Saturday, January 29, 2005

Speak Your Mind

As an experiment, I've gone ahead and enabled the comments on this site, at a couple of people's request.

Time will tell whether this proves to be a good thing, or one of those experiments that goes horribly wrong and wipes out half of humanity.

Fame!

Thanks to reneegetsfit.com for the link. Keep it up, Renee!

And thanks for the info on peaches. I never knew you could get 10% of your daily calcium from a peach.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Discipline--It Ain't Easy

Alright, so I just got a mileage check in the mail, for over $300. I had to do a lot of driving in December, and now the company's paying me back for it.

So now we've got $300 burning a hole in our pockets. Part of what got us here was the overwhelming desire to spend every penny we got, and some we didn't. So now, we're locked into a tight budget, where every penny we've got (and some we don't) are all spoken for, and it's like somebody who just got tied up discovering he has some wiggle room.

Your brain focuses with laser-like intensity, on that one spot you can move.

So now we've got $300. We know there's a bunch of things we could use. My wife needs a new sewing machine. The refrigerator's about ready to go. The rice cooker went out, the crock pot's cracked, etc, etc, etc.

We also know the car needs some work done on it. We did a quick fix job on it (I cleaned the spark plugs) but didn't really address the real problem (something is leaking that needed to be cleaned off the spark plugs). Technically, the money is meant to fuel and maintain that car.

Actually, to be even more technical, the best thing you could do with a mileage check is save it to pay cash for your next car. Helping pay this car off would be the next best thing to that.

Of course, I could also put it away, and use it as an emergency fund for whichever of these becomes a crisis first.

In other words, there's a whole bunch of logical, sensible stuff this could go to, that would either curtail a future problem, or shore me up for when it happens.

So why is it my first reaction is still, "Hey, I got some money. Let's order some pizza!"?

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Insulin

Some of the hard-core Atkins folks out there are saying, "What about the insulin response?"

See, when you OD on carbs, your body produces Insulin, a fat-storage trigger. This is because the carbs get converted into sugar which goes into your bloodstream, and your body wants to get your blood sugar down. Hence the insulin tells it to cart off some of that sugar and store it, to get it out of the way.

Atkins says that by avoiding carbs, you're avoiding the insulin response. No insulin = no fat storage, right?

Sort of. What Atkins doesn't tell you is two fold.

1. You need carbs. You just do. You need them for energy, you need them to feel good, your brain needs them to think. So the logic of this is like the logic of telling someone that since that crud in their car engine that's slowing down performance is oil buildup, they shouldn't put oil in their car.

2. There are other ways to limit the insulin response. If you mix the carbs, either with fiber or with protein or with both (as is preferable) you reduce the insulin response without eliminating the carbs altogether. Since the rate at which the carbs get absorbed is slowed down, your blood sugar doesn't spike as much, and you're okay.

Bad Coupons

Of course, right now is a bad time for coupon clippers who are trying to cut down the whole grocery bill.

Unless you want to live on a diet of Nacho Cheese, onion dip and party favors.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Coupons

My wife is strutting around, quite proud of herself, with good reason. Since my entire family is in town for a bit, and won't all be together again for at least two years, my folks want to take pictures tomorrow night.

Of course, for my wife, pictures mean make-up, and make-up is something that we don't usually have in the house, because whenever my wife purchases any, it usually ends up contributing to frescos my two little da Vincis do on the walls.

She approached me about it timidily, knowing that we'd already spent our grocery budget, and that really all we had left was my gas money. Would we have enough to get some make-up?

I asked how much it would be. Twenty dollars? Forty? I might know math, but I don't know make-up.

She said she had some coupons, and that Rite Aid was having a sale, and she could probably get by for $20.

Well, not only did she have coupons, but she found "on product" coupons, too. There was a "Buy a makeup thing, get an eye makeup thing free" coupon, and a "Buy an eye makeup thing, get a different eye makeup thing free" coupon. By combining these, she got the makeup thing, the eye make-up thing, and the other eye make-up thing, all for less than the price of the make-up thing, since she had a coupon for that to begin with.

Plus, the coupons were for higher quality stuff than she usually pays for.

