Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

This morning I was 13st 7 (189 lbs) up from 183 when I checked my body fat before Christmas. I’ve really noticed it in my waist mostly, and the tape measure shows that I’ve gained an extra inch there back up to 37″!

This puts my body fat percentage back up to 18%. Bugger!

The Zone Diet shall have to come to my rescue once more. What does help is that the wife and I have decided to go tea total for a couple of months, at least till her birthday, and see how we feel after that. I can’t say that isn’t going to be hard, cos it is but it needs to be done and will be interesting to see the effects it has on us.

What doesn’t help is that I’m feeling pretty beat up at the moment and can’t workout as normal. I hurt my elbow back when I went on my brothers stag do and it’s never properly healed. In fact it’s been getting worse and now it hurts not only when I’m lifting weights, but doing mundane stuff round the house: like lifting a drink, or pickup up a book, or brushing my teeth.

As a result I’ve been doing other stuff at Crossfit, but Monday’s leg and sit up intensive workout beat me up big style and I have a sore knee and sore stomach muscles as a result, and that was 3 days ago.

I’ve been wanting to see about going down to the new Awsome Walls climbing wall that’s upped up down the road from me, which is apparently one of the highest climbing walls in England. But I can’t in my current injured state. I’m also planning to take up Krav Maga this year too, but that is similarly going to have to wait.

Welcome to 2008, ho hum!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Symptoms and how they effect us all to a greater or lesser extent. If you didn’t listen to the short radio shows I encourage you to do so before they are removed, as I guarantee you’ll be able to see yourself in many of the OCD stories told.

You see I believe that being Obsessive Compulsive is a natural trait of being human, it’s only when it gets to be a problem in your daily life that you could call it a “Disorder”. We all have our little idiosyncrasies, only normally these are kept quiet, locked up inside us, only let out in our mind or when no others are about. However there is one place I’ve witnessed other peoples Obsessive Compulsive Disorders: at the Crossfit Gym.

You see there’s something special about Crossfit and the Crossfitters that partake: egos are checked at the door. I’ve never before met such a bunch of honest accepting souls who are free and liberated enough to sweat, bleed, grunt, belch, fart (rarely), lay exhausted on the floor and generally bear their souls to those around them. It’s in these situations where you occasionally get to witness what I shall now call Obsessive Crossfit Disorder!

Please bare in mind, I write this with the greatest possible respect for those I won’t mention by name, for I too have OCD in the Crossfit gym. It’s easy to see how it starts, given Crossfit’s penchant for Olympic weight lifting where failure to succeed in a lift is common. Take me for example, I have many idiosyncrasies that are exclusive to Crossfit, most of which have grown up from either what seems sensible for safety’s sake, or what contrived sequence of events seemed to conspire together to bring about a successful lift.

So how many of these top 10 OCD Symptoms do you see in yourself, post your answers in the comments:

1. Chalking your hands before attempting a lift, whether your hands need more chalk or not.
2. Ensuring that every last crevice of a certain part of your hand is completely covered in chalk or following a set pattern or process of chalking.
3. Having a “nervous wee” before starting a crossfit workout, irrespective of when you last went to the loo.
4. Always using the same pull up station / oly bar / bumper plates etc, even if there are other closer free ones.
5. Ensuring only matching pairs of bumper plates are used and then in the correct order, e.g. descending diameter. Note that where bumpers have writing on only one side, one must ensure the writing is facing out on both, or in on both, no mixing.
6. Making sure oly grips are on tight, with no air gaps between the bumper plates, and the grip handles must be facing in the same direction on both sides.
7. Always taking the same water bottle to the gym.
8. Lining the bar up so it’s right in the middle of a rack or floor tile, before lifting. Additionally, no standing on cracks or seams in the floor.
9. Grunting / coughing / sniffing, in a specific way before a lift or starting a Crossfit workout.
10. Completely unnecessary stamping of the feet before a lift.

I won’t say exactly how many of these OCD symptoms I’m guilty of, but it’s more than half! Feel free to post up any extra’s you think I may have missed.

