Paypal claims to be an Escrow service. But when it comes to valuable items, it's often better to go with a real service - which will independently verify the authenticity - of both the item and the payment for the item, before completing the change.
A real escrow service would receive the item, safeguarding and authenticating it. It would also receive the payment. Once the escrow terms are met, the buy receives the item and the seller the payment, minus the escrow fee.
I remember stuff like that. I even remember from some Antique Roadshow where it turned out something was a fake - but it was such a fake that it was actually MORE valuable than the real ones!
It's sort of the situation with bills/coins and misprints. Misprints get out in the wild so rarely that they're considered more valuable than the base unit.
Well, of course my priorities were different - I lived where I could get free housing, which, as the #1 normal expense, justifies a car. I've added all the expenses up - and I try to get a lot of teens to put off the car for a little bit; especially the 'getting a loan for an overpriced used car from a dealer' version.
BTW, I think car ownership is getting pushed to #3 - healthcare has passed it by.
I'd love to do without a car - but I'm in Alaska, and it's a 20 mile commute to work.
Couple thousand? 'If you're lucky'? More like 'If your parents are bad drivers, you drive a newer vehicle, in a bad area, and don't shop around'.
Also, you assume on going to a 'college town'. Many people, even today, don't go to college. While I went to college, I didn't live/work within easy biking distance, especially in winter. The bus actually cost more than the gas to go places, and I worked.
It's a luxury more than an 'extravagence'. It's even one that most kids from middle class backgrounds can afford.
It might be 'by law', but well, I tend to view obeying the law as optional - as long as you're willing to pay the consequences. Basically, the trade-off is worth it. Using handicapped spots to keep an eye on Gord for a store run might not be 'legal', but as long as there's still handicapped spots open, I'd see most people giving them a bye for the most part, and it might be worth the chance of a $250 fine. UPS/Fedex drivers risk parking fines all the time - the fines are, on average, less than the extra hours they'd have to pay people, much less when you add the extra vehicles that would be needed in.
If nothing else - them using excess handicapped spots keeps normal spots open for me. Basically, the laws need tweaking. Perhaps fewer handicapped spots, more 10-15 min loading zones. Maybe even dual-purpose spots, though that would be abusable.
Lawsuit-happy lawyers is no more a problem with the ADA than the RIAA is a problem with the Internet. As long as there are laws, there will be people who will try to sue who have no good case. The problem is with the US legal system which doesn't do enough to protect against frivolous lawsuits.
Who's saying that I think that #3 shouldn't be on a wider basis? Heck, all of them, adjusted as appropriate? Unless an individual has actually suffered serious harm, I think that businesses need to be given a chance to correct something first.
I figure that even if he got a violation ticket, he probably simply paid the fine as a 'business expense'. There are a lot of companies that pay any parking violation tickets for their employees - it's cheaper than them spending the time to find legal parking spots.
On Steve Jobs - consider that even if you got a $250 ticket every day, that's $91k/year in parking tickets. For somebody making >$10M/year, that's less than 1% of their income. At that income level, you're making like $5k/hour. So if you save more than 3 minutes for each $250 ticket, it's worth it.
Of course, it takes a bit of a dick of a cop to give the UPS/Fedex truck a parking ticket for parking right in front of a store, office building, or apartment complex, but it happens occasionally. I have more sympathy for those drivers than I do for Jobs.
WRT empty handicapped parking... Having empty handicapped parking spots is appropriate and correct. The number of spots is based on maximum capacity of the lot, have you seen otherwise 100% full lots with more than one or two empty handicapped spots? Is it really that inconvenient to walk a few more feet past an empty specialty spot if you're healthy?
Yes, actually I have. Lot 100% full except for the handicapped spots, 100% empty.
