Boom!  A post only a week or so later... I am on a roll.

Anyhow, in keeping with the food diary that I started a week or so ago, the next two weeks will be as follows:

Breakfast - Caveman Keto Choriso Breakfast Casserole devided into 8 equal portions with 2 cheese sticks.  Normaly I would do 7 portions, but I had company for a day this week.
Calories:613 Fat:47 Protein:42  Net Carbs:8

Lunch - Depends on the day but I generally have not been eating lunch since I have began this diet, so I did not purchase or make any food for lunch.  I have 400 or so calories allocated to this time, so I can have a big snack if I like, or just not eat and loose the weight faster.
Calories:-422 Fat:-30 Protein:-41 Net Carbs:-3

Dinner - Caveman Keto Mexican Spinach Casserole again divided into 8 portions along with 2 cheese sticks.
Calories:765 Fat:53 Protein:51 Net Carbs:14

All in all, it is going to be a good Mexican inspired two weeks. 

Keto Food Diary

So, you know, a week... A year... same difference right?  Okay, so after getting both hips replaced, and having a job that kept me on my ass all day, I have finally decided to give Keto a go again.

I lost about 40 or so pounds on keto the last time I tried it, but because of job stress, I ended up cheating one day, and then falling off the wagon in a manner of speaking.  This led me to a prolonged binge of eating high carb foods, with little to no supersize.  Needless to say, I gained back those 40 lbs, plus another 40 on top, leaving me at 387lbs total.

After leaving the stressful job for health and sanity reasons, and being unemployed for about 4 months, I have finally been able to get a job, and therefore I am able to afford keto again.  Not to say that keto cannot be done cheaply, but I was mainly eating food storage, which by its very nature is high carb.

Anyhow, onto the diary part.  I buy food for two weeks at a time, and cook the same meals each day for those two weeks.  I find that I don't get tired of it, as long as I don't do more than two weeks strait of the same foods.   My meals for the first two weeks are as follows. 

Breakfast: Manly Man's Breakfast
4 Eggs, over easy
2oz Sausage patty
2 slices thick cut bacon
(Calories: 590, Carbs: 2g, Fat: 49g, Protien: 39)

Lunch:  Buns Are For Squeezing, Not Eating Hotdogs
2 Hotdogs (Nathans brand, 2 carbs per large dog, no added fluff)
4 Romaine Lettuce leafs
Mustard
Sauerkraut
Up to 3 Tbls Creamy horseradish sauce (I actually use 6 tablespoons for calory purposes because I don't want to bother measuring it out.)
(Calories: 435 Carbs:3 Fat:39 Protein:14)

Dinner: Can't Think of A Name Chicken and Broccoli w/ Salad
12oz Chicken Breast
2 cups broccoli cuts
Romaine lettuce salad
4 tbls Ranch Dressing for salad and chicken dipping
(Calories: 680 Carbs:9 Fat:15 Protein:77)

So, in total I am eating about 1705 calories a day, and with the magic of Keto, I don't get hungry.  To compare, I used to eat about 3200 calories a day to get to the weight that I was at, and I still seemed to be wanting more and more. 

I am, as of typing this, a little more than one week in, just getting over the fun 'keto flu', as well as a cold that hit me at the same time (life was hell for a few days).  I have lost a total of 18 lbs so far, a good portion of it water weight, but probably about 10 lbs fat. 

Next week, hopefully I will be back for another entry with pictures.

So... Keto...

A month or so ago, my cousin came to visit before he went on vacation.  He and I have always been roughly the same weight, even when we were kids, so when I saw that he had lost over 100 lbs since I had last seen him I was quite shocked.  We talked a bit about how he has done it, and he introduced me to the Keto diet.  

I have tried diets before, but I always seem to get frustrated with something or another in life and turn to eating too much to make myself feel better.   That and diet food typically sucks, and you spend a lot of time craving things that you just can't have.  But Keto is different.  Keto is based on getting your body into a state of ketosis where your body is using fat for fuel instead of carbs.  Basically what I am saying is where before, I used to only count calories, tried for low to no fat products, whole wheat bread etc., I now eat high fat products, with a medium amount of protean, and hardly any carbs, while still counting calories.

