and such.

The take-home lesson from that: When you make your budget, keep it real.

At least if you want to be able to stick with it.

Biggest Loser

2006-01-04T22:12:00.000-08:00

So when I was talking with my doctor about the whole Viral Meningitis thing, we got talking about weight loss. My other doctor, who went into private practice just a couple of days after he saw me, mentioned that the doctor who he was referring me to did physical therapy and sports medicine stuff.

So I took advantage of the appointment to see if this guy and I were on the same page. I didn't tell him anything, I just asked questions, as if I didn't know boo, to see if I liked his answers. I did.

At one point, he talked about the TV show The Biggest Loser. He said his favorite thing about it was the way it showed that losing weight is hard. You don't just skip lunch every day and wind up skinny. You get determined. You work. You don't just do a little bit of stuff and hope it happens. You decide you're going to do it and then you make it happen.

The tale of the tape is now updated. I weigh 250. That's 12 pounds lighter than my starting weight last year, but it's up almost 20 pounds from my lowest point last year.

The measurements are updated, too. They're opposite last year--last year, my chest was 47.5 and my waist was 48.5.

I also added biceps--not because I think it has any significance, but because I'm a guy, and we guys just have some weird obsession with biceps.

Watching The Biggest Loser tonight, watching those two families work off between 50 and 90 pounds per person in five months, I was reassured that such weight loss is possible and advisable. I was also reminded that it takes, like my doctor said, dedication and hard work.

Last year, I had it. I was on track. I'd lost four inches off my waist. I was headed there. Then, life happened.

This year, I'm happening to life.

I have two milestones I'm shooting for this year. The first is, like last year, to be down to 220 by my birthday at mid-year. This year, I have a 12 pound head start. Then, the next goal is under 200 by the end of the year.

50 pounds in 50 weeks.

This year, it's happening.

Stay tuned.

Turnaround Man: Year Two

2006-01-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

So among the things I'm doing differently this year:

In addition to tracking things online, I'm using an exercise/food journal. Basically, I picked up a small weekly calendar at a dollar store and am tracking my exercise and eating each day in it. Also, since I only weigh myself and measure myself once a week, it becomes the perfect place to store that weekly number.

There are places online that will track that kind of stuff for you--Fitday.com is one, and nearly every weight loss website has some kind of cool graphical representation of the blogger's weight loss. If you see one of those you like you can just click on it. I do like fitday's, though, because of how thorough you can be in tracking even the percentage of your nutritional requirements.

Also, I'm using checklists. I really like checklists. There's a great feeling that comes from checking this off on a list. Even better is crossing things off.

Actually, you know what's best of all? When I used to manage my own store, I made my to-do list a .txt file on the computer. Each morning I would open the file and leave it on my desktop all day. As I would finish each thing, I would delete it. By the end of the day, the window was clean and I knew I was done. Then I'd close it without saving it and it would be ready for the next day.

Since I'm using a written list, I don't get to do that. But I do block out the squares completely instead of just putting a wimpy little check. It just feels more "done" to me when I do it that way.

Alright, I've got to go block out the "blog" square now.

365 Concluded. 365 Begins!

2006-01-01T20:45:00.000-08:00

One year ago, I started this little blog because I had some stuff I wanted to do. Get out of debt, lose some weight. You know. The typical New Year's resolutions everyone makes every year.

Only this blog kept me honest, and I did them. I really lost weight. I really started building muscle. My waist got smaller and I started getting shoulders. And by taking control of my money, making a budget, and paying off my debt instead of adding to it, I actually started ending the month with money still in the bank, and could do extravagant things--like go to the doctors when I needed to--with impunity.

Of course, life happened. And about halfway through the year I got a church assignment that messed up a lot of what I was trying to do. It stopped the exercising cold. Since the assignment was for early in the morning, I was too tired at night to blog. Plus, a couple of financial things came up that, while we were able to afford them, slowed some of the debt reduction.

But that's life, right? That stuff happened.

So even though I gained back some of the weight, the point is I'm still twenty pounds lighter right now than I was a year ago. And even though the debt's not all paid off, the point is I now have all my medical bills paid off and can afford to pay them as they come, and have almost half the debt I started the year with.

In other words, things have really turned around.

But now that I have my new schedule, and I've figured out the ins and outs of this new assignment, the trick is getting back on track with the new assignment. In other words, how do I still lose weight?

Also, they're switching me to a pay schedule that's every two weeks instead of twice a month. The old schedule made budgeting a breeze--One paycheck went to rent, and one went to bills. An every two weeks pay schedule is going to complicate things more.

Plus, there were problems with my original budget. It was as aggressive as I could make it, and consequently, it didn't leave room for things it should have. You know, things you need all the time. Like clothes and car repairs.

So the new pay schedule will bring a new budget. And the new daily schedule will bring, well, a new daily schedule. One that still allows time for exercise and fiction writing.

Fiction writing, in the new year, will happen every night. What may not happen is blogging.

But it is going to happen. Because I've learned that this blog is the best way to keep me on track that I have--when I lay off of it, I've laid off of everything.

But I also got a lot of the nuts-and-bolts posts out of my system last year. Hopefully, this year will be more practical stuff. You know--how all this stuff plays out in the real world.

How do you lose weight when you're on a food budget? How do you pay off the debt and keep a hectic schedule and still have fun?

Hopefully, this year we'll find out together.

I'm not going to be posting daily. Tuesdays, for example, probably aren't going to happen. And, though today's an exception, Sundays will always be out. Don't even bother checking.

But I'm going to be here. I hope some of you I lost during my absence find their way back. And I hope I find a lot of new readers this year.

But mostly, I'm excited to see what we can accomplish this year. The last year was a great foundation. Now let's see how we can build on it.

I've Given A Name To My Pain, Bob

2005-12-31T01:03:00.000-08:00

. . . and it is (or was) viral meningitis.

It usually goes away in 7-10 days. I guess I had a more severe form of it, since it stuck around for nearly a month. But at least I didn't have one of those super severe forms that cause life-long damage.

Since everyone knows I love to ramble about stuff, here's the lowdown on viral meningitis.

You have membranes and fluid in your body that surrounds and partly protects your brain and spinal cord--the part the doctors call the "central" nervous system. When any of those membranes become inflamed, it's called meningitis. Lots of things can make it do this--bacteria, parasites, fungus--but it's usually a virus.

Now any virus will do. It just has to get through the rest of your body and into that membrane and fluid and start doing its thing. So the symptoms can be widely different depending on what the virus was and how strong a presence it has. Usually all you get is fever and some dizziness. In my case, I got numbness and a couple of rather ungraceful falls. Which beats the worst case scenarios, which as you can probably guess are along the lines of strokes and seizures.

Is it contagious? Sort of. Remember, it's a virus. So it's just the virus that's transmitted. So you can get the virus, but that doesn't necessarily mean the virus will find it's way to your central nervous system.

Anyways, I'm glad it's over, and I'm glad to be starting a new year. We'll see what eventful stuff the new year brings.

Including (maybe?) me, back to this blog.

Sick Of Being Sick

2005-11-27T01:11:00.000-08:00

So I'm not usually the kind to blog about my personal life, even in this blog that I consider immensely personal. I try to be what I consider positive, posting things that I consider encouraging. Instead, I think I come across as preachy, constantly posting sounding like I'm trying to know it all.

Well, here's something I don't know boo about.

I've been sick. For weeks. Since almost the start of November.

It didn't start like an illness. It started, if anything, like a stroke.

Well, I guess it started as headaches. Bad headaches. By about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, I would feel like my eyes were going to pop out of my head.

But then one morning as I was driving home from the early morning class I teach for my church, I started feeling a numbness in my foot. Like my foot was starting to wake up, but it hadn't been asleep.

Then it started working its way up my leg. By the time I got home, it had worked its way up to my abdomen, and had become painful. From there it worked its way to the front and back of my chest. By the time it was done, my lips were numb, like they'd been shot with novocane, and my fingertips were painfully tingly.

The tingling went away, but an excruciating headache stayed behind.

I went into the doctor that afternoon, the first appointment I could get.

He said it looked like the flu. He gave me some flue medicine and a flue shot and gave me a return appointment for the middle of December. He said I was the picture of health, except for a bit of a temperature and these "bizzaro symptoms" I was having. He said it should go away.

It hasn't gone away. Even the slow-moving tingling thing has repeated itself.

It's been kind of cyclical, though. Up until this week, it's peaked on Saturdays. On Saturdays, it's almost become migrainesque, culminating in me conducting worship services between my shower and my sink. This week, Saturday was still worse than Friday, but not nearly as bad as last Saturday.

My friends and family have been collecting similar stories from friends, and it really does seem to be some kind of really persistent flu that's going around. It could be migraines, though--I've also heard descriptions of similar symptoms associated with migraines, so Excedrin Migraine has become my painkiller of choice.

So now I'm debating whether to go in early or keep the December appointment. I'll probably end up going in Tuesday, though. We'll see.