My issues with the ADA are ones of efficiency, flexibility, abuse, and lawsuits, not the idea in general. The number of parking spots marked handicapped should be more flexible. There should be valet options. Some effort should be paid to keeping it all financially reasonable, doctors should be a touch more discriminating For example, in the P&T episode, rather than paying off the 'disabled' lawyer, the correct course should be 1. The disabled party has to inform the business of the problem - the business looks to get a fix. No increasing penalties for not paying him off in a day - that should have gotten that lawyer disbarred. 2. If no fix is proposed after a reasonable time - and I'm thinking a month, minimum, or the proposal isn't acceptable, then it can progress to lawsuit stage. 3. In the lawsuit stage, the max the client can get is legal fees - and if he's a lawyer doing his own case, his hours aren't billable. The court's primary focus is determining whether the problem can be fixed reasonably, and forcing the business to do the reasonable fix. For example, if it's a M&P business in the 2nd floor of a 100 year old building, and the fix would be $1M when the business barely clears $100k, it's not reasonable to fix. The handicapped person then bears their side of the legal costs because, well, they should have realized that no, installing an elevator isn't that cheap.
But asking a M&P hardware store, much less a home depot type store, to put in a ramp, isn't that unreasonable.
If Gord is prone to seizures, yet doesn't have enough attendants so that he can still be covered while one runs into the store, I can easily believe that the attendant parking in a handicapped spot is for Gord - enabling the attendant to at least be quicker, perhaps even keep Gord in sight while in the store so he knows if there is a problem.
The signs would be expensive, but if the real estate is high value it is a justifiable expense.
If the real estate is valuable enough, why not have ZERO handicapped spots, plus a valet service that is free to handicapped placard holders?
Of course, now I'm thinking of the Japanese car parking machine - which uses a robot to slide your car into a multi-story parking lot, almost like a vending machine.
You really think your body absorbs everything you put into it? What are you shitting out, then?
Doesn't follow from his statement. Unless you're eating indigestible cardboard, your body is very good at extracting useful materials, and as far as it's concerned, calories, whether they be carbs, fats, or proteins, are useful.
There IS a top end of what the 'average' digestive tract can handle, so it is possible to overwhelm it, but that's generally tough - you're pushing vomiting, painful feelings of 'full', etc...
You are right about not making your body think your starving is a good thing, but I'm finding eating balanced meals while keeping a food log to keep my calories under control is working well. I'm naturally tending towards meals that are the most 'filling' to me without excess calories. I'm halfway to my initial goal, the top end of 'normal' for my height. If my waist isn't good then, I'll keep going, but I lose pounds a lot faster than inches, so it's easier to track.
His further explanation is that, due to neck injury, his head is permanently tilted down. From the description, open your mouth a bit, then tilt your head until your chin hits your chest. Try to walk while keeping your head in that position.
In the USA, it's fairly normal for teens to get a permit at 15, license at 16. As such, it's fairly traditional for parents to provide a kid's first car. Mine cost $250, near 20 years ago. Equivalent today is more like $1k, which gets you a basic, fairly reliable older car.
Oddly enough, many 'poor' types actually have more vehicles due to buying so cheap that they're no longer reliable, thus needing a 'spare'.
It's a luxury, yes. But one that many can afford with a part time job to pay for the insurance and gas.
Down around Sebring, FL, you have 10 rows of handicapped parking spots in front of Walmart, and it's not enough.
When they first put in the Gym at the military base I was stationed at, they put a dozen spots in - but off to the side. Please note that this is NOT a base where rehab takes place - I had been sufficiently injured to be disabled, I would have been moved to another base, such as Walter Reed(when it was still open). Even after they turned half of them into VIP spots(god forbid high ranking officers don't get a close spot so they don't have to walk too far before their workout), I never saw any cars parked there. Annoyance factor: The parking lot was frequently 100% full, except for those spots.
I'm at a new base now, and the handicapped spots (there are 3) ARE used, mostly by retirees. Not a problem - these are people working out what they can to keep what they can. Yes, the mere walk from/to the car ends up being a major workout, but that's life.
