Nike Galaxy - Riots? Really?

Nike just released a new, even more hideous pair of shoes to the public with a price tag of $220, the Nike Galaxy Foamposite.

Chris Richardson at Webpronews.com has posted 2 videos and some enlightening twitter comments on the "Nike Foamposite riots". Check out those videos in a bit. But the bottom line is 100s (perhaps 1000s) of people went out to buy a $220 pair of shoes that look like something I'd get for the kids at Stride Rite. Now I cannot really comment on the fashion of these shoes. After all, my brother and I had matching Converse X-High tops that were two-tone flourescent - mine orange and his turquoise both with yellow insides - and we wore them folded down like this (you gotta love the 80's):

So let the kids wear what they want to wear from a fashion perspective. They will, like me, look back on it fondly but laughingly regret it when they are in their 30s. But if we have overall unemployment at near 10% and youth unemployment significantly higher - near record levels - in the younger demographics, I have a few questions.

1. First, where are they getting the money to blow on these shoes?
   
2. Second, why would you want to get involved in civil unrest over these shoes (or any shoes so long as you have a pair on)?
   
3. Finally, is it just me or has our country gone completely and utterly insane?

I Won a Soil Cube!

The Soil Cube is a small tool used to start seeds. More specifically, it is a mold that you stuff full of your soil and press into a small cube. You then press a small hole into the top with a threaded press. I've been wanting one, but it was way down the list of things I planned to buy as I have a few hundred dollars of other items to get to put the new L-shaped, Eliz-approved raised bed in the backyard. After all, my Pop never used a soil cube. Nonetheless I really wanted to add one to my toolbox for use starting seeds... meaning I wanted it now because IT'S TIME!

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I have become an avid listener of The Survival Podcast by Jack Spirko. Jack occasionally has listener appreciate contests in which you send the appropriate key words in the subject and a sponsor will send the winner their product. AWESOME! But there are more than 25,000 listeners and I listen to the podcast at least 5 hours after the podcast posts, so snagging a win out of one or two potential prizes before the other listeners get to them is like catching a t-shirt out of a t-shirt gun while sitting in the middle deck at an ACC football game. NOTE: I was gonna say football game generically, but I'm from the SEC. We have 25,000 at our spring scrimmage games.

But lo and behold, this morning after the dust cleared from a couple of busy meetings, 6 missed calls from my boss, a contractor, and my wife, I got an email saying I'd WON the soil cube. I never win anything in random drawings... I mean like NEVER. So this really brightened my day. I will do a review of the soil cube once I get it and have some free time to start my seeds. It's the least I can do for Clayton and Jack. THANKS Y'ALL!

PS - I'm jumping the gun a hair since Jack hasn't announced the winners as of this writing (he had to unexpectedly can his episode today), but he says getting content out there is the most important thing and write about what makes you tick... this is it today. So I hope I didn't ruin the suspense for any of the 50-100 people per day that read this if you are also a TSP listener.

Hard-to-kill Greens: Chickweed & Malabar Spinach

Yesterday I heard about 2 separate plants that are both edible and grow easily in my regional climate - Chickweed & Malabar Spinach. You don't need a green thumb to get these plants going or keep them producing. Having no doubt I could grow these weeds - I have extensive experience with successful weeds growing in my yard :) - I was curious about how to use these plants before trying out some as ground cover in an empty bed on the side of my house. So in a quick search, here's what I found that makes me want this stuff tonight:

Malabar Spinach - Here's a video (makes me H-U-N-G-R-Y) about malabar followed by a couple of recipes.

• Indonesian Style Malabar Spinach - Food.com
  
• Mok Toi & Mushroom Stir Fry - MeltingWok.com
  
• Salads from Rose Creek Farms
  
• Bachali Kura Pappu ~ Malabar Spinach Dal - Sailu's Kitchen
  
• Pui Charchari or Malabar Spinach from Rice-n-curry.com
  
• Tomato-Malabar Quiche - Charlotte Fresh

Chickweed - I was going to post a cool video of this stuff being used, but the really interesting videos were all hosted by folks who appeared to have accidentally used a different, less legal weed and I couldn't put them up here without laughing (nor could they stop laughing). Just do a google or youtube video search for chickweed recipes. But here is the PBS-style public service announcement version, which actually shows you what it looks like on the ground and explains how to use it.

