Food and Mood

Most people change their eating habits based on the mood they are in. Many eat more when stressed, when they are bored, or when they have company. Some react the other way around, losing weight when stressing out or eating less when in a party. In general, feelings of euphoria make us less hungry, while less enthusiastic times see cravings and compulsive eating increase.

You can see this play out in a great many different places. Are you one of those that gain weight in the winter and shed it in the summer? Then your mood probably reacts to changes in the amount of sunlight you are getting. People whose mood is affected by the seasons have Seasonal Affective Disorder, something you should think about when considering a diet.

2009-01-19 Marshall Beach

Protein Bars

Have you ever gone to the supermarket on a Saturday afternoon? When the lines are long enough that you have no hope of getting out without having developed a serious craving by the time you get to see the candy bars?

Let’s face it, it would be wonderful if we could always eat healthily. We should always have fresh, raw foods with us; foods rich in proteins, “good” carbohydrates, vitamins, and a good balance of minerals. Instead, we opt for the convenient, and that mostly means fats and sugars.

Calorie Counting - the Retrospective

On New Year’s Eve 2007, the worst job of my life was over. I hadn’t been there long, but pretty much everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, except the stuff where my team and I had control. Still, the stress nearly killed me and the ten extra pounds I gained were nothing compared to the solace provided by a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie at the end of a long day.

How Do I Get My Content Back?

Have you ever done that? Created a content item that is of sufficient length that your session expired? You hit “Save,” Joomla tells you that you are not authorized to view the resource, and you are left there with a giant blog entry that is gone for good. You think.

I had that problem several times. Joomla could react a lot better to a session timeout than by making you lose hours of work, wouldn’t you think? It’s easy enough to fix, too. But we are not going to change the Joomla code right now just to find a fix from this impasse.

First boarding day of the season!

Go shredding! I can’t believe I waited this long, but 1/4 was my first day of boarding this season. I took bayareaskibus.com to Kirkwood, and had a blast. It was an amazing trip, with perfect road conditions, perfect weather, and really good snow.

The most exciting thing was that I didn’t have to drive one mile! I just hopped on the bus, and four and a half hours later I was on the slopes. Next time I’ll even take the PSP with me, and Shaun White Snowboarding on it!

bayareaskibus.com

No car and snowboarder? What do you do? Take your bike up to Tahoe (hopefully it’s motorized) with your gear and your snowboard strapped on your back? Comes in handy when going downhill, you can use the board as your wings and fly above the crowd waiting in that giant parking lot that is I-80 on a Sunday evening.

So far, I had three options: rent a car, go with friends that are willing to drive, or hitch a ride with unknown strangers on craigslist or one of the carshare sites. Each of the three came with advantages and disadvantages:

Low-Carb Diet

[Note: this is the first post in a new section, Diet & Health. As my pics prove, I used to be seriously overweight (108kg, about 240 lbs) and lost all the extra weight, replacing much of it with muscle. I felt I can add to the plethora of diet advice on the Internet, because I had to learn so much about weight management.]

It’s time for New Year’s Resolutions, and this year I decided to try a low carb diet. I am just human, and in the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year, there is a certain amount of risk I abused the ever-present cookies and sweets. Trader Joe’s, in particular, has a section devoted every year to Christmas candy, cookies, and chocolate that has almost magical syren song qualities.

2008

2008-12-08 Hawaii