Spreadsheeting...to...vic...tor......EEEE!

So, here's the problem with using software to design ingredient lists: no one really agrees on any of the data.

For example, I designed a nice ingredient list using the United States nutritional information at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/


2.5 cups Peas, green, frozen, unprepared
2.5 cups Corn, sweet, yellow, frozen, kernels cut off cob, unprepared
2.5 cups Collards, frozen, chopped, unprepared
1 cup Mushrooms, shiitake, raw
1 cup Nuts, almonds
1 cup Beans, snap, green, frozen, all styles, unprepared
1.5 cups Mollusks, clam, mixed species, canned, drained solids

That's supposed to be just under 1900 calories, and give really good quantities of everything except Vitamin D. But since D and B12 are hard to get, my plan has been to just take D and B12 pills, and not worry about it.

BUT. Everything else, according to the United States Government, looks good. Oil soluble vitamins like Vitamin A are not too high, and basically the whole batch of nutrients are almost perfectly balanced in just the right way.

So what do I do? I input the ingredient list into nutritiondata.com, at http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/1905617/2

It gives a really nice nutritional breakdown. But it also lists the calories at over 2200. Also, vitamin A is listed at 300% of the RDI, which is a lot closer to the upper tolerance level than the Government thought it would be.

Basically, both sources agree the ingredient list is pretty damn good. But the discrepancies are still so large!

On top of that, you've got to figure that store-bought foods don't match their official nutritional numbers very well.

So all of that can get pretty depressing. But then what typically happens is that I'll suddenly think to myself, "well actually, given the diet of the average American, it's probably good that there's a big grey area in there. If it all had to be balanced to such a nicety as I'm aiming for, there'd probably be a lot more people dropping like flies."

So that cheers me up. It reminds me that common sense just has to play a part, and I can't only rely on crunching numbers to figure out what to eat.

On the other hand, I just got back from the 2nd big yearly eatathon - Christmas - with another extra 5 lbs. Thanksgiving took me from 175 lbs to 180, and Christmas took me from 180 to 185. I'm just banking on getting back to my regimen, as the only thing that'll keep me from gaining back all the weight I took off. And doing a lot of spreadsheeting and ingredient list construction is one way I have of bringing myself back to the right head.

Spreadsheeting To Victory

So, one thing I've wanted to do for years is construct nutritionally optimized meals. It's a tough problem, because each food has different ratios of each nutrient; so stacking up a set of ingredients and quantities, that all add up to an optimized ingredient list, is hard.

And I cracked it! Turns out I was looking at it all wrong. I'd been thinking I wanted software that would do all the calculations for me. But actually it's much better to just automate a few little things that help narrow down which foods are available to add into my ingredient list.

So, here's what I did. I made a spreadsheet that had a bunch of foods, and a column for each nutrient; and I filled in the nutrients with an equation that would change the quantities of each nutrient to reflect the quantity of that particular food.

So if I put the quantity of green peas at 1 cup, all the nutrients adjust their values accordingly.

At the top of the spreadsheet is a special area, and if I move a food into that area, then it's part of my ingredient list, and I can see a summation of the nutritional values of all the foods on that list. So as I add each food, it shows me the total percent of the RDA I'd get from eating all the foods combined on that list.

That was what I was doing for awhile, and it worked a little, but not great. Through a lot of diligence and trial and error, I was able to cobble together a list of about 14 foods, mainly in 1/4 cup portions, that would add up to a complete nutritional balance, with a reasonable caloric intake.

But the real coolness was when I added a new column to the spreadsheet, that would give each food a score. At first I just averaged the values of each nutrient that the food contained; so the score essentially represented how nutritionally 'dense' that food was. And that was useful, in the sense that nutritionally dense foods are great to include in ingredient lists; but it wasn't as helpful as it could be, in terms of helping me pick exactly which food to add to a given ingredient list.

So then what I did was, I told the scoring function to take account of the ingredient list that was already up in the special part of the spreadsheet. For any given nutrient, if I still needed some of that nutrient, I'd include that value in the average. If the ingredient list already had enough of that nutrient, I wouldn't include it in the average. And, if any nutrient would put the ingredient list over the medically recommended maximum for that nutrient, that would send the food's score down to 0. In other words, I wouldn't consider it at all.

All of a sudden, the whole problem became easy!

The way it is now, using this mechanism, if a food has a high score, that means it will be directly beneficial to add to the ingredient list. So I just sort the spreadsheet on the 'score' column, and then select the next food for the ingredient list from the top items in the sheet.

In practice, this enables me to focus a lot more on which foods I think would taste good together.

So, here's an example of an ingredient list I've constructed with this technique:


2 cups Corn
2 cups Peas
2 cups Shiitake
2 tins Sardines
1 cup Almonds

That ingredient list gives me a relatively low caloric intake - but still 90% of the RDA, so it's good for weight loss. At the same time, it gives a virtually complete set of nutrients, with no nutrients going too high or too low. I'm no expert and you shouldn't rely on this information, but as far as I can tell, the above recipe gives me everything I need for a full day's eating.

Also, there are only 5 ingredients, with reasonable portions, instead of the 14 ingredients divvied up in 1/4 cup increments that I had to deal with before.

So, unlike the old days, where it was really hard to come up with even a single ingredient list that would meet my needs, now I can do it over and over. My master list of ingredients so far is still relatively small - only about 25 items - so there still tends to be some overlap. But now that I have the spreadsheet working, I'll be adding a lot more items to it as I discover more good foods.

Here's another ingredient list I figured out:


2 cups Lima Beans
2 cups Broccoli
2 cups Butternut Squash
1 cup Clams (canned)
1 cup Shiitake
1 cup Edamame
1/8 cup Almonds
1/8 cup Sesame Seeds


This one is a little less pretty because of the 1/8 cup measurements on a couple of those ingredients, but it's still pretty simple. This one is also even lower calorie than the previous recipe, so there's plenty of room for a few apples or other small snacks, if I want.

What this all really means, is that instead of having to eat the same meal every single day, I can now make a different meal for each day.

Every couple weeks I go buy my ingredients, divvy them up into freezer bags, and dump them in the freezer. Then each day I eat the contents of one of the bags. It's been OK, but it'd be nice to add some variety.

And now I can! When I divvy up the foods next time, I'll be able to put different ingredients into each bag, and still be confident that they'll contain everything I need for the day. Of course, not everything will be mixed in at once. Only the veggies will be frozen; the rest will be opened for each meal.

I'm very excited. I can't wait to add more foods to my growing database of available items, and to construct more meals for myself.

If anyone has any healthy foods to suggest, let me know so I can add them in, and start eating them! In theory, this spreadsheet could balance even unhealthy foods into a nutritionally complete meal, but I'm not really interested in trying to shoe-horn unhealthy foods into my diet.

Shaked? Baked.

Something went wrong with the new diet. It was really interesting. I started feeling as though something was just wrong. And I had that old sense that I used to get when I'd overeat all the time, that somehow eating would make me feel better. Even if I was already really full, I'd have this strong urge to eat as a curative measure.

So, that came back over the course of a few days, and peaked yesterday. At least I hope it was the peak. Sort of.

I think transitioning over to the grains and beans so suddenly from a primarily vegetable diet, was maybe a bit jarring to my lower brain. My suspicion is that the extra sugars are what did it.

It's kind of cool actually. Sort of hallucinatory. When I was little, growing up on a diet heavy in whole grains, I experienced mild hallucinations the whole time. Nothing major, but if I sat quietly and stared off into space, I'd perceive a kind of movement in whatever I was looking at, sort of a gentle fluctuation.

And that's started to come back over the past few days. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the sensation, especially since I just figured it was normal, and that I should sit and watch the world move.

So, I'm not sure exactly what to do now. Part of me is like, "weeee!" And the other part is like, "my preference is to not gain back all that weight." So, my inner parent and child are arguing about whether we should leave the park to go do homework, or wait for the ice cream truck jingle to sound closer and closer.

It's a little nerve-wracking, because yesterday I kind of pigged out on apples, nuts, a couple bites of cheese, and some entrées from the macrobiotic restaurant. I gave myself a .5 for the day.

I think my plan is going to be: go back to my old way of eating, and just add my new style gradually, and try to include more veggies alongside the grains and beans.

Not sure what else I can do. Plus I'm essentially tripping, so my judgment is a lot more easygoing. I'm like, "mmmmm, I bet it'd be fun to just see what happens....."

Shaking Things Up

So, I managed to get back on my diet. But now I've quit my job; which means I'm trying to get away from the restaurant-centric diet, and do more cooking at home, to save money.

So, instead of focusing on salads and macrobiotic/vegetarian meals, I'm shifting to foods that are relatively easy to prepare at home. I can cook pretty well when I have to, but honestly I just don't want to spend all that time doing it. My preference is to cook up a big batch of something-or-other, and then eat that for a few days, before cooking up another batch of something else.