All told, she ended up with over $35 in name brand make-up for less than $13.

Coupon clipping works.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Why low-Cal is smarter than low Carb

(I previously posted this in the Good Eats Yahoo! Group, so if you've seen it before, that's where.)

Everything you eat is made up of five things. Proteins, carbs, fat, fiber, and water.

Every gram of protein you eat contains 4 calories.

Every gram of carbohydrates you eat contains 4 calories.

Every gram of fat you eat contains 9 calories.

Fiber and water contain no calories.

If you eat more calories than you burn, you're going to gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than you burn you're going to lose weight. Despite all the different kinds of "trick" diets, "special" diets, whatever, this is the basic formula for weight loss.

That's it. More = store, less = lose. It's that simple. It's science.

Okay, so if that's the case, you're left with two requirements if you want to lose weight: You need to burn more calories, and consume less calories.

Naturally, the best way to burn more calories is by exercising. Not only do you burn the calories you expend while you exercise, but if you get your heart rate up to aerobic levels for twenty minutes a day, you can increase your body's base metabolic rate for hours afterwards. So you'll burn a ton of calories.

Weight training is also good. Not only is it good exercise, but if your body has more muscle, you will burn more calories every day just by having it. Muscle is high-maintenance tissue, and calories have to be burned just to keep it going. Fat just sits there, requiring no maintenance at all.

You can also burn more calories based on what you eat. For example, if you drink eight glasses of ice-cold water a day, your body will have to burn calories to warm that water up to 98.6 degrees. You burn enough calories to lose a pound of fat in two weeks that way.

Also, eating fiber can increase your metabolism. Fiber contains no calories, yet requires energy to process. Hence some foods have "negative calories," like celery and other greens.

Or, eating multiple times throughout the day can keep your body in a constant state of digestion. This digestion burns calories. But if you're not eating a lot, it won't "weigh you down."

Some diets take this to an extreme, though, trying to regulate the entire metabolic system entirely through food, without requiring exercise.

The Atkins plan is based on the idea that by eliminating carbs, your body has to expend more energy in order to convert protein and fat into a "carb-like" state, so it can use them for energy.

Does this work?

Well, if you eat one gram of carbs, there are only four calories. A gram of fat has nine calories. So it will be harder to eat "less" calories of something that contains nearly double the calories per gram. In other words, five grams of fat would have more calories than ten grams of carbs.

Dr. Atkins will point out, though, that part of those extra fat calories will be burned up just to get that fat you ate into a useful state.

This is true. However, it's only true if the fat calories get burned the minute you eat them. If they don't, and the fat gets stored, all nine calories get planted directly on your waist. It takes no energy to store fat as fat.

On the other hand, while the carb calories do not require calories to be made useful for energy, it does require calories to convert the carbs into fat. So if you've had a little too much, not all four grams of carbs will see their way to your waist.

Anyways, here's the big caveat--not all weight loss is good. Just because pounds went away, doesn't mean you lost fat. You can lose water weight, you can lose muscle, and you can lose fat. Really, the only one you're worried about is fat. If the weight you're losing is muscle, that's actually bad.

And there lies the problem--fat is actually the hardest one to get your body to burn. Right now, today, if you started starving yourself, your body is not going to start using fat for nourishment. It's not.

If your body thinks you're starving, it's going to hold on to your fat like mad, because it doesn't know how long this "famine" is going to last.

When your metabolism goes into Emergency Mode, it does everything it can to avoid burning your fat. It generally plunders your muscles and the sugars stored in your muscles first. So while the pounds DO come off, you're losing muscle, not fat. And since pounds of muscle take up considerably less space than pounds of fat, you're not going to get any smaller around the middle.

This "Emergency Mode Metabolism" is called Ketosis, and it's the direct result of not having enough carbohydrates. For years, athletes used the same "Ketostix" that Atkins dieters now use, but for the reverse purpose--in order to AVOID Ketosis, because they knew it for what it was--not the time when your body becomes a "fat burning furnace" but the time when your body most stubbornly starts holding on to fat, and cannibalizing muscle.

