Reality check on what people earn

[Tom Tom]

Fathead was testing a "theory" that many proclaim, that what makes you fat is sugar and not fat.

Exactly. He eliminated the sugar and kept carb intake low.

Although I say its a fact that sugar/carbs makes you fat.

 

[oatnet]

His movie was more of an "experiment" than super size was.

My favorite part of SuperSize was in the special features. They took meals from a range of restuarants, put them under Bell jars, and let them rot. While most product turned up landscapes of mold, the MCFries just mummified. Apparently bacteria don't consider McFries to be food either.

To me, that is the crux of the issue - it isn't fast food, it is false food. It looks like food, it smells like food, it tastes like food, but it is really a wonder of Modern Chemistry and Industrial Design tailored for Mass Appeal. Our supermarkets are lined with it too - boxes of processed items that look like meals, but are mostly junk calories with the good stuff stripped out, 'candy' at best, but definitely not food. If you are eating something that has been processed, or has an ingredient you can't pronounce, you aren't eating food. I eat as close to the source as I can - starting with ingredients like fresh local fish/poultry, raw vegetables, raw fruit, raw grains. There is nothing prepared in my diet, no BPA-lined cans or plasticizer-leaking plastics, or toxic chemicals to add that "buttery smell".

It isn't expensive to cook healthy - it is just time consuming, and we in the US are a combination of too burdoned by modern society, and perhaps too lazy. Plus a happy meal is the cheapest ticket to consumer-culture satisfaction, foisted upon us by decades of advertising. Finally, food manufacturers have given us what we have asked for - candy, packaged up to look like meals. If you are eating something made from ingredients that weren't available to humans in the 1920's, then you probably aren't eating food.

Although I say its a fact that sugar/carbs makes you fat.

There is some basis in that. This doctor's presentation talks about how our body processes fructose, or more correctly, does not process it. How we can't process 100% natural fruit juice's well, because the roughage which helps us process it has been removed from the fruit. How high fructose corn syrup, introduced by Nixon to stabilize the price of food in our economy, has changed our diet. How infants, once fed formula made with HFCS, become obese. This really shaped my view of what I eat.

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All Fathead did was to keep carb intake to less than 100 grams a day by not eating bread and not drinking soda.

Did it also track how much sodium he ate? That is a favorite trick of the "lose 20lb in a week" type of diets - they specify low-salt foods, so your body sheds a ton of water weight. Soda, for example, has a lot of salt in it - to keep you thirsty and wanting to drink more. That is why soda is so sweet - to cover up the taste of the salt they add, to keep you wanting more.

-JD

 

[Tom Tom]

. I eat as close to the source as I can - starting with ingredients like fresh local fish/poultry, raw vegetables, raw fruit, raw grains. There is nothing prepared in my diet, no BPA-lined cans or plasticizer-leaking plastics, or toxic chemicals to add that "buttery smell".

Right on! Thats almost my diet exactly. I eat no grains. But I do eat grass fed red meat.

Been doing the primab/low carb thing for over a year. Easily dropped 30 pounds in just 4 months.

 

[oatnet]

. I eat as close to the source as I can - starting with ingredients like fresh local fish/poultry, raw vegetables, raw fruit, raw grains. There is nothing prepared in my diet, no BPA-lined cans or plasticizer-leaking plastics, or toxic chemicals to add that "buttery smell".

Right on! Thats almost my diet exactly. I eat no grains. But I do eat grass fed red meat.

Been doing the primab/low carb thing for over a year. Easily dropped 30 pounds in just 4 months.

I'm down 61 lbs, almost by accident. After a reality check from my doctor last summer I updated my diet , not to lose weight, but to reverse the formation of arterial plaques. My motto has become 'Control Today, or Surgery Tomorrow.' Weight loss was a by-product of those changes.