• Chickweed Pate - Eatweeds UK
  
• Pakora & Hot Dressed Salad (+ a few more) - Carl Legge
  
• Chickweed Pesto - LearningHerbs.com
  
• Chickweed Salad - Food & Wine
  
• Chickweed Chimichurri & Tuna Poke - Fat of the Land

The last one makes my eat crazy stuff bell ring. I LOVE poke. When my little brother was stationed in Hawaii and I stayed with him during my two week Naval Reserve duty at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, we ate almost nothing else. Adding something local, prevalent, and free to something that is a lot more pricey in Mississippi (due to the large amount of saltwater fish) is a great idea to stretch it. Anyway, I'm stoked to try out the malabar this year.

Downward Class Migration: Not Falling Alone, Sliding Together

Jack Spirko has been talking about "Downward Class Migration" for quite a while on The Survival Podcast. I am hearing more and more media reports about people falling in the class structure, but that isn't what Jack has been talking about. His point is that what it means to BE middle class (or any given class) is sliding downward while the actual class structure remains relatively stable. I think of it like an avalanche or landslide in which a shelf of ice (the class structure) slides down a mountain so that everyone remains about the same relative to each other but everyone is actually lower on the mountain. The kicker is that this shift combined with all of the individual cases of falling down to a lower class (due to unemployment, etc) compound each other for those to whom it happens. Below is a video that Jack put together to better explain this concept:

WARNING: This isn't a graduate thesis. It's a discussion from a normal guy to his community. There is some PG-13 language, but nothing rated R.

Here is Jack's blog post at The Survival Podcast, with a growing comment thread.

The bottom line of Jack's entire focus at TSP is that if you become more self sufficient in providing your needs (and wants), you can combat the downward migration of the entire class structure while nothing else is going wrong on a personal, local, regional, or global scale (storms, medical emergencies, financial difficulties, civil unrest). Thus his slogan "Helping you live the life you want if times get tough, or even if they don't." - Jack Spirko

UPDATE - Here is a link to a story from the Wall Street Journal on cultural inequality. Many similar themes, but from a mainstream polished source.

OH NO! BVO?

I love Mountain Dew, well Diet Mountain Dew (DMD) to be more precise. I drink enough of it that I keep about 2 gallons (8 liters) in my pantry rotation to make sure that critical resource never runs dry and as an accumulator tank so I can catch sales on it. On top of that, I drink a knock off of DMD from Kroger - "Big K Diet Citrus Drop Soda" out of cans. I drink 1/day as part of my lunch at work. Here is an article comparing the Citrus Drop to Mountain Dew. The prices aren't up to date, but the relative comparison between the 2 options is still accurate, thus my choice. But I stick with the original for the 2 liters.

I heard a short discussion as part of The Survival Podcast feedback show yesterday regarding the use of a chemical called brominated vegetable oil in MD, DMD, and other citrus sodas. This chemical is pretty much like it sounds, vegetable oil bound with bromine/bromide salts. What is this chemical used as outside my DMD... a fire retardant. That is not enough in and of itself to make me shy away. After all, I regularly intake chemicals that are standard fire retardants/extinguishers (water, carbon dioxide). But a quick google search for "BVO" or "brominated vegetable oil" leads you to sites like:

• Scientific American
  
• Food Democracy
  
• Bon Appetit
  
• Environmental Health News
  
• RD411
  

Not a single one of these sources, or any other source I could find, has anything positive to say about BVO and everything I read says this stuff could be pretty nasty. In fact, it is banned for use in sodas in many countries (~100). Now I recognize that many of these sites are a bit on the alternative side of the media spectrum. But Scientific American is certainly mainstream scientific media. I have to do some digging into the actual impact and the data behind it and I think I may have to go to offshore data for impacts specifically in food/soda. But I sense that for my DMD habit there may be a quiet death knell looming in the distance.

Extreme Races: Warrior Dash & GORUCK Challenge

UPDATE: Run For Your Lives is another extreme race... basically a 5k with obstacles and, more importantly, zombies!!! This looks like a fun, less serious alternative to the GORUCK challenge and perhaps a little less physically challenging than the Warrior Dash. If anyone has participated in any of these and would like to leave a comment with some more info, please do.