Vegetables are still super healthy, and super low calorie; so I'm incorporating them into my new diet. Mainly I'll buy many bags of frozen veggies, and steam them. Whole Foods has organic frozen veggies, that are actually priced competitively to the lower-quality Western Beef options, that my roommate had kept recommending to me. (When he first came with me to Whole Foods, he couldn't wrap his head around it for awhile, then finally said he might start going to Whole Foods for his frozen veggies.)

Aside from that, the really healthy foods are whole grains, and beans. Both of which Whole Foods has in bulk, and organic.

So, for example, consider this collard green, mung bean, quinoa, sardine arrangement (not all mixed together, but just in terms of quantities):

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/1847443/2

It's 1600 calories, and it's basically everything I need for the day. The 1 cup of beans and the 1 cup of quinoa probably cook up to about 4 cups of actual chomp material. So that and the vegetables and sardines add up to a really huge feast. Plenty to last through lunch and dinner.

The 1600 calories is actually a bit lower than what I want; so that leaves room for some nuts and fruit, if I want to give in to the snack urge.

But the above recipe isn't actually something I spent a lot of time designing; it just so happens that when you mix up a vegetable, a grain, a bean, and a tin of sardines, you're very likely to get a fairly complete meal. Though those particular choices are healthier than most.

The problem is that this is a pretty big change for me. For the past long while, grains and beans have been a very small part of my diet. I'm not sure what kind of effect it'll have on me, to change it up like this, all of a sudden. Hopefully it won't induce those awful cravings, or bring back the exhaustion.

And hopefully I won't get too bored of the dull flavor of my own home-cooked meals.

I still need to figure out some cooking protocols, so I don't have to make too much of a mess, or spend too much thought on storing the foods once they're cooked, or worry about how to measure out the proper amount for any given day.

All that stuff needs to be attended to.

So basically I'm going to keep my eyes open, and watch for signs that I may be losing balance. The last time I tried cooking for myself, it precipitated falling off the wagon. This time, somehow, I think I'll be able to make it work. Yesterday I actually cooked and ate the recipe above, and it was excellent. It's a lot blander than I'm used to; but I don't really mind. And I'm looking into herbs and spices that'll hopefully add variety to a set of staples that wouldn't otherwise have much variety to them.

On Falling On

So, after I fell off the wagon and started eating bad, I actually managed to get back on the diet using the method I'd decided on: that 'day at a time' spreadsheet. I let go of the fact that I'd done the bad eating, and tried not to think about future bad eatings, but only paid attention to the present day's upcoming meals. And I gave myself a daily score indicating how well I'd eaten that day.

The point of the daily score is not to create a set of stats I can use later. Or to figure out whether to punish myself or not, or anything like that. The point of the daily score is to allow myself to let go of whatever I did that day. I ate that extra appetizer or whatever, I recognized it by including it in my score, and now I can move on. That particular little failing can be left behind, in the score for that one day, and now I have a chance to earn a top score for the new day.

That's how I think about it. And so, taking that approach, I was able to get back on the good diet right away. The big "falling off the wagon" moment lasted only a single day, the day that I did it.

But I did make some changes. For one thing, I stopped snacking. Or at least, I tightened up on the snacks a lot. I still might have some nuts once in awhile, but mainly I just don't snack between meals. The things that are still allowable are the two hardboiled eggs, and the tin of sardines; but those aren't snacks so much as they're things that I'd include with my meal if they didn't tend to dominate the flavor of the meal too much.

And I stopped going to regular restaurants. Or at least, I tightened up on that too. But the fact is, sometimes there's going to be a social occasion, and it'll be hard to get out of ordering off a regular menu; and I should be able to tolerate that. So there was one time last week, that my cousins were in town, and they took me to this great Jewish deli uptown, and I had some kind of scrambled egg with fish meal, and a bagel. So, lots of grease, salt, and refined flour. It was so good.

So, that day I got a score of .5 out of a possible 1.0; so, a very low score.

But in terms of going out to eat with friends, I basically stopped taking them to regular restaurants. In fact, I'm implementing a new experiment, where I keep a lot of herbs and spices and whatnot at my apartment, and I have my friends over to cook. The way it works is, they bring some meat or whatever, and cook it up using the stuff I keep around, so they're happy; and I cook my own food. So if they want a lot of salt and grease, that's cool, and I'll have my veggies and whole grains. That way we still get to hang out at mealtimes, which is really one of the best and most convenient ways to hang out, I think.

So basically I got back on the diet, and even tightened it up a bit, and ended up losing another 4 or 5 lbs right away, so I went down to 177 lbs. A friend of mine hung out with me yesterday after not seeing me for awhile, and said I looked "bony". That was the first time anyone had called me that in decades. In fact, I can't remember anyone ever saying that about me.

I plateaued at 177 though, and I've been there for a week, which is really fine. I don't want to force the weight issue. I imagine if I keep eating the way I'm eating, I'll gradually lose the rest of the weight.

Because I'm still overweight, according to the BMI. I have to lose another 6 or 7 lbs in order to be considered to have a 'normal' weight. And even then, that would only put me at the high end of the 'normal' scale.

But basically, hallelujah! My big 'falling off the wagon' experience became just a momentary thing instead of the total failure I was terrified it would become. I feel like it was a close shave; and I credit the whole 'day at a time' concept, that I borrowed from AA, for pulling me through.

On Falling Off

For the first time, I feel like I've really just let go of my diet, and pigged out. There's been a lot of stuff going on that's been bothering me, and it sort of boiled over.

I injured my back a few weeks ago, to the point of being unable to breathe easily or move; then just as that was starting to get better I got a bad cold that completely laid me up. Then just as the cold was starting to get better I was supposed to go on a trip for work, but managed to re-injure my back lifting my suitcase. So I canceled the trip at the very last minute. And that's still stressing me out.

So, while I was sick, it was especially difficult to get decent food, because I didn't feel like I could even go outside; and my whole diet is restaurant-based. I have some dry grain and frozen veggies at home, but I never cook them.

So when I got hungry at the height of being sick, I got a bag of frozen veggies and half a loaf of frozen raisin bread someone had left in the freezer, and ate them. Then some friends brought me canned chicken soup, and I had some of that. They also (at my request) brought me more loaves of raisin bread, and a tin of nuts.

So at that point, I was essentially completely off the diet. True, I wasn't eating pizza or chips or drinking coke, but the food I was eating bore very little resemblance to anything that might have a balanced nutritional content.

Today I'm still recovering from the back re-injury and the cold, but I still went into work to take care of some stuff. And I ate various bad stuff, including pure snack food. I had a fig bar that we keep in the mini-kitchens, and a piece of cheese.

So, I think that partly this was the result of me just being sick, and weakened, and not really caring to think too hard about what I ate, and not really having much resolve about diet stuff.

Also, partly, I think it was related to my whole effort to relax the diet somewhat. My weight had plateaued, and I was just (in theory) attempting to let my body adjust to the new smaller size. But in fact, there was probably various nutritional deficiencies hidden away in what I was eating, that I should've expected those to start giving me cravings. Maybe somewhere in my consciousness I did expect that.

And also, I was putting all my eggs in the anti-snack, pro-portion-control basket. Which, when I think about it now, I wonder, why was I so interested in relaxing the diet in the first place? What benefit did that bring, aside from giving me more options when I ate? Too many options were part of the problem.

Another thing I did was, I slacked off on the day-at-a-time principle. Originally I was keeping a spreadsheet where I would give myself a grade for each day. A '1' meant I had eaten perfectly; a 0 meant I had eaten the worst possible foods. Oftentimes I'd give myself a .8 or thereabouts, for a regular day.

As I had started trying to relax my diet, the mechanisms for calculating what score to give myself started becoming more slippery; and eventually I just started giving myself a '1' for each day; figuring that I was eating as perfectly as I wanted to. And after a few weeks of that, I stopped grading myself at all, and just let the spreadsheet lie fallow.

So now I've got several tins of nuts in my house, part of a loaf of raisin bread, and that may be it. Traditionally, for me, falling off the wagon like this tends to just continue, and I gain back all the weight I had previously lost.

I'm not sure what will happen now, because all my previous experience seems to point towards total failure.

One thing I'd like to avoid, is an effort to talk myself into eating any particular way, as I sit here thinking. I don't want to be like, "tomorrow I'm gonna...!"

But what I have done is, I've started a fresh spreadsheet tracking each day, and I've given myself a .3 for today. The spreadsheet seems like the thing to focus on right now. I originally started it as a way to mimic Alcoholics Anonymous's "day at a time" approach; and that seems to be where I've found myself now. I don't need to think about the days ahead; instead I want to just be aware of the single day I'm in right now, the single choice confronting me at this moment.

For example, do I want to eat more of that bread and nuts that are sitting on my bed? The answer is a pretty clear "no". I won't throw away the nuts, because they're actually OK in my diet, in small quantities. The rest of the bread is garbage though.

Damn - there's another can of tomato soup sitting in my bed... I don't want to throw it out because it's a perfectly good can of food. But I happen to remember there are some other cans sitting on a shelf somewhere... I can keep it with them.

And the rest of the nuts can sit on a bookcase.