These are some of my favourite CrossFit inspired designs for t-shirts and mugs and the like. I love these phrases, but it’s trying to explain them to non CrossFitters that makes me laugh the most! Just click on the image you like to see it in more detail, and buy it if you like it. They make great gifts.

I figure that things are inevitably not going to go well for the diet over Christmas, which is fine. The Zone Diet has proved its efficacy and a week off to enjoy myself over the holiday seems like a just reward for a years hard work and effort. So my pre-Christmas measurements are:

Weight = 13 st 1 = 183 lbs – same as last months weight

Waist = 36 inches – 1/2 down of last month.

Here’s where things get at a bit odd as compared with last months percentage fat loss calculation although I’ve lost no weight this month, and only 1/2 an inch off my waist, according to the body fat charts in the Zone books, I’m now 16% body fat, down 2% on last month!

It’s odder than that though, as my waist is on the border of being 35.5″ which would give me a body fat percentage of 15%, which is my target. Conversely if I lose just 1 more pound to 182, I move into a different row on the chart and go up to 17% body fat!

It’s all rather confusing really.

Day after a Marathon – Shocking advert by Flora:

Some dude after his first marathon:

Marathon stopped after deaths, where the reporter says “The heat didn’t kill him, he had a heart condition”. Odd, the first video from Flora said that after a marathon, your heart is the only part of the body that doesn’t hate you. Weird huh?

Like many people, I’ve bought every present online this year. However I’d just like to share with you the worst buying experience I’ve had for a long time at an online retailer. The shop in question was www.cd-wow.com and needless to say, they did not get my custom, in fact I ended up going to play.com and paying a few pounds extra.

Alarming DVD Region warning.

I came to buy a DVD and when clicked Add To Cart, a rather alarming window pops up in glaring red warning me that this is a Region 2 DVD and to check my DVD Player can play it.

Please ensure that your DVD player is able to play discs designed for Region 2 (UK & Europe/Japan)

I have never been to any site that feels the need to do this. Not to mention the terrible feeling that it gave me that perhaps I’d got the wrong one. As someone who knows a thing or three about online retailing and what effects a sites conversion rate, I can tell you that this is not a good thing to do.

Couldn’t find the Checkout
Having taken my life in my hands, I clicked continue and the popup disappeared. Great… now what… Where’s the cart checkout button? Normally it’s at the top right. Nope not there. Bottom right? No, not there either? On the right most column… nope. Wow this site is busy, there’s bright pictures and stuff everywhere drawing my eye. Where IS that checkout. Ah there it is, down the bottom left (what’s it doing there?!?) with a very bland dark blue text that says Click to Checkout under a tiny dull blue cart sign.

Blimey, these guys really don’t have a clue do they? Still off I go to pay.

Checkout Process Timed Out

Hmmmm, that’s odd. I clicked to checkout and got a blank page. I’ll refresh. Oh, I’m back at the home page. I’ll try that again… Oh, my cart’s empty, doh! Back through the whole sales process again, oh there’s that warning pop up again. Yes yes, I know I’m buying a region 2 DVD, I live in region 2, you’re showing currency in region 2 (GBP) and my DVD is region 2 (the hint was it was bought in region 2).

Coupon codes

Finally, I get to the checkout page and there it is, that inviting field that says E-Voucher No: I personally think coupon codes / evouchers are a terrible idea, for the simple reason that people do what I did: leave the site and go looking for one. I know that most online retailers have some Christmas promotion codes, surely it’s a matter of just looking hard enough and I can get some free cash off my purchase.

Actually, I couldn’t find any, which annoyed me for 2 reasons: firstly, I’d just wasted another 20 minutes of my life, and secondly, what kind of out fit are cd-wow that don’t have a Christmas coupon promotion??

Checkout Process Timed Out – Again!

DOH! I’d spent so long looking for a coupon, when I came back to hit Proceed, I got dumped back to the home page and lost my cart again. So now I’m going through the sales process for a 3rd time and already wishing I’d bought the damn DVD from play.com and paid the few pounds extra. Oh there’s that damn region 2 warning again! I tell you, if I see that warning one more time….!

And relax…. *sigh*

Here’s my details, no I don’t want to go on your mailing list.