Shhh! Don't Tell Anyone You Read This!

2005-11-24T08:43:00.000-08:00

My wife has taken up a new hobby--mystery shopping.

She's joined various groups around the internet--all free, in case anybody tries to convince you you need to pay to join their service--and when one of them lists a job she's interested in, she signs up.

In addition to the few bucks she makes off each job, she also often gets free food. She's done restaurants, pizza places, and apartment complexes, shipping centers--we haven't done movie theatres yet, but they are available.

It's a lot of writing meticulous reports and taking pictures and remembering names and guessing ages and all kinds of things Marci's better at than me. But it's given us some fun family outings that we didn't have to pay for, and who can beat that?

Quote of the Day

2005-09-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Man does not live by a turkey in every oven or a color TV set in every home. Man lives by faith and hope and love, by the star on the horizon, by the trumpet that will not call retreat.

E. Merrill Root

Lessons From New Orleans

2005-09-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

I crossed paths with the "tropical storm" that was left of the hurricane as I flew back from Pennsylvania this week. Knowing that if it was severe enough, I might not have got home made me keep my eye on it.

Like most of America, I had no idea how bad it would prove to be.

The take-home lessons, from a financial perspective, are obvious:

1. Have an emergency fund. Some money set aside for crises. Maybe start with $1,000, but eventually try to get 3-6 months worth of salary saved.

2. Have 72 hour kits. Sacks or backpacks with enough food, water, and other necessities for 3 days for each member of your family. Lots of websites give good suggestions for what should go in here.

3. Fill your car with gas when it's half empty. Not only will this make each trip to the pump less painful, but it will insure you have gasoline when you need it.

4. Have some water storage. A big drum or two, if you can afford it, but at least some bottles. Maybe some water-cooler type bottles.

Is it too early in this disaster to be talking preparedness? I don't think so.

Usually we won't make changes unless we have emotional reasons to go along with the logical ones, and I think right now, while emotions are running high, is the best time for us to get a little more ready. We might do things that would seem extreme two months from now, but that we'll be grateful we did when the opportunity arises.

It's also a good time to help where you can.

Cheap Isn't The Same As Best

2005-08-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

I love this quote:

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has passed.

Oh, it's true it's true. We're currently suffering through some trash bags that I am convinced must be made of the same material as crepe paper. However, I think this stuff would have to be layered before it would become crepe paper quality, because it is possible, if you're careful, not to rip crepe paper.

Whatever we saved was absolutely not worth it.

Add trash bags to the list of things worth spending a couple extra pennies on. You know--like toilet paper.

Everybody Stop, For Crying Out Loud!

2005-08-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

You notice how home prices keep going up and up and up? Feeling frustrated? Wonder how you're ever going to be able to afford a home?

Well, here's a secret: The real problem is America's willingness to go into debt.

That's it! The whole problem, plain and simple. If Americans were not willing to go into debt, home prices would be lower.

It's simple supply and demand. When Americans are more and more willing to go into debt, it increases the amount they're willing to pay for homes. If they're willing to pay a price, simple economic principles push the cost of the product up to meet that price.

Now, why are Americans willing to assume all that debt?

Because they're not thinking in terms of debt. They're thinking in terms of Monthly Cash Flow. And mortgage lenders keep coming up with hot new ways to allow you to have HUGE amounts of debt while keeping an affordable monthly payment. Interest only loans, Ajustable rate loans, fourty year mortgages--all of them designed to put insanely high amounts of debt within the financial grasp of everyone!

If this were a company store in the 1800's shackling us with this much debt, we'd recognize we were just becoming glorified slaves and we'd revolt. But no--the banks aren't forcing us to do anything we're not willing to do, and hey--the prices are already up, so what can you do, right?

You can say no more. Say you won't do it. Laugh at your friends who do. Try to bring sanity back into the world.

Mortgages are a rip off! It's a way for the bank to rent to you, while you still have to pay property taxes and repairs.

Start small, with something well within your means. Pay it off and save. Upgrade as you can.

"But my friends are living in a big house," you say, "While I live in this. How am I better off than them?"

Look--a person who finances a house for 30 years at six percent interest, will pay more money in interest then he paid for the house. If the finances a $500,000 home, he will end up paying over a million dollars for it.

So he can brag to you about how he made a certain amount in equity in so many years--whatever. You're the one who's going to have an extra $500,000 in your pocket because you weren't making the interest payments--the same amount that he's got in equity in his house.

The only way to purchase a house that makes sense, financially, is to get a house you can afford, and to pay it off as fast as you can.

Period.

Turning Away

2005-08-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I have some bad news.

I'm not that excited about it, anyway.

As I enter into the last half of the year, there has been a dramatic change in my schedule that is going to require an extra several hours a day of my time.

Unfortunately, this means that if I want to keep exercising and writing fiction, something has got to go from my life. We both know this thing can't be my family--my wife and kids are the reason I do everything else, so I can't cut back there.

So unfortunately, one of the things that has to go is this blog.

I think this has been coming for a while, but I've been reluctant to do it. The blog has created an accountability that was unmatched. The months I did the best in posting on it daily were the same months I lost the most weight and paid off the most debt.

Unfortunately, even as I try to return to those with laser-like intensity, that takes focus of everything else, including this blog.

Does that mean I'm going to stop posting altogether?

No. I will still consider this blog active. I will still post on it, possibly as much as weekly, and definitely at least once a month. However, I won't even be attempting to update it daily, so you don't need to check back that often any more.

But please do check back! I appreciate all of your support. I'm grateful you're all here, and I wish you all continued success in your own efforts.

My Real Age

2005-08-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

So, apparently, even though I'm 30.1, I'm really 32.3.

But if I do the right stuff, I could be 20 again in 90 days.

So what constitutes the "right stuff?" Check out this list of 12 of the biggest factors in your "real age."

Go ahead and take the test--it's not nearly as long as I had thought previously, and you can skip most of the questions you probably don't know.

In my case, it encouraged me to get a better "social support" network, to quit talking on my cell phone while I drive, to take a multi-vitamin, and to floss more.

And, of course, to lose some weight.

The Real Age Test

2005-07-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

I heard about this site on the radio today, and thought it sounded pretty intriguing.

I haven't taken the test yet, myself (it apparently takes about half an hour), but I liked the way the guy was talking on the radio today.

One of my favorite points he made is that really being healthy isn't about being a "super" athlete or anything extreme like that. He quoted Governor Arnold as once having said something to the effect of, "There isn't an athlete I know who hasn't destroyed their body for their sport."

If anybody does try it before I do, let me know what you think.

Fame!

2005-07-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've liked back to The bearable lightness of being yet, which bothers me. I'm sorry!

I usually try to post a link to anybody who links to me, but you know how it goes.

What I really need to do is put a links list in the sidebar. Maybe that'll be a project for this weekend . . .

Ground Turkey

2005-07-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

It's not the super-lean stuff they encourage you to buy in the fitness magazines, but it is leaner than ground beef, and the way my wife's been getting it, it's been cheaper than ground beef.

Yup. We're talkin' turkey.

It's been an experiment. Neither of us have much experience with the stuff, and I was a little surprised to see that it thawed to more of a soupy texture than the consistency we normally associate with ground beef.

Undaunted, we started thickening it up. Rather than using breadcrumbs, like you'd do for meatballs, we used oatmeal. Higher fiber, complex carbs. Also, I still have a can of Neston I got at an international food shop a while back. Neston is a flakey, whole wheat cereal Nestle sells in Brazil that makes a good additive for shakes. It's got vitamins and minerals and thickens the same as the oatmeal or breadcrumbs would.

We've also learned that it's dreadfully bland by itself. We've added all manner of seasonings, from barbecue sauce to Grillmates to vinegar. We've made burgers, meat sauces and meatballs with it, and while some experiments have been more successful than others, we're getting closer to figuring it out. The spaghetti Marci made tonight turned out really well.

So I recommend it to those frugal adventurers who are willing to put the extra bit of work in the extra few cents will save you, but do be warned that what you're going to get will not be something you can just form into a patty and put on the grill. The addition of the oatmeal or bran or whatever-your-flavor will do the trick, though, and makes the final product even better for you.

2005-07-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

Another Pic: Because everybody wants to see how big Mia is getting, here's a shot of the two of them playing with Nikki at my folks' house. I believe this was taken on my birthday . . .

Fat Man Walking

2005-07-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, a quick word about this guy.

I first heard him on the radio about a month ago. The makers of the insoles who are sponsoring him were having him do radio interviews to sponsor them.

Personally, I thought it was a terrible idea. And not just because he's going to walk right through New Mexico, a state which has driven even some who've attempted to drive through it insane.

And not just because, even though the six months is already half up, he's not even 1/6th of the way.

The fact is that, for all his talk of "No quick fixes for me!" on the website, this is still a quick fix. It's a long, slow, torturous quick fix, but it's a quick fix just the same.