That's the way I've handled the choices confronting me this evening. And that's all I need to trouble myself about right now.

On No Longer Feeling Thin

An interesting thing happened recently - I realized I don't feel thin anymore. While I was actively dropping a lot of weight, I started to feel very thin; when I got down to 179 I felt positively svelte, in spite of still being officially 'overweight' according to the BMI.

I've been hovering around 179/180 for a few weeks now, and I'm starting to feel like my body is fat. For instance, I'll think to myself, "the last time I weight 180 I was upset at myself for having gained so much weight."

I also recently hauled out my old jeans from the closet - the ones I kept around in case I lost all that weight - and they fit again, but they're a little tight. So they make me aware of all this extra body fat spilling over the waist, and filling up the pant-legs. When I was just wearing my big pants, they were like a tent, and I had to use a belt to hold them up; and I'd think, "these huge pants look so ridiculous on me because I'm way to thin for them now." Now that I wear the thinner pants, it's just the reverse.

So I think I've come to an understanding of what's going on. When I was losing weight, I felt thin because I was losing weight. Now that I've plateaued, my apparently "real" self-image as a fat person has caught up with me.

This is really interesting, because I've been curious lately about whether I identify as a fat person or a thin person. Most of my adult life has been a steady process of weight-gain, slow and inexorable. I guess the result has been that my normal mental state is to conceive of myself as fat. I wonder if this could translate into anorexia, where I might continue trying to lose weight, but always consider myself fat, no matter how much I lost.

Most of my friends tell me I'm not fat anymore, and express surprise when I tell them I'm still technically overweight. And my plan has been to just allow myself to plateau at my current weight, eating normal portions and not snacking, until my body adjusts, and the new eating patterns don't feel like such a new thing anymore.

But it's just interesting that now, once again, I feel fat. Part of me wants to go back to wearing the big pants. Part of me wants to go back to pure salads until the BMI thinks I'm normal. And part of me wants to just stick it out with what I'm doing, and not make any precipitous changes based on these odd new feelings. That's the part of me I trust.

Overeating Hurts!

I overate last night. It was weird. I ordered two entrées, two appetizers, and a cup of soup, then also got apples and cashew nuts on the way home. All the food was very healthy, but it was plentiful.

I didn't notice any sensation of being too full until after the last apple. I drank a glass of water to make the last mouthful go down my esophagus, and as soon as I swallowed the water I realized that I was really, really, really, really full. It hurt!

The sensation gradually subsided, but I remember thinking, "wow, I'm never doing that again!"

In the old days, that quantity of food would have been just normal. And back then I often ate enough to feel uncomfortably full, but the feeling in those days was much different. For one thing, that earlier sensation was less like a serious alert and more like a time-to-lay-still-for-awhile feeling. I remember long ago, discussing it with one of my friends who also would eat too much, and he was like, "yeah! I love that feeling!"

This time I was surprised by my own reaction. It wasn't just that I had to endure this period of discomfort. It was also that I had a strong negative sense of recoiling from the prospect of doing something like that again.

I don't know if I'll actually never overeat again. It could be that the various forces at work in my brain will tilt one way and another, depending on many factors. But the thing that's interesting is that my reaction this time seemed natural to me.

It's similar to the way hunger feels natural to me lately too. Instead of perceiving hunger as this ravening, unquenchable force racking my entire body until I launch into an eating frenzy, the sensation of hunger is much more like just a gentle reminder these days.

I had a chicken panini a few days ago; essentially as part of relaxing some of my dietary restrictions, in favor of focusing on portion control and snack avoidance. The panini was mainly processed flour, with a good bit of grease and salt, and some chicken and vegetables.

After I ate it, I had that old feeling of being hungry and unsatisfied right away, just like in the old days. It sort of confirmed my idea that I should always try to have vegetables, or at least whole grains, be the main ingredient of any meal.

It's fun to discover these quote-unquote "normal" responses to things, like hunger and feeling full. And it's interesting to feel like I'm getting confirmation that I'm avoiding the correct things too.

One interesting thing is that I talked to my friend K__ recently. She's always been very fat, and I've never heard her express any dissatisfaction with her body or her appearance. She just seemed totally fine with herself, and had a great self-image.

So I was surprised this time when we talked, that she's embarking on a very extreme diet, similar to what I was doing at first - eating virtually nothing but vegetables. I'm actually visiting her soon, and I'm planning to join her on whatever dietary measures she'll pursue. I know enough not to make comments to her in our conversations. That can be so annoying! Even encouraging comments. It really is virtually identical to when I quit smoking. Some of my friends don't like that analogy, but it's really dead-on. Controlling one's eating is like kicking a nicotine habit. The only different anyone's been able to point out is that controlling eating is even harder, because you can't quit entirely.

But that's why the sugar/salt/grease avoidance seems to be key. Those seem to be the things that produce the strongest addictive reaction. When I eat just vegetables and whole grains, with maybe some fish, and I make sure all the nutritional requirements are met, my reactions don't seem to resemble addiction anymore.

Roku First Impressions

It's much better than the vastly more expensive Samsung P.O.S. I had before. For one thing, streaming video actually works. When I select a video to stream, it comes up on the screen and I can watch it. That's a big difference from the Samsung, where instead of getting to watch the video, I had to watch the download bar interrupt the video every 30 seconds. Like, really, every thirty seconds. After testing, I found out the Samsung was only using about half my available bandwidth, and that was on a good day.

Roku's Netflix interface is vastly superior as well. Netflix on the Samsung was OK, I could access my queue; and aside from the fact that I couldn't watch anything without wanting to chew my own arm off, the interface itself was OK.

Roku's Netflix interface, on the other hand, is more than just "OK". It's very cool. I can access my queue, but I can also search for videos and see lots of lists of recommendations; all organized in a vast two-dimensional grid, where each row is a different type of recommendation. It's actually better than Netflix's own recommendation interface.

One problem I encountered with the Roku - I can't give it its own IP address. It requires DHCP. Which means I can't run a cable directly from the Roku box to the hub that sits by my DSL modem; I have to either connect wirelessly or run a cable to my wireless modem.

That's a drawback, and it's something the Samsung device actually let me do. The reason I did it with the Samsung was because I was trying to find something, anything, I could do to increase the bandwidth and maybe get rid of that stupid status bar every 30 seconds. Giving the Samsung a static IP didn't help; but at least it let me have that one additional way to beat my head against the wall. Roku doesn't have that.

Roku also has a neat content selection option, where you can sign up for what it calls "channels", which are just free and for-pay online media. The selection process for the various channels is pretty clunky, and could be vastly improved; but the services are nice. I signed up for all the free ones, which included some neat news sources; and apparently there'll be new channels available over time. Of course that's not necessarily Roku-specific, but they provide it and it works. Now I can watch Rachel Maddow on my wall instead of my computer screen.

Anyway, bottom line, Samsung sucks ass; Roku kicks butt.

The Whole Diet Thing

So, I'm still losing weight, but it's very slow. I'm basically down to 180, and everyone is telling me I no longer look overweight. I'll probably keep losing weight gradually if I stick with what I'm doing.

An interesting thing is happening. My diet is becoming normal. When I first launched into it, I was highly focused on the absolute healthiest foods I could find. There was a big variety of vegetables, and some fish. I was probably eating roughly as healthily as anyone who's ever lived.

At the time, one of my main goals was to stop the really over-the-top eating and weight-gain that was bringing me past all boundaries of health, and into a really bad zone. I was extremely strict with myself about every aspect of the diet, to the point where my friends and family were scared I might do harm to myself just from being on the diet. I was nervous about that too, but I figured it was life or death, and I was choosing the option that seemed available to me. I was attempting to thread the needle in the only way I could figure.

Since then, certain things have come clear as the real significant issues, and other things are turning out to be less important than I'd first thought.

One of the main things that I've come to understand is that the ban on snacking has to be maintained pretty strictly. Certain snacks are allowable, but they need to be regulated, and I can't let myself get into the idea that I can just go snack on things.

For me, a snack is anything I eat before lunch, between lunch and dinner, or after dinner.

Certain foods are things I'll eat to keep my protein up; but that aren't necessarily wonderful to include in a meal. Sardines, hard boiled eggs, and nuts fall into this category. If I have a tin of sardines, 2 or 3 hard boiled eggs, and a handful of nuts over the course of a day, that falls into the acceptable range of snacks.

Likewise, I might stop at the store and pick up some chopped watermelon or mango to eat after dinner. That's not a great source of protein, but it's also acceptable, just because it's fruit, and a bit of fruit is OK.

Those are my snack options. They've been changing over time, where I'll think about what's working for me, and what I'd like to adjust, and then finally make a decision about it. I try not to make 'impulse snack' decisions; and whenever they happen anyway, I take it as a sign that I need to clamp down and get back into the right groove.

So for the most part, I'm not snacking during the day. And when I'm getting lunch and dinner, the way I think of those meals is as the main chance for me to eat during the day. I don't assume that if I get hungry later I'll be able to just have a snack. The vast majority of my food is consumed during lunch and dinner.