Note that I said 'significant producer', nothing about reserves. Second, we wouldn't need to invade Iraq at all for the oil - Saddam was perfectly willing to exploit the supplies, it would have been far cheaper and easier to leave him in power and encourage him to sell oil. After all, oil is a global market, and even if he doesn't sell to the USA, his selling to the rest of the world would displace oil that would have gone there to the USA. Or even direct - see Chinese honey.
If we needed to invade 'for the oil', we could have done it far differently - simply securing the southern portion of Iraq where the oil fields actually are, which were mostly Shiite areas, leaving the Sunnis(Saddam's faction) and Kurds(mostly north) out to dry.
Apparently my earlier response was eaten by the system.
Anyways - Geothermal is going to be ramped up, but right now it's.4% of power generation. So even an OOM larger(which would be huge) would still place it as a minor player. I've seen some 'geothermal power' proposals that weren't for electrical generation - it was for things like climate control in buildings(geothermal heat pumps, essentially). I don't count those for electrical production, but it's certainly 'enhanced geothermal'.
I agree on reprocessing - as for terrorists, NK, Pakistan, or Libya is probably a better source than Russia.
In California, there was, and perhaps still is, a company that drug tests it's employees for nicotine - and it's a firing offense. From my memory, it's been judged legal.
For what you're proposing, the solution is simple - simply stick you in the worst diet category. You have to provide documentation to get the bonus, not documentation to get a pay cut.
I disagree. Certainly there are chemicals you don't want in foods, there are trace chemicals that can lead to bad reactions.
HOWEVER, from studies way back when, humans can live perfectly healthy on 100% artificial food, if it's carefully balanced. It's not tasty, but it's not harmful. In some cases, organic is actually more dangerous than conventional. In some cases, it has fewer nutrients. In any case, it's actually easier to eat organic today, at least you have the option - I don't ever remember seeing 'organic' as a teen, I can get all sorts of organic stuff today. It's a new issue.
Concentrating on eating organic before you fix your diet plan is like pulling your back seat out of your car to save gas mileage by reducing weight before learning to not ride the brake all the time when driving. Well, it's not that bad - because eating organic will tend to fix the overconsumption of sugar problem; heck, with the typical prices it'll fix the overconsumption problem period. But it's not affordable by everyone. There are options that are affordable, but 'organic' isn't it.
Fix the diet, and you can bring somebody down from 185 to 155, with all the attendant lifespan/quality of life gains. Going all organic might get you 153, and gains are within the margin of error.
I'm losing weight by keeping a food log to restrict my calories - I'm allowed 1200 a day, plus exercise. If I burn 500 cals, my limit increases to 1700.
I find that if I allow simple sugars in any major amounts, that I'm too hungry to stick to it. Heck, keeping proper nutrition at 1200 is tough at times, and I'm still hungry - but if I work out it acts as a hunger suppressant or something, and I'm satisfied with ~1500 calories, and am losing weight even faster. I'm also avoiding caffeine, so diet drinks are also mostly out.
As a result, I've eliminated things like soda and fruit juice, and even bread, rice, and noodles are 'restricted'. I eat LOTS of chicken for the protein. I generally have 1 orange and 1 apple a day as snacks.
Depends on how you count 'processed'. If you watch the whole youtube video, one of the things he hits on being bad is fruit juice. Why? The processing removes the pulp - the fiber and complex carbs. It takes something like 5 apples to make a glass of juice. People will drink a glass of apple juice like it's nothing, while they'd be feeling rather full if they ate 5 apples.
I've tried it with oranges as well - a single orange leaves me satisfied. The volume of OJ you get from an orange, or the slightly higher volume with the same calories as an intact orange is very unsatisfying.
Look at the obesity epidemic and many of the diets that work the best - Atkins, Japanese, Caveman, heck, even Greek. The old traditional diets were extremely lean in simple sugars. Avoid those and you'll become full faster, stay full longer, and with minimal additional exercise you'll lose weight.
