...Paul Kramer

Paul Kramer wrote a wonderful book called "Maggie Goes on a Diet". It is a book about a 14 year old girl who goes on a diet after kids make fun of her. After losing weight she becomes popular and good at soccer. Instantly overprotective mothers and others got riled up and pissed off because they think the message that he is sending to young girls is wrong. I would have to strongly disagree with those parents. I would also have to tell them to SHUT UP!!!! This book is necessary because there are SO many obese children in this country and the numbers will continue to grow as long as we have parents living in the land of denial. In the video below you can see that Maggie was snaking snacks and got fat, which can happen. She lost weight and people started to know her by her name, her real name I assume and not that fat girl or whatever kids are calling fat kids these days. Parents think that this could spark eating disorders in young girls, which could happen, but if so then I do not think you can blame it on a book. Stop looking for a scapegoat parents! Besides I ma sure they can look at their own botox Barbie wannabe mom and pick up a lot of things from her fad diets, constant cardio routines and doing whatever it takes to please daddy because he is the one making the money and develop bad habits, then whose fault is it hmmm? Does losing weight increase popularity? Yes! You may hate to agree with it but we all know this is true. The most popular women and men in the world, the most beautiful women in the world, as voted on by other people, are usually young, fit or thin, and that leads to their popularity. Ugly and fat people have to become smarter and funnier than everyone else just to get half as far as a pretty person, this is just a fact of life that we have to live with. If anything this book can be a life saving tool for some chubby little girl or boy who gets teased and bullied. Parents stop trying to control every situation for your children. By doing so you are only making them weaker and less prepared for the harsh real world that they will enviably have to face. If you keep coddling them then expect for them to be 34 and living at home with you with no plan of ever leaving. I am giving Paul Kramer 2 Digits Up and I think these mad moms need to take a chill pill, maybe with the wine that we all know they consume by the bottle, read the book and apply it to your children's life.

...Diets

Are we all on diets? It is Summer time, so I guess we should have started these things a couple of seasons ago. Why did I wait this long? I got busy. But now I am hot and I feel huge, though the scale and my doctor tell me differently. I will Buy my equipment and healthy snacks and see what becomes of me. I do not have to be ripped, though I cannot get this "Abs start in the kitchen" saying out of my head. I heard it earlier this week and it has been on my mind ever since. No matter how hard I workout I can always ruin it with some quick yummy extra fatty treat. Oh well, I will try to curb that this year... HA! I am still young, I should not have to worry about this for another 10 years. I am straight skinny, gay fat though, which means fun clothes will look like yikes...more like blah on me. Fortunately I am only 172 and over 6 feet tall so I do not have a ton of work to do. Now I have a real motivation, that and something else. Maybe I will go out and buy a small car, a Z4 or Boxster. If I cannot fit into hot clothes and a fun car maybe and I still do not feel like getting back in shape then it will never happen. I am giving diets and dieting a Digit Up.

...Mark Haub

Nutrition professor Mark Haub of Kansas State University put himself on a diet. At 5 foot 10 and 201 pounds, Haub's pre-diet body mass index of 28.8 classified him as almost obese. What did he do? He ate junk food. For one month he decided to eat Twinkies, Ho Hos, and brownies for each meal. He wanted t show his students that weight alone does not classify you as being healthy or not. He lost 15 pounds, lowered his bad cholesterol and raised his good cholesterol. This is what he did:
"To reach his goal of a normal BMI of 18 to 25, he would need to lose at least 25 pounds. He set an eventual target of 175 pounds and calculated that a diet of 1,800 calories a day for one month, 600 to 800 calories fewer than usual, would get him halfway there. To keep his energy up during the day, he grazed on 400 to 500 calories every few hours, more than 80 percent of which came from prepackaged chocolate-coated snacks. He ate almost no whole grains, fruits, or dietary fiber. A daily multivitamin, milk (whole) for calcium and protein, and a small serving of vegetables were his only concessions to nutrition. He also registered about two hours a week of physical activity—cycling, walking around campus, and chasing two young, high-energy sons."
This may sounds crazy, but it could work. Portion control is the most important thing. Even diet foods can become just as unhealthy as regular food if you eat too much of it. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Haub had this to say about his experiment, "I'm losing weight and my cholesterol is improving by eating those foods. Is it really soda and chips that are making people obese, or how much of them they eat?" and "I want people to look at what I'm doing and decide, is this healthy? I hope the answer encourages them to reexamine their own relationship with food." Take a look at one of his daily menus:
Breakfast - Total calories: 376

1 double espresso, black
2 cups Kellogg's Corn Pops
1 cup whole milk
1 Centrum Advanced Formula multivitamin
Lunch - Total calories: 540

1 Hostess Twinkie
1 Little Debbie Star Crunch
1 Muscle Milk Protein Shake
Snack - Total calories: 150

1 Hostess Twinkie
Dinner - Total calories: 688

1 Little Debbie Zebra Cake
1 brownie (Duncan Hines mix)
3-4 baby carrots
1 Muscle Milk Protein Shake
Snack - Total calories: 75

6 chips, Cool Ranch Doritos
Total Calories for the Day: 1,829

While I may not agree with everything he says, I do think this is an experiment. This could help open the eyes to many obese Americans. You can eat whatever you want, but in proper portions, and a little exercise will not kill you at all. I am giving Mark Haub a Digit Up.