People food?

[Sessie]

Let me preface this by saying that I am a clinical insomniac and have to take sleep medications regularly to ever have a chance at a good night's sleep. One side effect of the medicine is groggyness. Another is random-ass thoughts.

So. I was thinking to myself as I fixed Dante's dinner, which was to be his usual bowl of dry kibble, they clearly have this pet food thing nailed down. They have it all figured out: feed him this much of this stuff, this many times a day, and he will be one happy healthy kittycat. And I thought to myself, why can't this be done for people? 8AM, one scoop from the kibble jar...bam, breakfast. 12PM, two scoops...bam, lunch down. One more scoop around 6PM and it's all good til' bedtime. Imagine the end of diets and fast food lunches. Surely some brilliant scientist can figure this out.

Discuss. I'm going to bed.
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"I have an everyday religion that works for me: love yourself first, and everything else falls into line." --Lucille Ball

[The Ragin' South Asian]

I doubt it would be as hard to make such a thing as to get people to eat it for every meal.

[MatthewV]

I follow the diet my family taught me. Eat what you like and when you feel like it. If you know something is unhealthy... it probably is. Your body really does know what it needs to keep healthy if you stop trying to over think it.

I have never cared about the nutrition facts that are printed on everything these days. I haven't worried about getting enough vitamin B-236 or avoiding trans fat.

Staying healthy is simple. Eat and get some exercise. We don't need brilliant scientists working on a "problem" our bodies already cope with.

[Antrax]

First of all, that's what Chuck does, you can see it in the "What are you eating" thread.
Secondly, I think that was the idea behind peanut butter, or at least I think someone taught me that when I was young and asked a similar question.
Finally, people (unlike pets?) value variance in their food consumption. I know I do.
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After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Death Mage]

Futurama beat you to it.
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[Lepton*]

During some days-of-little-means while I was at grad school, I thought about making cookies that would have the right balance of sucrose and starch, the appropriate amount of protein power, a bit of fibre, enough butter to fulfill fat requirements, and some squished-up vitamin and mineral tablets. I ran into two problems: first, it would be a fairly significant start-up cost to get all the vitamins, protein, and so forth. Secondly, I couldn't find a decent "daily requirements" breakdown for everything that people need: I don't know whether this originates from scientific ignorance or if it reflects a fundamental variance in what we actually require.

A few months ago, I ate only candy and chips (and drank only Coke) for a week. My body gave me some pretty clear signs that it wasn't working. I think that, once you've developed the ability to read your body's requirements in broad terms, you can simply rely on the fact that foods have overlapping dietary contributions. In other words, a craving for fruit might mean either that you want Vitamin C or that you want some sucrose. Lucky, fruit has both! So people food would be much harder to match to varying dietary restrictions.

[Jack_Ian]

When I was in college on an extremely limited budget, Irish Stew performed this function for me.
One pot would take an hour or so to prepare and would last about 3 days, with the final bowl tasting the best.
The worst part was waking up to the smell of it in the morning. Sometimes I skipped breakfast.

[Antrax]

I used to live off "student chilli", which was basically ground mystery meat, baked beans and some peppers simmered together until the meat browns.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Courk]

1. Why is the recipe for Irish Stew that precise? That is not how you make it. It should say:

Some beef
onion
celery
spuds
carrots*

Combine and cook.

*you need to add the carrots some time before the potatoes so they can get soft.

The potatoes and carrots taste great mooshed together with some of the stew broth, butter, and Worcestershire sauce. I've been known to only eat that for a meal, forgetting that there was meat.

2. They do make this "people food" you refer to -- it's called baby formula (among other things), and it smells horrible.

[Pablo]

[Pablo]

[Samadhi]

My cats always have a full bowl of food but hang around me in the kitchen (hoping for tasty bits) "saying" the contrary.
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And he lived happily ever after. Except for the dieing at the end and the heartbreak in between.

[Pablo]

I think it's time to hear another of Sessie's "random-ass" thoughts.

[Sessie]

Stick around until about 10:30 tonight after I take my Ambien (honestly, I have only the vaguest memory of posting this thread).

[Samadhi]

BTW did anyone else, upon first seeing this thread, think of soylent green?
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And he lived happily ever after. Except for the dieing at the end and the heartbreak in between.

[wordcross]

I've been on facebook too much. I wanted to "like" Samadhi's post.
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Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Antrax]

The simple answer is that saying "I have no self control" is simply a way of refusing to take responsibility for your actions. I seriously doubt anyone can lose weight with that attitude. Unless you have reason to believe there's an actual organic problem preventing you from eating reasonable portions, you have to realise that your problem is that you like eating on its own, a lot more than you like being thin.
If you'd like to change that, what you should be doing is figuring out what it is about eating that's so important. For me, it used to be that I was afraid, on some level, that if I don't eat now, there won't be food later (don't ask). So, once I figured that out, it was a lot easier to eat a reasonable amount - whenever I felt bad about "having not to eat" something, I just thought how easy it would be to get the exact same thing later on, which meant there was no sense in eating it right now when I shouldn't.
For you it'll probably be something else. What you could try is simply to avoid eating for a day (or two. Trust me, neither kills you, or has any lasting negative effect on your health), and see what it is you're really missing. Then, see if eating really gets you that thing. If not, then it's easy to eat enough to sate yourself, rather than eat as much as possible.

