Diet

Do you know me? I do not really think so you see until 2 years ago I had been obese for most of my adult life. I had at one point weighed 285 if not more. I had all of the associated medical problems from this added weight. I had very high blood pressure sore back and knees and, I was oddly enough always hungry. I had to lose the weight because my doctor was trying all types of medicines to control my blood pressure but nothing worked. He mentioned that the thing that would really bring it under control would be a reduction in weight.

People always ask me how I had lost so much weight in such a short time. Well there were several things that I did to lose the weight. One of the most effective things that did was to keep a food journal. When I was 285 lbs I went to a medical experiment at Columbia University for Meridia (sp). They would not let me into the group for the medical experiment because my blood pressure was too high. But they explained that the most important part of the medical experiment was that participants had to keep a log of food intake. That is you had to write down everything that you ate and how much of it you ate. You had to keep this log for two weeks before they would even let you into the drug side of the medical experiment. The reason was that most people would be able to correct their excessive eating by seeing what they were eating. I ending up using this myself and found out how much I really was eating. I then started using it to count the number of calories and types of food I was eating. It was very effective because every time I wanted to cheat I had to think I would see it written in from of my face! There was no way to cheat because I had to write everything that was put in my mouth. If I drank coffee or juice I had to put it on my list. I keep this list religiously for 5 months and lost 100 lbs in those 5 months. I then keep the list up for the next 7 months so that my eating style would be permanently changed. It worked great and now I do not keep my food log even though I have stayed close to 190 since 2000.

Now in addition to this I also keep a very strict high protein and high fiber diet. Why Protein? In a diet you want to do two things. First you want to feel full for the fewest calories. Second you want to speed up your metabolism. Lucky enough protein does both of these; it makes you feel full and speeds up your metabolism. It speeds up you metabolism because it is hard to digest and therefore takes more energy to digest. Consider that Sugars are stored as fat, YIKES! While Proteins is stored as muscle. So if you want to cheat chose a Protein item. Beef jerky is great for this, but remember to wash it down with lots of liquid because that makes it absorb the liquid making you feel even more full.
Why High Fiber? First all of that protein you eat does not pass through your system very well so you will need the fiber to help you "stay regular". Second You want to eat foods high in Fiber because it fills your stomach up with space so you do not feel hungry. You do not calories from fiber because your body cannot process the energy in it. You should make sure your diet is high in vegetables and legumes (beans) because they are high in protein and fiber. Finally I use fiber products like Metamucil, I take them with lots of water about an hour before I eat so I feel full/eat less. Fiber is good at absorbing water, which works if you drink lost of water before and after your meals. The water fills up your stomach and you are not as hungry. For high protein high fiber foods legumes (beans) are the best source on the planet and they are also a good source for calcium and B complex vitamins. For high protein foods the best source is baked fish. But you would be surprised how few calories pork has if you cut the fat off before you cook it.

Another strategy that works great for me is reading the labels. There is a lot of information on US labels for food, like calories per portion. Portion size is a big problem in American minds, you see the food makers set portions so that al foods seem to have 100 calories! But the size of that portion can vary dramatically from food to food. For example Coke has 100 calories per portion but that is only 8 liquid ounces. Rice, which many diets tell you to stay away from, also has 100 calories per portion but that portion is a 1/3 cup of cooked rice!! And let me tell you I would feel much more full on that than Coke. Also many things you drink have a lot of calories in them. Back to the Coke example if you had coffee with (powdered) cream and sugar it would only have about 30 calories for the same amount. Also the added caffeine helps to speed up your metabolism and it is a natural appetite suppressant.

Well I hope this helps David Rumptz.

Golf

I started playing golf!! Mostly it is for the fun of hanging out with some buddies from work. It is good as we usually do not have to work much on Thursdays so I can play golf while Tita and the kids are in school.

We have two courses here in Al Ain one is a Desert course where they have just made bunkers and "greens" but no grass on anything. Your bring your own Astroturf to drive off. Then you go to where your ball has; landed and put it on the Astroturf to drive again. I have not played the course yet so I do not know what you do for the "greens" as they are all dirt as well. I cannot imagine trying to putt on them. I am going to go out next Friday with a group that plays and see how it goes. Good news is that the Desert course cost only $13 for 18 holes.

Now I have played on the Palm course and it is a golf resort with a club house and everything. This course cost $54 for 18 holes but that gets you a cart that has a GPS unit. It tells you the distance to each of the holes you are playing. Some of the carts have little Aircon units that blow cold air through a tube to the back of your neck, for when you’re playing in the 120 heat! It has greens, fairways roughs, sand traps, and water hazards!!! It is a nice course but it only has 9 holes they are supposed to open the back nine in a few months.