On the keto diet, a bit part of what you eat is determined by trying to hit certain macros.  The goal is to have your calories for every meal, and thus for the day, be 65% from fat, 30% from protein, and 5% from carbs. This means that a great breakfast can be a 3 egg omelette with cheese, mushrooms and peppers and 5 slices of bacon.  For the last few years, that breakfast would have been a very guilty pleasure for me.  Now I can have it every day if I want.  For every meal.

Next week I think I will start a food diary here, including pictures of what I have to eat, and updates on my weight accompanied with monthly progress pictures.  I will also probably post things about what I learn about Keto.  Stay tuned. 

One of those days

One must love those days when one wakes up to wonderful information.

For the last few days, I have been trying to get back into a schedule of sorts. Going to bed at a reasonable time and getting up early, that sort of thing.

As part of this effort, I sketched out a written schedule that included keeping up with the so called "enthusiast gaming press" like I used to back in the day. This generally includes going to sites such as Destructoid, Kotaku, Evil Avatar, Joystiq etc. It was in perusing these sites that I came across the post that made me so verry happy today.

For you to somewhat understand my joy, perhaps a bit of background would be helpful. Back in the day, which for this instance would be about 4 years ago, I was really into podcasts. My first favorites were Scott Johnson's ELR and the Sceptics Guide to the Universe. But from those two I branched out mainly into the video game podcasts. One of these that, for whatever reason caught my eye, was Destructoid's original podcast "Podtoid".

I don't know whether it was the right time in my life for silly dick jokes, or my general cynical outlook on life, but podtoid filled an empty void in my week with dick jokes galore. I think the first episode that I listened to was around 45, but I continued to listen to them weekly up until early last year when they kinda just died.

Anthony Burch, the last host of the podcast was moving from Destructoid's editor in chief to go off to Gearbox Software, a dream job for him. Months before, Aaron Lindie had picked up a job at Microsoft Game Studios, and didn't have much time for the podcast either, and Brad Nicholson, the man who was to replace Anthony as host, left Destructoid to be the news guy on Giant Bomb.

So, me being the change hater that I was, I went into a bit of a slump and stopped reading about games or really the gaming industry at all. This lasted for the rest of the year. That is until a few days ago... that is, until today.

It turns out, Brad Nicholson IS hosting a podcast. A podcast that has many of the same people that Podtoid had. A podcast that could very well BE podtoid if they wanted to call it that. "The Electric Hydra". Brad Nicholson, Topher Cantler, Jim Sterling, and Aaron Lindie are on the main cast, as well as one or two others. Sometimes even Anthony Burch, and Samit "SPORTS" Sarkar stop in for a few episodes. The entire cast of the old podcast has at one time or another been on the The Electric Hydra.

I don't quite know how to describe it. It's like coming home from a long overseas trip to old friends. I have been listening to the old episodes of podtoid, stopping by the site every now and then to see if there was a new episode up, but forever being disappointed. All the while, they had started anew on a different site with a different name. Now I am kinda kicking myself for not at least keeping up with the industry enough to hear about The Electric Hydra when it first started.

Ah well, I have it now, and frankly I couldn't be happier.

Manly Names And Brad's Biceps

On my forays across the vast internets, I have ran across a lot of cool websites. One of my favorite types of geeky websites are "name generator" sites. Whether you need a quick fantasy villain name for table top games, or looking for reggae names for a friends new pet; there is always a website out there for you, waiting to generate random, and often funny names.

I was perusing the internet, as I am wont to do, and came across an article about WWI's infamous "Red Barron". The pilot's real name is Manfred von Richtofen, which may just be the most manly name in the world.

...Even though his hair kinda makes him look like a penis...

Wait. Does that make him more manly?