A quick fix is a one-time "stunt" that is meant to make everything all better, but that is so far removed from your natural reality as to be ineffective in the long term. In this case, once he gets back home he's still going to have to go through the process of finding an exercise program, figuring out a healthy diet, and completely changing his life for the purpose of maintaining any weight he lost, or losing any weight he doesn't lose in these six months (or more).

And he'd have to spent six months (or more) of his life away from at least part of his family. Granted, this is the part of his story I know the least about, but that could easily be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Is it worth it to try to change your life, if your family goes to pot in your absence?

But now that I've seen the site, I see his kids are pretty young, and are kind of tagging along in the support van with Mom. Which turns this whole thing into a big six month long family vacation, which I've got no problem with at all. I wish this guy a ton of luck.

Of course, he really is still going to have to get down to the real business of changing his life, eating habits, and exercise patterns once he gets home. The temptation will be to say, "Alright, now a week off." The week will become a month, then a year, and then he'll be back where he started from. And pretty soon his kids will start saying to him, "Daddy, when are you going to walk across the country again," and he'll realize he's back where he started from.

But that doesn't have to be! And I must say, this is a heck of a way to kick off a turnaround.

Friday Mythbustin': A Magic Pill

2005-07-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Myth: If I just refinance my house/consolidate my debt/get liposuction/get my stomach stapled, my problems will be solved.

Truth: By treating only the symptom of the problem rather than the cause, you're just postponing the moment you have to deal with the problem, and possibly making them worse.

How did I get here?

In trying to find one's way out of a mess, this question is often the first one you need to answer. You need it answered before you even begin to answer the question that seems more pressing--How do I get out?

Because without answering the "How did I get here?" question, even if there were a "magic pill" that could whisk you away to Someplace Better, you would likely begin to wander much as you had before, and end up back in the same spot!

The real power would come not from your relocation, but from your power to prevent your return.

However, the so-called cures are rarely as magical as in our examples.

Home refinances are often more expensive than simply paying off debt. Thirty years of low interest can add up to more than five years of high interest. And if you opt for an interest-only loan, then your debt doesn't go down at all. You pay extra interest for the ability to lock your debt up somewhere, only so it can pop out and terrorize you later.

Stomach stapling is an incredible health trade-off. Often people who have had the operation end up thinner, but with reduced immune systems and other symptoms of malnutrition. Some even manage to re-grow their stomachs and gain back lost weight in spite of the surgery.

It's like if someone who's beginning to have trouble walking rushing out and purchasing a motorized cart. While the cart may seem easier, the fact that it's keeping them from walking can actually accelerate the problem. The answer may be that they need to walk more, not less, and they really ought to consult a physician.

All of these things are treating symptoms, rather than the problem. It's the equivalent of shoving two cotton balls up your nose because your nose is running. It plugs up the leak, but doesn't actually address the fact that you've got germs inside you doing bad stuff.

If you are having problems with your finances or with your weight, there is an underlying cause or two. Some examples:

1. Lack of Information. You simply do not know another way, or are ignorant of the effects of certain things. This one can be obvious--if somebody says 403b, for example, you either know what they're talking about or you don't.

Sometimes, though, the knowledge void isn't obvious, and you have to look a little harder to find it.

2. Incorrect or incomplete information. Someone might have told you, for example, that it's good to carry around some debt at all times in order to boost your credit score, or some other such silly nonsense.

The problem with this one, as opposed to the previous one, is this one is less obvious. There isn't an obvious gap in your knowledge--you think you know the answer!

Because of this, it is impossible to self-diagnose. You have no way of knowing, by yourself, which of your beliefs are true or false or a combination thereof. The only way to address this issue is to be constantly testing for it, by being in a constant state of learning, though whatever medium appeals to you.

3. Assumptions. I think this one is particularly true about weight problems. People think they're overweight because they're big boned, or they have a metabolism problem, or a thyroid problem. Or, they think their weight can't possibly be because of metabolism or a thyroid problem (It's never the big-boned thing. That's just bunk).

The problem with the assumptions is they exist independent of actual reality. And until the assumptions, either through research or professional diagnosis, are corrected, you are incapable of solving the problem.

4. Emotional issues. We are emotional creatures. We don't act logically all the time--Mr. Spock seemed weird to us for a reason. Getting our emotions regarding these things straightened out can be an even bigger hindrance than any of the previous three problems.

So it's in one of these four areas that things have gone wrong, and whichever one it is will keep steering you wrong no matter how many quick-fix patch-up jobs you attempt.

Quote Of The Week:

2005-07-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

The life that conquers is the life that moves with a steady resolution and persistence toward a predetermined goal. Those who succeed are those who have thoroughly learned the immense importance of plan in life, and the tragic brevity of time.

- W.J. Davison

Super-Fast Updates

2005-07-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

This, ironically, is both my slowest and fastest update ever.

As in, it's the longest I've gone between posts, but my first post using my super-fast, super-hype DSL connection.

Wow. It's a little bit faster.

I haven't hooked up my wireless router yet (Thank you, Becky!) but I will soon.

Our house is actually kind of turned upside down right now. My wife borrowed a carpet cleaner thing today, so most of my apartment is in my kitchen and my bedroom, so even the set-up I've got for the DSL right now was just temporary to make sure it was working.

But whoo-doggies, is this thing faster. I am feeling so spoiled right now.

Bring on your big files! Bring on your huge flash-powered websites! Bring on the large version of the film trailers!

I am the king of cyberspace!

Emma's Glasses

2005-07-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my brother Ryan for sending in this pic.

Emma's Eyes

2005-07-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

I know there are comments I haven't replied to, and I'll get to them I swear--it's just been a long day and I have to get up early tomorrow for work.

But I do want to let everybody know that the optometrist has officially declared that, while wearing glasses, Emma's eyes are completely straight. She won't even need to use a patch.

This could change six months from now, but for right now, her eyes are responding remarkably well to corrective lenses, and she won't need any other treatment.

She deserves to catch a break once in a while.

(And I do promise to post a pic. Pics have, in fact, been taken--like a dunce, I just forgot to email them to myself. I'll get 'em up! I swear!)

A Big Thank-You

2005-07-11T23:57:00.000-07:00

To everyone who participated in my birthday. Thanks to everyone who sent cards and/or presents and/or emails. You all are awesome.

On a fitness note, I got a pair of dumbells, which means I now have no excuse for not lifting weights more frequently.

Since my birthday was supposed to be sort of a milestone in the year, excpect a sort of "year in review"-type post this week.

Friday Mythbustin': Don't Eat Before Bedtime

2005-07-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

Myth: If you don't eat before bedtime, your body won't store up the calories and you won't gain weight.

Fact: If you eat more calories than you burn, it doesn't matter when you eat them.

I guess it kind of makes sense. If you eat only when you're doing stuff, you'll burn more of the calories, right? When you're sleeping, all you're doing is just . . . sleeping.

Yeah. But to be honest with you, when you're sleeping, you're not burning that many fewer calories than when you're sitting watching TV (Fitday.com gives you no calorie credit for doing either one). Unless you're actually up and moving, eating before you sit down for that Seinfeld marathon is exactly the same as eating before you sleep.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts showed that going to bed hungry (Going 3 hours without eating before bedtime) increased a person's risk of obesity by over 100%! The only things worse were eating breakfast out of the house (137%) and not eating breakfast at all (A whopping 450%!).

Now some people swear by this weight-loss trick, and have had terrific luck with it. I think there's a reason for this:

A lot of people only have access to food once they get home from work. They come home, eat dinner, and then snack until bed time. By eliminating all the pre-bedtime snacks, they significantly cut their calorie intake. As long as they don't eat the food at other times (which they don't, because they're not in the house at other times), they're going to experience weight loss.

What I want to do is reassure them that if they give in and have something, they don't need to beat themselves up over it. In fact, it's probably a good idea.

Obviously, this isn't permission to eat the whole pint of Chubby Dumpy Ice Cream, but it does say that eating is just as important a tool in weight loss as the not eating is.

So grab that apple, or have a little meal replacement shake. High protein meals before bed help the muscle grow while you're sleeping.

Just be reasonable about it.

Alice's Adventures In Turnaround

2005-07-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

In Lewis Carroll's book, Through The Looking Glass, there's a scene that's always stuck in my brain. It's not in any of the adaptations I've seen, but the scene rings true for me, and the scene is incredibly resonant.

In the book, Alice meets the Red Queen, who is not a playing card, but rather, a chess piece. After some amusing exchanges, this happens:

Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying "Faster!" but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had no breath to say so.

The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. "I wonder if all the things move along with us?" thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, "Faster! Don't try to talk!"

Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so out of breath: and still the Queen cried, "Faster! Faster!" and dragged her along. "Are we nearly there?" Alice managed to pant out at last.

"Nearly there!" the Queen repeated. "Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!" And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.

"Now! Now!" cried the Queen. "Faster! Faster!" And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy. The Queen propped her against a tree, and said kindly, "You may rest a little now."

Alice looked round her in great surprise. "Why, I do believe we've been under this tree all the time! Everything's just as it was!"

