Posts by viyahn

Hey there! My goals are to lose weight, strengthen, improve my heart health/cholesterol and complete the Sun Run Marathon here in Vancouver by next year. I jog in the mornings (as far as I can go before I just can't anymore), eat a clean vegan diet to manage my cholesterol and bike/swim on weekends.

Height: 5'11"

Age: 21

Start weight: 242lbs

Current weight: 218lbs

Goal weight: 154-165lbs (unsure, it's so far away yet!)

Goal pant size: 8

Start size: 18

Current: 13/14

Original Post by lysistrata:

Original Post by kdawg81:

I also found this info:

Supersedure is the process by which an old queen bee is replaced by a new queen. Supersedure may be initiated due to old age of a queen or a diseased or failing queen. As the queen ages her pheromone output diminishes.

Supersedure may be forced by a beekeeper. For example, by clipping off one of the middle or posterior legs from the queen, she will be unable to properly place her eggs at the bottom of the brood cell. The workers will detect this and will then rear replacement queens.

When a new queen is available, the workers will kill the reigning queen by "balling" her — clustering tightly around her until she dies from overheating. (This overheating method is also used to kill large predatory wasps that enter the hive in search of food and may be used against a foreign queen attempting to take over an existing colony.) Balling is often a problem for beekeepers attempting to introduce a replacement queen.

located at this link:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Queen _bee

Ok ... but if I understand this correctly, the balling is something that the bees do.  Naturally.  In other words, they would do it anyway without the beekeeper being involved ... yes?

Only if the queen is injured or incapable of laying. So by injuring the queen keepers are forcing the bees to 'ball' her and in effect simply killing her. It's on par with outright squshing her, imo.

Original Post by kdawg81:

I believe  I read from Burt's Bees that beekeepers kill the queen bee every so often to increase production. I don't know anything about that- that's just what I read. I didn't have a problem with honey until I read that. Now I mostly just buy agave nectar, but I will buy honey from local farms sometimes. Either way, I'd still prefer it not be from a large mass-produced company.

Oh my god, are you serious? I'm going to have to look into this a bit more, because if you're right that might be enough to have me permanently switch to maple syrup. Man, I love honey. :/

Really, though, I've never heard of this before! Weird.

Well, sully, since you're so opposed to the book just don't read it. :) Personally I loved it, yes I would recommend it, and no I don't think it's a bad as you're saying it is. My cousin (who is a nutritionist) says it's a good book, and that's good enough for me. I -like- the sassy, bitchy tone of the writing because it gives you that 'kick in the ass' I tend to really need and I find the cynical, sarcastic humor very amusing. The recipes are extremely helpful, as well.

As with any book, I wouldn't recommend you blindly take the contents as biblical fact. Do your research, and as the authors constantly insist, "use your head!"

As a new vegan I don't feel this book will hurt you in any way, and every once and a while it might even prove a valuable resource. Vegan brownies, for example! ;)

Barbecues are easy - just buy yourself some vegetarian burgers or hot dogs. You can get vegetarian immitation chicken breasts, beef strips and I've even seen an immitation steak. I have a barbecue and LOVE using it. My fiance eats cow flesh and I eat tofu dogs. It all works out.

You can get some pretty incredibly portabella mushroom patties in the cooler section of your supermarket. I shop the Safeway and Superstore. There are tons of options.

As for the family friction... yeah, I know all about that. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me "where do you get your protein?" I'd have a hell of a lot of nickels, and for the first few months I was vegan I got criticized every time I went out socially to a restaurant or dinner date at someone else's place. It took a really long time for my boyfriend to stop trying to buy me cheese and ice cream. I also had to teach him and my roommate what it meant to be vegan and what foods were good and what weren't.

There's a ton of misinformation out there and yeah, it's going to be really hard. You have to decide whether or not it's worth it to you to deal with all of that. It gets easier after your friends and family get used to the idea and realize you're not crazy or dying of malnutrition, but generations of teaching have reinforced in them the idea that meat is necessary to make a healthy, 'complete' meal. It's like trying to tell 16th century europeans the world is round to say you can be healthy and not kill a cow to do it.

Make sure you're solid in your convictions and go hard. If you're not 100% sure of why you're doing it it's easy to fall off the wagon. Remember you can always come back here for advice or ideas, most of us are very eager to help. ;)

As for dealing with family? PATIENCE is key. Akward dinners and conversations are imminent. Just try to understand that for the most part they're well-meaning and just misinformed (or completely uninformed). Read up on the topic and be prepared to defend your stance. Remember, you're doing this for you (and the chickens!), not for them. It would be nice to have their support, but it isn't strictly necessary.