...That is untill I came across a "Max Fightmaster" in an article on manly names from Cracked.com. Max is, or at least was in 2003, in the armed forces. Infact he holds a rank of Staff Seargent. Thats right, his full title would be Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster. Holy. Shit.

All these manly names reminded me of an old Podtoid(one of Destructoid.com's now defunct podcasts) joke about one Brad Nicholson.

This literal HULK of a nerd.

Basically, they decided that the name "Brad Nicholson" was not manly enough for Brad up there, so they came up with the nickname "Chet". They then joked about about other manly names: Frag Thickfeet, Snake Kickhead, Butch Rockfist, etc. Well, turns out there is a website that generates these names. Much laughs were had with the Manly Name Generator. I have a sneaking suspicion that Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster's parents might just run the damn thing...

The Clothesless Connection

For a long time I have asked myself, why do I like games?

Is it graphics?

No, I still love to play old NES games more than many newer titles.

Is it gameplay?

No, there are incredibly simple games that have pretty much no gameplay to speak of that I like as well.

Is it story?

No again, many of my favorite games of the past have little to no story.

So what is it?

I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that the best way to find out is to list my top 3 favorite games, and see what they all had in common.

1. World of Warcraft
2. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
3.The Sims 3

Then it came to me. In all three games, you can take your clothes off and run around naked.

In oblivion and the Sims, you can even take other people's clothes off (granted, you have to be looting their corpse in oblivion, so it's not as fun.). Some might say that this is rather contemptible, but hey, I'm a rather contemptible guy. There is something liberating about not wearing clothes that you can feel even when in a video game.

Now lets take a closer look at what makes each of these games a gem when it comes to clotheslessness.

1. World of Warcraft.

While you are still wearing underwear when you have all your armor removed (unless you have the nudity mod installed, you dirty, dirty boy) it is still fun to gauge the people around you's reaction. Especially if you try to have a meaningful conversation with them. Also fun, is to start stripping while having said conversations. This also serves as a great way to troll people in instances. Usually one of two things will happen. Everyone will either bitch at you about not having any armor or stat buffs, or for some inexplicable reason, everyone else will take off their armor too. The latter makes me believe that there are a lot of closet nudists out there in WoW, just waiting for a friend that understands their needs.

2. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Now beyond a few quests and some interesting glitches that I have seen, the majority of the people in Oblivion wear clothes. This always changes once I kill them. Now you may be thinking that there is something horribly wrong with me (and you are probably right) but hear me out. Blacksmithing. That's right. In oblivion you benefit from stripping all the clothes off of your victims bodies and repairing them for them. And believe me, to fully level blacksmithing, you will have to strip A LOT of people.

3. The Sims

Or as I like to call it, the multi-party sex simulator. Okay, so out of the other games, this may just be the most family friendly, and to fully get the most out of it, you have to do some rather extensive modding and searching on some rather... questionable corners of the web. But trust me. Its worth it. I have seen more deprived acts preformed by my Sims than I have ever seen in all of the porn I have ever watched. Fellatio chairs, sex showers, censor removers, the orgy bed. The list just goes on and on. But I think the best thing is that, now, whenever I see the EA/Maxis logo, I get a hard-on.

Oh yea, that's the stuff.

Now, there are other reasons that I like those games. The leveling, the customization, the open world feel, the modding communities, etc. But first thing that came to my mind, was the quasi nudity they all share.

So my conclusion is:

I like games because they give me a boner.

-EQ out-

CONGRATS REBECCA AND SID!!!!

Those of you who keep up on The Amazing Meeting (TAM) have probably already heard the news that Rebecca Watson (from The Skeptics Guide To The Universe) and Sid Rodriguez (from London Sceptics In The Park) were married on stage in front of the SGU panel audience. The rings were presented by Adam Savage (of MythBusters fame) and George Hrab (from the Geologic podcast) was on guitar for the music. The serimony was preformed by Julia A Kovacs, who had just recently (for this event do doubt) obtained her licence to preform marrages. Below is the video. I teared up a bit, I'll admit.



CONGRADULATIONS YOU TWO!!!