Then believe it or not we have a 3rd golf course!! Well it is really a pitch and put course in the back of the Hilton complex. I have played that twice and it is a a bit of fun and it is free for me as I have a Hilton membership. I even took eh kids out with me once to bash around on the course they had some fun at it.

Wadi Aboul

Saturdays' trip (October 3, 2009) with the Emirates Natural History Group was to “Wadi Aboul, historically one of the more popular oases to visit for expats living in Al Ain. Faculty from UAEU have been enjoying a day out in Wadi Aboul from the late 1960's.”

This is kind of ironic because when we were on Eid al Fitr break we drove up here by mistake. We had been trying to make the connection between Mahadah to Wadi Sharms but ended up in Aboul instead. We stopped but did not get out of the car had I know that it was as easy and entertaining as it was I would have much rather spent my time at this wadi instead of the Wadi As Sudiyah. Oh well you live you learn.

Well the first issue was getting the family out of the house for the trip they were pretty reluctant to go after spending all Friday in the house playing on the computers and watching movies on TV. But I prevailed even dragging Ttia out of the house.

Once we arrived I tried to take a shot and the battery on the camera was spent. Luckily I was able to take a shot at a time so I ended getting some high resolution pictures to supplement the camera phone shots I had taken.

The walk starts at a gentle slope going up the wadi, at several points you see small pools of water that are “iced” over. In fact they are covered with a film of calcium carbonate (like Tums ant-acids and bones) the water percolates through the lime stone dissolving the calcium and when then it deposits this over the course of the wadi. This is very interesting and in some of the larger pools the bottom of the pool is covered in white – including the plant material that has fallen in.

On the tip we did see some pools that looked good enough for a small group to splash about in. I am not saying it is swimming but it would be a nice spot to have a picnic and I am going to try to convince some of the guys to go out with me there.

On to the Aboul Fort, this place looks great and it is hard to believe that is has not been used or maintained for more than 50 years. The fort is in a great location on a small hill overlooking the formerly large oasis. It is a great place to explore as most of the fort is still in tack and you can get up to the top of one of the towers in the fort. A nice thing about the fort is that it has new occupants. There were several bats and geckos. This was a main selling point to the kids. And we were able to see several bats up close and personal. We got some shots of the bats but he picture I am posting I lifted off a newspaper article about bats in the UAE. One of the nice shots I have is of the interior of the mud brick wall where you can see that they stacked rocks in the wall to make it fortified. It makes sense as the people in the village would come here in times of raiding parties.

Not far from the fort is a village that still has some buildings being used for storage. The village is for me at least your standard mud brick and rock village. Granted some of the building did show signs of cement which according to Brien indicates that they were built or renovated after World War II. Brien indicated that swan lumber and Portland cement did not arrive in the region until after WWII. It was nice village with many houses in a fairly spread out area. The village still has a mosque that Brien says is still in use by the workers in the oasis across the wadi.

On to the Oasis, it is hard to believe how green it is in the working part of the Oasis- several plots on the lower plain of the wadi system had been abandoned due to lack of sufficient water. The Oasis was your typical Omani style with dates, mango, orange, lime, and lemon trees. This particular oasis also had the additional plants of eggplant and okra, which I found rather interesting.

After a walk through the oasis we returned to the cars on the donkey path which is opposite the fort and along the foothills. We stopped along the way to look at a cemetery.
All an all a good trip out, we were home by 7 pm and watching Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.”

Madbah Wadi

September 26, 2009 GPS 24° 5'31.43"N 56° 7'12.99"E

Well Justin found a wadi in his off road book. He was busy on Friday so we decided to go on Saturday. The trip out was nice and easy it was well posted as well so there were no incidents. We did pass the turn off to the climbing wall but we did not have solid directions to the turn off. It is kind of like the Hanging Gardens- We have been to both places with different groups but cannot seem to find our way back to them. Granted we have a listing for the turn off for the Hanging Gardens but every time we are on the road we do not see the dirt track to take. One of these days we will have to make a trip specifically to the Hanging Gardens. Also Justin’s book has a turn off to the Climbing/Wonder Wall so we will have to start looking for that when we go out again.

