VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 is released

I heard through Twitter a while ago that VMWare Fusion is a lot better then Parallels at virtualization.  I don't own a Mac or use a Mac at work so I told my boss who does.  He got five copies to try. I overheard him talking with our systems administrator one day and he said "Ralph was right" I even listened to what he said I was right about and it was that Fusion was better.

I heard that 2.0 beta 1 was released the other day.  I went to go check it out and I'll tell you what, Fusion makes me want a Mac just so I can load Windows onto it.

It now supports Multiple desktops and DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 3D.  That means it can play a lot of the newer games in a virtualized environment.

Watch this video and be amazed:

My first set back

So I weighed myself this morning and I was 1.5lbs heavier then yesterdays weight.  In analyzing yesterdays meals and exercises I don't think I did anything majorly wrong.

I started, just yesterday, to track my food intake with fitday.com and if we look at the macronutrient breakdown the only thing I am high on is my carb intake it should break down idealy to 20% Fat, 40% Carbs and 40% Protien.  40% protien at my weight is pretty high so I'll settle with 30%.  Also I haven't started any major weight lifting program to be in need of that much protien.

Also I'd like to point out that my calorie intake yesterday was 2345, and after figuring out my BMR for my weight and activity level for yesterday I needed 3035 calories just to maintain my weight. I still managed a ~700 calorie deficit yesterday. (2345 is still a rough guess, but I'd like to point out it is very close.  All nutrition is gained from labels as well as fit day's database of nutrients for raw ingredients like onions, tomatoes etc.)

So how did I gain a pound and a half in one day?  There are a lot of factors.  I had a full plate of wheat pasta with vegatables last night so in my opinion I am still retaining that meal.  More then likely I am retaining water from that meal.  Did I gain back 1.5lbs of fat?  No! Keep in mind the scale tracks total weight which includes fat and lean mass.  And lean  mass is not just defined as muscle either.  You need to account for access water, food still in your system as well as the muscle and bone weight you are carrying around.

Either way I am not going to let this minor set back discourage me.  This is the normal fluctuation of weight.  One of the sole reasons not to check your weight daily.  I did get down to a yearly low at 233.8 yesterday so that was very encouraging.

A Quick update on my diet

Wow, what a busy weekend, I didn't get a chance to get online once.  I haven't had a chance to write about the cardio and weight exercises and I appologies.  I did want to come on and announce that I have reached 10 lbs of weight loss.  I am down to 234lbs.  I feel great and I am definitely noticing where I am losing it.  Still haven't reached my first weight goal of 220lbs but now I am only 14lbs away.

I had a rough weekend trying to stay on track with natural meals but I think I did very well considering.

Two meals in particular, lunch Saturday (ramen) and lunch Sunday (greasy pizza).  I managed to eat in moderation for those meals and I didn't over do it.  I came away not feeling stuffed and engourged like I usually would have.

I spent alot of time this weekend doing manual labor so I didn't get a chance to do any formal exercises but I felt I got enough exercise from the work I did.  I did make plans with Hope to lift some weights tonight.  Even though she doesn't think she should lift weights, building a little muscle for her will be a huge benefit for her in trying to lose weight.  Because the more muscle you have the more calories your body will burn at rest.

More on my diet

I didn't want to overload yesterday's post with all the details of my diet since it's probably a lot to take in.  Once you understand it though it all makes sense.

I originally got interested in this diet, which is basically a bodybuilders diet, but it works great when wanting to cut fat.  Last year at this time on digg there was a post about John Stone who took monthly pictures of his transformation for a year.  That was very inspiring and I went to his site and started learning.  His forum has thousands of members all working on the same goal and are very helpful and knowledgeable. 

One of the links he advocates on his site is FatLossTips.com this is basically the blueprint for the diet I am following (among a few well written forum threads that are also fat loss guides).

Key points:

1. Increase to 5-6 small meal evenly throughout the day: this increases your metabolism thus making your body more efficient in burning through your calories.
2. Eat fewer calories: this is a given but you really need to figure out what your body needs to maintain your weight,  when I figured it out I was about 2700 calories a day to maintain my weight, now if I pull back the number of calories by 500 a day I should be able to lose a pound a week from diet.
3. Increase your protein intake: this helps rebuild muscle after working out and it jump starts your metabolism.  Foods high in protein: chicken, turkey, fish, eggs (esp. the egg white). I also take a protein shake after a workout, this will aid in muscle healing.
   
4. Eat more fat: WHAT?! That doesn't mean eat any kind of fat you have to know to eat the right fats.  Foods like Fish, Avocados, flaxseed, peanuts are all good fats with omega-3's.  Looking at the nutrition label look for foods that have low to none Saturated fats if the food has fat listed (by all means stay away from Trans Fats!) These fatty acids not only help increase testosterone production, they aid in the prevention of muscle breakdown, help to increase your HDL level (good cholesterol) and assist in hormone production.
5. Take a Supplement: I have a Men's daily vitamin that I take in the morning.  This just adds to the good nutrition I am already taking.
   
6. Switch to water: Cut out all the soda's and juices that are loaded with sugar and switch to water.  This is the biggest change you will see in the beginning when you switch to water your body will lose a ton of the "water" weight it has stored from the sugary sodas and juices you've been drinking.