"Of course it is," said the Queen: "what would you have it?"

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Not to correct poor Alice, but I think there are plenty of times in this country where things seem to work exactly as they do on the Red Queen's chessboard. We run and work and labor and try just to have things stay the same, at it seems like the effort to make something actually change is Herculean.

The Abs Diet

2005-07-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

So my new reading is The Abs Diet, the bright orange book you've seen at the bookstore and supermarket.

The guy who wrote it is the editor-in-chief of Men's Health magazine, and it shows. The writing has the same type of "We want to seem hip so bad, we're going to show you how hip we are at least once a paragraph," writing style that litters the magazine, which wouldn't be nearly so annoying if his definition of "hip" didn't match with that of a sophomore in high school. Hip means beer and girls.

Add to that the title and the promise--washboard abs in six weeks.

That's ludicrous all the way around. People don't need abs. Abs are nice, and are a good sign you've lost weight--the guys who track this kind of stuff say that you'll see abs when your body fat gets down around 11%--but they aren't vital to good health.

And, add to that the cutesy way he tries to make the "12 authorized foods" fit his acronym "ABS DIET POWER 12." A is for "Almonds and other nuts." S is for "Spinach and other leafy greens." The list is extremely forced.

There, in a handful of paragraphs, you have my only complaints about the entire book. The nutrition is sound, the logic is good, the recipes look tasty. He also points out it isn't a diet so much as a way of eating--an important aspect of not just losing a couple quick pounds, but about changing your lifestyle.

A lot of people are skipping the big thick book and just buying the little $8 Food Guide, which includes the chapters from the book on food, along with recipes and lists of what to get when eating out.

Worth a look.

Here I Come Back From The Dead, Oh No . . . . . !!!

2005-07-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

I got a little under the weather.

For those who don't read my other blog, I'm currently writing a screenplay. It's been interesting, because the book I'm using as a guide is one that acknowledges the difficulties of writing a screenplay. "No other book acknowledges the fact that you think you're going to die of this," quoth the book, and the amazing part is, it's right.

The way the book does it, see, is by paralleling the difficulties you're going through writing the thing with the difficulties your hero is facing throughout your movie.

At the start, you know you want to write a movie, but you're not really sure what all it's going to entail or how it's going to be. Your hero--same thing. He starts out wanting something but he's not sure what he will have to through between now and then.

And then you start getting into it, and you have to keep going forward not looking back, even when it starts to look a little harder than you thought. Ditto your hero.

And as things get going, there's actually a time where the screenwriter and the hero both just feel like throwing in the towel. This isn't what they signed up for, it's not what they wanted it to be, they can tell so much of what's gone before is just bad, bad, bad.

That's the day when it's the hardest for the screenwriter to sit down and plunk out the pages. That's when it takes fortitude and guts and character to keep on going and see it through.

It's true in screenplays. It's true in movies.

And it's true in 365 day turnarounds.

The car problems stunk. Being sick stunk. Coming back up four pounds (wonder why the Tale of the Tape hasn't been updated in a while?) stunk.

So there's that moment where you have to knuckle down, recognize the cost of what you wanted, and decide you want it anyway.

Onward, ho!

New Phone Deal

2005-06-30T21:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the deal:

We're ditching Netflix. They're great for selection, but they're a lousy value, and they've got lousy customer service.

We're also switiching phone companies. The new "Verizon Freedom Unlimited" plan gives us the unlimited long distance my wife needs so badly, and combined with their DSL, we'll actually be paying about the same as what we used to pay for Unlimited Long Distance with voice mail.

So I'm getting DSL and Unlimited Long Distance for less than what I used to pay just for the phone bill and dial-up.

However, I didn't let them lock me in to a one year contract, despite the offer of the free wireless router. I want to be able to ditch this quick if I need to, or if, as the frog and the dog sang, "Somethin' better comes along."

Emma's Eyes

2005-06-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

Usually, when people see me after a while, they ask about Emma. She's got a leg tumor and some other problems, but is sweet as pie in spite of it all.

One of the problems is her eyes. To put it gently, they tend to cross. Her right eye tends to drift off course a bit.

As it turns out, this is strabismus, a generic term for any visual defect that causes misalignment of the eyes. Her particular type of strabismus is called accommodative esotropia. That's a fancy way of saying she's really, really farsighted. So farsighted, that her eyes need to cross that much in order for her to focus.

The first step in her treatment is glasses. There's a chance that glasses alone might help. We'll see if we have to do any patching or anything else from there.

We did find some pretty cool Dora The Explorer glasses that were purple, so she's excited. I'll try to get a picture or two up when they come in.

Friday Mythbustin': Crunch Away That Tummy!

2005-06-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

Myth: If you have a tummy, if you do enough sit-ups, it'll go away.

Fact: If you do enough sit-ups, you'll have rock-hard abs underneath that tummy.

There still seems to be this persistent myth that muscle can "turn" to fat, and vice versa. That's biological nonsense. That's like saying your hair could, somehow, turn into fingers. It's made up of different biological "stuff."

The only things you can do with fat is burn it or add to it. Period.

And, unfortunately, your body does not select which fat to burn based on what part of your body you're working out. It will still pull fat from the next place it has set up to pull fat from.

On the other hand, that might be fortunate. Because what it means is, you don't have to work your abs harder than any other part of the body. Do a few exercises for it, just like you would for your chest or your back, to make it stronger. Follow your normal combination of a healthy diet, cardio, and weights. That'll get that belly down, and insure there's something nice under there when it's gone.

Oh, And As For The Thief:

2005-06-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking alligators.

Tale Of The Tape . . .

2005-06-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

. . . will be updated soon.

In the meantime, head on over to Dave Ramsey's website and nose around a little.

To Whoever Is Stealing . . .

2005-06-22T07:42:00.000-07:00

. . . from my wife's container garden:

For a couple of bucks and some water, you can grow all the cilantro and chiles you want. I'll be more than happy to help you get started. But the cilantro and the chiles are our favorites, too, okay? So please just leave ours be.

Quotes of the Day

2005-06-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

Thomas A. Edison:

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Jeffrey R. Holland on Thomas Edison:

Thomas Edison devoted ten years and all of his money to developing the nickel-alkaline storage battery at a time when he was almost penniless. . . .

One night the terrifying cry of fire echoed through the film plant. Spontaneous combustion had ignited some chemicals. Within moments all of the packing compounds, celluloids for records, file, and other flammable goods had gone up with a whoosh. Fire companies from eight towns arrive, but the heat was so intense and the water pressure so low that the fire hoses had no effect.

Edison was 67 years old — no age to begin anew. His daughter was frantic, wondering if he were safe, if his spirits were broken, how he would handle a crisis such as this at his age. She saw him running toward her.

He spoke first. He said, "Where's your mother? Go get her. Tell her to get her friends. They'll never see another fire like this as long as they live."

At 5:30 the next morning with the fire barely under control, he called his employees together and announced, "We're rebuilding." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Oh, by the way, anybody know where we can get some money?"

Virtually everything we now recognize as a Thomas Edison contribution in our lives came after that disaster.

Friday Mythbustin': I'm Starting A Diet

2005-06-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Myth: Diets are something you go on and off of as needed for your weight.

Fact: You're on a diet, whether call it one or not.

"Diet" doesn't mean "strict eating regimen." It means, "Any eating regimen." Whatever you're doing right now, it's a diet. It is The You Diet.

Seem a little like I'm parsing hairs? Like it's not really a big deal? Like it doesn't change anything, but just is a semantic "Gotcha!"?

Well, it's not. Because think about it this way--when somebody says, "I can't stay on a diet," they're wrong. There is some diet they can do perfectly fine, and that's whatever they're doing. It may not be a perfect diet, or a healthy diet, but they still "have" a diet. If someone were to watch over their shoulder with a notepad, they could even give them a pretty good idea of what that diet consisted of.

When someone says, "I can't diet," what they're really trying to convey is one of three things:

The Diet Excuses:

1. "I can't tie myself down to a plan." Let's say that the person with the notepad came back at the end of the week, took out all his notes and said, "Okay, you have to eat nothing but these things this week at these times." The person who holds attitude number 1 couldn't do it. They wouldn't want to restrict themselves. Even though they found the diet perfectly satisfying the week before, the idea of being tied down to it sounds horrible.

"Do I really have to get up at three AM and eat half a pint of Ben & Jerry's?" they'll whine.

2. "I can't deny myself certain foods." This person might be perfectly fine with the above scenario. In fact, they may eat pretty much the same foods every week anyway. They'd grab the list from the guy, grateful they don't have to stand in front of the fridge any more. But if the guy started messing with the menu, making suggestions here and there, this person would freak out.

"But what if it's three AM and I want to eat a half a pint of Ben & Jerry's?"

3. "I do not want to be subjected to the financial and/or physical difficulties that might come from changing my diet." This last group has, either by experience or by word of mouth, come to believe that it would be either too expensive or too physically painful (e.g. they'd have no energy or feel hungry all the time) to change their eating habits. This group would look at any list handed to them and think either:

"How am I going to afford all of this?" or "Is this all? But what if I need more?"