I second Oxygen! It's REALLY good. I'm nto a fitness mag reader, per se, but I love this magazine. You should give it a shot. It's not into fad dieting or anything like that, they advocate regular workout regimines and have lots of helpful advice for the gym and home.

...boycotting maple syrup will have absolutely no effect on seal clubbing. It'll jsut make the tree farmers sad. Maple syrup is not a huge enough industry in Canada to get government attention over this unrelated issue.

PETA is typically extremist, offensive and totally thoughtless. When that kid was decapitated on a greyhound bus here in Canada PETA ran a campaign comparing the violent murder and mutilation to slaughtering chickens for food. It was tasteless. They ran "sexy vegetable" adds during the superbowl showing mostly naked people in erotic situations with vegetables. Families watch that crap. When Mary Kate and Ashley wore fur they ran a smear campaign depicting them as ugly, hairy, unhygenic smokers that tortured kittens. There were little flash games you could play with them. The native peoples of northern Canada hunt seals for furs and food, so PETA runs a boycott of Canadian maple syrup and sells tote-bags depicting the olympic mascots as blood-crazed violent yetis torturing fluffy looking seal pups. Pretty run-of-the-mill.

The only thing they ever did that I supported was the Iams boycott to stop brutal and unnecessary animal testing performed by the company. Most of the pet stores in my area participated in that. It was a rare occassion where the organization did something right.

I will look for these, thanks guys! :D I live in a huge city so fingers crossed I'll be able to find them. You've been a great help.

Original Post by ds1973:

Edit: Oh, I see, you're a VEGAN.  Yeah, I get it now.  Don't worry, I'm eating enough chickens, cows and fish to more than make up for your boycott. 

I am so incredibly shocked an offended by this statement! So, so incredibly shocked and offended. How could you say something like that? Did you even think at all? This was a completely unncesessary and insensitive attack on another person's lifestyle choice. I could not be more outraged by it if you had just bashed someone for being homosexual or worshipping a different god than you. You should be ashamed.

If someone disagrees with the advice you are giving a mature person would respectfully explain their stance and sources without getting low and dirty with personal attacks.

Yes, a lot of people use low-carb high-protein diets to lose weight. No, it is not always a healthy way to do it, and certainly it is a very unhealthy diet to maintain over a long period of time. It puts a considerable amount of strain on your kidneys as metabolizing protein produces nitrogen waste that the body is forced to release as urea. This toxic substance passes through your kidneys and out as urine. Actually, a lot of the initial weight loss you will experience during a high-protein diet will be water weight because the extreme levels of proitein act almost as a diuretic in this respect. You'll be dropping all the processed carbs out of your diet which will cause you to lose weight regardless, however, so that's the only real part of the diet that works.

The human body can only produce so much muscle mass at a time. 210g of protein a day will produce the same amount of muscle at 410g of protein a day, so I've never understood the body builder's obsession with stuffing full of as much as they can get. The excess calories will store as fat whether they're protein or carbs, but drastically unbalancing the nutrients you intake can have adverse effects sometimes bordering on the extreme. I strongly advise against such a young athlete cutting back his carbohydrates so dramatically, regardless of anything else. He's still growing and developing and the brain and organs need carbohydrates to do this. Whatever advice you give, that's something you should try to keep in mind. Yes, make sure you're getting enough as an athlete to maintain your health and muscle mass. No, don't try and dump more of it on your body than it can healthily handle.

Yes, I am a vegan. No, this doesn't mean I am anti-protein. I actually spend a lot of time thinking about how to get enough protein into my diet, and dead animals or animal products are not the only way to do so. :)

If you're struggling with reducing your fat percentage without experiencing fatigue I would reccommend you talk to a professional nutritionist and wait until the off season to make any drastic dietary changes if you decide to restrict your caloric intake. Instead of cutting calories perhaps you should consider maintaining the same calories but lowering your fat and refined carbohydrate intake? If you stick mostly to lean foods and clean whole grains I predict it might help you reach your goals. Better fuel, not less, should get you where you're trying to go. All that exercise and lean muscle you're packing should happily chow down on your fat reserves considering just how active you are. :)

Good luck! Let us know what works for you.

Original Post by folkharpist:

And they were sooooooo good, you'd never know they were vegan. We added peanut butter frosting to ours. Simply marvelous!

I'm going to have to try this! Thanks for the tip! :o

Original Post by bubbles556:
its not a very wise tool, it will tell you totally unrealistic and unhealthy things. thats my observation about it. 

and is why i use the www.phord.com/cc tool instead. it was apparently developed by a fellow cc'er who recognized the lameness of the cc tool here and did something thats a bit more sophisticated.