Now, if you persist in a state of ketosis long enough (and you'll know when you're in it, because, among other things, your breath will be unbearable) your body WILL be forced to start burning the fat. And the inches will start to come off behind the pounds. You'll think things are great.

But the problem is, your body is coming at your fat cells with a starvation mentality. It doesn't know when it will see carbs again, and so it is still yielding up the fat reluctantly. It's slowing down your metabolism, so that you burn fewer calories a day, so it can tenaciously cling to as much of that fat as it can.

But the worst comes when you end the diet. Because as far as your body is concerned, you have just come away from a period of famine. And as far as your body is concerned, another famine may strike again at any moment.

Consequently, it will vigorously begin to store as much food as it possibly can as fat, saving up for the winter, so to speak. And you will actually gain more weight than before the diet, because now your metabolism is running slower, as I mentioned, and your body has less muscle on it, which means it burns fewer calories to maintain the muscle.

The sad truth is that your body just doesn't want to give up fat easily. The most fat you can hope to lose is 1-3 pounds a week. If you're losing more weight than that, you're not losing fat. You're losing water and muscle.

A good, healthy diet should look something like this:

Exercise every day. Weight train a few times a week.

Eat small portions throughout the day. Either eat six small meals, or three reasonable meals and have three small healthy snacks.

Eat unprocessed foods. In other words, foods that are as close to their natural state as possible (A twinky, for example, is not found in nature).

Have some of each of the five things at each meal. (Protein, Carbs, Fat, Fiber, Water.) Despite the Atkins people, your body really does need more Carbs than protein.

What will happen? At first, you won't lose as much weight. But you will lose
inches. Your clothes will fit better. This is because you'll be gaining muscle as you lose fat. The muscle is denser, so you have the same number of pounds in less space.

(Notice that this is the opposite of the Ketosis plan, where the pounds come off before the inches. This time, the right weight is being lost.)

Then, pounds will follow. As you have a greater amount of muscle, your base metabolic rate will increase, and you'll be burning more calories just standing around.

Because you're constantly providing nutrients to your body, it won't feel as obligated to store the fat as tenaciously. And since you're constantly digesting, even that will burn more calories.

And then your body really will be a metabolic furnance. You really will be burning more calories. At a relaxed, safe, calm pace. The same gradual process that you took when you put the weight on.

If pounds are coming off but inches aren't, you're losing muscle, not fat, and you need to up your carb intake.

The good news is that the reverse is true as well--if the inches are coming off, but the pounds aren't, relax. Your weightlifting is paying off. You're gaining muscle at about the same rate you're losing fat. Your weight may be the same, but your state of health definitely isn't.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Answering Riddles: Compound Interest

So, did you do the math? What did you find out?

If you missed it, go back and have a look at Saturday's riddle.

Okay, let's add it up for you:

Day - Plan A - Plan B
1) $100.00 $0.01
2) $100.00 $0.02
3) $100.00 $0.04
4) $100.00 $0.08 (Plan B people aren't even making a dime. This riddle doesn't even seem fair.)
5) $100.00 $0.16
6) $100.00 $0.32
7) $100.00 $0.64 (It's been a week, and the Plan B people haven't even made a dollar a day yet! What were those Plan B people thinking?)
8) $100.00 $1.28
9) $100.00 $2.56
10) $100.00 $5.12
11) $100.00 $10.24
12) $100.00 $20.48
13) $100.00 $40.96
14) $100.00 $81.92 (Two weeks down, and the plan B people still aren't making as much as the Plan A people! Halfway over, and the plan A folks are clear winners. Anybody want to switch sides?)
15) $100.00 $163.84
16) $100.00 $327.68
17) $100.00 $655.36
18) $100.00 $1,310.72 (Hey, wait! These plan B numbers are getting big!)
19) $100.00 $2,621.44 (Wait! The plan B people just got more in one day than the plan A people have made total, so far!)
20) $100.00 $5,242.88
21) $100.00 $10,485.76 (Three weeks down, and the plan B people are now making 100 times what the plan A people are getting! Things weren't like this a week ago.)
22) $100.00 $20,971.52
23) $100.00 $41,943.04
24) $100.00 $83,886.08
25) $100.00 $167,772.16
26) $100.00 $335,544.32 (That's over a third of a million dollars in one day!)
27) $100.00 $671,088.64
28) $100.00 $1,342,177.28 (Over a million dollars? Are you serious?)
29) $100.00 $2,684,354.56
30) $100.00 $5,368,709.12 (Five million dollars? What's happening here?)