I have to echo this, though I started as definitly obese - 188 for 5'7". My goal, right now, is 155, the top end of 'healthy' for my height. I can readjust once I actually get down there.
How am I doing it? My breakfast is with a healthy cereal(Special K 'red berry', that has the dried strawberries in it), lunch is a 'cafe steamer' - ~300 calories, and dinner is home cooked(large menu). I'm avoiding processed sugars, and even avoiding fruit juices in favor of eating the fruit. I try to exercise a minimum of 500 cals a day.
Sometimes I have a protein shake, but that's because between the calorie restrictions and the workouts, I have trouble getting enough protein.
It's been a month and a half, and I'm down 16 pounds. That includes christmas break when I stopped logging, and couldn't exercise(gym was closed, and running outside here is a masochist's game) and slapped a pound back on. Ah well - pick up and keep going. Just had a new low today.
Personally, I find that 40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat is doing wonders for me shedding weight.
I'm not particularly avoiding any foods, but my 'allowance' of fast sugars is so low that I'm avoiding such 'empty calories'. I don't drink soda, or even fruit juice - I eat the fruit instead, so I get the fiber to feel full. Morning - Bowl of cereal and skim milk, and an orange. Lunch - ~300 cal 'steamer', it's cold out, I want a hot meal, and only have a microwave available at work. Doesn't hurt that they're like $2.40 each, so it's cheaper than fast food. Dinner - all sorts of stuff, just portion control. Exercise - AT LEAST 500cals of workout/day.
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Paypal claims to be an Escrow service. But when it comes to valuable items, it's often better to go with a real service - which will independently verify the authenticity - of both the item and the payment for the item, before completing the change.
A real escrow service would receive the item, safeguarding and authenticating it. It would also receive the payment. Once the escrow terms are met, the buy receives the item and the seller the payment, minus the escrow fee.
I remember stuff like that. I even remember from some Antique Roadshow where it turned out something was a fake - but it was such a fake that it was actually MORE valuable than the real ones!
It's sort of the situation with bills/coins and misprints. Misprints get out in the wild so rarely that they're considered more valuable than the base unit.
The problem is that while the car is quite intact, the driver's unconcious due to his head hitting the steering wheel, or worse.
So they'll be able to drive away as soon as a new driver gets there.
Well, of course my priorities were different - I lived where I could get free housing, which, as the #1 normal expense, justifies a car. I've added all the expenses up - and I try to get a lot of teens to put off the car for a little bit; especially the 'getting a loan for an overpriced used car from a dealer' version.
BTW, I think car ownership is getting pushed to #3 - healthcare has passed it by.
I'd love to do without a car - but I'm in Alaska, and it's a 20 mile commute to work.
Couple thousand? 'If you're lucky'? More like 'If your parents are bad drivers, you drive a newer vehicle, in a bad area, and don't shop around'.
Also, you assume on going to a 'college town'. Many people, even today, don't go to college. While I went to college, I didn't live/work within easy biking distance, especially in winter. The bus actually cost more than the gas to go places, and I worked.
It's a luxury more than an 'extravagence'. It's even one that most kids from middle class backgrounds can afford.
It might be 'by law', but well, I tend to view obeying the law as optional - as long as you're willing to pay the consequences. Basically, the trade-off is worth it. Using handicapped spots to keep an eye on Gord for a store run might not be 'legal', but as long as there's still handicapped spots open, I'd see most people giving them a bye for the most part, and it might be worth the chance of a $250 fine. UPS/Fedex drivers risk parking fines all the time - the fines are, on average, less than the extra hours they'd have to pay people, much less when you add the extra vehicles that would be needed in.
If nothing else - them using excess handicapped spots keeps normal spots open for me. Basically, the laws need tweaking. Perhaps fewer handicapped spots, more 10-15 min loading zones. Maybe even dual-purpose spots, though that would be abusable.
