Jericho: The diet is working, unfortunately.

On Monday we checked my weight. Yes, "we". Steph has to look at the numbers on the scale, I can't see over my huge stomach. Embarrassing? You bet! IWDC lives to embarrass its writers and entertain its readers ... with our shame.

I'm at 501. Not below 500 like I would like to be, but I hope to hit that minor goal next Monday. I'm sixteen pounds down so far - not shabby.

However, we're not about numbers these days. They are a good tool but not the end all be all. My leg edema is my most pressing, immediate concern. I was hoping my leg edema would show more progress than it has. Obviously from my last sentence, it hasn't.

More than all of this, I know the diet is working. How do I know? I've kicked the sugar cravings. Better, and worse, I now get reverse reactions to sugary foods. This morning, I went to the cafe' in my building for breakfast. The main dish was some kind of Dutch apple pie thingy smothered in sugar, sweet something, something something and they offered maple syrup as a topping. It smelled freeking wonderful! When I looked at it, I nearly gagged. My sense of sight is competing with my sense of smell for control of my body.

I just went to a departmental meeting. They had a cart of soda, I grabbed a diet coke. They also had four giant serving platters piled with my favorite: cookies!! Every kind a fat man could desire. Free. Just take one. Take many! I heaved an audible groan and took none. A friend in the room said they were meant to bring me joy. I told him they didn't bring me joy. They brought me remorse and regret, but no joy. Again, they looked like pure shit but smelled like the cleavage of an angel! I had to sit on the other side of the room, easily ten meters away just to avoid the smell, which both delighted and revolted me.

So, either the diet is working or I am developing a wildly bulimic second personality. At this point, I'll settle for either.

Jericho: The PETA Prize

You've heard of the X-Prize. Well, the fine people at PETA now have their own prize. If PETA's plan succeeds, the future will arrive in the summer of 2012.

What are we talking about? Lab grown meat.

"What's the big deal?" you say. "We've had tofurkey for years!" you say. We're not talking about a meat substitute. We're talking about real meat or nearly real meat - but meat that never left the factory or was ever next to a bone. No animal had to suffer the trials of factory farming or had to die so you could enjoy a tender, juicy steak. This is guilt-free meat - and there might be other benefits.

I first came across this idea while reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. The idea is that if you can grow meat in the lab, you don't have to kill an animal and you use the materials in question more efficiently. It takes about five pounds of grain to get one pound of beef. Imagine if you could get a pound of beef for just two pounds of grain or even one to one. The rest of that grain could be used to feed people - lowering the over all price of grain. Not to mention changing the carbon footprint required to raise cattle.

Plus, there could be other benefits. What if the fat in your steak was GOOD for you? Well, if you are building meat in a lab, it shouldn't be too difficult to make the bad fats into good fats. I'm sure many of you have heard that meat fat is bad for you. You've probably also heard that Omega 3 fats are necessary for good health. Well, with a few changes, the Omega 6 fatty acids found in meat could be changed to Omega 3 fatty acids in lab grown meat. Then, your steak would not only be something that didn't kill an animal, but it would also be "health food". They could also enrich the steak with vitamins and minerals and other healthy ingredients. Imagine if you felt good about feeding your kid a McDonald's cheese burger?

I haven't agreed with many of PETA's methods and ideas across the years. But, encouraging this kind of research in this way is exactly where organizations like PETA should go in my opinion. Instead of throwing red paint on fur coats, encourage industry to find ways to not need to use animal based products. It benefits everyone - including the yummy cows!

Jericho: Day 22, 493 pounds, no acids

So, I got to weigh myself last Tuesday and I was down to 496.8. Today, the scale was hovering around 492.8, then .9 - easier to just say 493. Either way it's day 22, the beginning of week 4 and I'm nearly 20 pounds down.

280 pounds to go ...

