Kurt Leucht’s Blog

I have nothing against exercising. It’s very good for you and everyone should do it every day or at least every other day. My problem was that I was having lots of lower back aches and pains and exercising always seemed to make it worse. It was a Catch-22 situation: I needed the exercise to strengthen my lower back muscles, but whenever I exercised … my back would hurt. So I decided I would lose the 20 pounds that I’ve been overweight for the past 5 years or so and then I would try to get back into exercising and see if the missing over-weight would make things easier on my back. I figured it was worth a try.

I started eating only fruit for lunch every day. I would get an apple and a banana and a small fruit cup from the cafeteria at work. I would eat it slowly and would usually feel pretty full after only 2 of the 3 items. Then I would eat the 3rd item a couple hours later for an afternoon snack. After a couple weeks of eating like this I stepped on the scale and had lost like 4 or 5 pounds. That was a pretty decent start. Then I got a wild hair and went hunting for nutritional advise on the Internet and found something called Calorie-Shifting.

Here is the official website for the diet: http://fatloss4idiots.com/

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I’ll admit that it looks pretty gimmicky. And it almost looks like one of those websites that might take your money and then disappear from the face of the earth the very next day. And I’m not willing to pay good money for nutritional advise anyways. So I did some more searching and found this site that actually reviewed this calorie-shifting diet: http://www.weight-loss-for-busy-people.com/idiot-proof-diet-review.html

The review website is a bit critical of the calorie-shifting diet, but also admits that the rules are mostly sound nutritional advise. The 10 rules that form the basis of the diet are listed on this review website. (Not sure that’s allowed by the diet sellers, but that’s not really my problem.) The only thing you’re missing by not paying for the actual diet is the personal menu suggestions … which would be cool, but I’m a tightwad so I decided to try out the rules listed on the review website and see what happened. Here are the rules that are listed on the review site:

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• I don’t quite understand rule #4. I stayed on mostly carbs for 3 days or so, then switched to mostly protein for 3 days or so. Rule #4 contradicts that scenario, so I didn’t follow that rule.
• I didn’t eat 4 meals a day. Instead I ate my normal 3 meals a day with at least a snack between each. But the snack had to be mostly carbs or mostly protein as appropriate.
• Minimizing the condiments was not easy, but it is probably good advise for everyone at any time. Diet or no diet, most condiments have lots of fat and sugar that make them taste so good. Mustard is probably the safest condiment out there, but I didn’t even eat it during my diet trial period.
• Portion control is a problem for most of us. I went out of my way to make sure I put on my plate what I was going to eat during the meal and never went back for seconds. Portion control alone could possibly account for much of my weight loss.
• I didn’t drink anything but water. Not even juice, not even milk. This won’t be easy for most people, but it was easy for me because I already don’t drink sodas and already drink mostly water.
• I didn’t walk daily because I wasn’t exercising at all during my trial period.
• It was kinda hard to avoid sweets, but I managed. It was during the holidays, so that made it especially hard. When sweets or desserts were served, I would just eat a small bite or two instead of a whole large piece or two.

On my carb days, I would eat whole wheat toast or an english muffin with some of that fake buttery flavored spray and just a small amount of natural no-sugar-added jam. Remember jams and jellys often have lots of sugar, so minimize their use. My other meals consisted usually of spanish rice on a whole wheat wrap with just a little salsa or a nice helping of real mashed potatoes. My carb snacks were usually a Nature Valley pecan crunch flavored granola bar or a handful of Wheat Thins 5 grain crunch flavored crackers or a fat free blueberry muffin from the WalMart bakery.

On my protein days, I would eat sausage and bacon or eggs or the like for breakfast. My other meals consisted of various meats with some beans or eggs thrown in for good measure. Meats are pretty easy to find, but avoid lunchmeats and hot dogs and other highly processed meats. I made sure my protein days coincided with work luncheons and holiday dinners and such. The hard part about protein days is finding a side on a restaurant menu or finding a snack. Most of the sides are usually carbs, so I usually chose the vegetable side. When eating at a restaurant, I always ate half the meal and saved the other half for my next meal. Restaurants always give you way more food than your body needs. What I settled on for protein snacks was a little bit of chipotle flavored or lightly salted peanuts and a little bit of beef jerky snack. But neither is terribly good for you in large quantities. Peanuts are mostly fat and beef jerky type snacks are highly processed and not too good for you.