Lawsuit-happy lawyers is no more a problem with the ADA than the RIAA is a problem with the Internet. As long as there are laws, there will be people who will try to sue who have no good case. The problem is with the US legal system which doesn't do enough to protect against frivolous lawsuits.
Who's saying that I think that #3 shouldn't be on a wider basis? Heck, all of them, adjusted as appropriate? Unless an individual has actually suffered serious harm, I think that businesses need to be given a chance to correct something first.
In short, I agree.
I figure that even if he got a violation ticket, he probably simply paid the fine as a 'business expense'. There are a lot of companies that pay any parking violation tickets for their employees - it's cheaper than them spending the time to find legal parking spots.
On Steve Jobs - consider that even if you got a $250 ticket every day, that's $91k/year in parking tickets. For somebody making >$10M/year, that's less than 1% of their income. At that income level, you're making like $5k/hour. So if you save more than 3 minutes for each $250 ticket, it's worth it.
Of course, it takes a bit of a dick of a cop to give the UPS/Fedex truck a parking ticket for parking right in front of a store, office building, or apartment complex, but it happens occasionally. I have more sympathy for those drivers than I do for Jobs.
WRT empty handicapped parking... Having empty handicapped parking spots is appropriate and correct. The number of spots is based on maximum capacity of the lot, have you seen otherwise 100% full lots with more than one or two empty handicapped spots? Is it really that inconvenient to walk a few more feet past an empty specialty spot if you're healthy?
Yes, actually I have. Lot 100% full except for the handicapped spots, 100% empty.
My issues with the ADA are ones of efficiency, flexibility, abuse, and lawsuits, not the idea in general. The number of parking spots marked handicapped should be more flexible. There should be valet options. Some effort should be paid to keeping it all financially reasonable, doctors should be a touch more discriminating For example, in the P&T episode, rather than paying off the 'disabled' lawyer, the correct course should be
1. The disabled party has to inform the business of the problem - the business looks to get a fix. No increasing penalties for not paying him off in a day - that should have gotten that lawyer disbarred.
2. If no fix is proposed after a reasonable time - and I'm thinking a month, minimum, or the proposal isn't acceptable, then it can progress to lawsuit stage.
3. In the lawsuit stage, the max the client can get is legal fees - and if he's a lawyer doing his own case, his hours aren't billable. The court's primary focus is determining whether the problem can be fixed reasonably, and forcing the business to do the reasonable fix. For example, if it's a M&P business in the 2nd floor of a 100 year old building, and the fix would be $1M when the business barely clears $100k, it's not reasonable to fix. The handicapped person then bears their side of the legal costs because, well, they should have realized that no, installing an elevator isn't that cheap.
But asking a M&P hardware store, much less a home depot type store, to put in a ramp, isn't that unreasonable.
If Gord is prone to seizures, yet doesn't have enough attendants so that he can still be covered while one runs into the store, I can easily believe that the attendant parking in a handicapped spot is for Gord - enabling the attendant to at least be quicker, perhaps even keep Gord in sight while in the store so he knows if there is a problem.
The signs would be expensive, but if the real estate is high value it is a justifiable expense.
If the real estate is valuable enough, why not have ZERO handicapped spots, plus a valet service that is free to handicapped placard holders?
Of course, now I'm thinking of the Japanese car parking machine - which uses a robot to slide your car into a multi-story parking lot, almost like a vending machine.
You really think your body absorbs everything you put into it? What are you shitting out, then?
Doesn't follow from his statement. Unless you're eating indigestible cardboard, your body is very good at extracting useful materials, and as far as it's concerned, calories, whether they be carbs, fats, or proteins, are useful.
There IS a top end of what the 'average' digestive tract can handle, so it is possible to overwhelm it, but that's generally tough - you're pushing vomiting, painful feelings of 'full', etc...
