About that weight loss ...
 
I just finished off all 96 of my cadbury eggs I recently got.
 
My waist size neither increased or decreased.
 
So now its back to decreasing, and no more chocolate until christmas :)

Hey brother,
 
Good luck in the struggle. Most of you guys out there are probably tender immortal young pups, so this doesn't apply to the majority of you (yet).
 
Redistribution of fat to the stomach area follows age related decrease in growth hormone from the pituitary gland. Also decrease in lean muscle mass. This on top of the simple math of calories in versus calories out. They did studies years ago where they took a bunch of fried old dudes, nuked them with HGR and saw them get more slim and increase muscle mass. They couldn't rule out cardiovascular concerns within the scope of the study so could not recommend or seek an indication for injections as a fix, but it worked.
 
Deprivation of food, like what happened to our ancestors, increases pituitary output of HGR and thus gets us back to a more youthful state in this regard.
 
Fasting a couple single days a month, no food from sunrise to sunrise corrects some of the biological deterioration we face with the ravages of time.
 
John
 
 

No Im middle aged now with a greying beard. I put on loads of weight from living on dominos pizza for too long.
 
Other than a short binge of fast food once in a while, and my recent easter weakness, Im mostly managing fine, and now the chocolates gone I can resume losing my gut fat.
 
And the greys on my beard are spreading at an alarming rate.

Bhav,
 
My grey beard about the only hair I have left to get grey.
 
Thought however to throw out on weight loss. First that the attempt is a bummer because of backup contingencies wired into our physical structure once we have blown up over time. Nature says preserve every cell of fat you can. You may need it for the next 7 day run of no food.
 
Interesting series of events, bio reactions, backtracking bio reactions and going to plan B and C  if we are really not eating anything.
 
Not within the scope of Coffee House to dig into the stuff, but if you just stop eating, there is a program of reactions and backup plans that second guess how we are going to survive.
 
Problem in trying to lose gut weight is that we have a complex set of reactions that go back and forth burning up available sugar in the blood and gut before breaking up starches in the liver and muscles. After a couple days with no food, we toy with the idea of breaking down proteins, but consider this as a bad idea if the deprivation goes on too much longer. After maybe three days or so, we shift the breakdown to fats.
 
Means you can go 3 days under pure calorie deprivation before even touching the fat around the middle.
 
Fortunately, there is a bypass to get to the gut fat and burn it off.
 
Aerobic exercise. Get out there, jog, swim, work up a sweat doing something and you are directly attacking and deflating the fat storage.
 
John

Okay, sprouting…
 
You need several wide mouth Mason jars, a dish rack, and a drip pan. The traditional dish rack fits 8 Mason jars at an angle needed to balance drainage and air access.
 
If there’s a lady in your life, get some of her discarded stockings or panty hose. If you’re a cross dresser, use some of your own. Then just a few rubber bands.
 
Need a good, dark environment. Inside of the oven when not cooking is ideal.
 
Couple stages in the process…
 
First soaking. The elite connoisseurs have hour specific time frames as per the individual grain. I just soak overnight for any of them. Never hurt nothing in the final product.
 
For larger grains like pintos, garbanzos etc, discard the split ones as well an anything that floats.
 
Add a couple inches of the grains to the Mason jar and cover a couple times more deep in water after washing them. Piling the big grains too deep will cause them to get impacted in the jar. You can close the lid and lay the jar on its side to avoid this.
 
Next morning or after several hours expansion, pour off the water which can be saved for a good nutrient plant food.
 
Take a section of panty hose and stretch over the jar opening. Seal with a rubber band.
 
From here out, it is washing thru the panty hose at least 2 times a day. Rinse until the runoff is clean. You are fighting against mold and growth byproduct buildup which can create a mess and discourage virgin trials. Drip pan in the oven is to catch residual runoff beneath the dish rack.
 
The Mason jars will fit in the dish rack at an angle upside down so the water drains thru the panty hose and allows some air circulation.
 
Back to the cliff for fixes before the rains set in. Will continue. Hope this is making some sense.
 
John

More about sprouting…
 
Got to think like the seed or grain to understand what it is trying to do.
 
Things like mushrooms disperse millions of spores. Short lived hoping a few will survive. No backup stores to survive long term.
 
Higher plants do seeds. Way bigger and more complex. Not as many of them per plant but with condensed protein backup. Can lay latent for years. In hibernation but still alive waiting for the proper conditions.
 
So you got the panty hose Mason jar thing evolving in the dark of the oven. They don’t grow with the purpose of feeding humans, but there is a major time element we can take advantage of.
 
The condensed protein content of the plant to be is there to be disassembled into amino acids to be reassembled into the next phase of proteins that the plant needs to get it together before it can function on its own with light, water, minerals from the dirt.
 