Okay, it's crazy to discount what I've done so far by comparing it to the (huge!) overall goal. But, it's hard to be too wild about what I've done when I compare it to how far I have to go. Today, Steph asked me if I was excited? I told her I would be excited when I got to 400 pounds. I'm happy with my progress so far, I'm not about to give up, but I've got a long way to go. Excitement is hard to come by.

I'm reading Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever - by Ray Kurzweil & Terry Grossman. Max and Laura purchased this book for me as encouragement after a failed diet attempt a year or so ago - if I remember correct. Ray Kurzweil should ring a bell for long time IWDC readers, I was quite impressed with his The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology and commented on it here on the site. The basic idea of Singularity is that technological progress is increasing and that we will see incredible results as the next two or three decades pass. The basic premise behind Voyage is that if we shape up our health, we'll all be around to reap the rewards of the coming technological evolutions. And, if they are right, near immortality is just around the corner - just have to live long enough for technology to do its work.

So, the book has been good so far - but it's scaring the hell out of me. Some of the information isn't new, some info is presented in a much more detailed fashion - the rest is brand new info. For example, within the first fifty pages, I was cringing. They brought up the subject of drinking cola. I immediately thought they were going to go off on the sugar - the "candy in a can" aspect or maybe the caffeine. Neither came up. They went off on the acid. Acid!

Colas, diet or regular, are far more acidic than anything we would have eaten in a natural diet. Without getting too technical, (the book does a marvelous job of being techie and then explaining in English) if one were to drink a cola and the body did nothing to neutralize the acid, the acid level in your body would be increased 1000 times and you would be instantly killed! Your body does neutralize the acid in cola, but what it uses to do that task is then not available to handle other acids your body naturally produces. These acids stack up and cause damage - such as cancer. Cancer. And we thought we were doing ourselves a favor drinking caffeine-free diet colas!

I'm nearly on page 100, and the roller coaster is just getting up to speed. I'm drinking almost no sodas or any kind and I'm about to give up just about all animal products and become a vegetarian! Me - the consummate carnivore - a rabbit food only vegi-head.

*Sips water* *Eats broccoli floret* *Sighs*

The only animal protein the book recommends is wild salmon. I had some the other night at a restaurant. Good stuff! It wasn't a steak - but in some ways it was better. I'm in the right part of the world for fresh salmon. Of course, last night I made beer-can chickens! That's right, I burned fossil fuels to char a bird with a can of cheap beer shoved up it's ass. It was excellent! I get to finish the left-overs tonight - now that's something I can get excited about!

I think the cap to my SoBe diet green tea said it best. In large green letters on the underside of the cap are the words "diets suck!" - I have the cap prominently displayed on my desk.

Jericho: Congestive Heart Failure

I was in the ER again this morning. About 1 AM I woke out of a deep sleep. For about half a second it seemed like I was just waking up - then my heart started jumping all over the place. Some of you out there are saying "Ah-ha! Sleep apnea." Most likely, you are correct. I wasn't breathing. This sets off the atrial fibrillation. I went to the bathroom and then went and lay down again - hoping that if I just relaxed, it would stop or "convert" on it's own. I've had one incident that did and I am ever hopeful that I won't have to spend the night in the ER. But, it didn't stop. It was powerful and erractic. My left arm got numb very fast and my chest tightened up. I woke Steph about twenty after one, time to go to the ER.

When I got to the ER, I was still in a-fib, but it had slacked off some. They got me on the table and hooked me up. They set me up on the IV and drew blood. The waking out of sleep, the chest jumping, the numb arm, the tight chest, the ER and the IV, these are all routine to me now.

We talked with the nurses and with a doctor. In the process they noticed something a little different. I am retaining a lot of fluid. My heart is enlarged. The nurse said "They are thinking of keeping you over night, you have had some minor CHF".


Congestive Heart Failure.

Those three words sat me up in my seat. Those three words killed my grandmother. I know those three words and I know them very well.

