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After: divs, 29 lines of code

In theory, I suppose I could discount the meta tags to get an even lower line count.

To get calories from METS, multiply your weight in kilograms (pounds divided by 2.2), and multiply by the number of hours you performed the task for.

For example, if you weigh 70 kilograms and went to dig worms with a shovel for 30 minutes, you look that up on the chart. It’s METS = 4.0. Calories burnt = 70 x 4.0 x 1/2 = 140 calories.

To find out your daily calorie needs, take an average day, and track all of your activities during that 24 hour period, including sleeping, walking, studying, exercising, eating, etc. The more detail you put in, the more accurate your results will be. Here’s an example for one of my days:

Daily Calories Example

As you can see from my example, I’m burning about 3600 calories in that day. But if you saw my previous post, my average output is 3200 calories a day. This is because for this sample day, I’ve included my morning bike ride – but I do not do this everyday. To compensate, you  may need to average a few days worth of calories.

Of course, these figures will be different based on your age, gender, metabolism, etc. But overall, they are pretty accurate, especially if you are exercising a lot. This is because metabolic differences will become small relative to calories consumed during exercise.

Now all you need to do is consume a number of calories that’s approximately equal to your caloric needs if you want to maintain your weight. And if you’re trying to lose or gain weight, then eat less or more! A good estimate for calories to burn is that ~500 calories per day = 1 pound of loss a week, or 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat.  Healthy weight loss is about 0.5-2 pounds a week, depending on your original body weight. I’m not a qualified nutritionist, so you should contact a professional before starting any weight-loss/gain plan.

Intake:

Breakfast: 786 calories

• Parfait: 6 oz yogurt, 4 oz granola, 1 banana – 636 calories
• Other Fruits – apples, oranges, fruit salad – 150 calories

Lunch: 1138 calories

• Sandwich – 369 calories
• Salad – 146 calories
• Pasta – 361 calories
• Chicken Breast – 142 calories
• Orange Juice – 120 calories

Dinner: 1098 calories

• Sandwich – 369 calories
• Salad – 146 calories
• Pasta – 361 calories
• Frozen Yogurt- 102 calories
• Orange Juice – 120 calories

Supplements – 240 calories

• 2 scoops whey protein – 240 calories
• 1 fish oil tablet – 10 calories
• 1 multivitamin – 0 calories

Total: 3272 calories

Sandwich = 2 slices wheat bread, 2 oz tomatoes, chicken breast, 1 oz lettuce, 1/2 slice American cheese
Salad = 8 oz cucumbers, 2 oz tofu, 2 oz tomatoes, 4 egg whites, 4 oz carrots + other dark veggies
Pasta = 8 oz multigrain spaghetti + 4 oz tomato sauce
Frozen Yogurt = 4 oz
Orange Juice = 8 oz

Output:

• Baseline activities: 2000 calories average per day
• Bicycle ride: 1200 calories average per ride, 4x week (avg 685 calories/day)
• Run: 500 calories average per run, 4x week (avg 285 calories/day)
• Weight/strength training: 300 calories average per session, daily (avg 300 calories/day)

Total: 3270 calories

1. Burns calories

Fondle!

Biking will be good for your diet. If you weigh 150 pounds, you can burn anywhere from 400-1000 or more calories per hour, depending on your biking speed. Think about how long you have to run on the treadmill at the gym to burn that much. If you bike 30 minutes to work and back, you’ll can probably skip your gym workout; or better yet, still go and accelerate your weight loss!

2. Burns fat, builds muscle

Lance Armstrong has big muscles

Not only does biking burn calories, it also helps build muscle while burning that fat. You can lose weight just by dieting, but then you’ll also lose muscle.

3. Reduce your carbon footprint

Make every month bike month!

A bicycle’s carbon footprint is tiny compared to a car’s – it is much better to manufacture a bike than to manufacture a car. After that, you also won’t be burning your dollars away in the form of gasoline. Which brings me to the next point.

4. Cheaper

This is what happens when our police departments can't afford gas. I can probably outbike them.

A bike is cheaper than a car – there’s an upfront cost, and that’s pretty much it, excluding tune-ups and replacements if you need them. And then there’s the cheaper energy source – your legs! No need to pay $4 per gallon for gasoline.

5. Reduces traffic and congestion

And you got scared in your car next to big trucks...

Cars take up an entire lane in width, and several feet in length. Bikes can easily fit two to a lane in width, and sometimes just squeeze on the side of the road anyways. Drivers might complain about cyclists blocking their way, but it’s usually for a short distance; and if they’re driving that fast, there’s no congestion anyways!

6. Racing actually means something

Like dominoes

Now of course there’s kill in racing on tracks and such, but I never understood the fascination of gunning your engine and pitting your car against the car next to you. Obviously whoever wins either has 1) the better car or 2) no fear of getting arrested. On the other hand, passing another bicyclist up actually shows your physical superiority.