Us plant murdering humanids can take advantage of the transition. Dogmatic assertion, but around day 7 of the germination process is where the initial proteins are broken into amino acids that we can use to assemble our primate proteins. Message here is that pinto beans in the can, not cool. Pinto beans 7 days into the germination process, way cool.
 
The economic and health benefits of this process are enormous. Just ask Jesus. He was the first dude in our western recorded history to tell us to get our diet together in this trajectory (though there were others way before...).
 
Few pennies of dried grains grow into a huge bowl of food. Economic impact to self and family immediately. Though JC said to eat them raw, can cook them with a fraction of the energy cost over trying to nuke the dried grain. The more frail sprouts like alfalfa are a mess if cooked. Just do them raw.
 
Last notes on sprouting. After keeping in the dark, do the final wash and expose to the sun for an hour or more to develop chlorophyll before a last wash and refrigeration.
 
Maybe a couple last notes on the process, and then the deep secrets of probiotic culture. The ancient heathens said that a daily probiotic in the diet was one of the 7 secrets of a long and healthy life.
 
John
 

Moshkito

craigb
This seems like useful information, so does it belong in the Coffee House??? 

Maybe he's trying to get us all to lose some weight ... hmmmm ... not into cooking anymore, though!

I'm a vegetarian and I haven't lost weight.  I eat so much sugar and carbs.  I'm a blimp.

Eph,
 
It’s a bummer, but you got to get weight down. We don’t realize how hard it is to put on the weight to begin with. Takes as much effort to get it off. So many health problems associated with excess weight.
 
Have said that it is a math problem of calories in and calories out with a couple caveats. Mentioned the human growth hormone connection and the roll of periodic fasting to increase hormone level helping to reduce some of the fat around the gut and retain muscle mass.
 
Had mentioned that the body goes thru phases of stored energy reserves. First 2 days of no food focus on breaking pearls of glucose off of starch stored in the muscles and liver once the blood and intestinal supply of carbs is used up. Once this is gone, the body looks to break down muscles as a rational source of energy, but quickly rethinks in maybe another day that this as a bad idea, since you might need the muscles to run after or away from something. Only then moving to fat storage as a next to last resort before reverting back to protein breakdown.
 
Mentioned the aerobic bypass getting directly to fat stores which would normally take days of no food to touch or a very slow process of fat cell elimination if we are just doing the math part.
 
Balanced diet, small portions. If you can do a complete raw foods diet for several days avoiding the heavy starch items like banana, avocado, you will lose several ponds quickly while eating as much as you want. My opinion only, the Atkin’s like diets may shed some pounds, but accelerate aging in the imbalance of what we were designed to be eating. The raw food thing if properly combined will assure a healthy weight loss in addition to some daily exercise and periodic fasting for a day at a time.
 
Hell of an effort, but if I did it, anyone can.
 
John

Some more stuff on sprouting…
 
Sprouting in the dark is necessary because the grains think they are under a lot of debris and have to maintain pliability to get to the surface around rocks and obstacles. Once subject to sunlight, priority changes to developing woody cellulose to strengthen against the above ground stresses. You don’t want woody sprouts, so controlling light exposure is critical for the first days.
 
Thus, sprout the grains for several days in the dark and give a good nuke with a couple hours sun exposure before washing to refrigerate. Remember the 7 day dogma that if you can wash the things consistently, they will be vibrant around day 7, which is the break even point for human nutrition and volume return on your effort. Sprouting beyond this point has diminishing returns both in edibility and nutrient content
 
If you do things like soy beans, you will notice that you get tails about a half inch before you have to wash and refrigerate, meaning before they start to get moldy. Compare them to the 3 inch soy sprouts in a store. What gives?
 
If sprouting soy, put a plate with a brick on top in a wide container (max surface area). That’s the secret of the pros. Goes back to the light and dark part of the process. If they are in the dark and compressed by a heavy weight, they think they are up the creek under a rock or some occlusion. They compensate by accelerating growth and maintaining pliability in the search for sun light.
 
As much as the stench of the cadaver eaters is a turn off, doesn’t mean that a new age tree hug sprouting attempt gone wrong is a bouquet of roses. Failure to properly wash or maintain air circulation can end up with a smelly mess that will totally discourage the neophyte.
 
Recommendation is to begin using some of the more bullet proof grains to start off with a good experience.
 
Try green lentils and mung beans, alfalfa to start. Raw Spanish peanuts are exquisite. Much more forgiving than things like black beans. If you have a black bean bunch go bad, my advice is to seal off the city block and get the hazmat team in to contain the plague.
 
John

If this info changes one dietary pattern, worth my effort. Realize that I am fighting against our McDonald's and Burger King god role models. Fagot new age misinformation going against the bastions of our heroes. Intestinal worms will agree. Pharmaceutical economic empires making megabux to reduce clogged arteries will also agree with Burger King.
 
On to probiotics when I can sober up enough to pass on a radical cultivation process. Crap, even Yoplait is not going to like this. Growing your own for pennies on the dollar is a threat.
 
John