You are right about not making your body think your starving is a good thing, but I'm finding eating balanced meals while keeping a food log to keep my calories under control is working well. I'm naturally tending towards meals that are the most 'filling' to me without excess calories. I'm halfway to my initial goal, the top end of 'normal' for my height. If my waist isn't good then, I'll keep going, but I lose pounds a lot faster than inches, so it's easier to track.
I'm thinking 'take two spots', perhaps at an angle such that nobody wants to park next to him.
I'd just stencil, very obviously, 'HANDICAPPED ACCESS RAMP: 6' CLEARANCE REQUIRED' on the side of the van where the ramp is.
His further explanation is that, due to neck injury, his head is permanently tilted down. From the description, open your mouth a bit, then tilt your head until your chin hits your chest. Try to walk while keeping your head in that position.
Sounds like a weird injury, but plausible.
In the USA, it's fairly normal for teens to get a permit at 15, license at 16. As such, it's fairly traditional for parents to provide a kid's first car. Mine cost $250, near 20 years ago. Equivalent today is more like $1k, which gets you a basic, fairly reliable older car.
Oddly enough, many 'poor' types actually have more vehicles due to buying so cheap that they're no longer reliable, thus needing a 'spare'.
It's a luxury, yes. But one that many can afford with a part time job to pay for the insurance and gas.
I'll actually agree with you - but with caveats.
Down around Sebring, FL, you have 10 rows of handicapped parking spots in front of Walmart, and it's not enough.
When they first put in the Gym at the military base I was stationed at, they put a dozen spots in - but off to the side. Please note that this is NOT a base where rehab takes place - I had been sufficiently injured to be disabled, I would have been moved to another base, such as Walter Reed(when it was still open). Even after they turned half of them into VIP spots(god forbid high ranking officers don't get a close spot so they don't have to walk too far before their workout), I never saw any cars parked there. Annoyance factor: The parking lot was frequently 100% full, except for those spots.
I'm at a new base now, and the handicapped spots (there are 3) ARE used, mostly by retirees. Not a problem - these are people working out what they can to keep what they can. Yes, the mere walk from/to the car ends up being a major workout, but that's life.
Note that I said 'significant producer', nothing about reserves. Second, we wouldn't need to invade Iraq at all for the oil - Saddam was perfectly willing to exploit the supplies, it would have been far cheaper and easier to leave him in power and encourage him to sell oil. After all, oil is a global market, and even if he doesn't sell to the USA, his selling to the rest of the world would displace oil that would have gone there to the USA. Or even direct - see Chinese honey.
If we needed to invade 'for the oil', we could have done it far differently - simply securing the southern portion of Iraq where the oil fields actually are, which were mostly Shiite areas, leaving the Sunnis(Saddam's faction) and Kurds(mostly north) out to dry.
Apparently my earlier response was eaten by the system.
Anyways - Geothermal is going to be ramped up, but right now it's .4% of power generation. So even an OOM larger(which would be huge) would still place it as a minor player. I've seen some 'geothermal power' proposals that weren't for electrical generation - it was for things like climate control in buildings(geothermal heat pumps, essentially). I don't count those for electrical production, but it's certainly 'enhanced geothermal'.
I agree on reprocessing - as for terrorists, NK, Pakistan, or Libya is probably a better source than Russia.
In California, there was, and perhaps still is, a company that drug tests it's employees for nicotine - and it's a firing offense. From my memory, it's been judged legal.
For what you're proposing, the solution is simple - simply stick you in the worst diet category. You have to provide documentation to get the bonus, not documentation to get a pay cut.
Your store bought eggs will last a LOT longer in the fridge than 2 weeks. The date stamped is for utter paranoia.
I still remember Europe - where they didn't bother to refridgerate the eggs at all.
I disagree. Certainly there are chemicals you don't want in foods, there are trace chemicals that can lead to bad reactions.
