Weigh-In Wednesday June 19th: Biking to Food is Still Exercise Right?
Here at 2 Fat Nerds, each Wednesday is a Weigh-In day, where all of the data from the previous week is collected, displayed, and analyzed. Let’s see what data was submitted this week!
Weight Loss
Each week, members who have opted to have their weights publicly displayed for the world to see have them graphed on the main blog. It is a great way to keep track over time, and it gives a bit more accountability to your workouts. If you are interested, leave a comment!
Two-Week Triathlon Review: This Is Not a Drill.
The night before Mother’s Day, my siblings and I sat around my parents’ dining room table. We were all taking part in a semi-serious game of chicken. The game was to see who would pull the trigger and register for a slightly-less-than-Olympic-distance triathlon. For whatever dumbass reason, I cackled my way over to the computer and dropped the eighty bucks on registration fees. By doing so, I threw down the gauntlet on an event I didn’t fully understand and was certainly not prepared for. My brothers and Suz quickly registered as well, and a week or two later, my Dad also accepted the challenge of becoming a triathlete.
My parents raised the four of us out on Cape Cod for a couple of weeks a year. We swam in the freshwater kettle ponds, often forming a floatilla of canoe/inflatable boats and boogy-board-kicking kids as we swam across the various ponds. We grew up proficient swimmers, having gone to many way-to-early swim lessons with the Sneeringers at SUNY Albany. We also were lucky enough to spend many days by one pool or another, using our skills for chicken fighting and other forms of waterlogged combat. I’ve always taken being able to swim for granted, but over the past two weeks, I’ve come to greatly appreciate my parents and Susie for getting us in the water so regularly. Training for the swimming portion of this triathlon is brutal, and without that swimming foundation, I would be in deep trouble.
The siblings in the lake after flipping the canoe.
Experiment
It is not often that I am allowed to work on wet-bench experiments, as I am a programmer by trade. On Friday I had an idea to test some of our sequencing samples, and today we are going to try to put the idea into practice and see what we can come up with. It is always exciting to experiment outside of my traditional role as a bioinformatics analyst, and in all honesty it is extremely helpful to see how the other half lives and works, because the more I understand how experiments are preformed and all of their caveats, the better I can understand the output data and how best to utilize it.
Today’s work can be summed up in this nice graphical image via Wikipedia:
Basically, the idea is to see if we can detect and evaluate how much unique DNA is present in a sequencing library (library is what we call something that is ready for sequencing, as in a “library” of DNA). The idea is that for bad samples, we have many copies of the same fifty-base string (think ACGTACGT). For good samples, we have many, many different combinations of the ACGTs, meaning it is more “complex.” The more complex a sample, the better off the results are after sequencing. My hope is that we might be able to save money by not sequencing not very complex samples, as it results in junk output anyway. Kinda a simple breakdown of the idea, but who knows! Maybe it’ll actually work.
Anyways, hope it goes well!
Eat Fit Not Fat- Spaghetti Squash Primavera
I have been wanting to try to make spaghetti squash now for a long long time. I just couldn’t bring myself to substituting my childhood comfort food of pasta for veggies that look like spaghetti. When I was a child my Mom used to tell me, “Susan, you’re going to turn into a noodle!” I could have literally eaten spaghetti and meat sauce every single night for dinner. Last night I finally took the plunge to make my fake yet much healthier and way less caloric “pasta”. We topped our “spaghetti” with lots of fresh veggies and sun-dried tomato chicken sausage. By replacing my beloved spaghetti with vegetable spaghetti, I was able to fill my bowl much higher with delicious food then if I were to have been stuffing my face with carbs. (Disclaimer: I don’t think I will ever be able to give up my real noodles, but maybe I can use squash as a substitute once in a while 
Ingredients
Serves 4 - (some veggies aren’t pictured above because we added some extras as we cooked)
- 2 large spaghetti squashes, cut in half and seeds removed
- Approx 1/4 cup of basil, shredded
- 1 package of fresh spinach
- 1 box of grape tomatoes, sliced in half
- 4 chicken sausages (your choice of flavor) we used sundried tomato
- 1tbsp of Parmesan cheese per serving (or however much you desire)
- 1 zucchini, cut in slices
- 1 box of mushrooms
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
- salt and pepper to taste
- Approx 1 tbsp of olive
Life in the Slow Lane
That about sums it up.
Fried chicken. Homemade fried pies. Grits smothered in butter. Banana pudding. Buttermilk biscuits with cane syrup. Fried country ham. Sweet tea.
Life in the South.
Life is slower here, and people are nice. “Here, have another piece of pie!” is a common phrase spoken down here. “Let me fill up your tea glass for the road,” is another expression we often hear. At any given time, my grandmother has two to three canisters on her counter that are stocked with amazing baked goods, and it would be rude to not sample 1 or 2 of each variety.
When people think of the South, normally two things are brought to mind: Food and Family (and, in the effort of full disclosure, many people think of standardized test scores, but that has nothing to do with this post).
Contrary to popular belief, the South isn’t the fattest region in the United States, we are just the most honest (source); however, it is difficult to grow out of the culinary traditions of one’s upbringing. While day-to-day dining here isn’t a carnival food buffet as some believe it is (curse you Paula Dean), fried food and the gratuitous use of butter are common. It’s just the way things are done here, you know? Read the rest of this entry
Weigh-In Wednesday June 12th: Filter Your OTU’S!
Here at 2 Fat Nerds, each Wednesday is a Weigh-In day, where all of the data from the previous week is collected, displayed, and analyzed. Let’s see what data was submitted this week!
Weight Loss
Each week, members who have opted to have their weights publicly displayed for the world to see have them graphed on the main blog. It is a great way to keep track over time, and it gives a bit more accountability to your workouts. If you are interested, leave a comment!