Two different extreme races have come to my attention via completely separate ways in the last 4 days:

• The GORUCK Challenge - This weekend while researching a discount on a highly recommended pack (GORUCK) I ran across the GORUCK Challenge put on by a high-speed cadre of former operators from the special operations world. I was immediately intrigued by the challenge and started thinking of who I could recruit as the core of a team to do a custom event later this year or, more likely, next year since their schedule is pretty chockablock until then. The list of people who would think it is cool is relatively long. The list of people on my short list who would actually commit to do something that won't be fun but will be extremely rewarding... let's just say I didn't need my toes. I am scared of this thing and exhilarated at the same time. Can't wait to get down to brass tacks on this one.
  
  
• The Warrior Dash - A colleague is participating in Warrior Dash Mississippi which will raise funds for St Jude Children's Hospital. I can't think of a better reason to run myself into the ground regardless of how crazy or painful it might appear. The kids for whom the funds are being raised run headlong into the unknown every day and don't have a choice. But they keep fighting until they can't. If that isn't a warrior spirit, what is? I'll be working shift work, so can't participate this year. But the event organizers tell me they often do repeats as their events are very successful. I'm IN for 2012.

I can run a few miles without "having to" and I can push myself through some pretty hard work. I'm no hard core terminator cyborg like my little brother, but I think either of these two events would be awesome to participate in.

Financial Bogeyman

I am starting to get nervous about markets like I was in 2008. I held on a little too long then and wish I had moved to cash a month earlier than I did... it would have saved me almost 10% of my investments. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like one of many financial bogeymen are hiding in the closets just waiting for us to open a door.

The major things going on out there that worry me are:

• European debt crisis - News from The Guardian and Wall Street Journal

Everybody knows there is a crisis here and lots of nations are doing things in the background and more overtly to fend this one off for a while, but it still makes the market do stupid stuff. I think the impact of this one could potentially be smaller on me us if we are smart about how we react. I also think that there may be some long-term good investments to be had as European companies that are solid get hit at the ticker but less elsewhere. (See also the US market in late 2008)

• Domestic municipal debt "crisis in the making" - News from The Guardian in the UK, Reuters, and CNBC

The Brits are saying we might be in trouble, while CNBC is trying to maintain that there's nothing to see, move along. If you sign up with your brokerage to be on the "New Offerings" list, your email will be pelted with multiple listings every day for things like $134M from the NY Dormitory Authority or $282M from the Omaha Public Power District, etc. I could see how you spend almost $300M in a power district. They could be building a new power station and/or upgrading their infrastructure - I know they're dabbling in wind generation, too. But a dormitory project >$100M is ASTOUNDING. You can build a WHOLE LOT of dormitories for that kind of money. Cities around the country are having to cut services to meet their debt obligations, moreso where they are prevented by state law from filing for bankruptcy (see Harrisburg, PA). Yet they continue to drink the spiked kool-aid out of the cooler and party like it's 1999. Eventually, these cities are going to need a bailout from the state or their (formerly apparently rock solid) munis will tank. The states don't have the dough (try figuring out the California budget) and will have to borrow it or be bailed out by Uncle Sam. Now Uncle Sam can do a few things to fix the problem... raise revenue, cut expenses (they don't have the fortitude to do that) borrow more or just have the Fed print more money to give to the states to funnel to the cities. Borrowing more is just kicking the can again. I don't have full faith that our credit can hasn't been kicked all it can stand. Printing more is gradually devaluing the dollars (so they don't have to do it all at once Zimbabwe style). Both of those options pretty much just suck. I don't have a more cogent, mixed company appropriate, professional term.

So what do we do about it? I'm still working that out myself. But I am certainly looking for opportunities to move things to cash where it makes sense and the risk probably isn't worth the reward (European sovereign debt off the top of my head). I'm also trying to position myself to make the really good buys that I believe will be there when things eventually do get bad. I think the market could experience one more super jubilant rally over the next few years, but protecting capital is my primary goal right now and I am beginning to feel like one of the sober people standing around the frat party at 3 in the morning. It's been fun, but there are going to be some serious hangovers.

Gulf Coast Tourism - Driven by Staycations?

Not sure about the national market, but here in Mississippi I see a "Come Visit the Gulf Coast" commercial like this one a couple of times a night.