The total payout? Under plan A, you'd get exactly $3,000. Under plan B, you'd end up with $10,737,418.23. It would take more than 3,000 months of making $3,000 a month to get that much!

So what happened here? How did we get from a penny to five million dollars?

The answer is a little principal called "Compound Interest." Albert Einstein is reported to have said, "Compounding interest is the greatest mathematical discovery of all time." I don't know if he said it or not, but as you can see in the above example, it's power can't be understated.

What compound interest means is this: If you have some money, and you put it in a place that earns interest, not only will your money earn interest, but the interest you earned will also earn interest. Before too long, you get to see interest earning interest on interest earning interest. This "stacking" of interest in on interest is called "compounding."

The money you make makes you more and more money the longer you let the interest "compound."

This is what it means if you hear that money is "compounded annually" or "compounded monthly." It describes how often they add the interest on top of the interest. If it's compounded annually, the interest only stacks up once a year. If it's compounded monthly, the interest stacks up every month. And if it compounds daily, then every single day, you're earning interest on the interest from the day before.

As you can see in the above example, the main thing you need in order to harness the power of this principle is time. The more time you have, the greater the principal can work for you. After one or two weeks, it didn't seem like we were doing that well. But the longer the time went on, the more dramatic the results became. If you extended this out further, you can imagine how quickly it would build.

The other important element is the interest rate. What percent interest you're making on your money can greatly accelerate the growth of your money. My example was extreme--we doubled our money every day. But you can double your money at any interest rate. To figure out how quickly, we use the Rule of 72.

To use the rule of 72, just divide the annual interest rate you're getting into 72. That's how many years it would take to double your money. At 10% interest, your money will double in 7.2 years. At 12% interest, your money would double in 6 years. On average, Coca Cola stock has returned 16% interest. At that rate, your money would double in less than 5 years.

How quickly does that add up? Well, let's say a teenager puts $2,000 away on his 16th and 17th birthdays. If he got 12% interest on that, he'd retire at 65 with $1,094,079.72, even if he never contributed another dime towards retirement.

On the other hand, if I, the guy turning 30 this year, put $2,000 a year in the same fund from now until I retire--that's $72,000, total--I'd still end up almost $10,000 shy of matching him. I'd still end up a millionaire, but with a $68,000 higher pricetag.

But even then, it still cost me less than $75,000 to become a millionaire. Those are still great numbers.

So now that you know how interest works, think about how your credit card companies are working with you. If they're getting 20% interest on their money, what's 72/20? Like, three and a half? By giving money to you at that interest rate, they can collect double their money from you in just three and a half years. You think you're paying it down, but you're really not.

If you only pay the minimum, the average credit card bill takes 48 years to pay off. The credit card company wants you to keep their money. They're more interested in letting that money compound, and letting you pay that.

Remember the other famous saying about compound interest: "Thems that understand it, earns it, thems that don't, pays it."

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Sunday Book Review: The Business Plan For The Body





In a time when most diet and fitness books seek to provide you with some "trick" to losing weight, some special way that you can eat all that you want, as long as you avoid the special food type or special secret that "unlocks your weight loss power," The Business Plan for the Body by Jim Karas stands out as a no-nonsense, realistic approach to weight loss.

If you have no problem with your finances, but struggle with weight issues, this may be the book for you. His approach is simple--if you treat your body the same way you would the financials of a business, you can control your success.

While the Karas can be blunt, and at times comes across as a wee bit vain (I don't think I'd want to hang out with this guy in real life) the facts are straightforward and accurate. No over-the-top false promises here. Just an absolutely clean, no-hype look at the cold, hard facts for weight loss and fitness.

Halfway through my last weight loss success, I shifted from Body for Life over to this book. While Body For Life was great to get me started, I felt like this book helped me step it up. Worth a read.