Posts by john_liu

You might try raising your desk so that you can use it as a "standing desk" or perch on a high stool.  A co-worker does this for his back issues. 

Or you can simply recognize your advanced age and do as an oldster should.  Sit on a park bench, gumming your metamucil and leering at the pretty girls.

I do not know much about the dietary needs of diabetics, so please keep that in mind when reading the following.

Three basic issues.  What to eat, How to prepare it, How much to eat.

What to eat. 

- You basically want to minimize certain foods that are particularly dense in calories.  Things made from grains - the most common are rice and flour (pasta, bread, baked goods).  Things with a lot of sugar (sweet stuff, pastries, non-diet sodas, some commercial sauces).  Things with a lot of fat (animal fat, oils, butter, cheeses, cream, and many things with a pasty consistency, e.g. hummus) - but don't go nuts and banish fat entirely, you do need some and it tastes yummy. 

- You also want to avoid foods with a lot of sodium.  That means many processed foods (canned soups, packaged meals, cured meats, all fast foods, most snack foods).  Salt is a cheap flavor enhancer and is heavily used by the food industry.  You needn't avoid salt entirely, see below.

- Alcohol is high calorie and zero nutrition.  Some or occasional drinking is fine (and fun!).  Daily drinking isn't helpful. 

- Everything else is pretty much fine.  Any sort of fish or shellfish, pretty much any unprocessed cut of meat, any vegetable, any fruit (some are higher in sugar, but still low compared to a cookie), any herb or spice.

- In most grocery stores, this means you will do more of your shopping around the perimeter (where the meat, seafood, and greengrocer departments are) and less in the center (where the baking supplies, snack foods, canned and frozen goods live).

How to prepare it.

- In my view, no home cooking method needs to be ruled out for health or weight loss reasons.  Even when I'm counting calories stringently, I'm happy to saute my veggies in oil, deep fry my meats, add butter to my soups, and salt everything.  Just do the math - dropping a pat of butter to a saute pan only adds 36 calories, if you're cooking for two that's 13 cal per person, it just isn't a problem.   Add a teaspoon of kosher salt to a big pot of soup, that's 2000 mg sodium, so each bowl from that pot might be 200 mg sodium, it isn't a problem.  Adding a cup of half and half to that pot adds 320 calories total, just 32 cal per bowl.  After a session of deep frying, a couple of tablespoons of canola oil have made their way from pot to food, that is about 250 calories, each person eats some fraction of that. 

- If you are using the right ingredients, in their raw and unprocessed state, and cooking from scratch at home, you'll almost automatically make pretty healthy food.  

- So the preparation issue really comes down to making it tasty.  There are lots of ways to make food tasty. But everyone's taste is different, no point in posting a yummy baked salmon recipe if you hate fish.  So, get a "basic healthy cooking" sort of cookbook and just try out different dishes.  Make it a "quick meal" sort of book if you are time-pressed.  Cooks Illustrated has a "Best 30 Minute Recipe" book that I like.

How much to eat

- This is easy - get a $20 kitchen scale and weigh each portion.  It feels silly at first, then you don't think anything of it.  After a while you'll get used to what 6 oz of meat, etc, looks like and you'll get used to those portion sizes. 

- The commercial food industry has trained us to expect huge quantities of cheap, high-calorie, filler food.  It takes a while to retrain yourself to moderate quantities of good, healthy, tasty food.  Remember: quality over quantity.  

- There are also supporting tricks like using small plates, eating with chopsticks, waiting 20 minutes before considering having seconds, etc.

Hurrah! Show those pants who's the Master (Mistress)!

What is your secret?  I'm well and truly stuck at 182-184 lbs. 

I can't really avoid riding outdoors, since the bike is my commute vehicle and I have vowed to ride every day all winter absent actual snowfall.  Also part of my strategy for dealing w/ SAD and low Vitamin D during the Portland winters is to force myself to be outside as much as possible.  We mostly have cold and rain, which I consider manageable; at the higher elevations the roads do ice up and on the flats black ice is infrequent but dreaded.       

During all my skiing and bicycling, I've never tried to break a fall with my hands, I always roll or worst-case go down on my hip/side.  E.g. I dropped the bicycle on some ice a month ago, went down on my hip; last fall before that I rolled.  My guess is that my ribs and/or collarbone are more at risk than my wrists.  If the roads get scarier, I may switch my weekend rides to the local trails, theory being that dirt is softer than pavement and there's no following car to run you over. 

I had dinner w/ my injured friend on Saturday.  He has both wrists/hands in big casts, his fingers are mobile but his thumbs are immobilized.  He has wires in his wrists, after the healing they get pulled out (ouch).  He is a doctor, not a surgeon fortunately, and has a pretty high tolerance for pain.  

Great article, thanks.  Here: male, unknown genetics, no training history, 48 y/o - so we'll see what happens.  Darn age thing.   

OP, you're a lucky (young) fellow, make the most of it!

Wow, the 20 lb/year one is more than I'd thought. 

Err, how "serious" is "serious"?  Are we talking seven days a week, multiple hours per day?  Or can "training smart" substitute for "training long"?  I'm expecting to work hard, but am pretty time-challenged.

"in the first year of serious strength training a beginner will on average add about 20lbs of muscle, 10 the second, and 5 during the third and fourth year after which progression becomes generally imperceptible."