Whoa nelly, I used that tool and it told me to eat five hundered calories a day more than CC says to! Lately I've been feeling realy sluggish and tired (and I've pretty much stopped losing) so perhaps there's something to it!

I lost five pounds in a week using the cc tools, but that's likely way too fast. I'm gonna bump up my intake a little bit 'cause this seems a tad scary.

I don't know about butter, but I've gotten very sad in the stomach after accidentally eating meat products. I talked to a doctor about it, once, and she told me that because I don't eat meat my stomach and digestive tract contain a very low amount of enzymes and bacteria required to break down and adequately digest the meat product. So basically, bloat, gas, and indigestion abound. The food pretty much rots in your tum-tum until it passes because your body just isn't used to dealing with it anymore.

If you were to gradually ease back into an omnivorous diet, though, your body would build back up those enzymes over time.

I suppose it COULD make you sick if it was a very large quantity of butter. How much butter are we talking about here? A smear on a slice of toast or 'dipping my entree in melted butter sauce' butter?

Try making yourself a mix of raw, unsalted nuts and dried fruit. This provides a delicious, high-calorie and extremely healthy snack! My personal favourite right now is almonds, pumpkin seeds and unsweetened craisins mixed together. Almonds have roughly seven calories a piece, pumpkin seeds roughly 190 per quarter-cup and dried cranberries 100 calories per third cup. You can mix it up by changing the nuts or the fruit. It keeps it fresh!

Avocados are high in calories and very healthy. They're rich in the good fats and I think that a single avocado fruit is about 300 calories, but I'm not checking so don't take it as gospel. They have a good deal of fiber in them, too.

Eggs! Personally I avoid animal products, but hard-boiled eggs are full of good nutrients and are very satisfying. They're also easy to pack around! If you like milks and cheeses you might also try incorporating cottage cheese into your meals for a healthy little kick. Try mixing it with tomatoes and basil or your favourite raw fruit.

ANother thing I like to do is make sandwhiches with whole-wheat spelt or flax bread. A slice of the good stuff clocks in at just over 100 calories, so it's easy to round a sandwhich with some healthy fixings out to 300 or 400 calories. Whole wheat tortillas are great, too. Pretty much anything 'whole' is ridiculously filling, healthy and higher on the calorie scale.

Hope this helps! If you have any other questions you can feel free to drop me a note. Good luck!

I applied at a local chicken slaughter house a month after I got out of highschool because they were advertising 18 dollar an hour possitions and it was a twenty minute walk from my home. The man running the place was a mean, bee-battered middle aged man who literally told me he would not hire me because I was female, but he would hire my male friend who came in with me the same day to apply. He gave us a tour of the facilities.

I watched them load up the struggling, bloody, beak-less chickens onto the conveyor-belt like shackle system. Everything was covered in bird excrement. The entire building was filled with a repetitive, melodic 'shink' noise, and I didn't realise exactly what that noise was until my friend and I were talking and a dozen damp, freshly cut chicken heads fell out of a shoot next to me to land on the muddy dirt floor. Just the floor. There was nothing to catch them, no indicator that they would land there. I just stared. I could not believe it.

Then I had this overwhelming urge to be sick.

The place had an atmosphere unlike anything I have ever seen or felt. It was extremely unsettling, and the workers treat the chickens extremely poorly. I watched a man punch a struggling chicken and break its wing as it was being strapped into the belt. I watched them strap up already dead chickens that didn't survive the trip. I watched them boil the feathers off the birds' bodies and cut off then unceremoniously dispose of their heads. And I was outraged.

I stopped eating chicken immediately, and a year or so later cut all meat products from my diet. Now I'm nearly vegan, my one exception being honey. I just can't let go of my green tea with honey or my granola with honey. Maybe one day.

After watching it, though, the decission is extremely easy. My carnivorous and proud male friend that applied with me stopped eating chicken for months afterwards and once confided in me he felt bad for his steak. It's difficult to meet your dinner. I just never want to be faced with the situation again.

gi-jane:

Well, I suppose I can't rule out iron deficiency, though it seems unlikely considering the fact that I take a supplement and keep my greens high. I'll keep an eye on it, though, just to be safe. Maybe incorporate some cream of wheat into my diet.

My lethargy does seem to be in direct correlation to the diet change since I didn't have any symptoms like this before I switched over, but if it continues after I try and improve my diet I'll see a physician.

As for caloric intake - I'm trying to lose, so average about 1800 a day or so when I exercise. That's the goal, anyhow.

Thanks for the advice.