This diet is not all that hard.  Just eat naturally and avoid the highly processed foods and stick to vegetables, chicken and lean meat and you'll do fine.

Tomorrow, I'll discuss Weights and Cardio workouts.

Time for a lifestyle change

So I've been watching my weight on the scale for a while now and it eventually topped out at 244lbs.  HOLY SHIT!!!  That's the biggest I've been in my life.  That was last Monday (3/24) at the doctors office.  I was going to the doctor for some issues and the issue of my weight came up and that I would benefit from losing some weight.

Today I weighed in at 238.4.  In a week and a half I've lost 5.6 lbs by switching to a healthier more natural diet.

Here's what I am doing.  I am not on some fad diet like south beach or atkins.  In my personal opinion I think those diets are unhealthy.  I am looking to try to eat as naturally as possible.  So that means cutting processed foods out of my diet as much as possible.  I've also switched to drinking water.

The great thing is I have the support of my wife and we aren't telling the kids that what they are now eating is healthy for them.  So far they haven't noticed and during one dinner (wheat crust pizza with low fat cheese, red pepper, red onions and chicken) they said it was really good. 

Last year I was doing this same diet but way more extreme (I was counting every calorie and measuring myself every week, etc.) and I got down to 226.  But I eventually got frustrated. My wife was eating South Beach and we weren't making the kids eat what we were eating so that meant 3 different meals a meal we were cooking.  It came down to me only able to do my diet at work and then coming home and eating crappy.  Finally I caved and just went back to eating whatever.

I think I'll create a new category called 'fitness' and use this blog to  talk about my progress and my plan.  Hopefully being open about what I am doing will be a good kick in the butt to show progress to someone.

Tradition: Superbowl Sushi

SuperBowl, for me, is one of the biggest nights of the year for sushi. For the past 10 years or so I usually buy a tray of sushi for SuperBowl and bring it to whoever is hosting.  I usually educate people about sushi and get people who are normally afraid of sushi to try it when it's free for them.

This year though I made my own sushi.  I made five different types of rolls.  A Crab Salad roll (sometimes called classic California Roll), California Roll, a Italian Roll (Pesto, Spinach, Portabello mushrooms and Salmon [raw]), Philadelphia Roll and my famous SuperBowl Roll (Chicken Wing meat and Blue Cheese).

In total, I made 21 rolls in two and a half hours, that's 168 pieces.  Needless to say it turned out awesome.



Notice how I made the Wasabi to look like a football it even had the rice laces. I even bought a wooden tray that had a football field painted on the bottom.

I really had fun with this, even though it was a lot of work. The reaction I got though was well worth the trouble.

Hope you enjoy!

Observations of MacWorld Blogging

Today was the keynote address at MacWorld 2008.  I observed quite a few things this year that didn't happen in years past.

For instance this year seemed like everyone was live blogging the event. From Fake Steve to Valleywag to the normal web information outlets for MacWorld Keynotes: Engadget, MacRumors and Gizmodo.

But it seemed the first timers didn't have much luck with keeping their servers up.  Fake Steve was using a third party web app to stream the live blogging directly to his blog.  Unfortunately the app crashed almost as soon as the keynote started.

Fake Steve then went to the back up plan of using Twitter. Valleywag had also planned on live blogging via Twitter.  MacRumorsLive had planned on also posting it's updates to twitter as well as on their website and IRC channel.

Ok so with these big names live blogging on Twitter as well as countless others at the keynote and with millions of people trying to refresh to get the latest from twitter on what was happening....well let's just say Twitter buckled.  It went down hard for at least an hour. Even now they are rate limiting the API calls to less then the normal 70 an hour to try to take the pressure off.

With all the live blogging, I found a few who tried to stream video from the Keynote. We watched this stream until someone asked the guy to lower his Camera/phone.  The picture was crappy and the sound quality wasn't the greatest but at least you could sort of make out what was going on and related back to the MacRumorsLive notes.  We observed at the peak the stream had over 9000 concurrent viewers.  The most surprising thing heard in that stream?  A baby crying in the audience, seriously who brings a baby to an event like this?

I heard iJustine tried to Stream as well.  Seems like she suffered the same fate as above.

But that brings me to my next point live video streaming seemed to be big during CES but it was really noticable today.  I caught Scoble recording most of this evening with his Nokia N95.  Here he is with Leo Laporte at MacWorld.  Here Scoble interviews Qik founder when a Video streaming orgy breaks out by four different people one being iJustine.


So who had the best info this year. Engadget had the best write ups but their server were starting to buckle from people constantly reloading.  Their page took forever to come back up.  MacRumorsLive had an awesome AJAX solution that didn't require you to do anything photos and updates "magically" appeared on your screen when updates occured.  In my opinion MacRumorsLive won the bragging rights.

It's fun to see how the new technology made today a much more interesting event to watch from a far.  It was also fun to see how the old technology players struggled as they are the now go to outlets for this event.

Either way with everyone sharing information it makes it easy for everyone to experience the keynote as closely as they do.  Thanks to you all for your hard work.