Credit Card Processing

That’s interesting, there are several warning pointing out that my Credit Card statement will show up as “PayNova.com” not CD-Wow.com . That’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s odd as this day and age, it’s not beyond the whit of man to get the name of the website on the credit card statement, instead of some other parent company or something, but ok, I’ll go with it.

Now what’s this, they want my email adderss again? But I filled that out on the previous screen, why do they want it again? I’ll just ignore that. Hmmm it won’t let me pay without putting my email address in again, something to do with a PayNova.com account. But I don’t want a PayNova account. I don’t know what or who they are. Ok ok, here’s an email address.

What? It still won’t let me pay, don’t these people want my money!?! What now, oh I have to tick to accept the PayNova terms and conditions. But I saw the CD-Wow terms and conditions on the previous page, wtf is going on here, this looks like PayNova is a separate thing to CD-Wow and not just a parent company name at all.

Right, Nerd hat comes out, lets work out what this is all about then, let’s take a look at these PayNova Terms and Conditions, cos I’m not signing up to something with an email address on the same page as entering my credit card details without reading what it’s for, as it sure doesn’t look like a simple CD-Wow website thing. Here’s the link to their T&C’s for your viewing pleasure, but I shall highlight the shocking bits.

http://www.paynova.com/ENG/kundavtal.htm

Right, it appears that PayNova.com is a competitor to PayPal. By signing up for this, I’m signing up for a PayPal type service where I stick cash in my PayNova account, and that pays CD-Wow. Great, except I don’t want to do that, I don’t even want a CD-Wow “send me spam” account, I just want the damn DVD.

But wait, there’s are few conditions here that are a real shocker:

> The Customer shall, without unreasonable delay, report, to its Paynova Account, changes in the Customer’s name, address, e-mail address and any other information.

I have to tell them “withour unreasonable delay… changes in… any other information” about myself. So when I have a child, or buy a car, or change house insurance? I don’t think so.

> Unauthorised transactions – Paynova cannot control that it is the Customer who has initiated a payment, but only that the correct password or answer to a secret question has been used.

> The Customer understands and accepts that orders and instructions given to Paynova by using the Paynova Account, and where the Customer has been identified and verified through the use of the Customer’s password or answer to the Customer’s secret question, are binding for the Customer.

So basically unlike every other financial institution you use (Banks, Credit Cards etc) PayNova are not responsible for fraud as a result of someone breaking into your account!

> Withdrawals from and termination of the Paynova Account are charged a fee of 4 per cent of the amount withdrawn, however not less than EUR 2.

Charging me to take back my own money, WTF!

> The Customer undertakes to hold Paynova harmless for amounts that Paynova may have to pay to third parties because of the use of the Customer’s Paynova Account

They are not liable for anything, no matter what happens, it’s all my fault.

> Paynova intends to process the Customer’s personal data with the object of administering the Customer relationship, fulfilling the obligation to provide information to authorities, and providing information about its own services through marketing.

So by agreeing to this, I agree to allow them to send me junk mail. Note, there is NO opt out of this clause. But wait, it gets worse:

> By accepting these general conditions, the Customer accepts such processing of personal data as has been described above. Such acceptance also includes transfer of personal data to third countries.

Hahahahahhahaaaa *cough*…. I think not.

> On request by Paynova, the Customer undertakes to provide information about the Customer’s identity, etc., as well as other information which can be considered material for Paynova’s business. Paynova also has a right, on its own or through a third party, to conduct its own investigations about the Customer.

My God, I must submit to the Paynova Gestapo now must I?!?

And finally:

> This Agreement shall be governed by Swedish law.

Errr, no.

It won’t come as much surprise I’m sure to learn that I didn’t continue my purchase. This was the most shocking online shopping experience I’ve ever had and CD-Wow will not be getting a single penny of mine, neither now, nor at any time in the future. They alienated me from the start with a shoddy user experience and continued to put every road block possible in my way, before finally trying to sign be up for a service I didn’t want, force me to accept spam and junk mail, and admit to transfering my personal data to undisclosed third party countries, Nigeria perhaps?

