Category: General

I'm twenty pounds lighter than I was at the beginning of the year. That just feels good. I'm twenty pounds lighter despite the fact that I've learned how to smoke meat. I'm twenty pounds lighter despite the fact that I still haven't been able to work exercise into my schedule yet. I'm twenty pounds lighter despite the fact that I quit counting calories weeks ago.

I'm not losing weight as quickly as I did in the beginning, but I'm still plugging away at about a pound and a half a week, without counting calories and without exercising. That, in itself, is a big win for me. I've even "splurged" a little bit--going out to JCW's with my family and eating too much gumbo last weekend.

I'm halfway to my initial goal that will put me back under 200 pounds again, at which point, I'll reevaluate how much more weight I need to lose. But at that point it won't be very much at all--maybe about 8-10 pounds.

In 5 more pounds, I'm going to get my suits dry cleaned because they'll fit me again. It's going to feel good. It should only be about three weeks from now.

A friend and I were discussing food (I know, surprise, surprise) a few months back at the beginning of Sunday School.  It was more than likely fast Sunday.  This friend is from Mississippi and as we discussed Dutch Oven cooking, he talked about how long it had been since he had made gumbo.  As we continued talking (and salivating, might I add) about gumbo, my friend told me that he thought that dutch oven cooking and gumbo were a natural match.

As Mardi Gras approached, we decided that we could celebrate by cooking up a big pot of gumbo.  Then we realized that Fat Tuesday, being a Tuesday, would be a bad day to attempt a gumbo.  Gumbo takes a while to cook.

If you're not familiar with gumbo, you can check out the Wikipedia article here.  For the less curious among you, I'll summarize:

Gumbo is a type of stew that originated in Louisiana.  It's uses stock, "trinity" (celery, onion, and bell pepper in Louisiana), meat or shellfish, and some sort of thickener.  It's the thickener that makes the gumbo what it is.  It's usually a roux made of flour and some sort of fat, okra, filé powder (sassafrass leaves, dried and ground), or a combination of the three.  Gumbo actually combines culinary influences from several cultures: French, Spanish, German, West African, and Choctaw.  The name comes either from the African word for okra (ki ngombo) or the Choctaw word for filé (kombo).

There are two main varieties of gumbo.  Creole gumbo usually has tomatoes, shellfish, and a thickener.  Cajun gumbo is based on a dark roux and is spicier.  It can contain shellfish or fowl.

My friend described the dark roux and talked about a chicken and sausage gumbo, so it was pretty clear that he was talking about Cajun gumbo.

We finally got together on Saturday, armed with his mother's gumbo recipe, a pile of ingredients, and my dutch oven equipment to give it a try.

The recipe (with pictures), if you're interested, can be found on dutchovenchef.com.

The roux was the most fascinating part of the process.  It was made of nothing but vegetable oil and flour that is cooked until it darkens to a nice chocolate brown color.  As I continued to stir, it became progressively darker in color and smelled more and more like chicken frying, minus the smell of the actual chicken.  I could feel the heat radiating from the Dutch oven, so I knew that it was getting hotter and hotter and the flour became darker and darker as it toasted in the hot oil.

Without the roux, the gumbo would just be another pot of soup.

In the end, we had a savory, spicy gumbo that disappeared way too quickly.  I ate the last of it for lunch yesterday.  I'm definitely going to make it again.

But the best part of the day, for me, was both learning something new (how to make gumbo) from a good friend while being able to teach him something new (dutch oven cooking).  The only thing to "rue" on Saturday was that the day ended.

Kidney stones, I mean.

Yesterday, I was surprised to pass my eighth kidney stone.  Yes surprised.  It looked like it was about 2-ish millimeters.

I've had some kidney-stone-like pains off and on for the last couple of months.  Nothing excruciating.  Just enough to make me wonder if something is going on in there.  Yesterday, I knew for sure:  YES.  Something WAS going on in there.

Here's hoping that the rest of the kidney stones I ever have (may they be few) are as relatively painless as this one was.

