2024 New Years Resolutions

[REPO Man]

Too bad lentils and rice can't be tossed in the microwave for three minutes and end up tasting like pepperoni pizza.

But seriously, we're already on page three and no one else has said fuck-all about their resolutions.

I appreciate the help, but maybe someone should create a new topic for health and wellness advice. That way we can talk about our resolutions and congratulate others on theirs.

[Ziggy]

Yes, preparing meals to bring to work is hard in that it takes time and dedication. I don't, myself. But if that's the case, then at least don't eat total shit for lunch. Like fast food with soda.

Making individual meals each day would take too much time. Most people who bring prepared foods to work for lunch make everything in one go. For example, you could fry or grill up 5 chicken cutlets at once, and make 5 different lunches out of it.

I can also be picky with foods. But on the upside, I can be satisfied with something simple. My meals don't have to always be something amazing. he above chicken cutlets example, I can throw one on bread with a slice of cheese and ketchup and be perfectly happy with that. Or cut one up and put it in a container with chopped lettuce and whatever else you like (tomato, cucumber, whatever, just not too much dressing) and call it a salad. I could eat something that simple for lunch every day and be happy with it. The salad 2 or 3 days each week, the sandwich the remaining days. Making these salads and sandwiches would take less than an hour, and that's 5 days of lunches right there.

Pizza is bad because it's mostly bread. I've lived my whole life on Long Island. I absolutely love pizza. There's been times that I've had it every day for lunch for weeks or months on end. Sometimes for lunch AND dinner. So it pains me to say this, but pizza is not a good meal. Once in a while is OK, but not every day.

Pepperoni isn't just beef and pork (which are bad meats) but it's a heavily processed thing. There's so much more in there than the meats, red meat isn't even the worst part about it.

The advice is easy to give, and it's even easy to understand, but it's hard to actually do and to keep up doing. You are not alone in that. Plenty of people eat bad when they know better. Myself included. You have to keep your eyes on the prize.

It's easier to maintain a diet change once you get into the swing of it. Like anything, you have to make and break habits. After a few weeks of a healthier diet (if you're doing it right) when you start to feel better you'll be less likely to make bad choices because you know it'll make you feel bad. For example, if you've been eating good for a few weeks and feel like you have more energy, you'll be less likely to eat a big portion of carbs (like a big bowl of pasta or a lot of pizza) or a dessert with crazy sugar because you wont want to go into a food coma.

I don't think many people do the resolutions thing.

[Golgo 14]

I hit the scale for the first time in a long time today and I'm about 14.5 pounds over my target weight. I expected something like that, but it's still disappointing. I've really been lax on my diet lately, killing pints of ice cream and bags of chips at good clip. Part of the problem is that I buy ice cream and chips for my mom (she's 92 so why shouldn't she eat what she wants every day?) and since it's in the house I end up eating some of it.

Since I'm in no particular hurry, my goal is to lose about a third of pound a week until Halloween or so. A slow pace like that should make the process fairly painless, mixing increased exercise. I'm no dietitian, but if you're losing more than 2 pounds a week, that's either water weight or you're doing something drastic and unhealthy.

Speaking of unhealthy, I eat a lot of what these days they call ultraprocessed foods, but I don't see it as much of a problem as long as the nutrition is there. At least when it comes to losing weight, it's mostly a simple calorie equation: if you burn more than you take in, you're going to lose weight.

[Ziggy]

I disagree with the assertion that a healthy diet will be expensive compared to one built upon hot pockets.

You aren't wrong, you can eat better than frozen and fast foods for the same amount of money or less. I was speaking of healthy food more in terms of the quality of the food and not what foods. So meats that tout no antibiotics or hormones, or range free blah blah, are often more money. And organic meats are even more money still. Organic foods, on the whole, are more expensive. For eating healthy, there's nutritional values and then there looking at what chemicals might be in the food. The later definitely being more expensive.

[Raging Justice]

In my experience, exercise and physical activity is SIGNIFICANTLY more important than diet. 90% of the health issues I've had in my life were due to lack of physical activity and my weight. You do not have to diet to lose weight. You just need to be active.

I know people who eat whatever they want, but they use moderation, and they are constantly active, keeping themselves constantly busy, and moving around a lot. They are all slim and healthy.

What you eat does have an effect on your body and it can very much affect how you feel (and your mood) as well, but your weight and how accustomed your body is to physical activity is much more important. People who are too sedentary will even suffer from muscle atrophy over time. Plus, things like diabetes and blood clots all come from not having an active lifestyle and thus gaining weight.

GET OFF YOUR ASS AND MOVE AROUND. That is the most important thing you can do. IT'S HOW YOUR BODY IS DESIGNED TO FUNCTION. Go to a gym, maybe lift some weights, and FUCKING WALK EVERY DAY. Walking is so goddamn important. Even better if you run. Walking has so many health benefits including improving your cardio and it's such a simple thing that anyone can do. Do some kind of activity that stretches your muscles and elongates your spine too like yoga for example. You'll avoid so many problems over time if you get your body flexible and as you get older the state of your back is very important. Stretching and elongating the spine helps with that a lot.

Eating right is a good thing, but it's expensive and difficult. Physical activity and exercise will have a much greater impact on your body in the long run.

