Lying Machines and Lying Lies They Tell You

Well I'm not sure if it was the fourth medicine that I'm on for all this madness but I actually think that I got a full nights sleep. I woke up, walked the evil that is Layla, came here to work and got tired.

Not out of the woods yet.

Though I tempt fate by writing this I have to consider that my wife (who I've driven dangerously insane) may have a point about calling in a sick day and just resting. Nah, that's just crazy talk.

Glancing at my email I note that my blackouts must be getting worse:

As you begin the third month of your online journey to a healthier you, we’d like to tell you about the importance of logging your food and exercise every day. Also, by doing so, you may be eligible to earn points for my company's quarterly raffle drawing!

You don't say. Apparently I've been on a three month journey to a healthier me. Judging by these last two weeks I'm wondering how that's going. I read further trying to ferret out the importance of logging my food and exercise everyday, since I've unsuccessfully tried this four different times with four different apps (I'm currently not using myfitnesspal which has an app and a website for you to record this stuff, this is about as easy as it gets and it's still a pain in the butt).

The food and exercise logs in the Health Connections portal offer an easy way to keep track of the calories you consume and the calories you burn each day. Also, use the food log to determine how to substitute healthier choices into your daily food choices. Logging what you eat and how much you exercise every day will provide you with a complete picture of your daily calorie allotment and keep you on track.

Yes, yes. Eat fewer calories than you burn and you'll drop weight. Here's what happened to me, I found myself in lunch lines and what not trying to figure out how many calories were in whatever I was looking at. After awhile I just became uh dour, face all scrounged up staring at dish this and that trying to find the corresponding food in some calorie database for whatever program I was currently using and getting inventive with that (so they don't have Madam Sows Stir Fried Chicken with Secret Sauce but they have a Wendys Fried Chicken Sandwich - good enough! if you don't want to spend an eternity entering the individual components by hand increasing your autism) before considering a bowl of grapes over a bowl of ice cream and opting for the ice cream (but I did feel guilty about it).

I lack the desire and discipline for this sort of stuff and I get cranky at the idea that I spent an hour on some spinner in the gym and can not have the ice cream and lose weight. Can I spend an hour on the spinner, have the ice cream and maintain weight?

No.

Why?

Here's why my dumplings, everyone and their brother bitches about high calories in Starbucks coffee but not about the fact that those fancy exercise machines we use are seriously lying about the number of calories you burned during your little workout.

Honestly, do you think you burned 300 calories on that thirty minute elliptical, spinner, whatever machine you pick workout?

REALLY?!

Well if you decide to believe the machines and then enter some calorie counting program where you're subtracting the calories you burned in the gym based off what the machine told you and hitting your maximum number of calories for the day you will gain weight Porky. I guarantee it.

My advice, which is worth NOTHING, is this. Do the calorie thing if you want to - it's the only way to lose weight but do NOT subtract the calories you cooked off at the gym. And that is hard to do because you worked out gosh darn it. If you're not experiencing a certain level of discomfort (misery) while dieting, you're doing it wrong.

How bad do you want it? Your call.