The Excuse Busters:

1. If you're in category 1, here's the coolest thing you can learn about dieting, that will make you able to diet again: You can be in control. There is no guy with a notepad. The only one who will ultimately decide what you eat is you. At no point has any person who has ever subscribed to any diet stopped being in control. They've still had their free agency the entire time.

What I recommend for the controllers is this: Design your own diet. Learn all you can about nutrition. Read a couple of books that you think sound appealing, and then use all that knowledge you gain to create a diet for yourself. Use recipes from each book that sound appealing to you. Plan it all out yourself. Now, when you have to eat salmon and brown rice on Wednesday night, it will be fun, because it was your idea, rather than be frustrating because some guy with a notepad told you to.

2. Number two--here's your deal: You can eat whatever you want and still lose weight. You really can. There's only two tricks you have to learn.

First trick is to learn how to keep foods from being a problem. Plan for pizza night by eating low calorie, high fiber foods the rest of the day. Plan for the church Pancake Breakfast by having a sensible meal to prepare for dinner that night.

And second, learn tricks to reduce the calories of your favorite foods. Use less fatty cheese and meats on your pizza and more antioxidant-rich sauce. Use unbleached flour in the dough instead of white flour. Figure out how to get the taste you like with less caloric cost.

3. If you're the person who's afraid they'll be hungry if they eat better, think about this: Some foods, like asparagus and watermelon, actually have negative caloric value. It takes more calories to digest them than they contain. In other words, you could spend all day, every day, for a week doing nothing but eating watermelon or papaya, getting beyond full, and you would still wither away and die.

Okay, maybe you wouldn't die in a week. And you definitely wouldn't want to ever try this diet, but there still exists a happy medium. Somewhere between starving yourself and eating watermelon all day long, there's a diet that will keep you full and still be nutritious and help you lose weight.

If it's a financial thing--well, I hear you. While I struggle with just about every issue on this list, this one's probably my biggest one right now. We coupon shop, and with coupon shopping, junk food is where the bargains are at. We could be stocked to the gills with junk food for nothing right now, if we wanted to. But we don't. We want to eat healthy and lose weight.

Again, though--you can do it, if you plan. Not buying junk still saves us money, and we are able to find creative ways to save money. Buying in bulk, growing vegetables ourselves (did I mention I had the first tomato from our patio garden yesterday?), making things from scratch--they all help. It can be done. We're doing it.

Final Note:

You may have noticed all of these answers had a common word--plan. It's really all about making a plan. So I guess there's one excuse that I don't have an answer for:

"I don't want to have to make a plan."

If that's your reason, well--I can't help you. There is nothing in this life you can accomplish by luck. You have to make a plan and see it through.

I won't say "stick to it." You may find you have to modify the plan as life and circumstances happen. But you just adjust your plan so it still brings you firmly to your destination.

Final Word From Kathryn

2005-06-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

10. Now that I have offered you several tips on how to save more money each month, I will tell you how to spend what little you do have. It is a really simple formula, but it has worked for me and I am a single parent with 2 kids making less than $30,000 per year(I am a college student). If it works for me, it will work for anyone!

First start by writing down your TAKE HOME pay. Lets say it's $2000.00.

Use the 30/30/20/20 rule.

- 30% goes to rent or mortgage payment. So for a take home pay of $2000.00, you should not be spending more than $600 per month on your rent or mortgage. If you find that your rent or mortgage is higher than 30% of your take home pay, you cannot afford to live where you live and it is time to move! Sell your house, or move into a cheaper apartment. If it is LESS than 30%, say your rent is only 550, instead of 600, that extra $50 goes directly to paying off your credit cards and bills on your credit report.

- 30% goes to bills and all monthly expenses. This includes car pmt., insurance, utilities, food, gas, etc. So in this case that would be $600 per month. If it is higher because the car pmt. makes it higher, you need to get a cheaper form of transportation. Either sell the car and take public transportation, or get a cheaper car.

- 20% goes to savings, no questions asked-directly from your paycheck into the savings account. For this example, that would be 400 per month, or 200 per paycheck. This money is to sit there. Do NOT touch it for anything. It needs to grow until it equals 8 months of living expenses. In this case, that amount would be $16,000.00. Then after you have saved that much, your credit cards and bills should be paid off as well by that time and you can start investing or using that 20% towards kid's college educations, or whatever your heart desires.

- 20% is your miscellaneous. This is $400 per month for stuff like clothes, gifts, eating out, co-pays to the Dr. office, etc. If you don't use the full $400 in a month, great! Anything leftover goes towards paying off those credit cards and bills on your credit report faster.

I have used this method and nothing I have done before works better. Like I said before, now that I have that down, time to work on the weight loss! I know this email is windy, but I really wanted to share this information with you and your wife because it can and will help you. I have never shared this with anyone before, but since reading your blog, what can I say? I had to put in my two cents...or shall I say my dollar seventy-five? LOL...If you have any questions or want to exchange any ideas or whatever, shoot me an email anytime! :) Meanwhile, I will be reading your blog to see how you're doing. Hang in there!

I'm really glad Kathryn went to the trouble of sharing all of this, and not just because it gave me nearly a week of blog content.

When I read this, my first reaction was to want to nitpick at certain parts of it. "Well I heard that your rent or house payment shouldn't be more than 25% of your paycheck," or "Pay off your debt first!" or other such silly nitpicking.

None of that is the point. The point is, Kathryn made a plan and stuck to it, and now it's working for her. That's exciting. That's inspiring.

We could sit and quibble endlessly over details, but the point is Kathryn is proof it can be done. She's turned her life around, and has guaranteed that her own life, and that of her two kids, will be better than if she had just rode the wave and seen where life "took her." That's like taking your hands off the wheel of the car in moving traffic.

So please, read her post and glean from it all the parts that are useful. Use what works for you. But don't let the details distract you from the big picture--when you decide what you want and make a plan for going after it, and if you go after it with gusto, you can make it happen.

Thanks, Kathryn, for sharing with everybody. Feel free to weigh in whenever you like!

More From Kathryn

2005-06-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

8. Pull your credit reports from all 3 bureaus. If there is anything on there that is potentially negative, dispute it. You can do your dispute online, and for the reason for the dispute, just say that it isn't your account. That is what I did for quite a few items and they were all DELETED from my credit report because the companies didn't reply to the credit bureau within the allotted 30 days. I have drastically increased my credit score by doing that. Anything negative that remains on your report after the 30 day investigation needs to be paid off because your credit score can't improve with unpaid accounts or collections. So, chip away at any items that are unpaid and they will eventually be paid off. Meantime, do you have current credit cards that you are still using? If you are, your balance owed should never be more than 30% of your credit line because it affects your credit score. For example, if your credit line is $500, you should never charge more than 150 on that particular card. If you don't have a choice and there is an emergency, try to pay it off as soon as possible at least to get that balance down to 150. Hmm..what else? OH, I am sure you already know this, but once your cards are paid off, leave them that way and never charge more than what you can pay off in FULL by the next month's bill. There is a new law regarding minimum payments on credit cards that will be going into place sometime in the next year or so that will dramatically INCREASE minimum payments on credit cards. So, if you have credit cards with balances AND other bills that are unpaid and on your credit report, pay off the credit cards first, especially because of the interest you are probably paying. Then, after the cards are paid off, tackle the other debt, if any. My other old job was working for Visa, so I was fortunate to learn all the in's and out's of credit, credit scores, etc.

9. For entertainment, instead of going to a movie the first weekend it is out, wait til it's in the cheap theater then go see it. Or if you don't have a cheap $1 or $2 theater where you live, wait til its out on DVD and rent it. You will save tons of money by quitting going to the full priced movie theaters.

Entertainment on a budget is sure an issue.

Finding things to do usually isn't--yesterday, since I had to go to Orange County anyway, my family and I had a nice picnic dinner on the beach and then went and watched the fireworks from outside of Disneyland (We sat under the "R" in California) and only paid for food and gas--gas we'd have had to spend anyway, since I already had to go to Orange County.

But as big a movie fan as I am, giving up movie theatre trips has been hard for me. While I did go see the new Star Wars, that's been my only movie trip this year, which is tough for a guy who used to spend every weekend seeing whatever the hot new movie was.

As it is, I'm chomping at the bit about the new Batman movie that came out today--the wife and I might have to sneak out and see a showing after it becomes eligible for Entertainment Book coupons.

More From Kathryn . . .

2005-06-14T23:35:00.000-07:00

The email continues . . .

4. I cut down the cost of my car insurance by changing a few things around on my policy. I have full coverage insurance. I live in Arizona, so car insurance is astronomical anyway, but I did manage to save a few bucks per month by changing my deductible from $500 to $1000, lowering the amount I can use for rental cars from $40 per day to $20 per day, and lowering the medical coverage to $5,000.00 Not to worry about the medical part, because if you get into an accident and your medical bills are more than $5,000, your regular health insurance will cover anything above and beyond the car insurance policy. I used to be a claims adjudicator for blue cross blue shield and saw it all the time-all they will ask you for is a denial letter from your car insurance and the bills will be paid.

