the daniel fast

Among the more interesting things I've tried in the past year: a meal plan that lets you eat as much as you want, whenever you're hungry, and still lose weight.

Of course there's a little more to it than that, because it does restrict you from meats, bread  and a few other things. Known as the Daniel fast, it's essentially a vegan diet with a spiritual gloss, although it's just as effective without the religious aspects.

It's based primarily on what the book of Daniel records that he, Azariah, Mahalel and Hananiah ate, with additional restrictions taken from the fast Daniel kept while praying for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. I lost about 20 pounds on it over a two-week period this past June.

It's pretty straightforward. Under this regimen, you can eat any fruit, vegetable, nut, legume, root or whole grain that you want, cooked or raw. Use any natural herbs or seasonings that you want. You drink water. Quantities are unlimited, so there's no worries about getting enough calories.

The benefits of a vegetarian diet are pretty well documented, so it's not too surprising that the book of Daniel reports that he and his friends outperformed both physically and mentally those who ate choice meats and drank fine wines.

From a proscriptive angle, the Daniel fast allows no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no sweeteners of any sort (including honey) and no flour. This pretty much eliminates all processed foods, so you can see why it's a big saver on the waistline. In the first few days alone, a person usually drops about 10 pounds of retained water.

The downside is that this is a big change from the diet we're accustomed to eating as Americans, and we can get strong cravings those first few days for junk food, or just find ourselves hungry for more food.

At the same time, though, that is part of the appeal of the Daniel fast both for losing weight and for being able to stick to the commitment -- if you're hungry, just get something to eat. You're not relying on willpower alone to tough it out for the duration of the fast; you're training yourself to eat more healthily, and you're breaking an addiction to unhealthful habits the way you're supposed to -- by replacing them with good habits.

One thing I discovered after trying the Daniel fast in June was that, after a few weeks without meat and sugar, I really didn't have an appetite for them. They not only lost their taste to me, they annoyed my stomach. If I hadn't insisted on getting back into some unhealthy eating habits for the sake of convenience, I probably would have stuck with it just fine.

Make that a goal for 2013.

new rules to live by

Taken and adapted from CHRefugee:

1. Stop giving me that pop-up ad for Classmates.com. I'm not in touch with my high school classmates 20 after graduation, because high school sucked and the people who made it suck were my classmates. Why would I want to reconnect with them -- so they can make middle age suck too?
2. Don't eat anything that's served to you out a window unless you're a seagull. People acted all shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy's chili last summer. The chili cost less than a dollar. What did you expect it to contain, trout?
3. Don't complain about high gas prices. There's an easy way to deal with it: Drive less, and do it in a car with better mileage than a minivan or sport utility vehicle. And don't tell me that corn-based ethanol is going to save us all. Corn is for food, not for putting into our gas tanks.
4. Stop saying that teenage boys who have sex with their hot, blonde teachers are permanently damaged. There isn't a man alive today who didn't want that same thing when he was a teenager. Try sending the message to teenage boys that women are people, not sexual encounters.
5. If you need to shave and you still collect baseball cards, you're a dope. If you're a kid, the cards are keepsakes of your idols. If you're a grown man, they're pictures of men.
6. Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men care about your eyebrows: Do you have two of them? Okay, we're done.
7. There's no such thing as flavored water. Flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.
8. Stop screwing with old people. Target is introducing a redesigned pill bottle that's square, with a bigger label. And the top is now the bottom. And by the time grandpa gets it open, he will be in the morgue. Congratulations, Target, you just solved the Social Security crisis.
9. The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the jerk. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low, and one NutraSweet," your picture deserves to be in the dictionary, next to the word jerk.
10. I'm not the cashier. If I'm spending my money at your store, is it too much to ask to have one of your employees run my purchases across the scanner, ring me up, and tell me how much my bill comes to? No one has complained, "Stores are getting too personal and friendly. They should lay off some cashiers and replace them with Do-It-Yourself express lanes."
11. A tattoo with Chinese characters it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above your butt crack, and it means "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
12. Competitive eating isn't a sport. It's one of the seven deadly sins, and it's gross. ESPN recently televised the U.S. Open of Competitive Eating, because watching those athletes at the poker table was just too damn exciting. What's next, competitive farting? They already do that. It's called "The Howard Stern Show."
13. I don't need a bigger mega M&Ms. If I'm extra hungry for M&Ms, I'll go nuts and eat two.
14. If you're going to insist on making movies based on old TV shows, then you have to give everyone in the theater a remote so we can see what's playing on the other screens. These things were TV shows in the first place because the idea wasn't good enough to be a movie.
15. No more gift registries. You know, it used to be just for weddings. Now it's for babies and new homes and honeymoons and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn't gift giving, it's just a lazy way to go looting and pillaging.
16. If you ever hope to be a credible adult and want a job that pays better than minimum wage, then for God's sake don't pierce or tattoo every available piece of flesh. If you do, then plan your future around saying "Do you want fries with that?"

keeping it kosher

I knew a Jewish woman in college who was very critical of our meal plan for not having more kosher options, and yet who thought nothing of eating pork chow mein when we were at a Chinese restaurant. Her explanation -- in total seriousness -- was that everyone knows that pork is kosher when it's at a Chinese restaurant. Perhaps there is a similar exemption for hot dogs; i.e., they're always kosher at a Fourth of July barbecue.

kosher laws

Taken from a post at CHRefugee, where someone asked about Christians and the kosher laws. Reposted here just because I like the thinking that went into it.
Heck, if someone wants to keep the kosher laws, you're probably not going to be able to dissuade them. More power to 'em. Keeping kosher is actually a pretty healthy way to eat and to live, but for your own edification, and because you asked politely, here are a few verses that satisfy me on my freedom from the dietary laws -- actually on pretty much the whole shebang:

Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened, and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

— Acts 10:9-15

While this is part of the passage dealing with God calling on Peter to take the gospel to the Gentiles, note that the vision specifically deals with food. In fact, it's only after Peter accepts that the dietary restrictions have been superceded that he's willing to visit the house of Cornelius.

