Bank Accounts And Babies - Better When They're Fat.

I have started reading a blog by a guy who calls himself Mr. Money Mustache.

It's pretty serious.

He- and others like him- call themselves Financial Independialists- of FIentists. Their "thing" is saving massive portions of their income- like, 50% or more. By minimizing all spending and investing like crazy, their goal is to reach financial independence as soon as possible- and well before the average retirement age.

Mr. Money Mustache followed that strategy starting when he was 20 and "retired" at 30! "Retired" because he still has some sources of income (besides investments)- he does contracting work and "fixer-upper"-ing, but he does it because he likes it, and not because he needs the money.

It seems totally impossible, and there are some things that he does that I'm not willing to do. For example, he lives in the suburbs, outside of Denver, where living expenses are a lot lower than they are in DC. I'm not doing that- both because I love big cities, and because both Ron's and my job can only be done here (or NYC, which doesn't help in the broke-ass ninja department).

Salt is my favorite flavor

I love salt. If they had salt licks for humans, I would buy two.

Mmm...deeeliciooooous....

My friend Christian likes to ask impossible questions as a drinking game- usually a version of "Would You Rather". Like, would you rather be covered in pinstripes, or explode confetti out of your orifices when you sneeze? Or, would you rather have ears you could remove and leave lying around for spying, or have wheels instead of feet?

And then, "Would you rather....give up sweet snacks and coffee, or salty snacks and beer?"

Easy peasy. I'd give up sweet snacks and coffee. I'd miss them, for sure. And I don't need the beer (that's why God gave us gin and tonics). But give up salty snacks? NEVER.

So I was relieved and gratified to read in the NYTimes of a recent study showing that, not only is there no correlation between low-sodium diets and lower rates of heart disease, it's actually possible that super-low sodium diets are bad for  you.

YESSSSSS.

Sad News!

I tried the NYTimes seven minute workout aaaaaannnnnd....I'm sore.

That is nothing but sad.

That is all.

Vegemite, Anchovies, and Olives, Oh My!

This is classic- slow mo video of kids trying new foods for the first time.

I love the little girl trying the olive. C'mon, kiddo, you know you love it!

Were you an adventuresome eater as a kid? I always have been- my parents talk about watching me eat oysters on the half shell as a toddler, so it seems it's part of my nature.

Good News!

Guys! Great news! It turns out, there's no need to work out for, like, eons. Or even 30 minutes. 

There've been a number of studies recently that indicate that short bursts of intense activity are at least as effective at reducing weight and increasing fitness as well as longer, less intense workouts. 

For those of us who have slogged through marathon training, this seems like information that would have been helpful several hundred miles ago.

The concept, sometimes called High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), is the basis for the trendy CrossTraining workouts.

The NYTimes has an article this week recapping a study that showed that a high-intensity workout, done for only SEVEN MINUTES, "produces molecular changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of running or bike riding."

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, Y'ALL!*

DILDOs

All this talk about yuppies and their shopping habits this week made me want to share the best new acronym I've heard in ages.

DILDOs, aka, Double Income Large Dog Owners. It's me and Ron, to a tee.

Just a couple of DILDOs, heading into the weekend. Have a good one!

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

My entry about grocery shopping at Whole Foods got me thinking again about how much we spend on food, and how spoiled we are, frankly, that we have the option to eat the way we do.

As I mentioned, we grocery shop at Whole Foods almost exclusively, for a number of reasons, prime among them being laziness.

If we eat most meals at home during the week, we'll probably spend about $150-200 on groceries, depending on whether we have to restock on expensive stuff like wine olive oil.

When I say we're eating "most" meals at home, that means that we go out for no more than two meals- maybe one dinner and one breakfast/brunch- in the course of the week. That is us at our most disciplined- it requires that we cook at home pretty much all week and then save eating out for the weekend, with friends.

Most weeks, we can manage that. Maybe once during the week we'll be stuck working late, or just be too tired to cook, and we'll end up ordering pizza (we can get a good carry-out one for $10) or Thai.

Given how expensive Whole Foods is, I sometimes wonder if we're really saving money by cooking, but for the two of us to go anywhere we like to go for dinner is easily $50. It's not hard to see that grocery shopping (even for expensive groceries) and cooking at home is cheaper. Of course if you grocery shop and then decide you're too tired and order out anyway, your meals start getting really pricey.

I heard the CEO of Whole Foods interviewed one time, and the interviewer asked him about the prices at Whole Foods, and how he expected people to justify the high costs versus a cheaper store. His answer was dead-on- basically, we all have to make choices about how to spend our money, and you spend your money on the things that are of highest priority to you. If having cable at $100/month, or having a cell phone at $100/month, is more important to you than buying top-quality produce, then that's fine, those're your priorities.

The graphic below demonstrates all of this very tidily, and comes from a very interesting website, if you're interested- link is below the graphic.

From http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2011/09/28/is-fast-food-cheaper-than-cooking-at-home-bittman-mashup/

Thug Kitchen

Thug Kitchen is my new favorite food blog and everyone should read it.

He's a vegetarian gangsta. Despite the graphic I chose, he offers a lot of recipes, and they all look great. Plus he makes me laugh out loud and at inappropriate times.

In the immortal words of one Mr. Lavar Burton, you don't have to take my word for it. Saveur just named Thug Kitchen the Best Food Blog of 2013.

Word.

I Made This

And it was good. 

You should make some.