That is some terrific advice. My wife and I have not yet looked into doing anything with our insurance. About the time we started this turnaround, we were going to start looking for cheaper insurance, but then two accidents dropped off our record (well, my record) and it became cheaper without us having to do a thing. Because of those two accidents I had in a row, I've always been leary of lowering my car insurance or going with a cheaper provider--I tend to use my car insurance, and I want it to work--but I strongly advocate having emergency funds in excess of $1,000 for stuff like this, and then going for the higher deductible. Great advice.

5. I stopped going out to lunch with my colleagues every day. I used to spend at LEAST $5 or $10 daily on lunch outside. I started bringing my own lunch every day and only going out for lunch on paydays. I figure lunch outside twice a month is OK. Money saved-$100+per month. Another cool thing about this is that it is easier to eat healthy when you aren't in a restaurant!

Because of the weight-loss portion of my goals, I tend to eat up to six small meals a day, which means I eat 3-4 times during the hours I'm at work. My first "meal" is usually a meal replacement bar--whichever one we were able to get coupons for and was on sale. Lately, it's been the EAS Advantage bar. Then a while later I'll do whatever healthy frozen meal had the right combination of sales and coupons--usually Healthy Choice as of late. Then I'll have maybe an apple and a cup of cottage cheese, or maybe sandwich. Sometimes I'll substitute canned soup or leftovers for any one of these meals. All told, I usually end up spending $2-3 on food a day, although I will skip one or two if we're getting close to a payday or far from a shopping trip, so it's sometimes less.

6. I don't know if you are living in a house or apartment, but if you are in an apt. and are paying extra for a garage or cushy parking spot, lose it and save money!

7. Stop using that debt-free service if it isn't free! You can pay your OWN bills if you stay organized. Get a monthly planner or print out a new calendar every month and keep it at your computer and desk. When the bills come in, write on the calendar when it is due, how much it is, and then keep the bills in a neat stack RIGHT next to the computer monitor, like I do. Then, when you have paid the bill, take it out of the stack and put it in a file for your records. Keep doing this until the stack is gone. Same thing for the next month, etc. Also, quit using checks from your bank! That is the fastest way to end up with costly overdraft fees from the bank. If you don't already have it, get online banking, enter in all your bills and their addresses and account numbers. Then when it's time to pay bills all you have to do is sit at the computer and click. No more writing checks, getting postage, etc. If you have a bill that's due on the 30th, for an example, arrange to have the payment go out on the 25th-ALWAYS send your payments out 5 business days in advance. Do that, and you will never pay another late fee. If, for whatever reason, your bank doesn't offer online banking, I would still do away with the checks. Just get 29 cent money orders at your local gas station for the bills and do it that way. Get out your scissors, and those boxes of unused checks and go to town. Cut them all up and never order another box. Checks are nothing but headaches. OH, and not having checks is also another way to ensure yourself of no more costly pay day loans!

I don't get payday loans. I make them--it's actually what I do for a living. I give people loans by day at work and beg them to get out of debt on this blog by night.

To everyone--don't get payday loans. If you're tempted to get one, don't. And then, on your payday, take the $300 you'd have had to give the payday loan company if you'd got it and put it in your sock drawer. Then, next time you need one, you can give one to yourself. Put the $300 back on your payday. Repeat as needed.

I will say to anyone looking to follow Kathryn's advice about checks--see what kind of account you have at your bank first. Many banks, such as Bank of America have "Free" accounts only so long as you do all your transactions by ATM or check. If you start cashing your checks or withdrawing sums larger than what you can get from the ATM each day--like if you need a large amount to pay rent--you can often get charged transaction fees for those. Getting to know your bank's policies is valuable. If you tend to go inside the branch, take note of which teller seems most knowledgeable about bank policy and most willing to share. You'll be glad you did.

And as for the debt consolidation company, I'll post my do-it-yourself debt consolidation plan before this month is out. It's the plan that's got me out of all my debt except for my car and the stuff I turned over to those guys, and if I'd have started it sooner, I'd never turned any of it over to them at all.

Even More To Come! Keep It Tuned In!

Unjumping The Shark

2005-06-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

I realize that some time ago, this website jumped the shark. At least, I thought it did. Somewhere around the time my car broke down, this blog went from being helpful to being whiney.

However, I think I've received more comments since I became whiney then I did when I acted like a know-it-all. Quite frankly, the support has been welcome, and lots of the advice has been great!

But I still want this blog to become helpful again. And here to help me do that is Kathryn, who has been going through some of the same stuff I have, and has had to go it alone. She has some great tips I think everybody can use, including me.

I'll be publishing her email, along with my comments, over the next couple of days. Here goes!

Hello Erik,

I have been reading your blog for the past few days. I haven't read through all the archives yet, but I am working on it in my free time. I was going to post a comment, but it wouldn't let me since I am not a blogger. Hence this email. Hmm...where do I start? I have some free advice for you and your wife. I am almost 30 myself and have struggled with the exact same things you are struggling with, i.e. weight loss and financial freedom. I have the financial freedom thing down, but am still working on losing more weight.

For starters, why did you buy a Saturn? First things first, I would trade in that Saturn for a Toyota Camry! It doesn't even have to be a new Toyota Camry. I have a 1997 and haven't ever had anything major go wrong with it. After checking the consumer reports, I found out that the Toyota Camry is one of, if not THE BEST, car for families. I have two daughters just like you, so I wanted a good, reliable sedan to haul them around in and luckily decided on the Camry.

I agree completely. My next car will definitely be a Honda or a Toyota.

I'm not going in for one yet, though--my primary goal right now is to become completely debt-free. As crazy as it may sound, I want to pay cash for my next car. That means paying this car off at an accelerated rate, and then starting to save the mileage checks I get from work towards a used vehicle.

The Saturn hasn't been too bad for me, although I have discovered the problem I just had with this one is fairly common (If you have a Saturn, do not, under any circumstances, let it overheat).

I got a great deal on the Saturn--at the time, I looked at Hondas and Toyotas, and they were just a hair out of my price range.

(Actually, there was a Nissan I could have afforded if the guys at Planet Nissan in San Bernardino hadn't tried to pass a 24% interest rate off as an 11% interest rate. But that's another story.)

Next, you and your wife need to start saying NO to everything. I know, it is easy to get suckered into offers, specials, sales. But all those things end up being is another headache. Hence the credit card situation when your wife thought she was only requesting information, but they had to sign her up BEFORE they sent out the information.

Wonderful advice.

In my wife's defense, she's become a master of using coupons and offers to make money rather than just save money. In this case, the way the whole thing was presented to her made it sound like an exploitable system she could have cleared some cash on. Not wanting to get ripped off, though, she requested the information.

I do want to say we did get in writing that those charges are all reversed. Came in the mail today.

Here is what I did for financial freedom:

1. Cut off the cable TV and cancel your newspaper and magazine subscriptions. Now, I get about 2 local channels so if I really want to watch the news or something else on that channel, I still can, but without the monthly $43 bill. I rent FREE DVD's at our local library. I was shocked to find out that they have so many titles, for adults and kids. I also have more time to do other things now that the cable is gone. I don't miss it one bit. Get your news online, and take a trip to the local library once a month or so to read your favorite magazines and check out books.

Check! We don't subscribe to any magazines, and we only get the Sunday paper for the coupons (We also bum coupons of subscribing family members who don't coupon shop).

We did cancel the cable, except local channels. For $5.99 a month, we get the local channels from Dish Network (Unfortunately, antennas don't work where I live). We do make extensive use of the local library, including their audiobook section, since I drive a lot.

(Actually, for any locals reading this, I recommend the Riverside library by the Mission Inn. They have lots of free videos and audiobooks. San Bernardino still charges for both.)

2. Cut off all the "extra" telephone services-NO more call waiting, voice mail, etc. I pared my monthly service down to $13 and got an answering machine. Then I cut off my DSL and signed up for $10 a month Net Zero. I hardly notice the difference in the internet service and I could care less if anyone doesn't like the fact that they get a busy signal when they call my house. My Qwest bill used to be around $87 a month, with all the phone features and DSL, Now it is less than $20.

Amen!

I used to love to brag about my ISP--I was getting dial-up for $6.95 a month. Unfortunately, they've gone under, swallowed up by Earthlink, but I'm still getting $9.95 a month for them.

I also agree about the phone bill. My wife and I haggle over this one, though--she can't give up call waiting and voice mail, partly because I spend so much time on the net, and she doesn't want to miss those messages, and because she really does have people she needs to keep in contact with during the day, since she's starting a child care business in the next couple of months to bring in some extra dollars, and wants to be as accessible as possible. Also, she won't give up unlimited long distance, because she really does use it--her family is from back east.