The church council in Jerusalem also settled the issue of Gentiles following the Torah in its letter to the Gentile churches:

We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear brothers Barnabas and Paul ... It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

— Acts 15:23-20

Of course, that didn't satisfy the group Paul called the Judaizers, and in several epistles he was forced to address the issue himself. One of his more strident passages says:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing -- if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you heard?

Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because "The righteous will live by faith." The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them." Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

— Galatians 3:1-12

In other words, observance of the Torah — including dietary law — is not required of a believer; we are expected to live by faith and the Spirit, which frees us from being enslaved to doing "the right thing." Put another way: I push all the little old ladies in front of cars that I want, rob all the banks I want, and have all the adultery I want. Of course, when you are living by faith and the Spirit, none of those things should appeal to you very much.

Remember that the Torah and all its dietary restrictions came to the Jewish people at the time of Moses. There is no reason to believe that Abraham observed the kosher laws, although it is possible that some of those laws developed during the period of Israel’s enslavement to Egypt and later received divine sanction after the exodus. In any event, the Scriptures are quite clear that we can eat pork and shellfish — that we can even eat pork roll and cheese on a bagel — and have a solid relationship with God.

In another of his letters, Paul has the following to say specifically about food:

Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious fetival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

— Colossians 2:16-17

As I said earlier, I doubt any of this will change your correspondents’ minds. Generally, when people have made their minds up that strongly, they don’t want to acknowledge the validity of other interpretations and will just get more recalcitrant if you push the issue. My advice is to let them think what they want, and if you’re concerned that they’re in danger of shipwrecking their faith or that of others, that you pray for them. In a truly extreme case, you might want to consider blocking them from the forum, though it doesn’t sound like it’s that bad at this point.

battle of the bulge

About three months ago, I decided this was the year to get back in shape.

Weight problems run in my family; actually, they run in our country. I read recently that something like a third of the country is considered "seriously overweight." Although I don't have my own ZIP code, I've been forced to admit that my gut hangs out farther than it should.

"Look dear," my wife told me recently. "Your belly is larger than mine!"

Ordinarily, that would not mean much since Natasha's stomach has been as flat as a washboard since the day I met her. But since she's four months pregnant, it really drove the point home. She drove it home even further when she started playing games like "See how far we can put a finger into Dave's belly button."

The F word has become one of her favorites. "You're fat," she teased me.

"I'm not fat, I'm big-boned," I lied.

"In the belly?"

So, much to my dismay, I have to admit that I have a weight problem again. The last time I was this overweight was back in college. After graduation, I moved to Haiti for two years and dropped more than 40 pounds, putting me at the lightest I had been since high school.

Of course, a good part of that weight loss came from things like dengue fever, amebic dysentery and tapeworms. I want to lose the weight again, but not that badly.

The chief culprit here is my eating habits. I love food, but unfortunately I don't have the metabolism I did as a teenager to burn it all off.

It's frustrating to watch my wife, who does have a high metabolism, eat and not gain a pound. It's even worse now that she's pregnant, because her appetite is increasing and so she's eating all the time. At least in a few months her belly (I hope) will be larger than mine.

As every weight-loss expert will tell you, proper diet is important to any weight-loss program. Nutritionists consider a balanced diet to come from the food groups.

My middle school health teacher defined those groups as dairy, bread, meat, and fruits and vegetables. In the past few years, I personally have redefined the food groups as soft drinks, french fries, pizza and cookies, preferably with chocolate chips.

So the first step of reducing my weight theoretically is to improve my eating habits. Just cut the junk and get back to those fruits and vegetables, and I'll be fine, a voice from middle school tells me.

If only it were that simple.

As fate would have it, there is a Pizza Brothers restaurant within walking distance of the Hillsborough Beacon's office. It would be easier to resist if their pizza were bad or overpriced, but it's not. It's cheaper than the national chains, I don't need to tip since I walk over there, and I like it.

"You go to Pizza Brothers a lot," Natasha said two weeks ago as she looked over our credit-card bill.

Even in the office there is no escape. Mary Stulack, the newspaper's office manager, keeps a tin on her desk filled with candy for us to eat. On a good day, when I demonstrate self-control, I'm out in the reception area three or four times to check the mail, and decide as long as I'm out there, I might as well take a few pieces of candy.

Two weeks ago, the tin was filled with gum drops, which I don't like. As a matter of fact, only one person in the office does like them, and it took forever for the gum drops to disappear.

It was hell. After waiting in vain for a week for Jack to eat all the gum drops, I drove to the ShopRite and bought a bag of bite-size Three Musketeers for the tin.

So here I am, fighting the losing battle I have fought since I became a journalist. How do you stay in shape at a job that keeps you at a desk? At least as a teacher, I walked around the room constantly to help students, keep their attention and stop them from cheating.

Whatever the answer is, I have to find it fast. The postmaster general recently called to let me know they have a few five-digit numbers that are still available if I want one.