And eat it all up.

Because it's spring.

And life is short.

And it was delicious.

The Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen

Ron and I grocery shop almost exclusively at Whole Foods, that well-lit haven for yuppies in search of multi-hyphenate food products to buy in order to rid themselves of their gobs of superfluous income. Free-trade gluten-free locally-sourced-buckwheat soba noodles, anyone?

Basically, yeah.

We shop there for a couple of reasons. Primarily, laziness- it's the the only grocery store within walking distance of our house.

But even when we lived directly across the street from a Harris Teeter, we'd still make trips to Whole Foods to supplement our produce and meat. Those items in particular are much fresher and of much higher quality at Whole Foods.

When we bought produce from the Teet, it started out looking somewhat depressed at its own underachievement, and would go downhill from there. It would be moldy and soft within a day or two; the fish and meat seemed to visibly decompose even as you stood considering it.

Ah HA! and Happy Weekend

Cavemen did not do this.
But they wanted to.

Of course there was always lots of evidence of, or at least discussion of, the possibility that the Paleo diet wasn't all it was cracked up to be. For me, it definitely wasn't a good fit.

This piece refutes one of the central claims of Paleo-purveyors, which is that the reason Paleo dieting is good for you is that our bodies haven't had time to adapt to the grains that are now in our diets but weren't when we were cavemen. The article points out a number of examples in which adaptation happened extremely rapidly- much more rapidly than the 30,000 years or so that have elapsed since grains were cultivated agriculturally, ground up, and used to make delicious carb-y bread. Further, some foods, like tomatoes, weren't available to cavemen either, and Paleo diets don't outlaw those.

The author points out that this fact isn't to say that the Paleo diet won't help you lose weight. It's just that any restrictive eating plan where you cut out whole food groups and think intensively about what you're putting in your pie hole probably would.

I would only add to that that while we may have been eating grains for the last 30,000 years, it's really only in the last 30 years or so that we have started eating so many crazy, super-processed grain products. Because they are delicious, of course, but they are completely devoid of nutritional purpose, and they are making us fat. So while cutting out grains entirely probably isn't necessary (or even a good idea), getting rid of the junk carbs almost certainly is.

Happy weekend all!

Coming Out of My Cave

I'm back! Were you worried?

The beast stirs...

No?

Not even a little bit?

Well, fine. I'm fine, since you asked. 

I may have fallen into a small winter hole. 

You know, a winter hole. The warm and cozy spot you snuggle into to hibernate when it's dark and dreary outside. Dark when you wake up and dark again about 20 minutes after you eat lunch, unless it's cloudy/raining/sleeting, in which case, it's just dark all day. 

You can just feel the hope, right? RIGHT?!

I'm not fully out of the winter hole yet, but I'm trying. There's light showing through. The daffodils seem to have some faith that eventually the gloom will part, so I'm going with them. When have they ever been wrong?

There's been so much interesting health news in the past couple of weeks that I've been feeling antsy to talk about, so I finally shook off my Snuggie and took up my laptop. 

Happy Friday!

It's the weekend! Go for a run, go ice skating, ride your unicorn bike...do your thang, y'all.

Source: d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net via Rebecca on Pinterest

To Vitamin Or Not To Vitamin

Vitamin N used to be good for you too.

Once every couple of years I go through a little phase where I feel like I should be taking vitamins. I go buy them and take them very regularly every morning...for about a week.

At which point, I forget, or get tired of my pee looking like Mountain Dew (sorry), and stop taking them. Then the vitamin bottle sits on the shelf for 6 months until I get tired of it judging me for my lack of follow through, and I throw it away.

There's not a lot of evidence that vitamins actually make any difference in your health. NPR has a nice little summary here; basically, there are some vitamins (like calcium and Vitamin D) for which there is evidence that supplements can be helpful. But mostly, you're paying a lot of money for...Mountain Dew.

That's why this article caught my eye. I mean, I can't be bothered to do a checklist to make sure I'm getting, say, my B6 and B12 by eating "one cup of plain yogurt and a banana, one ounce of sunflower seeds, and three ounces of roast beef" AND getting my folic acid by eating "a cup of peas, a cup of cooked spinach, and about five spears of asparagus."

Side note- who do these writers imagine lives like this? "No, not four spears- I need five, dammit, FIVE!" We can't all be Anna Wintour. Tragically.

Nevertheless, the theory is right on. If you eat mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods, and especially lots of fruits and veggies, you will end up eating the things you need. I go through phases when I get really strong cravings for certain vegetables or fruit (recently, arugula salad with lemon juice, olive oil and parm, and grapefruit)- I think that's my body telling me what it needs. Of course, it has also been telling me it needs another peanut butter blossom cookie, and it most certainly does not.

To me, vitamins are part of the same industry as any processed food. In buying them, you're paying for companies to market products you don't really need to you. I'm saving my money for some gigante grapefruit.

Speaking of, Ron's recently started making baked grapefruit to go with our weekend breakfasts. They're a favorite from his childhood- especially with a maraschino cherry on top :)

They're supereasy to make, and so pretty and pink-a perfect warm winter comfort food.

To make:
Preheat oven to 400
Cut grapefruit in half, and then around the edges of each half and separating the flesh of the fruit from the little section divider things.
Sprinkle top with brown sugar (our preferred), or honey, or maple syrup. Add any cinnamon or vanilla extract, etc.
Bake for 15 mins or until browned

Yum!