3. Do you have cell phone service? I used to have Verizon's 1100 min. per month plan, and was paying around $80 per month. I cut my cell phone service down to the 400 min. per month + free nights and weekends and saved myself over $40 per month. I also started being religious about checking how many minutes I have used so far, so I don't go over on the minutes to rack up a higher bill. No problem.

My company pays for my cell phone. Otherwise, I would probably get a prepaid for my wife for emergencies and call it done. Just like you could care less if people who call you get a busy signal, I could care less if people can't get a hold of me when I'm at the park. ;)

More to come! Tune in tomorrow!

Friday Mythbustin': There's Nothing Wrong With Being Overweight

2005-06-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

Myth: All this obesity and BMI stuff is way overblown. Being fat isn't nearly as big a deal as they say it is.

Fact: While much of the obesity epidemic is overstated, and BMI may be a gross oversimplification, that doesn't mean we can ignore our weight.

In case you hadn't noticed, the media are terribly hypocritical. The new big thing in the media? Headlines like "Is The Obesity Epidemic Overblown?" "Being Fat: Is It As Bad As They Thought?"

And here's the thing: It's not. A lot of the scientific data right now is reinforcing the idea that the obesity myth is just that--largely a myth.

Here's the problem, though. Who was it who overblew it?

The media themselves. They took valid scientific data and blew it out of all proportion in order to get you to "Tune in at 11."

And now, they're making the same mistake the other way. They're taking more valid scientific data and blowing it out of proportion again in order to get you to tune right back in. Only now, it's turned around--they're lulling everyone back into apathy.

Here's the thing--it's not the data that's wrong. It's the hype.

I don't need a scientific study to tell me that being overweight is bad for me. I didn't start this diet because of any scientific study. I did it because I was getting winded too easy. I did it because my knees were aching constantly, a pain I couldn't bear any more. I did it because I never had any energy.

Clearly, being overweight hurts. The "data" still supports this. Sure, some of the numbers may have been overblown. But even the true data, while it may not be "Tune in at 11" kind of exciting, well--let's just say it brings a smile to my face when I can walk three miles without noticing my knees.

So don't believe the hype. And don't believe the anti-hype. Do what's best for you.

Rental Car Bargains

2005-06-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Since my car's been in the shop for a while, I've been forced to rent. And I've learned about the rental car system.

If any system is sufficiently messed up, and you can find a way to take advantage of it, you can save a ton of money.

In this case, the rental car system is pretty messed up. Dave Barry once joked that the world would not truly be fair until two people sitting next to each other on the same airplane had paid the same price for their tickets.

Same way with rental cars.

My first rental car was actually paid for by my company. A Chrysler 300 from Dollar. Last year's Motor Trend Car of the Year. Wow. It was pretty darn cool, and I didn't have to pay for it.

For my second car, I got a Pontiac Grand Am from Alamo. Using coupons in the Entertainment Book, and a discount they give to anybody who uses the coupon book, I was able to get it for about $115 for five days.

So when the day came to return it, I knew I wouldn't have my car back yet. So I called up Alamo the night before and asked what it would be to keep the car another four days. They said it would normally be about $130, but with a $10 a day fee for keeping the car past the contract, it would come out to $170.

"So lemme get this straight," I said, "It would be cheaper to go in and get a new one than keep this one?"

"Probably. Go ahead and call and see."

So I hung up with the local rental center, then called the main distribution center. They rented me a mid-size for the next morning for four days. Using another coupon, it came out to about $80.

So I go the next day, drop off my mid-size, walk inside, pay for the new midsize, go back outside, and pick up a full-size. See, there were no mid-sizes on the lot, so I got a free upgrade. Even though the mid-size I had just returned was sitting maybe 20 feet away with the keys still in it, it hadn't been "cleaned and prepped" yet, or whatever.

So here's some tips for renting cars:

1. Always make your reservation for a small car. You should do this in the hopes of getting upgraded free. If you want a bigger car, and they don't upgrade you free, you can always "change your mind" at the last minute. In my case, I made the reservation for the smallest size the coupon would allow. That did happen to be big enough for me, but I did get upgraded once.

2. Always make your reservation over the phone at the 1-800-number. Since the phone center folks know less about what's on the lot than the lot guys, they're more likely to book you something the rental lot won't have. This is a huge help when you're renting moving vans. I once made reservations over the phone for a Ryder center that, unbeknownst to the phone center folks, only had like two trucks. Since the small one was out, they were forced to rent me the big one (and it was huge, probably bigger than my apartment) at the same price.

3. Use Coupons. The Entertainment Book has great coupons, but you can find them in the travel section of the Sunday paper, too.

4. Call around. If it takes you an hour and you save $40, you just made $40 an hour for your time. Not bad, eh? Ask about each company's specials before you tell them what you want--you may be able to fit the special into your plans.

5. Use the web only after you've called. Part of the messed up rental car system is that there are different specials on the web vs. on the phone.

If you have any other tips or ideas, feel free to post them!

The Whole Messy Story

2005-06-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so sometime last month, the car broke down. It's our only car--a Saturn SL1.

I purchased it--well, August will make three years. It was five years old, and it had only 24,000 miles on it.

I financed it for five years at 11%. This was a mistake I will never make again. Actually, I hope to never finance a car again, but even if I do, it will not be for five years. As my Dad correctly pointed out at the time I bought it, my little daughter, who was not yet one, would be in kindergarten before this thing was paid off.

Anyway, I put a lot of miles on it driving for work. Last month, I brought it up over the 100,000 mile mark. Although I try to be real, real good to it, I had the proverbial "bad feeling."

Sure enough, one morning as I was driving to work, the thing overheated. I pulled into the WalMart station to check my fluid levels and see what was going on. My radiator exploded a dark, thick goo all over my engine that looked like something Nickelodeon would sell to kids.

Turns out oil was leaking back into the radiator. A big mess. A big mess that's kept me from having the car for several weeks, and backwards in my debt payback plan to the tune of about $2,500. That's about equal to the amount I still owe on the car.

I'm taking a week's pay in lieu of vacation to help me pay for a chunk of that--I'd been planning to do that to pay off some of the debt anyways--and will shift some of my dramatic paydown money and my mileage checks into paying that off in a few months.

In all, this means I'm about three months behind, now, in my debt pay-off plan, which was already about six months too slow to get me out of debt by the end of the year.

What will happen, true believers? Will the 365 day turnaround be forced to become a 780 day turnaround? Will this debt-free thing ever happen?

Stay tuned to see how we get ourselves back on track!

Tale Of The Tape

2005-06-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Up two pounds. I wasn't really bad for eating, but I haven't really been exercising.

So I'm really behind on my birthday weight goal. A lot of that is discouragement from the car situation, which I still haven't mustered the energy to blog about. I'll probably post more about it on Wednesday or Thursday when the car's back and the dust has settled and I'm back to where I was a couple of months ago, financially.

Which, I really need to keep in mind, is still way ahead of where I was a year ago, financially and weight-wise.

Laugh Yourself Skinny

2005-06-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

This article is a bit misleading.

See, on the surface, it says that laughing burns more calories than your basal, or "resting" metabolic rate.

That sounds really exciting. Laugh yourself skinny, right?

Only see--what they compared it to was sitting watching TV.

Your body never burns fewer calories than when you're sitting watching TV. You could sit and talk and burn more calories than sitting watching TV, since you'd be moving your mouth, gesturing, etc. You could hiccup and burn more calories than sitting watching TV.

So as far as exercise goes, they admit right in the article this is a great way to burn about four and a half pounds a year.

So don't swap your Kathy Smith videos for Marx Brothers just yet. Or, if you've already memorized the Smith routines, then maybe you can go ahead and make the swap and watch Groucho and Harpo while you do the memorized routines. Now that's multitasking.

Friday Mythbustin': The Extended Warranty

2005-06-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, a post about how I took advantage of I took advantage of my own stupidity when I'd bought an extended warranty. Using it now, I was able to get my old video camera working again.

Well, it turned into a celebration of all things warranty. We all posted about great things that happened when we got the warranty from one place or another. That, together with the enthusiastic endorsement of the person trying to get you to buy the extended warranty, may lead you to wonder why I even said in that post that warranties are usually a bad bet.

So, I thought I'd clear it up.

Warranties are insurance.

Insurance is a way of making things more expensive.

For example, we as Americans pay more for health care than what health care actually costs. This is because most doctors are not actually paid directly--they're paid either by an insurance company or the government. Which means that we not only have to pay for the salaries and equipment of the people in the doctor's office, but also for the salaries and equipment of the people who work at the insurance offices or the government buildings who process all of this money and these payments.

But what we do is put our money in a big pool and gamble, collectively, that we'll be the one it pays off for and that we'll get more out of it than we had to pay into it.

Now in the case of health care, it's obviously a necessity. The mere existence of the insurance industry has caused the prices to get so high that a medical crisis without insurance would bankrupt nearly anyone.