According to this BP-funded piece, 2011 was a heckuva year across the Gulf region of TX, LA, MS, AL, and FL. I'm curious how much of that improved tourism was due to an increase in "staycations" and how much was caused because of BP's "everything is OK" marketing campaign. You can be on the Coast from St. Louis in an easy day of driving and from Chicago in a closer to miserable but not too much worse than dealing with the airlines daylong kinda drive. The number of people within an easy/doable drive coupled with the depressed economy seems to point to more people showing up on the Coast. Don't get me wrong, there are some beautiful sites to be seen down here, like these shots from the Emerald Coast of Florida along 30A near one of my preferred destinations.
But it doesn't have the wow factor of Nevis & St Kitts or the Montserrat mystique (here's to Brian Wilson). I'm hoping for the sake of the folks who depend on the influx of cash into the region that whatever the reason, the tourism spike in the Gulf region levels out higher than in the past and has a moderate long-term growth rate instead of creating a big boom-bust cycle.
PS - I wonder how much BP paid to have that cheeseball sandcastle constructed for their spot.

Chef Georgia Pellegrini

I'm completely intrigued by Georgia Pellegrini. She's gone way beyond where I would expect most girls to go in terms of "back to nature", hunting, gathering, etc. But she seems to have proven that you can do that stuff and still stay what would be conventionally described as "girly". Not to mention having some ideas that the guys can learn from. Here's a link to Chef Pellegrini's recipes. You can navigate to the rest of her site from there. Some of the recipes are pretty adventurous - but I will try just about anything once and have found many interesting foods that way over the course of my life and travels. I certainly want to do a couple of the weirder ones on my own before I try to convince my kids that it's even in the realm of possibility to try.

The Girl Hunter - Facebook Fan Page

Finally, here's a link to her book. It looks pretty interesting, but I haven't read it yet and therefore can't endorse it. But I have added it to my wishlist.

Opportunity for Hypocricy: Winegate

On the following issue, I intend to be almost 100% hypocritical. Dr. Dipak Das, a UCONN researcher apparently falsified data that showed health benefits of red wine. In discussions on scientific endeavors, I insist that the data be legitimate and the conclusions made from them are based on reasonable assumptions. Aside from no obvious physical evidence confronting me each day, that is the primary reason that I don't buy into all of the global warming (aka global climate change, global weirding, other aliases that fit this year's data). The basic underlying data isn't even easily available and we depend on a couple of clearly motivated (regardless of HOW/WHY they are motivated) nerds that think they are too smart to need to explain themselves to the rest of the world. When their methods of hiding things and making adjustments to UNDERLYING DATA to make it "fit" were exposed, that did it for me. Those guys were doing something for which a 6th grade science teacher would flunk a kid.

Back to the point... Dr. Das MAY, ALLEGEDLY, POTENTIALLY have messed with the data. However, as a true believer and practician of the "Glass of Red Wine a Day" religion (when I can), I refuse to believe that one of he apostles hadn't been preaching the truth. Unfortunately, there appear to be sufficient sources to prove the legitimacy of this damaging peice of information that I will now resume ignoring. Wine-gate Information Sources:

• Winegate: Red wine health researcher falsified data - Watts Up With That
  
• University Suspects Fraud by a Researcher Who Studied Red Wine - New York Times
  
• Red-Wine Researcher Charged With 'Photoshop' Fraud - Medscape News Today
  
• Red wine researcher said to falsify data - CNN
  
• Red Wine’s Health Benefits May Have Resulted from Falsified Research Data - DietsInReview.com
  

Cheers!

Dinner with my wife

I think everyone who has been married more than a couple of years has had a dinner like the one Marshall Ramsey relays on his blog today:

The Entree - Marshall Ramsey

It's the things rolling around in your head that don't break the silence that are really interesting. If the marbles rolling around my wife's head are anywhere near in line with the marbles that I haven't lost yet, we'll be OK for a long, long time.

Local Farmers & Produce

My search for locally grown food just became much easier. Since my wife & I returned from a trip to east Tennessee on a visit to some friends that live outside the rural town of Maryville, we have been looking for farms that raise meat and vegetables to reduce the amount of mass-produced food we eat. We are primarily looking for a source of poultry, eggs, and vegetables.