Striving to Be at Least Part Kenyan.
The Sawhili word harambee represents the idea of pulling together as one to accomplish a common good. It is a driving force in the Kenyan culture, represented above in their Coat of Arms. It permeates everything they do, including athletics. Positive thinking and a supportive community let them excel as some of the worlds most accomplished runners. A recent article written by David Alm in RunnersWorld introduced this concept to me. He suggests that being an elite runner and an elite athlete is more than just putting in the training, being naturally gifted, or being genetically predisposed to perform at the highest level. It requires a certain way of thinking, a certain psychology. He writes:
This ethos [harambee] translates to their athletics, he says, inspiring hundreds—if not thousands—of young runners to join the fray each year. “People will look at other runners and say, ‘That guy is the same height as me, the same weight as me, comes from the same town as me. Maybe I can do it, too,’” he says. “So you have this group of positive-thinking people, and positivity spawns more positivity—people encouraging you to do more.”
Removing “Diet” From Our Vernacular.
“Are you an apple, a pear, or fat all over?”
– Dr. Oz in a preview for an upcoming episode
While walking through the isles of my local grocery store, collecting my usual foodstuffs, I overheard an interesting conversation between a mother and her small child. This kid must have been about five years old, if that. As I was reaching for my wife’s soy milk (and my almond milk), I saw him look up at his mom and ask a simple question, “Why do we have to be on the South Beach diet again? . . . I don’t like it.” I’m not sure if his mom caught a smile flash across my face, but she quickly said, “Oh you aren’t on it, just me!” She hurried away, seemingly embarrassed, and I kept on shopping, quite a bit more amused than I previously was. Read the rest of this entry
Eat Fit Not Fat- Black Bean and Smoked Mozzarella Summer Salad
I was short on time this week, big time! With working 9-5 everyday, commuting to work 2 hours round trip, fitting in some training for the 15 K Boilermaker run in July and my first ever Triathlon in August and prepping to be a bridesmaid in a dear friend’s wedding this coming Saturday up in Maine, cooking was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to keep things quick, healthy and easy. With last week’s heat wave still on my mind, I chose something that was simple and you don’t have to fire up your oven for. I have made this recipe many times in the past and it always comes out great. With prep, chop and mix time, this salad took about 30 minutes to prepare. (I subtracted the time that it took to take pictures.) Mike and I ate ours with a side of cedar plank grilled salmon for dinner. I also recommend splitting the salad into 4 Tupperware portions and taking them to work for lunch. Each hefty portion packs out only 9 grams of fat and a ton of fiber to keep you full till your next meal. This salad is also great to take to your next BBQ get together.
Serves 4
We Went Swimming!
This post comes from my wife, Ellie, who apparently likes to blog. She’s filling in while I attend a bioinformatics symposium. Enjoy!
I’ve decided that Dory’s message from Finding Nemo is pretty misleading. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming . . .” Cute, right? When the going gets tough, just keep swimmin’ on through! You’ll make it to the other side! It’s so catchy, my coworkers and I printed out a picture of Dory with that message on it. When one of us is particularly overwhelmed with a project, we pass on the Dory message as a way of saying, “It’s not so bad, you just have to keep going! This crap you’re dealing with will be over soon.” Well, what Dory didn’t tell you is that swimming is flippin’ hard. Maybe even harder than whatever you’re going through.
Liar!
Last night, Jon and I went to the JCC to take advantage of the lap-swim hour. Honestly, I am so excited for this triathlon because it’s pushing us to try out other exercises besides running. We even went out and bought goggles, and I got a swim cap and ear plugs! I felt super cool with all my accoutrements (thanks for the tips, Adrienne!!), and I think Jono felt pretty BAMF, too. We jumped in the far lane (there are only four lanes, but there were also only four or five lap swimmers, including us) and got to it!
I can’t tell you how awesome goggles are. Having them makes a huge difference. Whenever we go on vacation or stay in a hotel, I try to swim. But the last time I had goggles, I was probably about ten years old. So anyone who witnessed my “swimming” at these hotels was probably comparing me to a drowning, blind cat fighting to get out of the water, but all I was trying to do was cross-train . . . with my eyes closed!
This is pretty much exactly what I look like when swimming.
Back at the JCC, Jon started off down the lane with an impressive freestyle/crawl. I like the breaststroke because turning my head side to side gets water in my ears something fierce and I hadn’t put the earplugs in for fear of looking stupid (because that’s how you should work out, not by what doesn’t hurt or what feels best, but by what makes you look coolest). I still tried to fit in some front crawl, just to see if I could, and learned that yes, I can still do it. I still think I looked a little drowning-cat-esque, but I did do it. Jon was swimming like a pro, trying to tread water rather than stand on the bottom when he arrived at the shallow end. This made a lot of sense because, during the triathlon, you can’t really stand up when you’re tired. You kind of have to just keep going or tread water while you rest.
We swam for about twenty-five minutes, and believe you me, that was enough for one day. Jon did 750 meters and I lost count. I’ll say I did about 500; I took a few breaks to catch my breath. After grabbing our stuff and heading to the car, I was still out of breath. When we got home, I took some laundry down to the basement and my legs screamed at me the whole way down and back up. So I think swimming is a good idea for me, something new that works muscles I don’t remember having.
In all, I am SO glad my parents and grandma got us kids into swimming at a super young age. A lot of the strokes came back via muscle memory, and I can’t imagine what I would’ve done if I didn’t remember them. . . . Good ole doggy paddle, maybe? So I send major props out to Adrienne, Dad, and all the other swimmers out there. You guys are my role models. I hope to be able to swim a mile without stopping someday . . . We’ll see!