The core of my diet was fresh foods for a long time, but I also ate organic junk food (ice cream bars, cookies, etc) from Whole Foods. I reduced my saturated fat intake to meet the american heart association guidelines. I tried to balance my diet to the USDA guidelines, but when you drill down, they are suprisingly vague. I increased my consumption of brown rice, which is about as carby a grain as you can get. My vegetable intake is great, but I leveraged more fruit to replace the organic junk food. I started regarding all processed foods as 'candy', and am amazed by the aisles of regular supermarkets, teeming with nothing but things I don't consider to be food.

The weight has just been coming off since then, slow and steady. My sleep has been much better too - it seems the junk part of my old diet had me getting up to pee a few times a night, and otherwise made me uncomfortable enough to not sleep well. At no point do I feel hungry, or deprived, or that I have to do special exercises I don't want to (although I enjoy walking the beach every other night), it just flows naturally from eating real calories from the stuff my body needs, not junk calories.

My mother gave my wife and I 'FitBit"s - a clip-on biometric tracker with a 3d accellerometer , that counts steps, flights of stairs, sleep patterns. At first I was skeptical, but it is a real handy device. http://www.fitbit.com

-JD

 

[REdiculous]

Eat what you crave, when you crave it, but eat slowly and stop as soon as you feel your stomach stretch. Easiest diet ever....

I have to work damn hard at being lazy to get over 140lbs. :lol:

 

[oatnet]

Eat what you crave, when you crave it, but eat slowly and stop as soon as you feel your stomach stretch. Easiest diet ever.... I have to work damn hard at being lazy to get over 140lbs. :lol:

Typical diet recommendation from a naturally skinny person, who doesn't understand. I'd speculate that you were one of the following:

. 1) brought up on the right foods so you 'crave' the right food, or
. 2) have a very active lifestyle, or,
. 3) under 28 (ie hasn't stepped off that metabolism cliff of adulthood yet), or
. 4) one of those jittery people with a naturally high metabolism.

When I ate junk I always "craved" more junk, because while my stomach may have had a ton of food in it, my body was starving for the nutrients that were missing in "False Food." I've never felt my stomach stretch, or feel particularily full, so it is only "the easiest diet ever" if your body works that way.

-JD

 

[V_Mark]

To me, that is the crux of the issue - it isn't fast food, it is false food. It looks like food, it smells like food, it tastes like food, but it is really a wonder of Modern Chemistry and Industrial Design tailored for Mass Appeal.

I've recently heard it termed as "edible food-like substance."

BTW-- wow, what a tangent for this thread.

 

[heathyoung]

Nothing wrong with a tangent...

Easy way to tell if you are eating right - if you food has numbers in the ingredients - don't eat it

 

[veloman]

Haha, I don't mind the tangent. Food is one of my biggest expenses and eating healthy is a main concern of mine.

The worst I eat is a frozen pizza once in a while. Otherwise, my gf is vegetarian and cooks a lot, so I eat really well there. I typically eat turkey or chicken, occasionally have the steak or pork taco at whole foods market. If you look at the groceries I buy, it almost looks like too much fiber. I hate traveling because I never can get enough fiber and that's no good. I do eat a fair bit of dairy, but cheddar cheese is so tasty and cereal and yogurt is so easy.

Lots of breads (fresh from Whole Foods, rarely buy the packaged stuff). I do most of my shopping at the big grocer here - HEB. WFM is just too expensive on most stuff, but the artisian bread is my treat to myself ($8-10 a week). The taco $3.79 is worth it since it's almost a meal and I doubt I could make it myself for any less, and the time it would take would be huge.

I spend about $250-300 a month on food, which I thought was reasonable. This doesn't include eating out at restaurants. If I was training on my road bike like I use to, I'm sure I'd be spending another $100 or so.

 

[REdiculous]

#5...Grew up poor. :|

 

[oatnet]

#5...Grew up poor. :|

I grew up dirt-poor in a rich town. :lol:

 

[SamTexas]

I don't have a shopping list per-se, though I tend to have rounds of stuff I buy periodically.

Usually it's whatever meat is on sale that week, for the super-duper-loss-leader type of sale....