While searching for something to watch between football Saturday, I ran across Farmweek and didn't blow past it. They ran a piece about a web-based engine to help you find agriculture providers as well as the providers finding customers. It's called Market Maker. Pretty straight forward concept, but it is eeking its way into a market that is not well-known for being super techie - namely small ag. I'm glad to have found it. I looks like it takes proactive effort from the grower, which was the point Farmweek was trying to get across. Here's the list I got within 50 miles of my location:

• Barr Farms - Mendenhall, Mississippi
  
• Cedar Hill Gardens - Brandon, Mississippi
  
• Dancing Hooves Stable - Jackson, Mississippi
  
• Flying M Farm - Vaughan, Mississippi
  
• Le Petite Poulet Farm LLC - Jackson, Mississippi
  
• Livingston Springs Farm - Flora, Mississippi
  

I'm pretty sure Dancing Hooves is live horse sales even though they categorized themselves as meat & poultry. Who knows? Either way, not really my market. But I plan to visit the others over the course of the spring and summer to source some of my food. I'm curious to compare & contrast this clearly government funded effort with the more "organic" AgriTrue effort that Jack Spirko is starting up.

Social Network Prepping

So I am all about prepping for food/water/shelter/energy and am a gung ho fan of people like Jack Spirko at The Survival Podcast. But prepping is typically described as what to do to continue on living, surviving. But we all recognize something is going to get us eventually. When it does, what about your Facebook page? In 2011 a high school classmate, Thomas Baggett, succumbed to a unexpected illness. Following his death, his Facebook page lit up with messages of rememberance from his old friends as well as his students in the St Louis area. However, the lack of a reply was palpable. I ran across an article today about a new Facebook app call If I Die that allows you to pre-record messages that can play once the 3 people you assign confirm your death. I am curious how things might have been different if Thomas had been using it.

I also wonder, though. Do you say the things now that you would say to your friends and family after you die if you could? Are you even capable of putting yourself in the right mental frame of reference to speak to them with not only the right perspective to understand how they will receive the message but also the words that you really want to say given that you would now be dead? I spent about 5 minutes thinking about what I would say and I'll tell you... it takes a lot more than that.

I think that you should get as much off your chest while you are alive. If nothing else, it removes the need to have to use this app. I recently reconnected with an old friend after about 3 years of radio silence - attributable to me, by the way. It was eating at me that I hadn't picked up the phone and finally just did it. We had a wonderful conversation, but it was weird that so much of it had to be spent on catching up.

If you read this far, here are a couple of action items for you to bring prepping into your Social Network:
1. Think of someone with whom you haven't spoken in a long time but should have or you are estranged.
2. Figure out how you played a part in it. Note: Even the most 1-sided arguments have 2 sides somewhere. Find it.
3. Reconnect. Use your face, a phone, or a handwritten letter. Save Facebook & email for those who you don't really care to talk to or who you already connect with enough that there's no need.

Help: Mushroom Identification

These mushrooms have spawned in a few places around my yard, primarily where pine trees once stood (the roots are still in the ground). They are also popping up in shady spots in 2 of my beds. I'd appreciate some help identifying them. A few more pictures are shown below.

They may be utterly inedible. But they might be a perfectly acceptable addition to a salad or other dish. I hope a roving mycologist checks in and lets me know.

The Toys I Always Wanted

The kids each got an iPod Touch AND a Nintendo DS Lite for Christmas. They also racked up with tons of Lego Ninjago stuff and this new game called Beyblade (marketed on Cartoon network with its own cartoon). Awesome aunt Jen, aka Papucha kicked in with a new refractor telescope from Tasco, which comes with a microscope kit, too! Santa even added a Playstation 3, but my oldest immediately said Mr. C brought it for me.

Now I am not a huge gamer nor do I have a TON of time to just play. But I have to say that the shift from toddler-type toys to "big kid" toys is very welcome. My wife & I both enjoy playing Beyblade enough that we sat down for about 10 minutes and did it while the kids were on a day trip with their grandparents. My oldest son can now put the complex Lego sets together, so he takes off and occasionally yells down that he needs help putting 2 difficult sections together. Bottom line, it's like being a kid again and I'm game. Quality time is no longer tickling Elmo, but building Lego jets and submarines, shooting Nerf guns or their new BB guns, launching rockets... the list of awesome goes on.

Here are some links to the cool stuff the kids got. If you want it and buy it through these links, I'd appreciate it.