But for smaller things, odds are against you. Consider this quote from Dave Ramsey:

When you buy an extended warranty, you're covering commissions, overhead and profit. Thirteen percent of what you're paying for an extended warranty goes toward actual repair costs. If you'd set that amount aside, you could cover that average repair expenditure on your vehicle. The remaining 87% of what you are paying is going toward the warranty company's marketing costs (commissions and sales expenses) and profit. Extended warranties are extremely profitable for those selling them and a terrible deal for those buying them.

In other words, statistically speaking, you're only going to use that warranty 13% of the time--about once for every ten items you purchase. Those are horrible odds! A Vegas game with odds like that would be ignored even by the dimmest of casino goers.

Instead of shelling out money to these folks for each purchase you make, create a well-stocked emergency fund of your own. If the statistics hold true, your dollars will go almost eight times as far as if you'd paid them to take care of it.

And, don't underestimate the value of good old fashioned customer service. Use the regular warranty as often as is necessary. More products than you think actually have "lifetime warranties" on them. Also, many stores--like Wal-mart, dreaded as they seem to have become--have very liberal return policies as long as you're trading for merchandise rather than getting cash. As my cheapie Wal-mart VCRs have broken down quickly, I've just returned them and shelled out a couple more bucks for a slightly nicer model. I've done this a couple of times, until I finally got one that's worked fine for me.

So, use the customer service programs that already exist in the store, set up an emergency fund, and, in most cases, do a Nancy Reagan on anybody who pushes the extended warranty at you--just say no.

Free Credit Report

2005-06-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm the last one to find out about this.

At least it feels that way. But since I still hold on to the hope that this might be useful to someone, I'll post it anyway.

It seems that there's been a new law passed that requires every credit reporting agency to issue a copy of your credit report to you for free at least once a year.

It's being phased in regionally, and as of yesterday, only the northeastern states are not yet eligible. Everybody else can go to annualcreditreport.com to get a printable copy, or call 1-877-322-8228 to request a copy be mailed to you.

The northeast will become activated for this September 1st.

Now, keep in mind, this is the only website that is legitimately offering these free credit reports. Other websites that purport to offer free credit reports actually sign you up for a credit monitoring service upon your request. I've heard this site makes a similar offer, but it does not require you to join, nor does it involuntarily place you on any list. This is where to go.

Make Diamonds -- Not Chaos!

2005-06-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

If you've been to my house, you've seen there's a lot of signs around my desk. Some are about debt, with Dave Ramsey quotes, and others are about writing, with Artist's Way quotes. My wife makes these for me, as a way of encouraging me.

The title of this post is from the newest sign she made. It's from a quote that's my own. I wrote it in a training article for work.

"Explosions don't make diamonds. They just make messes. Diamonds come from consistent, intense pressure over time."

It's meant to be a reminder that it's better to do a little bit of something day after day after day than to try to do a whole bunch of stuff, all on one day. I think it's in our culture to make explosions rather than diamonds--we're used to the idea that problems can be solved quickly. TV teaches us that if a problem is funny, we can solve it in half an hour, and if a problem is serious, we can solve it in an hour.

For this reason, I think TV also teaches quick-fix values ("So what if your doctor says your weight problem will kill you? The most important thing is that you learn to love yourself for who you are").

The truth is that success at anything is slow and boring. Jackie Chan can make jumping through a window look easy because day after day he was forced to do arduous exercises at the Chinese Opera where he was raised. Successful writers don't just fling books out at the world and bask in fame--they spend most of their time alone tapping keys.

We tend to make dramatic starts--we stuff all the junk food in a trash can, or we rush out and buy a huge home gym or we vow to run 5 miles, right now, today. In a movie, that's all we get. The moment of resolve. The time when the change happens. We can just assume from there that it's all flowers and roses and happily ever after.

In reality, it's not always that way. If you've ever pushed against a door you thought was stuck, only to discover it wasn't even closed, you've experienced an interesting sensation--you pull back. You stop going through the door. Even though it's going where you wanted to go, your body has to compensate for the extra force you put into it.

Same thing here. Too much force at the start can force your mind and heart to pull back. It can actually inhibit your efforts. Counterintuitive, maybe, until you give it a little more thought.

A little each day pays off far more than a whole lot of fireworks that fizzle out fast.

Make diamonds, not chaos.

Chase Visa Wants Blogged About

2005-05-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

Chase Visa, apparently disappointed I haven't mentioned the $400 card I kept for emergencies after I paid it off, has decided to do something stupid in order to get some blog time. I'm willing to give it to them.

A little after we paid off the card, my wife got a call from them asking if we wanted to sign up for some kind of protection service where we'd have certain transactions monitored. My wife, not sure if this was something we needed or not, asked them to send us the information.

When our bill came this month, we were charged for the service. Which we never signed up for.

When my wife called to point out that we'd never signed up for it, she was told that she must have signed up for it, because otherwise they wouldn't have been charged for it.

So she explained the prior conversation to the lady, saying she had only asked for information.

Honest, the lady's reply was something to the effect of, "Oh, well that explains it. We have to sign you up for it to send the information."

My wife still hasn't been able to convince them to reverse the charge and cancel them from the program.

I'll be calling them myself tomorrow, and I'll be sure to tell you all about that conversation.

Coupon Sadness

2005-05-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so how was I supposed to know they wouldn't put coupons in the paper on a holiday? Other holidays, they load that thing up with more coupons than . . . than . . . well, than something with a lot of coupons in it.

You can always try it next week.

Have a great holiday!

Coupon Joy

2005-05-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

My wife sent me out to pick up some things since we were having a couple of people over for dinner. I got to do the coupon thing. Match the coupon with the sale and all that. Got a couple quarts of ice cream (Dreyers Slow-Churned Light, if you were worried) for a song. I can see the thrill she gets from it.

Come on--just try it. Find some coupons, then find some sale papers for a few grocery stores. Then play a matching game--it's like the one you used to play in grade school. Put the two together, and do a little math to see what kind of deal you can get on fun stuff.

Go on. Tomorrow's coupon day in the paper. Give it a whirl.

Friday Mythbustin': Knowledge Costs Too Much Money

2005-05-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Myth: Knowledge is expensive.

Fact: Knowledge is not only cheap, but it's worth it at any price.

Whenever I talk to somebody who's paying hundreds of dollars in interest and in debt up to their eyeballs, and they complain about the bind they're in I'll usually suggest something. A book, maybe, or a class down at the city rec center.

Their answer is inevitably the same: "Oh, I can't afford that!"

I don't usually press the issue. But think about it--how can they afford not to? It's not reading the book or not going to the class that's costing them the money.

Besides, they could get the same book for free down at their local library. They could find all the same information on the internet for free. They could invite a financially competent friend over for dinner in exchange for getting advice and tips. There are a million ways they could learn the things they needed to know to get out of their fix.

Why don't they? I'm sure there are as many reasons as there are people. In my case, it was procrastination, pure and simple. I knew what I needed to do, but I knew that making the turnaround would be painful. I was taking what felt, at the time, like the easy route, hoping that in a couple of years when I was making more money or things had settled down it wouldn't be quite so painful to do it. It's the American dream, right? That things can be better tomorrow than they are today?

Well, it finally dawned on me that things can get better any time I want them to--if I'm willing to make the effort. While the year may be half over, and my debt's only a quarter of the way gone, that's still better than what probably would have happened if I hadn't started this--the hole would be even deeper, and when I finally got around to making the turnaround, it would have taken even longer.

Knowledge is knowledge, and they'll package it up whatever way you want it, and put whatever pricetag on it you're willing to pay.

I noticed this a while back when I started getting into books by guys like Robert Kiyosaki and Tony Robbins. They'll put together a package for every price range. Want to pay $20? Here's a book. Want to pay $100? Here's a CD set. Want to pay $1,000? Here's a seminar. Want to pay $10,000? Here's a seminar on a private island. The knowledge is the same; they're just packaging it to what you can afford and what you think you need to pay to get worthwhile information.

It doesn't take money, but what it does take is time. And while I realize most of us don't feel we have enough of that (I know I sure don't) it's still the same deal as with the money--the longer you wait, the less of it you'll have. You're never going to have more time than you have today.

On A "Lighter" Note

2005-05-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

As of this morning, I am officially down 30 pounds.

I was worried. The car problems had sent me straight to stress eating, which I am very good at. However, we really don't have any junk in the house any more, and the hotel room had nothing but water, so I guess I was forced away from snacking.

But I also wasn't doing my 3 miles a day. Or lifting weights. So I've probably just lost 4 pounds of muscle.

But who cares! It's a great feeling to know I've hit the 30 mark. To weigh as much as I did at the start of the year, I'd have to be holding my kid.

And six pounds a month is a good average.

Of course, that only leaves me a month and a half to lose another 12 to get to 220 by my birthday--but I think we can do it. Month and a half is about 6 weeks, so 2 pounds a week still keeps me on schedule. Although I do know the pounds get harder the lighter you go.

Anyways, woo-hoo! 30!