The reason that's good for me is because it makes it much, much easier to guess how much I'm eating. If I were snacking all day, I'd have a much harder time figuring out how many calories I'd consumed that day. And with me, it's so easy to just keep snacking on more and more stuff, which is exactly what happened before I went on this diet. And the more I ate, the hungrier I got.

So the general ban on snacks is one of the key things I've identified as being really useful for me personally. It's not for everyone. But for me, snacking is a huge trigger for more snacking. I have to keep it under tight control or it gets way out of hand.

Another main thing that I started out with in this diet, and still believe, is that I should avoid things that have a lot of sugar, salt, and grease. For me, those ingredients feel highly addictive. They make my brain go dingdingdingdingding! They're extremely tasty in a weird way that's a little disturbing. There are plenty of other foods that I find very tasty - various vegetables - that don't have that disturbing kind of "must...have...more...." quality.

So, like snacking, those particular ingredients seem to be a big trigger for me to eat more and more and more.

Now, the third main thing is more of a surprise. As long as I stick with the first two main things, and only have a reasonable portion of food at mealtimes, I'm realizing it's no longer so necessary for me to be quite so focused on eating only the absolutely most healthy foods.

I still like to make sure I get a nice big helping of vegetables; but I'm starting to feel like it's OK to also delve into grains and various meats. I try to keep the meat servings relatively small, but I don't shy away from them completely like I used to. I still haven't had red meat though.

Basically my preference is to have the vegetable portion be the largest, the grain portion be next, and the meat portion be the smallest.

But that actually describes a lot of the foods available at many restaurants and in the café at work.

So when I say my diet is "becoming normal", it partly means that I'm becoming more used to it, and also that the things I'll eat are coming more in line with what a normal person might eat who didn't have an eating problem.

In terms of my caloric intake, I'm pretty sure there were several weeks or a month there, when I was getting way too few calories; and the result was that I was starting to get extremely exhausted in the middle of the day, and need a lot more sleep at night than I ever had before.

So, even before I started relaxing my approach to lunch and dinner foods, I had started raising my protein and calorie intake; and that ended up having a big positive effect on my exhaustion and sleeping habits. I'm almost back to normal now, in terms of wakefulness and sleep.

And now that I've relaxed my lunch and dinner requirements somewhat, I'm finding that I'm still gradually losing weight. Maybe in 6 months or so the BMI will think I'm normal. But the continued gradual weight loss is basically a confirmation that I'm not swinging too far in the wrong direction by easing certain restrictions.

Overall, things are looking pretty good, from the eating perspective. I seem to be settling on some good habits that work for me, and the health issues I associated with making such extreme changes to my diet seem to be fading as well.

I recently had a little scare though. I decided to quit eating at the super healthy restaurants I usually go to, and to start cooking healthy foods for myself again. The result was pretty strange. I didn't end up cooking for myself, but the effort to do so resulted in my restaurant behavior and snack behavior beginning to spiral out of control. I started eating more, especially snack foods.

It wasn't a huge lapse, and by most standards I was still eating really healthily; but I could see the fabric of all my good habits beginning to unravel. It scared me. I quickly decided to abandon the idea of cooking for myself, and try to settle back into the habit that had been working for me.

What that told me was that my eating habits have become a bit more rigid than I want them to be. I definitely should not have to confront the prospect of total failure, when something unusual causes me to change my eating regimen. I need to have the flexibility to cook if I want to, eat out if I want to, or go on a fast for the day if I want to.

So I'm not 100% sure how to deal with that one. For now, I'm planning to stick with what I'm doing, and just give consideration to the problem and see what I come up with.

FOIA Part II

As expected, all my FOIA requests came back marked "insufficient personal information provided". Remember the requests were constructed by my lawyer. So, clearly, the process is intended to be so opaque that only the iron-willed can get through.

The rejections each included a little bit of information about how to construct the request better the 2nd time around. I decided to drop the Department of Defense request, since they said they'd only have a file on me if I had some kind of nameable relationship with them. Since I've never been a member of the armed forces, that's a no. But I'm going to resubmit requests to the FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security requests. Those are what my lawyer's working on now.

If I can get the government to finally cough up my files, I plan to work with my lawyer to write up a thorough explanation of how to do it and what to expect, and post it online. In theory there are online resources to make FOIA requests easy, but that's what we've used and clearly they don't.

Why am I bothering with this? Well, for one thing, the law exists and it's all about letting me, so why shouldn't I? And if it turns out to be impossible, then something's wrong, because FOIA's kind of an important law, it seems to me. It exists for a good reason, and if a random Joe like me can't get his file, then probably no one can, and then FOIA might as well not exist. I don't like that.

Diet Relaxation

As I get more used to my diet, I'm noticing that certain things are more important to me than others, and certain things are getting to be reliably well-established.

So, I'm good about not snacking between meals, and about turning down food that isn't on my diet. That seems to be fairly reliable at this point.

At the same time, I think I do a fairly decent job guessing at the number of calories that are in a given meal.

And, I'm realizing that as long as I get the right nutrition overall, it doesn't much matter whether any given meal is particularly nutritionally balanced, so long as it doesn't include much forbidden foods (chiefly sugar, salt, and grease).

So for example, last night I had Indian food with my friend Alexandra. I haven't gone to an Indian restaurant in a long time, mainly because the food they serve is very iffy with respect to my diet.

But I went. First they brought us papadum, which is made of lentils. So I felt OK eating that.

Then I ordered a sort of minced vegetable appetizer, which turned out to be a bit more grain-like than I wanted, and probably a bit more salted than I wanted, and probably a bit greasier than I wanted. But really it didn't have a ton of those things, and it was a small dish of food.

Then I ordered a vegetables-in-cream-sauce dish, with no rice. It came in a small metal bowl, and wasn't a large meal at all.

As I cast my eye over the whole meal including everything, I guessed it was probably less than 1200 calories. I would have guessed lower, but restaurant food is always higher in calories.

So, what happened? Clearly this is food that normally I wouldn't consider part of my diet. I wouldn't eat like that every day. But the calorie count was right for a dinner entree, it didn't seem to have too much of the specific foods I avoid; and my lunch had been a very abbreviated vegetable dish.

In terms of nutrition, yesterday was probably a big bust. but not a total bust; I probably got a lot of what I needed. Nutritional "daily requirements" are mainly average requirements, so it made sense to consider the Indian food as part of an overall diversity of eating.

Then this morning my weight was lower than the day before, which is at least partly encouraging.

I think what's happening is that I'm gradually recognizing that as long as I make sure I get the nutrients I need in general, and avoid snacks and 'trigger' foods, and make sure my regular meals are appropriately sized, it may possibly be OK for me to eat a more normal-seeming diet than what I have been eating.

But I haven't made a decision about it yet, and for now I'm just going to continue focusing on the vegetable/fish regime. I want any changes to be introduced slowly, and tested out in terms of how I feel and what I weigh. I don't want to start acting like I can just eat any old thing. I'm just considering the possibility that a slightly less hard-line approach in certain areas might be OK.

New Yoga Teacher

Jessica, my yoga teacher, decided to move out to California. Boom, just like that! I'm sad, but I have to admire her ability to unconstrainedly head off to a new adventure. If I didn't feel some roots in NYC that I don't want to break, I'd probably head out to Europe for awhile, and see what I could see; or maybe to various parts of this country that I've never seen before; New Orleans, the Gulf states. Or Asia, where I've never been and would like to go.

But off she went, without a job or a prospect, to see what she could see. Before she left, she set me up with a friend of hers named Keisha, to take over the yoga lessons. Keisha seemed great when I met her, and today we had our first lesson. In some ways it was different from the way Jessica taught me. They emphasize different aspects of each pose, which I found very interesting. But in a lot of ways it was very similar. Lots of encouragement, lots of clear explanations of what was intended. And Keisha hit the right difficulty level for me, which turns out to be about 3 notches underneath 'beginner' level.

I'm really lucky, because both Jessica and Keisha were willing to come to my apartment to teach me. It's a lot harder to slack off when the teacher is coming to my home at 7:00 AM. The usual excuses don't seem to work as well for that situation. "Oh, I just couldn't get there today. Had a million things going on." Yeah.

I really like taking the yoga lessons. I can feel it improving my posture and flexibility. Some day I might be healthy!

Umbrella Review: Senz Vs. Gustbuster

I recently got a Senz umbrella to see how it compared with the Gustbusters I already own.

Basically, there's no comparison. Gustbuster is entirely the winner.

The Senz has an interesting design, it's basically a regular umbrella, with most of the fabric cut away. The remaining fabric just doesn't have enough diameter to suffer from the wind. So sure, it can withstand 70 mile-per-hour winds, but that's because the part that covers you is almost the size of a dinner plate. It didn't protect me from the rain at all, except maybe for a bit of my face.

The Senz also has one small portion of itself that's like the brim of a baseball cap, sticking out. This is its claim to fame. Unfortunately, that little flap is so flexible it whips around in the wind, gouging unsuspecting eyes, and letting the rain pass freely down from above.