I know I'm seriously in the minority when it comes to sports.  I suck at most all of them.  I've never been able to get that good spiral on a football.  I wasn't ever able to play well enough to get into the infield on my little league baseball team--and I was even on the crappy "Security Bank" team that won about one game a season.  Basketball?  Forget about it.  Other team sports?  I haven't gotten past the part where your own teammates berate you and belittle you if you do something wrong.  I used to enjoy racquetball, but a torn tendon put an unfortunately permanent end to that.

Now I know that this isn't necessarily out of the ordinary.  The problem with me is that I never EVER got the whole sports fan thing. I enjoy watching a good game of whatever, but just can't feel the euphoria over a win or the pain of a loss. It just doesn't affect me when people I don't know playing a sport I can't play do well OR do poorly.

Rabid fan-dom baffles me.

That having been said, I must say that there are certain college football teams that I enjoy watching more than others.  College football is my sport of choice.  I really enjoy the fall--I look forward to it.  But win or lose, I enjoy watching my teams play.  I don't get overly excited about the wins and I don't mope about after a loss.

I honestly can't stand watching basketball. I went to a Jazz game when the company I worked for at the time made a Jazz game a company "event."  I believe that I enjoyed the food before the game much more than the actual game.  I don't remember if the Jazz won or lost.  It was the first time I saw a Jazz game "live" since the Jazz vs Celtics game I saw the Salt Palace when I was 16 years old.

I watched the Jazz play a few years back when they were making runs for championships, but it was more about "doing something with other people" than watching the basketball.

I've never watched a BYU basketball game in my life--nor any other college basketball game for that matter.

Now that I think about it, I don't support professional sports at all.  I don't go to games, I don't buy merchandise, and I don't even watch the games on television.

Nope.  Fan-dom doesn't speak to me, though I don't begrudge others their fun in it all.

I do sometimes use it for my own enjoyment. I love taking the "other" side in a one-sided crowd.  It really depends on the crowd though--in some crowds of "blue-bleeders," I might end up actually bleeding red.

This morning, I'm fifteen (and a half) pounds lighter than I was when I started counting calories.  I actually quit counting calories a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still maintaining a weight loss of between a pound and a half and two pounds a week.  As a matter of fact, on 1 February, I posted that I'd lost 7 pounds.  Today, I'm posting that I've lost 15 pounds.  That's 8 pounds of weight loss in 4 weeks--exactly 2 pounds a week!

This is even after a bit of "celebration" over the weekend.  I enjoyed pizza from The Pie, sparkling cider, and a nice breakfast at a B&B.  The main difference now is that I had two slices of pizza instead of 3 or 4 or more.  Because of the breakfast, I decided to forgo lunch.  Choices like that allow me to still enjoy the foods I love without there being more and more and MORE of me to love.

At this rate, I should hit my first goal of losing 40 lbs at the end of May.  I believe that I'll probably slow down a little bit around the end of March because when I have less of me, that means that the same amount of calories will result in less weight lost.  Starting in April, I'm going to target a pound and a half weight loss per week instead of two pounds per week.  More realistically, I'll hit this first goal by the end of June.  At that point, I'll reassess where I'm at and I'll likely set a second goal of losing around 10 more pounds.

I love that I have a plan and that the plan is working!  Even better: this plan is something I can do even when things happen--like torn tendons and surgeries and not being able to ride my bike.  This is something I can do ANY time.  All it takes is a little bit of time and a lot of willpower.

As of yesterday, I'm officially ten pounds lighter than I was when I started counting calories!  Hooray!

I'm in my fourth week of the calorie count, and I still don't quite feel ready to abandon counting calories yet.  I'm more excited about the rate of weight loss than I am bugged by logging everything that I eat.  I'll continue to be really strict in my counting and I'll continue to stick to my daily allotment of calories and I should continue to lose!

Speaking of my daily allotment of calories, now that I'm ten pounds lighter, my allotment has dropped by about 50 calories.  What??  No fair!  However, it does make sense.  There is less of me to maintain.

I can't really see the weight loss yet.  That will come in about 10-15 more pounds.  My wife says she can see it and I am noticing that my clothes (especially my pants) are fitting looser, so I'm seeing the progress.  It's just not very visual yet.

But I FEEL a lot better, mostly because the upward trend in my weight has been reversed.