I probably came off sounding like some sort of cultist there, and I'm sorry, but it worked quite well for me.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[wordcross]

I agree with Antrax. My problem is that I eat when I get bored. Which happens too often. So I have to make myself realize that I'm not eating because I'm hungry but because it's my reaction to hit the fridge when I'm bored with a task.
_________________
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Pablo]

[Sessie]

[Courk]

Eat slower. It takes a bit of time for your body to get the message that you're full, so you could still be eating even after you're full, you just don't know it yet.

[Quailman]

Take small steps. When you stop for petrol, don't go into the convenience store and buy anything while the pump is running. In my case one step was to stop clearing my sons' plates into my own pie hole after I was already full. Identify a food that's probably not the best for you in addition to being fattening (for example, ice cream) and stop buying it.

But you can ingest as many calories as you burn without gaining weight, so work on the other side of the equation too. Take up a hobby where you'll get some good exercise. Why don't you try belly dancing?

[Zag]

[JF*]

[Quailman]

[Zag]

To answer Sessie's original question, the perfect people food already exists:

Click here to see it!

All the food groups, and yummy, too!

P.S. I looked at your pictures you have on your myspace page -- you look great!

[Pablo]

[Sessie]

Thanks for the compliment, Zag...but I should tell you most of those pictures were taken about 2 years and 35lbs ago

Lots of good advice in this thread. I'm interested in the GL Biggest Loser thing...how could we work that?
_________________
"I have an everyday religion that works for me: love yourself first, and everything else falls into line." --Lucille Ball

[Chuck]

That pizza isn't quite done yet. The pepperoni slices are supposed to curl up forming little cups of hot grease.

[Antrax]

Can the biggest loser thing be retroactive? I don't want to have to regain those 100 pounds
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Pablo]

[Travis]

posted by MattV (written in the style of Bad Luck Schlep Rock)

[Antrax]

[Pablo]

I find it not only interesting, but inspiring and worthy of a heart-felt Mazel Tov!!! How could you NOT tell us???

I'd love to hear more details as to how you did it.

[Travis*]

You finally decided to have the family removed. Nice work.

[Pablo]

Actually, even in that first picture, you don't look as heavy as I thought you were. The picture I had seen before included blond hair, so maybe that added a few pounds?

[Antrax]

It's a picture mith recently uploaded to facebook, so it might not be me at my prime. But even at my prime, I carried it well. The problem was that you can't really carry diabetes well.
But anyway, from the beginning, and I'm sorry for hijacking your thread, Sessie.
When I started working for Intel I was in the 220-242 range - whenever I would near the 240s, I would eat a bit less and go back to the 220s. I did okay with girls and was healthy otherwise, so I didn't see any reason to bother beyond that. However, all the snacks available to employees and spending literally every waking moment near a computer (either at work, or doing homework) took their toll and made it difficult to go back to around the 220s. For a while I worked out, but wasn't able to keep it up beyond the summer vacation, as during the school year the combination of school and work overwhelmed me. In short, I gradually gained my way into the aforementioned 286 pounds (which, for my height, is obese), and stayed there for a while.
After over a year in that weight, my regular blood tests started showing a deterioration in my health. I'm in, um, risk groups? for both a heart attack and diabetes, and I was showing signs of heading for both (diabetes in leaps and bounds), so it became obvious that it's time to lose weight. My original plan, back when I decided I can live with being obese, was either nanotechnology or some other advancement that lets you lose weight without any effort. Sadly, I won the race against technology (though seriously, those things are just around the corner), so I had to do it the old-fashioned way.
A friend told me she knows someone who does diet workshops. I went there, was wholly unimpressed, told him how unimpressed I was (it was a bunch of New Age bullshit), he explained the scientific basis (he's a doctor that had to lose a lot of weight himself, so he did some independent research) and I decided to go with it - at most I would waste about $350. So I went with it, it worked well for me. What's funny is that the "method" itself is quite simple: just eat a lot less, and only very specific things: green vegetables, fish or chicken breast, etc. The trick was that he gave me the medical assurance that not eating at all for a day or two (at some point, doing it twice a week) is not detrimental to my health in any way. The added benefit was that I finally figured out what hunger was, and now I know when I'm really hungry and when I'm just bored or upset or recognise an opportunity to eat.
So, that's the not-too-abridged version. I reached my target weight (186, which puts me on the high end of normal for my height) late in September 2007, and have been keeping it (with variations of up to 5 pounds in either direction) since. After I gave my body some time to recover, I also started working out at least once a week (most weeks twice, working on finding a third slot) somewhere in early 2008 and have been keeping it up since.

So, that's how I avoided diabetes and also got a hot girlfriend, and that's why it was the best summer vacation ever.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Travis]

Good job, Antrax.

[Pablo]

That is a great GREAT story! And you thought no one would be interested?

Thanks for sharing that, and yes, by all means, find that third workout spot!

[L'lanmal]