The Gustbuster, on the other hand, is a full-sized umbrella, in fact the ones I have are larger than full-sized. Its design uses holes in the main area of fabric, so the wind can blow upwards and out the top of the umbrella. But on its top side, the holes are covered by flaps that can lift up on elastic bands to let the air out from below, but that are immediately closed by the elastics when each gust ends. They don't flap down into the holes, so no air or rain will go down onto you, but plenty will blow upwards.

There are other umbrellas with this type of design, but those are very cheap imitations that have not been really tested (at least that's been the case with all the ones I've seen). Gustbuster umbrellas really withstand the wind. The rain slashes down, the wind crashes from all directions, and the umbrella is really undisturbed. It's only when I look around and see how much difficulty everyone around me is having with their umbrellas, that I realize it's actually a very windy storm. The Gustbuster stays stable and calm. And it's a really large umbrella. I stay dry. And the two people under the umbrella with me also stay dry. And the people passing by say, "wow, that's a big  umbrella. Why isn't it flying down the street? Or laying inside-out on the ground?" And I reply, "it's a Gustbuster."

They really are great. I do give props to the Senz folks for coming up with an interesting idea. But the umbrella problem has really already been solved. I've never seen an umbrella that comes even remotely close to Gustbuster for withstanding windy days, and keeping me and my friends dry and comfy.

Here's an ad-type video about it, masquerading as news. It's still right though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZQuhrftV-M

Eating At Special Events

I just got back from Floating World, which was really great, but I've discovered that trying to live on lettuce with a little chicken and tuna is sub-optimal. I also discovered I could do it. So, cool! But it's sub-optimal. On the other hand, I now know what it feels like to be nutritionally deficient for several days. It felt as though the vitamins and minerals that normally would be making my body go, were being leeched out of me by a strange and unpleasant process.

Floating World itself was excellent. I had one very lovely session of play with one of the people I'm dating. It was perfect. And I got to hang out with a lot of other wonderful people. I also didn't over-purchase toys; instead I got a single thin cane, because my last one was breaking and wasn't meant to be used as a cane (by which I mean a pain stick).

I just got home a few minutes ago with one of the other people I'm dating, and she's over with my apartment-mate hanging out and researching trains, because I mentioned I was curious about all the different ways out of New York City by train. And I'm in here catching up on news, doing Labanotation, considering whether to watch Netflix in spite of the delays; and generally being tired.

Oh - also, I'm apparently no longer on a weight plateau. Even before Floating World I had lost about another 5 lbs. I now weigh approximately 185. In 15 more pounds, I'll be at the high end of 'normal', according to the BMI charts.

If the BMI charts could only look inside my mind, it would just give up right then. And I don't mean it would give up on me. It would give up on its entire approach to other people; then it would go to Paddles and start learning what life can really be like.

One more thing. While I was browsing through toys for sale, I said something that made everyone around me immediately stop everything and tell me it was the best thing they'd heard all day. Here it is: "Have you seen 'The Passion Of The Christ'? It's a snuff film about Jesus, and they whip him with a chain very similar to this one." Apparently that was a win.

Weight Plateau

I haven't lost any weight in the past week and a half. The only change in my diet has been the addition of two hard-boiled eggs per day, which significantly mitigated my cravings and exhaustion. (Thanks, everyone who suggested eggs!)

I'm not planning to do anything about the weight plateau. My diet is extremely healthy right now, in spite of the added cholesterol. If my body wants to hang out where it's at for now, I'm fine with that. I'm still 20 lbs overweight, but I don't see how the diet I'm on could support me staying overweight long-term. I'll drop the weight over the natural course of events, but probably just more gradually than I have been so far.

If I start gaining weight with this diet, on the other hand, in addition to being very surprised, I'll probably try to cut something back to stop that.

So that's where that's at.

The thing about the eggs is, I don't love them. They mess with my digestion, and have 72% of the RDA for cholesterol (RDA in this case meaning 'recommended upper limit', I suppose), so I'd rather do without them if I can. But I'm not sure what a real substitute would be, i.e. something that would have the same effect on my cravings and tiredness.

Anyway, for now I'm sticking it out.

FOIA

I'm submitting some Freedom Of Information Act requests to various government agencies, asking for all materials that pertain to me. The agencies are:

• The CIA
• The Defense Department
• Homeland Security
• The FBI

Last time I tried this, they bounced the requests right back to me, but this time I'm having my Lawyer do the paperwork, and handle any resistance. Not that I expect there's a lot of material on me in government offices, but I've always wanted to know, and FOIA exists partly to let me do this.

20 lbs Gone. 20 More For A "Normal" Weight

I think I may be reaching some sort of complacency phase in my diet. Partly this is because my hard-line approach makes a lot of decisions pretty straightforward, so I often don't have to think very much about any given choice. Is it a between-meal snack? Then no. Does it use processed flour? Is meat or grain the main ingredient? Then no.

But then I've also started relying on certain 'feelings' that I'm choosing to interpret as my body beginning to starve. Tiredness, mainly, and a feeling of being run down. Then I'll take the opportunity to add a little something to a meal; even a second entrée in some cases, telling myself that this way I can be sure I'm getting enough nutrients.

That doesn't happen very often, maybe once or twice a week; but it's the thought process that concerns me. I can feel myself potentially making excuses to just eat more. And because most of my eating decisions are made almost automatically these days, I'm concerned I might just automatically start responding to hunger as a symptom of starvation, by eating a lot.

But overall, I seem to be doing OK. I still need to get used to the idea that my current diet isn't just an expedient for weight loss, it's the way I actually want to eat from now on. So, we'll see how that goes. I'm definitely in some kind of relatively easy phase; but I'm still expecting very hard times up ahead.

Short Story: "A Simple Truth"

Got another short story here. If you like it, share it around. Here it is:
http://sites.google.com/site/whereiwrite/2010/a-simple-truth

I Has Foodz Issues: Part V

I've been having some dizzy spells and sleepiness issues. The dizzy spells are not so extreme that I actually fall over, but a day or so ago it was hard to read because the words seemed to float out of my field of vision.

The sleepiness issue is not so terrible either; but definitely present. I've been getting tired very early, and sleeping for 8 hours, as opposed to my usual five and a half. Also, after eating I tend to get very sleepy; which hadn't been happening so much before my diet.

I figure it could either be an injury from the sudden diet change, a caloric deficiency, some other nutritional deficiency, or lupus. It always has to at least possibly be lupus.

I suspect the sleep stuff is probably a result of injuring myself from the sudden diet change; and I just have to hope that I recover. I don't want to compromise the diet for that though, because it's such a razor's edge that I don't want to risk falling back into my old way of eating.

The dizziness, I'm guessing is a vitamin deficiency. I recently made a couple of changes to the diet, that might have resulted in that.

First, I cut down my caloric intake. I had been having a salad for lunch, and then two entrées from the local macrobiotic place. One of those entrées was a fish tempura, and someone pointed out that 'tempura' meant deep-fried in oil. So I cut that out and started having a small appetizer with a single entrée instead.

And secondly, I've been loosening up about exactly what kind of salad I'll eat. I had been going across the street from work to a salad place, and having a very complex, nutrient-rich salad that covered pretty much everything. Now, I'm essentially practicing my "find the best foods where I am" approach, by going to the café at work, and getting the healthiest vegetables I can find. The problem is that even though it's a big pile of nice raw veggies, it's not as diverse as my salads, and probably not as nutritionally balanced. So it's now much more likely that I could develop some kind of nutritional deficiency.

Certain cravings have also come back, which I've also started equating with nutritional deficiencies. And the psychological inner warfare is also in effect. Lauren and I went to the grocery store yesterday, and I found myself trying to make excuses for everything. Breakfast cereals, snacks of various kinds, you name it.

It can get pretty scary, because I realize that I might suddenly find myself biting into a huge burger, or snacking on cookies or something. And if that ever happened, I might just take the opportunity to keep going with it. I'm a junkie. That's not a metaphor. I'm a junkie and I'm trying to get clean, but if my brain tricks me into backsliding, I don't really know what'll happen.

Anyway yeah. Various symptoms, no solutions, just keeping on keeping on, and hoping it evens out.

Samsung Killed My Netflix

Awhile ago, I talked a bit about Netflix streaming, and how it was just eh, but still something I'd keep around because it did prevent me from buying so many DVDs.

Since then, my Netflix experience has definitely flopped right on its back, with its legs in the air. It's dead, Jim.

The way the stream works is, when you start watching something, there's a little delay, with a red status bar that fills up over the course of a few seconds, and then the video comes on. Thereafter, the stream continues to fill up in the background, so you never run out of video to watch. Every once in awhile you might see that status bar again, but for the most part, you just get a continuous stream, with no problem.

About a month ago, my Netflix stream started  dropping into that status bar every 20 seconds or so. I'd get 20 seconds of video, then 20 seconds of downloading; then 20 seconds of video, then 20 more seconds of downloading. Everything was completely unwatchable.