I also feel much better knowing that I have found something that both works for me and is something I can continue to do all my life.  It takes a little bit of time and a lot of willpower.  It doesn't mean any special diet that I'm eventually going to go off of and gain my weight back.  It doesn't mean that I have to stop eating any of the foods that I love--I just have to keep track of the calories of the foods that I love, and eat less of them.  I am avoiding a couple of things right now, because as much as I love them, I wouldn't be able to fit them in my current calorie plan.  But I'm not swearing off of them for life--just until I get to the point that I'm maintaining my weight loss and I will have a larger calorie allotment each day.

I have been thinking about maintenance already.  When I hit my target weight, I'll count calories for a month or so--until I better understand how much a 190-lb me can eat and not gain weight--and then I'll stop calorie counting.  But I also have a "trigger" weight (200 lbs) where I have to start counting calories again, like it or not.  This way, I have a plan to keep the weight from slowly creeping back on until I have to do something more drastic again.

And yes, I'm going to celebrate ten pounds of weight loss, and I'm going to celebrate it with food.  I'm going to smoke a turkey tomorrow.

Today, someone said something to me  that I've heard many times in the past, and today, I'm finally going to blog about it.

Pleasant Grove High School is currently putting on a production of Phantom of the Opera.  My sons went to see it last night and really enjoyed themselves.  One of them told me today that he's had the songs in his head all day.

A co-worker who knows that I'm into theater (or, at least used to be.  More on that in a future blog entry...maybe) asked me if I had seen it yet.  When I mentioned that I hadn't, he told me that I needed to make sure and go see it.  Then he said it:

I saw Phantom in Toronto, and those kids at Pleasant Grove High School did every bit as good as the professional group.

NO. THEY. DID. NOT!

I've heard this time and time again.  "I saw <insert show name here> in <insert city here>, but <insert local theater group here> did a production that was just as good."

I understand that you thoroughly enjoyed the local production.  I get that.  I enjoy theater as much, if not more, than the next guy.  But there's no way that the local theater group is even in the same league as the professional group.

I have only seen one show on Broadway.  I have seen several shows put on by Broadway touring groups.  I've been in and seen more amateur and semiprofessional theater productions than I can count.  I don't feel like I'm disrespecting the local theater groups by saying that even the very best local theater doesn't compare to the professional groups.

Does this mean that I didn't enjoy the local groups?  No.  Does this mean that the local groups didn't put on a good show?  Absolutely not.

What I'm saying is that with multi-million-dollar budgets and with a MUCH larger talent pool, the professional groups have a big advantage right from the start.  Local theaters will rehearse a musical for a month or two.  The length of a run for a local theater is anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.  Professional groups have a much longer rehearsal period followed by a much MUCH longer production period.  This also leads (generally) to a higher quality production.

Are there exceptions to this?  I'm sure there are.  I'm sure that there are bad performances by professional groups and exceptional performances by local groups that approach each other in quality.  But this is, by far, the exception, not the rule.  As often as I hear the superlative praise of local theater groups and its less-than-apt comparison to professional theater, I'm quite certain that there is a lot of exaggeration going on.

So please don't tell me that the production you saw at a local High School was as good as the production you saw on Broadway, because that's when I'm going to stop listening to you.  Instead, tell me how much you enjoyed the production.  Give me  details about what you liked and why.  That goes a LOT farther than an overly-gushing comparison that has an unbelievably slim chance of actually being true.

I'm two weeks into calorie counting and I'm 7 pounds down!  I haven't been hungry all the time as I thought I might be.  I have been eating pretty much everything I'm used to eating.  I even get desserts, especially if I work out that day.

This is a very good thing!  I'm already a sixth of the way to my goal!

I know some people in this group.  It would be great to send them to New York!  If you're reading this, please vote for their idea.  You can vote once per day per email address.

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As of this morning, I'm down four pounds my first week.  FOUR!  Like I said in my previous post, it's probably not all REAL weight loss, but probably half of it is, which means that the app is doing pretty good.  I told it that I wanted to lose two pounds a week, and if half of the weight loss is water weight or some other fluctuation, then it's spot on.  I've stuck pretty close to the calories and I've lost two pounds.

Now for week two.