Sorry CD-wow, you blew it big style.

I’m sure you’ve seen videos of George Bushisms, but these top 10 George Bush moments from David Letterman are just great and not confined to the rubbish that often comes out of Bush’s mouth.

This is just a shocking video of Bush giving a speech, completely plastered:

In fact, it appears there’s quite a few Drunk Bush vids out there, here he’s giving a press conference:

In this final video, Bush actually seems to fess up to being an addict:

RANT mode definitely ON

I spend some time on ZoneLiving.com as there’s a small but interesting community of Zoners there and it’s one of Dr Sears official sites. I received an email from them yesterday advertising a press release which they’ve posted on their front page here The article is entitled: “Arizona State Researchers find Zone is superior to Atkins for energy, healthy bones, and cholesterol levels.”

I was shocked when I read this article. It’s one of the most sensationalised, vitriolic, gutter tabloid, trash journalism, being passed off as real “science”. The factually incorrect research jumps to wild and unfounded conclusions, in a desperate attempt to make The Zone Diet look better than Atkins. It shows a surprising level of insecurity on behalf of the Zone Diet, that it feels the constant need to bash the Atkins Diet by constantly comparing themselves, and trying to discredit Atkins.

I went off on one in the comments and have felt quite justified in my criticism by being backed up by several other commenters too. This is a reproduction of my comment (or you can read it at the bottom of the article linked above):

By Colin @ Tuesday, December 11, 2007 3:38 AM
Before I critique this article, I’d like to say that I’ve tried both the Atkins and the Zone, and I find the Zone to be the superior diet and am a big advocate of it. However it’s a shame that such a biased report such as this appears on this website.

> The Atkins diet entails very low carbohydrate, less than 20 grams daily,

That is a factually incorrect statement. The Atkins takes a 4 stage process, the first of which is a very strict “Induction Phase” which dictates a 20g carb per day restriction, but this is only for the first 2 weeks. Note this is not “less than” 20 grams as the article says, and the article makes no reference to the fact this is only for 2 weeks, which Atkins freely admits should not be sustained.

> The downside of severely low carbohydrate intake is that dieters go in to what’s called ketosis or the inefficiency of the body to oxidize fat

I have 2 issues with this statement. The first is that Ketosis is not a “downside” of the Atkins diet, it is in fact the *aim* of the diet. Atkins asserts that the presence of ketones in the urine is a natural by product of burning fat for energy, and is simply a measure of the diets success.

The second is that in the article ketosis is defined as “inefficiency of the body to oxidize fat”. I do not believe that is a suitable interpretation of the term ketosis, rather it’s one that attempts to paint ketosis as bad.

> their research uncovered that the ketogenic diet may increase bone loss because of an increase in acid in the body

Very inflammatory use of the word “uncovered” here, suggesting some dark revelation, whereas in fact the research found “an increase in acid” though which one and where and how much isn’t mentioned. Note also that they did not discover bone loss, they discovered an increase of acid, and made the very unscientific leap that this acid “may” result in bone loss, without any evidence of that.

> a higher percentage of calcium was found in the urine of those on the KLC diet, leading the researchers to believe that the bones are “leaching” calcium.

Another shocking and knee jerk interpretation of the facts here. The Atkins is typically a high calcium diet, due often to an increase in intake of dairy products. Leaping to the conclusion that bones are “leaching” calcium (is that even possible?) strikes me as a desperate attempt at trying to make the facts match a pre-existence theory, rather than real science.

A proper scientific response here should have been: We detected in increase in Calcium in the urine, a specific dietary controlled study is required to determine if a low carb diet is responsible, where 2 diets are compared that have an equal intake of calcium.

> those following the KLC diet experienced a greater increase in LDL cholesterol

It is laughable that this argument is used to discredit the Atkins diet, when Dr Sears himself has regularly stated that cholesterol is an irrelevance, e.g. when it comes to preventing heart attacks. I quote Dr Sears from p17 of The Anti Inflammation Zone: “The trouble is, 50 percent of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels, and the best drug that reduces heart attacks (aspirin) doesn’t have any effect on cholesterol levels.”