At first I thought it might be a problem with my wireless, or with my Internet connection in general; but no. Everything checks out. I also thought it might be some metal cans sitting next to the wifi modem; and I moved them out of the way. I also thought it might be the position of the modem relative to my player. But no. It was none of those things.

My current theory is that the software on my player is to blame. That software gets updated periodically, and lately it's been very obvious that the software is simply broken. For example, I'll get a "Network unavailable" error coming from the player itself. I can navigate away from the Netflix app and back to it all I want, with no change. But when I reboot the player, the error goes away. Clearly it's not a problem with my network, but with the device's ability to perceive my network.

Things like that. The player also has a tendency to lock up sometimes, and button pushes stop working on the remote, except for the power button. So I reboot the player, and then it works again for a little while.

And by "works", I mean it interrupts my video every 20 seconds with that same red status bar.

The player is the Samsung BD-C6900 1080p 3D Blu-ray Disc Player. I paid $350 for it, and I haven't been ripped off by any company that bad for years. I'd be very reluctant to buy anything at all from Samsung from now on.

I Has Foodz Issues: Part IV

One interesting thing that I've noticed lately, is that my mind will start thinking in terms of excuses. I'll go into the café at work, and look around at the selection, and all of it will seem pretty well within the bounds of my diet. "Hm," I'll think to myself, "I could have that, or that, or that, or maybe all of it!"

That happened to me today at lunch. My sense of what is and is not a part of my diet is becoming blurred. But, maybe because I keep a spreadsheet with a grade and explanation for each day's eating, I was able to snap back to reality. It's possible that this habit I'm developing, of considering how my eating will affect the day's grade, is becoming sort of a trigger, to wake me up from dangerous food happyland.

So I ended up getting a plate full of some sautéed vegetables, and a couple of different kinds of raw vegetables - all safe, perfect foods.

This is a deviation from my usual habit, which is to go across the street to the salad place, order the same salad as I did the day before, and then eat it in the comfort and safety of one of the kitchens over here.

So I was thinking, "what's really happening here? Is something up? Am I leaving the true path?"

My assessment is this: one of the cornerstones of my diet is the flexibility to do without a meal if appropriate food doesn't present itself; as well as the flexibility to tolerate the healthy foods that are available, even if they're not entirely to my taste.

So, for me, lunch today ended up being a very healthy, yet probably not nutritionally complete, response to what was immediately available. And now I'm committed to that having been my lunch, and to no other food going in my mouth until dinner (except perhaps a tin of sardines, which have also been part of my regular habit).

So, I think I handled the situation the right way, but it's confusing. During lunch, I had the strong sense that somehow I was falling off the wagon. Somehow by deviating from my normal routine, I was in the process of failing. But when I think about what I ate, it just can't be the case. The food today was every bit as nutritionally dense as my normal salad; it just probably wasn't as nutritionally balanced as that salad is.

So my suspicion is that this sense of being in the process of failing, is something the addicted part of my brain is throwing out as an attack, just like when I was quitting cigarettes. It's trying to break my will by convincing me that my will is already broken. No need to stay on the diet, I've already failed, I might as well just eat whatever; and anyway all this food over here is probably perfectly fine for my diet.

It's very contradictory - part of me is saying the unhealthy food in the café is perfectly fine for my diet, and part of me is saying that even by choosing the foods that actually were fine for my diet, it still constituted failure.

So yeah. If I'm right, this is a little inkling of the psychological warfare to come. I need to maintain my hard-line approach regarding what is and is not OK for my diet; once I start to compromise on it, I'll be giving my secret anti-brain exactly what it wants - a way to confuse and disorient me, to trick me into a situation where it can tell me that each successive failure is justified by the previous ones. Or who knows what other nastiness it's got brewing.

Books, And Cases, And Tables, And...My Toe?

These are my bookcases with things on them:

Notice there is a floor. Notice also there is a couch.

These are my toes:

See if you can guess which foot had a very large piece of lumber fall on it three days ago.

Notice also a conspicuous lack of swelling. I'm not sure exactly what the deal is, but I did take 4 ibuprofen pills as soon as it happened, following up with 2 more periodically. The idea was less to kill the pain as much as it was to prevent swelling. As far as I understand it, swelling can do more tissue damage than the injury itself. But ibuprofen can only do so much. I did expect more swelling than this.

When it happened, my first thought was, do I need to go to the hospital? If it was broken, that would be a yes. So I took off my shoe and wiggled the toe around a little, enough to be fairly convinced that there was no break. I was pretty sure there were going to be some stretched ligaments in there somewhere though.

But over the course of the next couple of days, I gradually realized that there probably wasn't any ligament damage either. It was just healing way too quickly for that. Soon wiggling the toe was not too uncomfortable, though even now I can't put any weight on the pad of the toe itself, without sharp pain that seems to threaten further injury.

My guess is there may be some cartilage damage, which would suck, because that leg has already had other injuries that make it weaker than the left. But I figure, that's how it goes.

By the way, aren't my two big toes awesome? I love their shape.

Anyway, new shelves! New table! Yay!

All...Done?

Whew! Well, it took us all weekend. We just finished a few minutes ago, and I have to admit, Will did more of the work than I did. Maybe if I hadn't banged my toe it would've been different. There's something about having a banged up toe, I find, that makes you want to take the shortest route to all other destinations. I had no interest in checking any calculations, verifying any measurements, or correcting any misalignments of wood. But as it turned out, everything worked, and there was nothing to correct.

The worst problem with building these three bookcases was that the screws were a little too thick, and so they were constantly threatening to split the wood, or poke out one side or the other as we screwed them in. But they were remarkably well behaved. I've had some bookcase-building experiences where the wood was entirely warped, and it took a huge effort to make everything come out OK. These bookcases seemed to actively desire to be built. They gave us no trouble at all.

There they are. Too late I noticed we'd used one-by-tens for the planks, instead of one-by-twelves, so they're not as deep as the other bookcases in the apartment. But eh. They will totally do.

It's too late in the day, and I'm too tired and achy, to put anything actually on the shelves. That will be tomorrow evening's activity. If I'm very very lucky, I will, like the Cat In The Hat, pick up all the things that are down. I can't imagine that there is more stuff on the floor than will fit in those shelves. And I do still have a lot of free closet space. So one way or another, my apartment will no longer be saturated with junk. The junk will be neatly on shelves, thank you very much.

So, yay! Hooray for building things that are functional! Hooray for tables and bookcases and things to put on them and do on them. And hooray for Will, who was great the whole time.

And In This Corner.......

So I showed that picture to Lauren, and she was like, "oooh, it's such a beautiful table, Zack! What does the rest of the room look like?" She knew. She knew what I'd done to get that table in there. And we both laughed just thinking about it.

There you go. There's more, off to the left. It's not the best angle to show the true scope of devastation; but I wanted to include a bit of the new work table, for perspective.

Once we get the new bookcases up, all that junk is going right on the shelves. Theoretically, that's today. Cue theramin.

Books, And Cases, And Tables, Oh My!

I make a pretty good bookcase. With only one exception, everywhere I've lived since I've been on my own, I've made my own bookcases (one of my SF places had Ikea). The basic idea is, store-bought stuff just isn't going to use the space in the best possible way. When I moved into my place here, I built 4 floor-to-ceiling shelves that fit exactly where I put them, and 3 smaller shelves that ran the full length of a wall, leaving the wall area above it free for video projection.

That was several years ago. Then recently I got the idea to put 3 more floor-to-ceiling shelves in, against a wall that I'd previously been keeping free for art. I'd originally wanted to cover that entire wall with art done by friends, but I only ended up putting a few pieces up there, and it didn't have the feel I'd been going for.

I'd also run into a big problem of where to put all my stuff. I'd moved from a three bedroom apartment in San Francisco to a one bedroom apartment here, and I still had a lot of stuff in boxes, and a lot more stuff that was not in boxes, but instead on my floor, gathering dust and making a mess. It was possible to put all that stuff away, but only if I essentially stored it all in the small closet cubbies that would make everything much less accessible.

A week or so ago I started questioning my use of that art wall. Why not put bookcases against it? Well, the couch would have to move, and the 700 lb compressed-air-powered die press would also have to move. Where would those things go? I didn't know. But the more I thought about it, the less of an obstacle all that stuff seemed. I'm not sure how exactly the decision was made - at a certain point it seemed like the scales just tipped, and I was ready to do it.

A few days ago it also occurred to me that while I was building things, I could add a work table into the mix. This was kind of a revolution in my thinking - it had never seemed to me that any kind of table would even fit in my living room before. Certainly any table in the middle of the room would prevent anything else from happening in that room except some kind of interaction with the table. But my dream had been for the living room to actually be a hangout spot with open air between the sitting places, rather than a table-sitting spot or a repository for vast clutter.

So the idea for the table was really unexpected. But there was a long wall in my living room; with two windows looking out of it, and three bookcases in the spaces between the windows, that might actually work. And if it worked, I'd have a huge table area that wouldn't really take away any space from the rest of the room. Not only that, but the table could double as a bench. The way I envisioned it, it would be incredibly strong, and the nooks between the bookcases and windows would be great for cushioned seating.