They wheeled in a scale and I got up on it. I nearly had a heart attack right there. The read-out was upside-down, but 507 is pretty easy to read backwards. That's right, 507 pounds. I thought I had hit bottom when I hit 475, but I forgot one fact: I'm a Brown. When we hit bottom we ask for a pick-ax and explosives!

They upped my beta blocker dosage. They are telling me to cut my salt. Hmmm, I haven't had caffiene since September, they want me to do low carb, low fat, no salt. That leaves distilled water and brown paper bags. The beta-blockers have dropped my energy so low that I don't know what to do. Combine that with the Benadryl I'm taking to fight my allergies, I might as well just spend the day in bed. Throw out sugar and carbs in general, and I have no energy at all. We have had a treadmill in our living room for a month now and I don't have the energy to step up on it much less use it and now I have more beta blockers to deal with!

Eventually, my heart slowed on it's own, they gave me some drugs and that finished the job. They didn't have to shock me this time - although, with the news I got, I guess they did. They just didn't have to connect the paddles.

I stayed home from work today. My heart has flip-flopped a few times, just enough to remind me how much trouble I'm in. I ate smartly, but with no salt, the food was completely tasteless. And, please, don't tell me about Mrs. Dash or some other herbal alternative to salt. I'm not a salt addict. I barely use the stuff. What little I use is now gone. I know how the human sense of taste works. There are taste buds for sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. I am left with sour, bitter, a little umami - but it better not be from MSG, and various artificial forms of sweet. In all, brown paper bags are probably the best option.

I don't know what to do. I really don't. What's the point of eating if nothing tastes, much less tastes good? There's no point it drinking anything but water - all the artificial junk tastes like crap. So, the good news is that I will lose weight, the bad news is that it will be from malnutrition. I have no energy. I really want to exercise - but how the fuck am I supposed to do that? Everything is bloated. I have a thing on my leg that won't heal - it's been there for weeks, it just weeps. It's disgusting. I was told last night that it's the diabetes, you don't heal as well when you are diabetic. Everything hurts; my back, my knees, even my arms. They are all suffering from hauling around a quarter ton of body. So, working out will bring down the weight and break my knees and back in the process. What if it sets off the a-fib? That's great, in the ER three times a week because those are the days I work-out.

I don't know what to do.

Max: 'Doomsday' vault design unveiled

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'Doomsday' vault design unveiled

The final design for a 'doomsday' vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government.

The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.

Max: Gaaaaayyy

Max: Miracle Fruit

Eat Foo: Post-Rapture Miracle Fruit Recap

Miracle fruit is not mind-blowing, but it's very, very cool. If you have the choice, go for the magic mushrooms, but otherwise miracle fruit is one of the weirdest food-induced experiences one can have. It's like some weird new experiment from Willy Wonka's factory, only Willy Wonka is some shady horticulturist from Fort Lauderdale known to the world only through his cryptic messages on obscure gardening blogs. But he came through.

The miracle fruit experience itself was awesome. I've tried it three times now. The fruits definitely vary in potency, although I don't know whether the potency is altered by what one has eaten before the miracle fruit. Some people seemed to have a more mild experience, and others' tastes were drastically altered. No one got a dud. Even the three times I tried it, it was different each time. The first time was more mild, the second (at the party) was quite dramatic, and the third was more mild again.

Max: Methspresso

Meth Coffee, a rebel coffee company in San Francisco, opened for business today with the launch of its hard- hitting coffee roast for energy addicts and caffeine freaks. Meth's super- caffeinated beans are amplified by the addition of yerba mate, a powerful natural stimulant and antioxidant used by shamans of the Amazon for boosting stamina and mental clarity. Boasting an intense buzz and cocoa-tobacco finish, Meth Coffee is fresh-roasted within 48 hours of shipment to jumpstart workaholics, thrill seekers, artists, and subversives seeking an exciting new fuel for their endeavors.

Max: Chocolate Coated Lies

Are Noka's chocolates worth the money?