I will say this though, there's nothing wrong with eating meat, try some QUALITY meat though like the grass fed stuff. Or just stick to turkey and chicken (grilled, not breaded). Seafood is great, but I detest the taste of it.

Then just focus on drinking lots of water, probiotics/prebiotics (for gut health), and multi-vitamins.

If you want to do a strict diet on top of all that, go for it, but I find dieting more of a hassle than it's worth. Just use moderation. Don't go overboard on carbs and sweets, don't put a ton of salt on everything you eat, common sense stuff. And yeah, less processed foods is generally a good idea. Focus more on exercise than what you eat though.

[Ziggy]

I will say this though, there's nothing wrong with eating meat, try some QUALITY meat though like the grass fed stuff. Or just stick to turkey and chicken (grilled, not breaded). Seafood is great, but I detest the taste of it.

My problem is that chicken kind of grosses me out but I fucking love steak. I could eat a giant steak that fills the entire plate for dinner, with no sides! Chicken I'll eat, but I have to slice a cutlet thin and fry the hell out of it. Or thin, marinated, and grill the hell out of it. Under cooked steak, great! Anything remotely close to under cooked chicken, I can't eat chicken for a while.

Fish is hit or miss for me. Some grosses me out, other stuff I love. Anything that tastes or smells really "fishy" I can't eat. But breaded and fried flounder is mostly like eating a chicken cutlet. And I've really grown to love salmon in recent years. Oh, and I love calamari.

PS - Don't bring fish to work for lunch. Your co-workers will be talking about what an ass hole you are behind your back because you stunk up the place.

[REPO Man]

I detest fish, and as for pizza if the option exists I'll opt for turkey pepperoni. And if possible, I'll nuke the pepperonis to get the excess grease out. Plus if you nuke them enough you can literally crumple them up, a la bacon.

But on the subject of my other resolutions:

* For the "write more" one, I have an idea for a short horror story involving a Midjourney-like AI image generator from the deep web. I've also been working on an idea for a play called "Hurricane Party", set in a family's house during a hurricane with each member of the multigenerational family dealing with the situation in different ways. It's told in three acts, each act having a different motif (Fantasy, which deals with what each person expects to do, usually drinking or reading; Reality, when everyone comes to terms with festering grievances while dealing with the reality of the storm; and finally a third act to be named later with everyone having grown from their experience).
* The card game, as said before, is based on Memory (aka Concentration), but uses a motif set around treasures typically associated with dungeons (i.e. gems and precious metals), divided into type of treasure (i.e. gold, diamonds, etc) and perceived value. Also, jokers are replaced with mimics.

[marurun]

Zig, you’re condemning carbs way too hard. For calorie density fat is arguably more problematic. The key to carbs is getting them less refined or otherwise paired with fiber and protein. Beans and brown rice have lots of carbs, but also protein and fiber. Heck, white rice and beans are also real tasty and healthy in proper helpings. Beans and rice will never taste like pizza, but with the right seasonings and sauce will taste great and are very affordable staples. Learn to cart around a soft-shelled cooler and keep it in the fridge where you work and you’ll be fine all day.

Also, while exercise does burn calories, over the longer haul our bodies adjust. If you exercise moderately for a few years your body will actually burn very few calories extra over your old baseline from before you changed your habits, because our metabolism adjusts to prioritize some functions over others. Our bodies don’t want to burn 10000 calories a day so they adjust over time to try to pull us toward our baseline calorie load. So in the short term exercise definitely burns extra calories. In the long term exercise maintains your health and body but ceases to contribute as much to burning off extra calories (I can find and link to the study about this if anyone is interested.)

[Ziggy]

Re: Carbs - I'm mainly talking about over loading on things like wheat and potato. And that being the case, I don't think I was hard enough of them. Pizza is like 90% bread, and bread makes you fat. Even if you put broccoli on it, it's still way too disproportional to the amount of vegetable and carbs you should be eating (so says the healthy food plate). And a bowl of spaghetti with like two meatballs, again it's all carbs and a little meat (and no veggie).

Re: Exercising - So what I said was that, for a lot of people, making smart choices in your diet isn't enough to lose weight fast enough. That discourages some people and they relapse into their bad eating habits rather quickly. So to jump start losing weight, you can bike or run. That, along with adjusting your diet, can help shed those first pounds more quickly than diet alone. Which can be very encouraging. And long term, running and biking are great cardiovascular exercise. And at the end of the day, some people have to do things like bike or run because they wouldn't get enough activity in their normal day.

But here's a fun little true story about carbs... I was once in a food court of a mall and I was thirsty. When I'm thirsty, soda is the last thing I want. So I went to a random counter that had no line, but their beverage choice wasn't clear. So I asked the girl behind the counter, "What drinks do you have that aren't carbonated?" The girls tells me to hold on and goes away for a few minutes. She comes back and tells me, "Diet Snapple Something and Diet Something Else." So I ask her, really, the only drinks you have that aren't carbonated are diet? She goes away again. When she comes back, she has a diet drink in her hand. She points to something on the nutrition facts and says, "Yeah, see, it only has X carbs in it."

[marurun]

Pizza is unhealthy for SO many reasons it seems unfair to pick on it just for carbs. It’s loaded with fat, salt, processed ingredients… there’s tons of reasons we love it so damn much. Well, so many reasons I love it, anyway.