Once I got the idea, it was hard to believe I hadn't thought of it before. It was perfect! A lot of my projects required space to spread out, and those projects had been languishing lately, partly because of that problem. It had been really frustrating for me, but I hadn't realized how significant the table issue was until just then. But now I'd be able to do my labanotation research, which really required a lot of space to lay out index cards and many books open to many pages; and I could do sculpture, clothes making, and other art activities, that I realized I'd also been somewhat pining for. If the table was the right height, it would also be a good ergonomic area for computer stuff. All kinds of things were occurring to me that had been mouldering away in my mind, because until then I'd just given up on any idea of having a table in my apartment.

Then this weekend I found myself with no other plans, so I asked my apartment-mate Will (he actually lives in a different apartment, but it's part of the same larger area and we use the same keys) if he was interested in helping, and he said sure! So we spent some time figuring out all the measurements, going over them again and again to make design decisions, and figure out the best way to do everything; and then yesterday we went and got a big pile of wood from the lumber yard.

In San Francisco years ago, when I'd told my friends I was going to build shelves, they were mildly amused. "Aren't you kind of a nerdy computer guy?" Then when I went and purchased all the wood I would need for 9 full bookcases, they became alarmed. "Just build one shelf, see if you can do it OK, and then maybe get materials for the next one!" But no - I got all the wood for all the pieces I intended to build, and then I got busy and built all 9 bookcases in just a few days. I knew what I was doing - my mother had built everything in our apartment when I was growing up, and that included lots and lots of bookcases for my dad's 20,000 books.

So, same thing Saturday. Will and I went to the lumber yard and purchased all the wood for the bookcases and the table, and got it back to the apartment, and got to work. He wanted to start with the bookcases, but I was in a fever to do the table, partly because I'd never done one before, and partly because it was going to be so cool. According to my calculations, it had to be precisely the right size or it just wouldn't fit at all. The bookcases had no such stringent requirements.

There it is! In this picture it's still only resting on about half of the posts; but the far side is fully attached, and very strong. Originally we were going to finish all the building that same day, and then I'd spend Sunday cleaning up and putting everything on the new shelves; but I dropped the 15 foot table top on my toe, and it is 1" birch plywood, strong and heavy, so... ow. But the toe survived. And by then we only really needed to screw the table top into the posts, so Will did most of that while I read Little Orphan Annie (did you know "Daddy" went blind during The Depression?) and helped a little.

There was one very iffy moment near the beginning, when we had to lift the entire table-top and slide it into the slots created by those bookcases, and set it down on the freestanding posts. We really weren't sure, even up till the last minute, whether it would truly fit or not. But it did, and after that, I had the pleasure of walking around and admiring the actualization of a lovely idea that hadn't been part of my worldview just a few days before.

Today we'll finish up the table top and build the three bookcases (they are much easier, with just thin pine and no space issues.

But isn't that table great? Four or five people could do art along it, or sit against the edges of the bookcase and look out the window, or jump up and down on it, or whatever! Soon it'll also have a few coats of polyurethane for splinter protection. Also, those shelves in the bookcases that don't quite line up with the table top, I'm going to remove and set lower down so they're like an extension of the table itself.

And the best part is, the table doesn't really encroach on the rest of the living room. No one would walk through that thin strip of floor; but now they can sit on it and converse and hang out. And for getting stuff off the top shelves of the bookcases (which are several shelves above the top of this photo), anyone can feel confident in standing right on top of the table without it falling or really moving at all. This is a strong, functional, kick-ass table of awesome.

Reading, Walking, And A Car

I read while walking. It's a skill. The trick is to understand the meaning of different kinds of movements at your periphery. It's all about trajectories. And if something is obviously moving but not changing position relative to your ebook reader, that means it's coming right for you and you should look up, ready to take evasive action.

I cross the street while reading too. But I'm not insane - I do take a moment to glance both ways, and I make a point of keeping any possible oncoming traffic available in my periphery. But I'm so talented, that my total awareness of my surroundings isn't always obvious to the people around me, which can cause some consternation.

Yesterday on my way home, I was deeply engrossed in my calculus book. Derivatives are so amazing, it's a shame the financial mess is turning them into a dirty word. I love how you take this weird thing and stick it into an equation - and then when you reduce and solve the equation, the weird thing disappears of its own accord, leaving you with a whole new view into the thing you were just looking at. I'm telling you - derivatives are like eye of newt!

Anyway, right at that moment, as I was about to get to the other side of the street and find out how derivatives relate to limits, this car swerved out of the path of traffic, heading right at me! I jumped out of the way, but in any case he hit the breaks before hitting me. Something about the way he just happened to be aiming straight at me told me that this was yet another person trying to give me a life lesson.

So I turned around and just stared at the guy for probably a full minute, and he stared back. Clearly, this was a guy that had road rage among his top 3 emotions. Then he rolled down his window, and drove past, saying, "Look where you're going instead of reading your book!" or something like that. And I cursed him out through the same window.

The last time something similar happened, I was fully on the sidewalk, in the middle of reading Proust. Would he and Albertine see each other again? Would he become lovers with Monsieur Charlus? When all of a sudden, some guy walking in the opposite direction stuck his hand between the ebook reader and my face, and wiggled his fingers around before passing by.

I chased after him and tried to grab his hat, but he was too quick and I couldn't get it. It's a good thing, I probably would have thrown it into the street or something. But when I tried to take it, he spun around, and again I stood staring at him for solid minute or so, till finally he walked away.

For some reason I feel as though staring at the person is similar to capturing their soul. I don't dumbly stare. I devour them. I take them into myself; their cares, their fears and frustrations, and see how little they are. And then they don't bother me anymore, because I also see that in their own small way, they believe that disturbing someone who's reading a book is actually doing them a favor, teaching them to pay attention to the world around them, and not bump into other people or get hit by cars.

It's also a cultural phenomenon. In my culture, people feel like reading while walking is a negligent act, and that anyone is justified in bothering me, since it will make me a better person. The same people won't give two dimes to a guy with a cup; but for me, they'll make the extra effort. In other cultures, someone reading while walking would provoke outright rage among everyone they passed; and in yet other cultures, it would be seen as a commendable act, a sign of intelligence and sensitivity. In mine it's considered a sign of carelessness and social neglect.

Well, I'll keep reading. An hour or two of my reading is done each day on foot or on the subway. I'm going to give that up because sometimes people jump out and say boo? No thank you.

I Has Foodz Issues: Part III

It was pretty sudden. I'd been on my diet for about two weeks, and was experiencing all kinds of emotional ups and downs, to the point where I really could barely participate in conversation. I was sticking with the diet, but it was really, really tough. Then one day, poof! I was fine.

All of a sudden, my brain was back! I could think and feel normal emotions again! I wouldn't collapse into a heap of disfunction as a mealtime approached. In fact I could be arbitrarily late to a meal and experience no ill effects.

Feelings of hunger, that before would rage out of control, now had simmered down to something akin to a normal sensation, something I could recognize without it utterly taking over my existence.

The cravings, which had been extremely intense, had actually subsided a few days or a week earlier, after I'd adjusted my diet to give me a few vitamins I'd been lacking. So those had already been gone for a while.

So, what's my experience right now, after several days of this new non-insanity? Well, my salads and relatively small meals satisfy me; I don't go through life in agonizing hunger, but instead I have plenty of energy and I feel basically fine.

Yay! I am very joyful!

I'm staying on my guard though. I expect the cravings and possibly other symptoms to return within the next few months, and stronger than before. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the feeling of freedom.

I Has Foodz Issues: Part II

I've been on this diet for 2 weeks now. So far I've lost 8 lbs and the cravings have gone away for the moment; but I've been irritable and cranky. Then I happened to be reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting and it mentioned irritability as a symptom of dieting.

So today I just feel like doing nothing, and just vegging out in my bed, watching movies. Blah. I have articles to write, and a batch of other projects I'd love to get going on, but every time I start to do them, I just feel repelled.

It seems pretty clear it's the diet. But I doubt it has anything to do with any particular vitamin deficiency. I'm getting all the nutrition I need, and then some; but my caloric intake has really gone down. So wherever this bad mood is coming from, I'm guessing it's related to calories alone.

On the other hand, I'm also pretty sure the bad mood will clear up in time. It's probably the result of the sudden change, not to mention all the withdrawal I must be experiencing, from grease, salt, and sugar. I'd be amazed if I did this sudden dietary change, and just felt great right away. I have to pay my dues.

This reminds me of when I gave up caffeine recently. I felt awful for quite awhile, but then I was free. This has to be the same exact thing. It's amazing how nonfunctional I feel. As I write, the words seem very poorly thought out.

So yeah, this is clearly one of the early tests, where my strength of resolve has to be equal to the challenge of losing the ability to reason. And through it all, I have to remember the massive temptation that lies probably months in the future, and not get lost in any sort of "hey, I'm losing so much weight" euphoria.

Still though - blah.