On this diet I probably lost about 3 or maybe 4 pounds each week. Nowhere near the 9 pounds in 11 days that is promised by the calorie shifting website. But then again, I wasn’t following their menu suggestions that I would have to pay for. 3 to 4 pounds a week is a nice weight loss rate. Much more than that is considered dangerous by most nutritionists, anyways.

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I lost exactly 20 pounds total by New Years. I started at 180 and now I’m at 160. This was from a couple weeks of eating just fruits for lunch and about 4 or 5 weeks on the pseudo calorie-shifting diet. I don’t look much different in this recent photo, but in the mirror my face does look skinnier and I can see less fat under my shirt and my belt is actually 2 notches smaller. I can now comfortably wear jeans that I haven’t been able to wear in over a year. How much of this weight loss can be attributed to the calorie-shifting diet? I don’t know. But a lot of the principles listed in the diet’s rules are wise nutritional advise, so that counts for something.

Kurt

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention above that I am not continuing to calorie shift now that my little weight loss experiment is over. I only did it to see if I could lose 20 pounds. And I’m not completely convinced that the weight loss was primarily due to the calorie shifting. Most nutritional experts will tell you that leaving out major food groups is not a good idea. Most nutritionists suggest eating the right kinds and amounts of carbs and proteins and healthy fats at each and every meal.

Attention anyone who lives in East-Central Florida! The Gilchrist Education Foundation (GEF) will be hosting the 2nd annual Light the Way 5K. If you are not familiar with GEF, it is a non-profit foundation that raises money to provide scholarships to children who desire to attend Christian schools in North Brevard County.

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The date for the race is January 19, 2008. This event is a run/walk event and even though it is a part of the Titusville race series, GEF considers it a family event and goes out of their way to make it a great time for both adults and little ones. So if you can’t run, come out and walk with your family. Mark your calendars and invite your friends and family to join you. I wrote about our family’s great experience at the 1st annual Light the Way 5K earlier this year on leucht.com and also included a couple photos from the event:

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If you are the one saying, “I can’t run or walk 5K” then there are other ways that you can help. The race committee is in need of 20-25 volunteers for the day of the race. They need help with parking, water stations, registration, etc. So if you are not interested in running/walking, but would be available to help on the day of the race, please contact myself or Samantha using the “email us” form on this website!

There is an additional way that runners and walkers can help raise more funds this year, by getting friends, co-workers and family members to sponsor you in the race. Although it is not required, it is a simple way to raise an extra $10, $15, $25 or let’s think big $100 for the foundation. The sponsor form can be downloaded from the GEF website.

All of the race and registration information can be found on the web at www.gilchristfoundation.org So don’t delay… sign up today!!!

Tonight I set up a CafePress store to sell various merchandise with my lemon blossom photo professionally printed on them. Check it out! <http://www.cafepress.com/lemonblossom> There are mugs, tote bags, coasters, buttons, magnets, greeting cards, posters, and much more! These are the perfect gifts for that person in your life who already has everything!

Today I attended the Daytona Continental Historic Races at the Daytona International Speedway. This event is organized by the Historic Sportscar Racing (HSR) organization, and is just one of about 10 historic sportscar racing events that it organizes each year throughout the country. According to the HSR website, “Historic racing series such as HSR represent the fastest growing segment of motorsports in the United States and Europe.” It was an exciting day and I had a lot of fun watching these vintage cars compete against each other on the racetrack. I recorded a little bit of video with my pocket digital still camera and edited it into a four and a half minute compilation. You can watch my video compilation on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwrNkTx42o

Click on any photo below to go to my online photo gallery where you can download a higher resolution version:

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This is an event that I will definitely take my boys to when they are a bit older.