7. Not that slow anyways

Bicycle vs. Car

It’s going to be different in every location, but for the city streets of Cambridge and Boston during rush hours, a bike is often just as fast if not faster than a car.

8. Break laws with impunity

Training camp.

A cop is much less likely to pull a bicyclist over for running a red light.

9. Wear spandex

Hot...why are their uniforms also phallic?

Bicyclists get to wear spandex in public and get away with it. How many other people can say that?

10. Free parking

Don't know what to say about this picture.

Parking a car sucks in the city. Locking up your bike is easy. Of course, there’s the fear of getting your bike stolen, but get a good lock and there’s just about an equal chance that your car window will be smashed as your bike will be stolen.

Main Street Parallels Main Street

One of the shortcomings of the design of Boston’s Greater Metropolitan Area is the overfrequent use of street names. In the picture above, there are two Main Streets. I understand that Saugus and Wakefield both think that they are very important places, and their most important street is their “Main Street.” But this causes great confusion to non-natives of the area. There are also multiple Tremont Streets, multiple Prospect Streets – the list goes on and on.

At some point the city councils of Boston should just get together and duke it out. One Main Street per 50 mile radius, not one per town. Other names, such as Prospect and Tremont, should be limited to one per 100 mile radius. And this is why I will never become an elected official.

This explains the horrible menu at Chevys Fresh Mex in Times Square. Chevys has a great location – it’s right next to and connected to the Regal E-Walk Stadium 13, which seems to play new releases more often than the AMC 25 across the street. However, the menu makes you cringe. Even a light salad that seems to have nothing at all is 700 calories – the main dishes easily push into the high 1000s and even 2000s. Sharing suddenly becomes a great idea: who wants to eat their entire supposed daily intake in one meal?

Sometimes things are better left untold – guiltless food tastes better than remorseful eating. I’m not sure which one is worse: unhappy fooding or America’s obesity epidemic, but everyone loses in the end, for better or worse.

C57BL6 (Strain Name)

I work with mice at lab. I work with mice at my apartment. It’s pretty similar – in lab you give the mice food, and run experiments on them. For example, you might listen to their ultrasonic vocalizations, or check their responses to sound in the human-audible spectrum, or perhaps in the ultrasound range. In my apartment, the mice eat up the food I accidentally leave out (and sometimes even the food that I hide). To make them go away, I’ve invested in mouse traps, rodent poison, and even ultrasound devices.

But there are differences. If you’ve ever read the Little Golden Book, City Mouse, Country Mouse, you’ll know what I mean. The “city mouse” (aka the lab mouse) is nice, chic, and clean. They are kept in well-maintained facilities with bedding that gets replaced. They are given a constant supply of food and water, and experience perfect light-dark cycles in a temperature controlled room. The “country mouse” (aka the apartment mouse) is dirty, hungry, and scared.

At lab, we have to follow hundreds of regulations to make sure that the mice are being humanely treated. But what about the mice in my apartment? If the lab inspectors saw what kind of conditions apartment mice lived in, they would have a fit. That doesn’t mean I’ll be leaving out food and water any time soon. Shoo, mice, shoo!

Or at least that’s what we’re told. Professionals say that it’s not when youe at, it’s what and how much to eat. But in the news recently, was a Harvard study that might cancel out part of the last statement as well – what you eat doesn’t matter too much either. Apparently, a calorie from carbs and a calorie from fat cause the same weight gain. Big surprise, right?

This means the only thing left in weight control is WHAT you eat. Weight Watchers and other dieting programs have something like this in place already – you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as you don’t surpass your daily allotted points.

Thus the popular saying, “You are what you eat,” is wrong. You are how much you eat. So stop eating.

You are how much you eat.

I lose again to Psycho Slime: http://oneslime.net

Whoever created this game never heard of the “easy” setting. You’re supposed to make a game easy at the beginning to get the player hooked into the game, and then make it progressively harder until the player can’t beat it. By this point, the player is hooked, and will keep on playing until the game is beat.

Slime Volleyball starts out hard, and gets harder. It’s extremely frustrating, and I hate it with a passion. But I’m already hooked. This is the result of a four hour bus ride with nothing else to do. Thus, the game got the opportunity to skip over the “easy start” before luring me into the “hooked stage.”

You’re a yellow half circle (a slime), fighting other slimes. The point of the game is to bounce the ball into the computer’s side and have the computer player not be able to hit the ball (i.e. the ball hits the ground). Then you get a point. First side to 6 points wins. As the yellow player slime, I’ve beaten a white slime, red slime, and a black slime, all the while muttering at the racial irony.

However, the flashing blue and white psycho slime, who has superior speed and looks, is killing me. I just can’t beat him, no matter how much I try. I’m doomed – second best to a damned half circle.