I Has Foodz Issues

I've changed my diet. In fact, I've really only decided to eat healthy foods, i.e. mainly vegetables, but also some fish. The idea of a 'diet' as a special new understanding of what's healthy seems like the result of so many fad diets being on the market, like the one saying you should eat mainly meat and fat. Ugh.

Science pretty well knows what a good diet is. We may not have a perfect picture of the nutrients required for optimal health, but the picture is still pretty clear by now, and we know which foods will give us those nutrients, and which foods will include too much of various things like salt and sugar.

The problem isn't identifying the good stuff to eat anymore. The problem is that people have all kind of crazy ideas about the ways we need to eat; and people have all kinds of crazy issues like cravings and an inability to control hunger.

The cornerstone of my new diet is essentially the idea that if I can't find anything to eat that fits my diet, I'm going to go without. That doesn't sound very radical to me; it just means that I'll wait until I find healthy food somewhere, rather than just eat the unhealthy food that's put in front of me.

This has provoked universal consternation from everyone I talk to. Immediately they're conjuring images of a hunger strike. Zack has gone insane! He's not eating! Is this a syndrome? How could this happen???

All I'm saying is, if a big plate of pasta and mashed potatoes comes my way, I'm not going to eat it, but instead wait until I can find some nice vegetables.

It seems perfectly sensible to me, but it really has produced a huge uproar whenever I tell someone new about my dietary changes.

Another thing that seems almost universal is this idea that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." When I tell people that I don't eat breakfast, they completely wig out. But not one of them can actually justify this idea. The argument in favor of breakfast basically is, it jumpstarts your metabolism.

Why would I want my metabolism jumpstarted? Well, they answer, it will cause you to burn calories.

But does my metabolism really burn so many calories that the whole breakfast I've just eaten will be burned off before lunch?

No one really has an answer to this. I think it's because people mainly just accept that theory without question because they then have an excuse to eat a big breakfast. They don't want to lose the whole "most important meal" theory, because they wouldn't be able to have their flap jacks and bacon.

As far as I can see, the difference in the number of calories my metabolism burns just on its own, versus the number of calories I burn on an empty stomach in the morning, can't be such a large number. Maybe in the double digits? A breakfast with a double digit number of calories might be a container of yogurt or a glass of orange juice. That's the kind of breakfast that must be advocated if someone insists on the whole "most important meal" concept. But that's not the breakfast I hear people advocating.

Getting back to my specific approach though; I'm attempting to deal with the cravings and other eating urges that have been overwhelming me. If I'll just eat whatever's in front of me, I'll never be eating healthy. I'm surrounded almost all day by very unhealthy choices. And my job serves free, very tasty, yet also largely unhealthy, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. If I try to make a small change, as I've tried in the past, it might proceed for awhile, but eventually I just drift right back to eating too much of the wrong stuff again.

Another problem is, if I go a little further, and make a larger change, like cutting out the bad foods, and trying to set up some kind of regimen where I always eat well, then I start getting cravings. Hoo boy will I start getting cravings. After a few weeks, it can become intolerable. And then, if anything happens to disrupt my carefully planned regimen, I can become completely overwhelmed and just pig out, and fall totally off the wagon.

Hence my current diet plan, which I chose specifically to deal with those hard cases. It does me no good to set up a very fragile, brittle approach to eating, if that approach is just going to break at the first shock. What I need is an approach that can withstand the exceptional circumstances as well as my daily life.

So, by design, my intention to "do without" if I can't get what I want, is an attempt to address cravings, and situations where my routine has been disrupted. My focus is on those inevitable events, because those are the events that always beat me. My plan has to address the real problem.

So, some people have said I should carry healthy snacks around with me, so I never run into a situation where I have to "do without".

Bad idea. First of all, I'd eat all the snacks right away, and then what? I'm stuck with no snacks again, facing cravings and temptation.

But the main thing is, if I try to rely on keeping snacks with me, and creating an environment where I never experience being deprived of food, then I'll be all the more likely to fail when I am one day confronted with that situation. I wouldn't be solving anything, just making myself weaker and more vulnerable.

So, my experience with my current new diet so far has been very difficult. I'm eating well. I have a large, vegetable-heavy salad for lunch every day, which gives me a lot of everything except a few vitamins that I can pick up elsewhere. For dinner I have a larger meal, typically with fish, or at least a larger quantity of stuff than what I had for lunch. And I'm losing weight at a healthy and not too aggressive rate. I'm not starving myself, I'm doing OK.

BUT.

The cravings are so powerful, it's a nightmare. Each time I try to control my eating, the cravings and temptations get worse. If I'm with someone who's eating something, I crave whatever they're eating.

The cool thing is, because of my simple protocol of "doing without", I don't feel any actual compulsion to act on these cravings. I experience them merely as a symptom, something that triggers my "do without" protocol.

Still though, it's extremely distracting. I really hope that the cravings start to subside in the next couple months.

Also, if the diet follows the same path as quitting smoking (which it really does seem to), the cravings will subside, and then will come back somewhere down the road in a sudden massive attack that will be extremely difficult to resist.

So that's my plan. Weather the current cravings, keep my guard up even as those cravings subside, and be prepared to resist the larger wave of cravings that will hit me once I do finally start to relax my guard.

I'm kind of hoping it's like cigarettes. I quit those, and got a lot of practice trying and failing, before I managed it. Now I have a lot of practice trying and failing to get my eating under control. If the addiction is similar, I may be able to use my cigarette experience to advantage here.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Crumble Rules

I've been playing crumble for a couple of years now, and the rules are no longer changing. I think the game is done. Every once in awhile I consider ditching one or more rules that seem difficult to explain to new players; but I always decide that those rules make the game much better than it would otherwise be.

Take joins. They typically never happen in the early part of the game, and you can definitely get some good play without resorting to them. But having the option to do a join is a very powerful weapon that forces the opponent to take your pieces seriously, even your pieces are smaller than theirs. Without the threat of a join, a player could simply ignore the smaller pieces on the board, until the entire position became completely immobile.

Even relatively obscure elements of joins, such as the ability to join many pieces into one, seem essential. Not only do they allow sudden interaction with much larger pieces, but they also make it possible to create regions of the board that are completely distinct from other regions, like a world within a world.

Long splits are another feature that sometimes gets criticism, though it's used much more frequently than joins. But long splits are one of the major ways that multiple simultaneous attacks can be launched. This is something that is so difficult to set up in a game like chess. In crumble, multiple attacks are much more common, and they add an element of force to games of even relative beginners, that you'd almost never see in chess.

It's the same right down the line. People criticize captures on the same grounds - takes up time to explain how it works. But capturing is important because it forces players to maintain cohesion between their pieces. In general, the entire game position is always very significant in crumble. Without captures, you'd end up with little pockets of pieces everywhere, not really doing anything, but just hanging out, waiting. With the possibility of captures, most of the pieces on the board have to remain focused on protecting one another.

Other rules come under criticism for more legitimate reasons. Why is it necessary to be able to divide the pieces down into other, arbitrarily smaller pieces? Why not have a reasonable limit?

That's something I have to answer on more abstract terms. For one thing, imposing a limit would mean that at a certain level of recursion, the very strategy and nature of the game would completely change, in order to accommodate that limit. For another thing, that limit would put an inherent limit on the ultimate complexity of the game. And one of my goals when I first started thinking about designing a game, was to create something that didn't suffer from having a finite game tree. I wanted something whose complexity would grow to match the needs of its players. The game of checkers has already been solved, and chess is not far behind. Unless an entirely new approach to game analysis is discovered, that fate will never befall crumble.

It can be frustrating to introduce someone new to crumble, and see them shake their head sadly at the 'obvious' mistakes I've made in its design. But without exception, those people are looking at the game in terms of irrelevancies. They have no clue of the justifications behind each rule of crumble, they only think in terms of how well it could be packaged or marketed.

My idea is, first you get the good idea, then you get other good ideas that solve the packaging and marketing problems that may stand in its way. But you don't cripple your good idea just because it would be easier to fit it in a box.

For example, I've had consistent problems writing down the rules. I've written them down a number of different times in a number of different ways, but each attempt has been unsatisfactory. The problem is that the rules do require a lot of explanation. But another problem is that the more explanation I give, the more likely it is that a newcomer will miss something I've clearly explained.

So, this is an example of needing to have more good ideas in order to solve the problems surrounding the good ideas I've already had. There has to be a way to express these rules clearly and concisely, so that people find it easy to get started.

One reason I know there has to be a way is because once a player learns the rules and gets comfortable with them, oftentimes they'll remark that the rules are actually extremely simple, once you know them. In other words, they're clear, intuitive, and result in easy-to-follow moves by both players. I just need to find a way to express them, so that all the details are just obvious. Maybe there's a natural analogy somewhere, or a set of natural analogies, that would make a lot of the nuance of the rules seem obvious to all concerned.

That's what I'm thinking about lately. I'm trying to write the rules down again, in yet another way that will hopefully be easy to read. So far, though, the new text is still relatively long. I have to keep working on it.