HOWEVER, from studies way back when, humans can live perfectly healthy on 100% artificial food, if it's carefully balanced. It's not tasty, but it's not harmful. In some cases, organic is actually more dangerous than conventional. In some cases, it has fewer nutrients. In any case, it's actually easier to eat organic today, at least you have the option - I don't ever remember seeing 'organic' as a teen, I can get all sorts of organic stuff today. It's a new issue.
Concentrating on eating organic before you fix your diet plan is like pulling your back seat out of your car to save gas mileage by reducing weight before learning to not ride the brake all the time when driving. Well, it's not that bad - because eating organic will tend to fix the overconsumption of sugar problem; heck, with the typical prices it'll fix the overconsumption problem period. But it's not affordable by everyone. There are options that are affordable, but 'organic' isn't it.
Fix the diet, and you can bring somebody down from 185 to 155, with all the attendant lifespan/quality of life gains. Going all organic might get you 153, and gains are within the margin of error.
I'm losing weight by keeping a food log to restrict my calories - I'm allowed 1200 a day, plus exercise. If I burn 500 cals, my limit increases to 1700.
I find that if I allow simple sugars in any major amounts, that I'm too hungry to stick to it. Heck, keeping proper nutrition at 1200 is tough at times, and I'm still hungry - but if I work out it acts as a hunger suppressant or something, and I'm satisfied with ~1500 calories, and am losing weight even faster. I'm also avoiding caffeine, so diet drinks are also mostly out.
As a result, I've eliminated things like soda and fruit juice, and even bread, rice, and noodles are 'restricted'. I eat LOTS of chicken for the protein. I generally have 1 orange and 1 apple a day as snacks.
Depends on how you count 'processed'. If you watch the whole youtube video, one of the things he hits on being bad is fruit juice. Why? The processing removes the pulp - the fiber and complex carbs. It takes something like 5 apples to make a glass of juice. People will drink a glass of apple juice like it's nothing, while they'd be feeling rather full if they ate 5 apples.
I've tried it with oranges as well - a single orange leaves me satisfied. The volume of OJ you get from an orange, or the slightly higher volume with the same calories as an intact orange is very unsatisfying.
Look at the obesity epidemic and many of the diets that work the best - Atkins, Japanese, Caveman, heck, even Greek. The old traditional diets were extremely lean in simple sugars. Avoid those and you'll become full faster, stay full longer, and with minimal additional exercise you'll lose weight.
I have to echo this, though I started as definitly obese - 188 for 5'7". My goal, right now, is 155, the top end of 'healthy' for my height. I can readjust once I actually get down there.
How am I doing it? My breakfast is with a healthy cereal(Special K 'red berry', that has the dried strawberries in it), lunch is a 'cafe steamer' - ~300 calories, and dinner is home cooked(large menu). I'm avoiding processed sugars, and even avoiding fruit juices in favor of eating the fruit. I try to exercise a minimum of 500 cals a day.
Sometimes I have a protein shake, but that's because between the calorie restrictions and the workouts, I have trouble getting enough protein.
It's been a month and a half, and I'm down 16 pounds. That includes christmas break when I stopped logging, and couldn't exercise(gym was closed, and running outside here is a masochist's game) and slapped a pound back on. Ah well - pick up and keep going. Just had a new low today.
Personally, I find that 40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat is doing wonders for me shedding weight.
I'm not particularly avoiding any foods, but my 'allowance' of fast sugars is so low that I'm avoiding such 'empty calories'. I don't drink soda, or even fruit juice - I eat the fruit instead, so I get the fiber to feel full.
Morning - Bowl of cereal and skim milk, and an orange.
Lunch - ~300 cal 'steamer', it's cold out, I want a hot meal, and only have a microwave available at work. Doesn't hurt that they're like $2.40 each, so it's cheaper than fast food.
Dinner - all sorts of stuff, just portion control.
Exercise - AT LEAST 500cals of workout/day.