Kurt

I took this video using my pocket camera this afternoon. This was in Titusville, Florida at the river. I see these dolphins in this same area almost every day on my drive across the river while going to work. Today they were chasing fish along the seawall and doing a pretty good job of catching them. It’s kinda like shooting fish in a barrel! This video shows 2 dolphins, but there were at least 5 hanging around. Here’s the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxHExrZ9k4Q

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After a spectacular mission, Discovery and the STS-120 crew came in for a safe landing at KSC a few days ago. I work out at KSC, and I went outside my building to watch Discovery glide in. When the Space Shuttle lands from South to North, it glides pretty much right over the KSC Industrial Area, where about half of the KSC employees work. I happened to have my digital pocket camera on me, so I shot this footage. It’s not the greatest quality video, but it’s about all I can expect out of my pocket digital camera.

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Click here to watch the video on YouTube. You can hear the sonic booms in the footage and you can also hear it “whooshing” through the air as it passes close overhead. Remember the Space Shuttle Orbiter lands in an unpowered glide, so the “whooshing” is purely the sound of a large lifting body cutting through the air as it glides down to an unpowered landing.

I’m going to attempt to place a Google AdSense Video Unit into this blog post. I have no idea what the actual content of the video will be, but it is supposed to be targeted specifically to match other content on this website. I imagine it will contain something related to woodworking or the Space Program.

[Google AdSense Video Unit removed due to inappropriate and usually offending content!]

Update: That didn’t originally work too well. WordPress, my blog software trashed the javascript code I pasted in. I had to directly modify the mySql database entry to get it to work.

Update 2: Wow, the videos that were showing up here were not related to woodworking or the Space Program at all! Many of them were quite offending, so I removed the video unit. I guess Google has some more work to do in this area. Good luck, Google!

According to recent website statistics, my Yard Shed Plans web page (http://www.leucht.com/kurt/shed/) is pretty much the most popular web page on my whole website. This is very cool to me because this is exactly the sort of content that I had most hoped to be able to provide with this website back in the late 90’s when I first created it. Sadly, that Yard Shed Plans page never even got completely finished. Mostly because the 3D models and images were difficult and time consuming to create. Also because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, which makes them even more time consuming to make.

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So busy-ness has kept me from finishing that particular page and also it has kept me from providing more content like this on my site. But the invention of the blog in the past few years (and my subsequent use of it here) has allowed me to quickly and easily create simple web pages, or blog posts, about even the most simple and small projects. So far the traffic on my blog is no where near the amount of traffic on the Yard Shed Plans page, though. Maybe most people that find my Yard Shed Plans page are searching specifically for “plans”. And it’s hard work and time consuming to put together actual “plans” for a project. So maybe I’ll have to go back and add “plans” to all my other projects that are on this site. In my spare time, of course.
Kurt

Pretty soon it will be 2008, which means that those of us who graduated high school in 1988 will be having our big 20 year reunions next year. The Deer Creek-Mackinaw (a.k.a. Dee-Mack) High School class of 1988 is starting to lay down plans for our 20 year reunion.

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Kurt

I was at the NASA Press Site yesterday for the launch of STS-120. What an amazing launch that was to witness. I’ve seen a lot of launches, and this one was the loudest I can remember. I imagine the extreme loudness can be attributed to either the heavy humid air, or the wind direction, or the low cloud deck, or probably a combination of these atmospheric conditions. I took these photos of the launch while at the same time helping to make sure people didn’t “loiter” in front of the big countdown clock. When people stand directly in front of the clock, it has a tendency to annoy most of the TV stations who are using the footage from the countdown clock in their live launch feeds. Click on a photo for a larger version in my photo gallery.

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BLOG CONTEST: I will give one dollar via PayPal to the first person who can identify the white haired man in the white shirt in the second photo. Anyone that I know and have already told is obviously not eligible! Also, anyone who was actually at the NASA Press Site yesterday is not eligible. To enter, you must email me (Kurt only) via the web based email form on my website and tell me your name and your email address so that I can PayPal you the money. If you enter using this method, your email address will only be seen by me and nobody else. If you don’t mind sharing your email address with the whole world, you can enter by adding a comment to this blog posting. I promise I will not use your email address for anything other than sending you the one dollar.