Weight loss, my diet and lifestyle

In 2002 I was 250 pounds with a BMI of >25. I got that way by transitioning from a 210-pound, muscular college athlete in May 2000 (a cheerleader at Mississippi State) to a sedentary tub-o-lard following a knee injury in the Navy. I continued eating like I was burning 3000 calories a day but relied on the knee-injury crutch to explain why I wasn't exercising at any level. My biochemistry didn't particularly care about my excuse as it prepared for hibernation accordingly.

In October of 2001, I finally failed the "rope-and-choke" measurement the Navy performs if you're above the height/weight standards (see Navy PRT). The standards are generous to say the least. The secondary "rope-and-choke" measurement gives you a better result if you have a fat neck. So as I became tubby, I stayed in standards for a while because my neck was matching my gut growth and I put a lot of the weight on in my legs/chest. As part of my continued denial that I WAS THE PROBLEM, I argued that the test was stupid and didn't give a good measure of body fat like hydrostatic weighing or other more accurate measures. In the end, I realized that Uncle Sam's method was more favorable to the fatty (that was ME for those who think I'm insensitive), but that realization came later.

So after failing to live up to the lowest common denominator in the service, Uncle Sam strongly encouraged me to get within standards - I had a year to reestablish myself to the standard or it was sayonara jobby-job. My wife & I both took this opportunity to make some lifestyle changes and I ended up at 175 pounds after approximately 6 months of dedicated effort and I'm sitting at 180lbs 10 years later. Many people have two reactions when they hear this factoid about me:
1. I don't believe you were EVER 250lb - it's true, unfortunately
2. PLEASE tell me HOW you did it. - let's see how to put this gently... DIET & EXCERCISE

We started out with the little book and a slider that you got in that time frame from Weight Watchers. That was all it took. We created and printed out a week-long journal in Excel to count points and keep up with what we were eating. While my wife said I was crazy, I always rounded up if it was a "half-point" situation. The 2-3 points I counted but didn't eat each day helped me cut another couple hundred calories just by mentally tricking myself. I also exercised 3-4 days per week for no more than an hour. Once we reached my goal weight and my wife's corresponding 10-15 pounds (she was already only 120 pounds and "smoking hot", so didn't have as far to go), we started to gradually increase the points to level out and eventually stopped formally counting/journaling. This way of life had become just that... second nature. With all of that weight loss, I gained some additional benefits that are sometimes strange to think about:

- Blood pressure improved to below 120 / 75-80 (<100 with a bit of relaxed breathing)

- Clothes fit right off the rack and I often find my size on sale since everyone else is buying the bigger stuff

- No more ingrown hairs, boils, and associated skin complications on fat inner thighs that never saw any space between them. This was a little-known complication of me becoming a fat polar bear.

- Improved ability to, ummm, perform.

Since 2002, my wife & I have continuously searched for healthy ways to feed ourselves. With the addition of 2 kids (recently a 3rd), our habits devolved a bit with an increase in nights where we would clean up the mac & cheese or chicken nuggets by eating their leftovers. Over the last 7 years I ended up gaining 20 pounds of the 75 pounds lost. Once we had our daughter, we both centered ourselves and recommitted to live a healthy lifestyle. We don't do "diets" and have continually warned my seriously overweight dad & stepmom that fill in the blank fad diet won't work and isn't meant to be a long-term lifestyle. They have tried Atkins, Glycemic Index, et cetera ad infinitum. I started hearing about the "paleo diet" and I was immediately skeptical. However, a little more research and hearing other people who I am beginning to trust explain it uncovered the point that the paleo "diet" is diet in the traditional sense - the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group. At it's core: eat simple food that was common in a paleolithic diet (meat, vegetables, leafy greens, et al) and avoid food that our evolved biochemistry may not be properly designed to deal with (grains). Various people have their on take on this diet and one who continues to be very popular is Robb Wolf. At our house we have started using leafy greens to deliver meats conveniently (think lettuce wrap). I also increased my egg intake to replace cereal in the morning. I plan to continue with dairy, though I have significantly decreased my intake just because I don't eat cereal every morning anymore (my family has dropped our milk intake by 75%). We have made very few changes from our already veggie/meat intensive diet, but dropping out the 2 slices of bread, cereal, and most milk have made about 15 pounds disappear over about 9 weeks.

This post is getting a bit wordy and I feel like I might be rambling. So I'm throwing it out there. I can always post a follow up. I hope this helps someone.