Thanks for sharing. You're quite a shopper.

Sometimes I get foodboxes like that, but unless I am in desperate need, I don't try to, because I know the supply is very limited, and there are others much worse off than I am that need it more than I do.

I bet you feel great for doing the right thing.
I know of a food bank in Houston. I went there several times in the past to watch. 70% of the people look legitimate and deserving. The other 30% look like opportunists judging from the way they dress and the car they drive.

I wish it was as cheap to get dog food, but fortunately there are times (like right now) where I get a lot of dog food for nothing or next to nothing becuase of end-of-year changeouts, or stuff people don't want or their dogs didn't like or wouldn't eat, etc. The latter is not that uncommon to find on Freecycle and sometimes on Craigslist. That lasts me thru much of the beginning of the year, sometimes all the way into summer. But when I can't do that, it can cost much more to feed the dogs than it does to feed me, so I have to cut back on my own stuff to keep them in food.

I don't have a pet so I don't know. But I have heard similar complaints from many other pet owners. It does not make sense to me at all.

 

[dogman dan]

Well, ya could keep a few medium size dogs AW. I know the feeling, I don't have much trouble affording my herd usually. But there are times when I think to myself, dogs smaller than St Bernards or bloodhounds could be a good idea.

Right now my St Bernard is at the end of his days, barely able to walk. His medications to keep him comfy are costing more per day than feeding the whole pack of bloodhounds.

But in the end, the pack of hounds for 30 years has been cheaper than one visit from a burglar.

 

[amberwolf]

it's not actually any cheaper for a smaller dog, cuz they often live enough longer than the big ones that they end up eating the same amount. or thye ar e higher energy and eat more anyway and run it off.

the 35-ish pound fred -little black dog in pics- eats almost as much as nana or hachi, each at 100lbs, but she rns it lll off. :lol: zing...zing...zing...

defnitiely keeps the bad guys away though

 

[Nehmo]

Do you honestly consider a $100k a year as "rich"? NOT!!..... Doing betterthem most maybe but a long way from what I would consider rich.

"Rich" is a relative term, but OP's use is appropriate because he was referring to the ability to by a high-end e-bike. Anyway, if we use household income as a gauge, $100k/year puts them in the top 20%.

 

[deronmoped]

I've got a great lifestyle. I'm living the $100,000.00 lifestyle making one tenth that.

I work a day or two a week, have plenty of money and tons of free time. It's a philosophy that can set you free. I told all my friends that I retired at forty, well not really, I only decided that I was going to work as little as possible and as long as I could, pretty much till I'm dead. Retiring is not all that it's cracked up to be. People do not realize how much self-motivation it takes to keep busy in retirement. I have plenty of stretches where I did not have all that much work coming in and found myself running out of things to do. You basically end up twiddling your fingers and find you haven't accomplished much that day. What I'm getting at is, you need a job in retirement to keep you active, sharp, in shape... Someone calling you on the phone, asking for you to do some work for them.

How I got to this point takes a lot of "not" spending, paying things off... Everything I own is paid for, house, cars... Also I fix all my own stuff, don't hire anyone. I get 95% of my stuff used, ten cents on the dollar, cheaper or even free. I almost never eat out, most the food out there is junk, loaded with fat and sugar and expensive at that. If I do eat out, I usually come away disappointed, knowing I could of cooked it better, healthier and way cheaper.

The latest way to "Cheapdom" I found was to have my dental work done in Mexico. The dentist here wanted to retire after they worked on me. I did some checking around and found you can get just as good of work done in Tijuana. People even fly into San Diego to cross the border to get their work done. When I went down there, I was blown away on how professional they were, put some of the dentist in the States to shame. I was in and out in a couple of hours, where as I would have had to make multiple appointments here in San Diego. Saved $2,500.00 on top of all that too.

Most people have no clue on how to make money work for you, their idea is to throw money at the problem till it goes away. That's why some of these people can make into the six figures and at the end of the paycheck they are still just as broke as when they started.