> Their most recent article published in October explains that the body needs carbohydrates for energy so if you are taking in an extremely low amount of carbohydrates and only receiving energy from protein

Fat is stored carbohydrates. Stored energy for later use. That’s why it’s there. In order for any dieter on any diet to lose fat, that fat must by definition been broken down for use as energy. This ridiculous statement that “the body needs carbohydrates for energy” is an attack on all diets. It is also extremely rare for the body to consume protein for energy, something that only occurs in extreme cases of malnutrition.

Let me summarise, I am a believer in the Zone Diet as a superior diet to Atkins, but for reasons that are nothing to do with the content of this article. I sincerely hope that Dr Sears is not aware that such a biased and factually incorrect article, one that is almost devoid of any scientific process, is being used to promote his diet. The Zone diet does not need this kind of tabloid journalism and today I am ashamed to call myself a Zone convert and be associated with this tripe.

RANT mode OFF.

If you don’t know what Crossfit is, post a comment here and ask away.  I may even do a Crossfit Intro post sometime, if there’s enough interest here.

Facebook are under fire for their user tracking software Beacon, which apparently not only tracks users on Facebook but also on “partner sites” too, and collates the data across these sites, to build up a bigger picture of their users. You can read a back ground to the story here

Whilst I don’t use Facebook, I’m not surprised by the story. There are more and more ways being invented all the time to track what you do and how you interact with sites. Google Analytics is a great example. This Beacon seems to go a bit far by collating data from other sites too, but from an advertiser / publisher / retailer perspective, knowing your customers better helps you to provide more targeted offers. I’m sure Beacon could be deployed to any website, is MySpace next?

I take the view that if you use the net, expect people to be watching and tracking what you do. Mostly it’s harmless, they are looking to see how you interact with their sites and so how they can improve your online experience, and of course maximise their income from you, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if they are offering you what you want. It’s not all about privacy and identity theft.

Simple webstats will tell you what url a visitor to your site came from. If you notice that a lot of visitors come from Site A, you may want to increase the number of adverts / articles / products on your site that cater for the kind of market that Site A attracts. What you’re less interested in is what any particular individual did, it’s trends that hold the valuable data. This benefits the website owner but also it benefits the visitor, as they get more of the things that interest them.

For example, if you regularly visit the Manchester United website, and from there go to the Football Association website, you’re not going to be interested in seeing adverts for cheap Liverpool shirts. But you may be interested in seeing adverts for cheap Manchester United shirts, or Manchester United game tickets, or Manchester United memorabilia. By tracking where it’s visitors come from, the FA site can provide a better experience to it’s visitors by offering them more content that they are interested in. This is a good thing!

I read somewhere some good advice recently – Don’t post anything on the internet, anywhere, that you wouldn’t be prepared to stick up on the public notice board of your local supermarket. I guess that also applies to a list of what websites you visit, and what you buy online.

My personal view is that people get far too upset and paranoid about these kinds of things. Take the recent loss of a disk with details of 25M child benefit records from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This got the wife really worried as we’re on the list. But it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, here’s why:

1) The disk is lost, there’s no evidence or suggestion it was stolen and now in the hands of the Russia Mafia.
2) The database, whilst not specifically encrypted, was password protected.
3) The data holds information that most people have no problem giving away: Name, Address, DoB, Bank details etc. You give away that information freely every time you register for any service and pay by direct debit or cheque. I reckon there’s at least 50 organisations that have those details on me.
4) Those details do not allow someone to empty my bank account, they don’t know my password or PIN’s.
5) Everyone is automatically covered against Fraud by the banks. If someone fakes a cheque, it’s a pain, but not your fault so the banks will compensate you.
6) Then there’s the issue of scale, 25 MILLION records! A criminal gang would take a lifetime to work through even 0.1% of that number (25,000).
7) 90% of households throw more valuable personal data away in their rubbish every day. If I wanted to steal someone’s identity, I’d just walk down the street picking up bin bags, especially paper recycling bags.

In conclusion, Facebook’s Beacon is just the next thing on the list of things that will track your movements. As long as you’re careful about what you do online, you should have nothing to fear.