Tuesday, February 23, 2010


Fat Tuesday
Part VI in a Series


Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 168.5 Lbs. (Oops. Guess that's what a week of all you can eat buffets can do to ya)
(My fingers are too fat to use a calculator to figure out my BMI and BMR today)
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs. (I AM LAUGHING OUT LOUD!)

As someone who sort of plays a bike mechanic in real life, I should know better than to begin a project before I've read the instructions through to the end. Last week I was babbling about the NuVal system, assuming that Matt Fitzgerald was talking about it in his book Racing Weight because it's the latest-greatest thing. Wrong! I should have finished the chapter before I wandered off to buy huge amounts of spinach and green beans (and throw away my massive stash soda and double stuff Oreos). The latest-greatest is actually Fitzgerald's own system the "Diet Quality Score, " or DQS for acronym-iness. By utilizing this system you will come up with an overall score for your daily food intake. It does make sense (more so than the NuVal, which if you take literally, will lead you to eat just spinach and green beans all the time). Let me see if I can make some sense here...

The first time you eat a food item, it scores higher. Each time you eat it after that it scores lower and lower. This way, if you want to get a high score so you can win the "making racing weight game" you need to eat a variety of high quality foods.


Although I kind of went into a light coma when Fitzgerald started talking about scores (scores involve numbers, numbers make me sleepy...and nauseous) my ears lit up when he started talking about how "a can of soda can save your life in the right conditions." He doesn't elaborate, although I'm guessing he's talking about that scene in the movie "Bad Boys," (the one with Sean Penn not the one with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence) where Sean Penn knows some bad dudes are totally about to f— with him, so he goes down to the RC Cola machine and starts buying soda after soda, then he puts the cans in a pillowcase, and then when the bad dudes descend upon him, he's ready — WHAM! He smashes the Kurgan from Highlander right in the nose with a pillowcase full of RC Colas. (Talk about product placement. Back in '83 Sears couldn't keep "Pillowcases Full of RC Cola Cans" on the shelf.)


Only it's not really The Kurgan, it's "Viking Lofgren," played by Clancy Brown who played The Kurgan. I'm not sure why in both Highlander and Bad Boys, he didn't go by his real name: Clancy. Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of reform school boys and Scottish warriors like a guy named CLANCY.

Fitzgerald also talks about portions as relating to the size of your outstretched hands. I have disproportionately large hands for my height and weight. You know what they say about short guys with really big hands right? They have big...

Guts (because they measured out portions that are too large using this system).

Speaking of guts, Matt keeps coming back to the basic, obvious, you-don't-need-a-fancy-diet-score-to-figure-it-out principle of CALORIES in CALORIES OUT. Though this is the last thing the "obesity is a disease" club wants to hear. Is obesity a new disease? When was it discovered? Has it always been a disease? Is it just that more people get it now? Do you catch it from leading an indolent life full of energy saving technology and eating calorically dense, nutrient poor foods?

Or maybe it's a newer virus, like AIDS. Did humans initially contract fatness from having sex with or eating obese monkeys?

I've read that a malfunctioning hypothalamus can cause the satiation (stop cramming chili cheese fries down your gullet) message to fire, so that people think they're hungry when they're not. A little naturalistic observation down at The Old Country Buffet would disprove this theory. There is no way that Mr. 300-pound behemoth is going back up for his his third 1500 calorie plate of food because his hypothalamus is telling him "Hey...hey big guy...I think you're still hungry, go get some more food OK?"

Looks like we ran out of time just a little bit late at The Big Bikes today.

P.S. - the photos at the top...
on the left I'm wearing my normal-person-swimsuit. On the right I'm wearing my I'm-a-freakin'-weirdo-Speedo that I go "proper-swimming" in. When we were down in Mexico last week, on vacation, I would wear the weirdo-suit under the normal-suit down to the beach. When it was time to proper-swim, I would tear off the normal-suit, revealing the Speedo. I said "it was like on Knight Rider when Kit would come out of the back of that semi!" Miriam's sister was totally freaked out.

4 comments:

dicky said...

It must be Viking Day... but then again isn't every day Viking Day?

solobreak said...

The pink background made this difficult already, but now you've totally crossed the NSFW threshold. I'm going to have to start reading this with lynx.

People watching at the OCB may just be the most entertaining spectator sport in the world. Do you think they shave their legs?

Big Bikes said...

\I must-a thought it was Viking Day. It ain't Viking day is it?

Solo -
There’s one thing I don’t understand…the thing that I don’t understand is every motherfuckin’ word you’re saying.

It's OK, I'm quoting "The Limey," it's OK to swear when you quote.

Anonymous said...

Fun and funny review! Thanks!

Dave
VeloPress