Back to the trip, so we proceeded up the paved road to the dirt road, as I had said the turn off was well marked so there was no mystery to the trip. We drove up the dirt track and took the turn off to the Oasis. There was an actual parking lot of sorts at the end of the trail; we had a nice herd of goats for a welcoming committee in the parking area. We disembarked from the cars and took a short hike up to some pools that behind a small dam. We decided to set up our picnic here at the smaller pools. We dropped off our chairs and food and then I went on a bit further with Justin, my kids and a few of Justin’s kids. Justin has 5 children. He is a Mormon and they believe in having large families – kind of like us Catholics in the 60s and 70s. Tita, Justin’s wife Maya and some the younger kids stayed at the base cap while we explored higher up. Well after about 100 meters we came to the first waterfall / pool. The pool is rather large with lots of space on either side. Well it is split into 2 pools, the lower pool which is about 3-4 meters wide by 1 meter deep and the upper pool which is about 2 – 3 meters wide but and at least 2 meters deep. Also the second pool has a small waterfall that feeds it. Well climbing to the second water fall was a bit a challenge as there is a huge boulder in the path, about 3 – 4 meters tall, and we had to help the young kids over this. Once on top of the bolder the area levels off to a nice plateau with a gentle stream feeding the small waterfall below.

On to the big waterfall, once up to plateau it is a short walk around the corner to the big water fall. The big water fall is at least 4 meters high and very impressive especially considering that we are in a desert! It is amazing that so much water is flowing constantly in these few spots as the rest of the area is barren rock field. Some people say it is like Arizona but I disagree because in Arizona you have all those saguaro cacti so it is not as barren as the Omani foot hills. Well with the area being explored we went back to the picnic area and had our lunch. It was quite windy and after lunch we decided to take the chairs and other picnic items and drop them back at the cars, so that we could go up to the big pools to go swimming unencumbered. Well it was nice easy trip up to the pools and we kind of skipped the sallower pool and went right into the deep one even though some of Justin’s kids were a bit small for it. Not to worry there were areas in the pool that were rather shallow to play in. And after a while Tita and Maya came up and climbed the big rock to go look at the water fall. At that point Justin ferried the smaller kids over across the pool and they went with their mother Maya. Tita and Maya led the smaller kids to the big waterfall which has a smaller pool that is easy for them to play and swim in.

After swimming for an hour our two we were visited by what looked like an Afghani or Pakistani man from his cultural attire. There was bit of confusion as to why he was there checking us out. He hung out for a bit and we felt a bit nervous and awkward but then he left. It was only until when I went down to the lower pool later that I saw he had come with this family and was checking it out as he had brought his young children to play in the lower pool. Actually this made me a bit more anxious to get going as he had his wife with him and she was wearing her abaya (cloak) and shelia (scarf to cover hair). I wanted to give them the area to themselves so that they could have a nice picnic with the worry of us. Well we all got back down from the various pools and waterfalls we were at and made our journey back to the cars. The goats had been eating our leftover food when we came back so they got a lunch out of this as well.

Anyway a great trip and a fun time, cannot wait to go out again, actually we are going today with the Emirates Natural History Group Wadi Nahayan.

More travels Eid Al fitr 2009

More travels Eid Al fitr 2009 Thursday September 24

Mahdah GPS 24°23'57.72"N 55°58'11.39"E

As Sudiyah - GPS: N24 33.173 E 56 07.539

On Wednesday September 23, Andrew went to a 3 day birthday party!! I know it sounds crazy I have to say the parents of the kids must be brave. Well I was worried that Ashley was going to feel less than special so I planed a trip for us on Thursday just for Ashley. Sadly the off road book made the trip seem a lot better than the reality of the matter.

Well we went off to explore the pools of As Sudiyah , the first stop on our trip was to Mahadah Oasis 24°23'57.72"N 55°58'11.39"E. I had been to Mahadah Oasis with the Emirates Natural History Group earlier and though I would manage my way around the Oasis but unfortunately it had been a long time and I did not quite remember the route we had taken. But on the positive note Tita and Ashley got to see the mosque and the working sundial. They seem to still use the sundial to allocate the water that comes into the oasis. Also we heard some men washing – clothes? – in the falaj which has a built up wall to keep them from view. This was interesting as I did not think it was used for washing anymore. Well we did some exploring of the oasis but gave up after a few false starts. We did get to see some stuff that was nice but not the ancient village made of rock and mud brick that lie in the foothills near the oasis. I wrote Brien and got directions to the back of the oasis but I would still explore it before I thought of bringing the family back there. But it does have some potential.

On to As Sudiyah 24°33'10.01"N 56° 9'11.65"E Well the travel book gave pictures of water and I expected to see pools!! After hunting for the oasis and then finding the flaja, I was able to track it back to the “pools” but sadly the pools were very shallow and hardly a place I would say was swimable. One thing that was nice about the area is that it had a great back drop of mountains. It also had some natural oasis up the wadi some. I went up to see if I would find any more pools. I did not find any more pools but in the natural oasis I found a couple of traps that were handmade. I am not sure what they were trying to trap. I did find one that had been sprung but did not want to open it up.

Well we did a bit of a dip in the pool and made the trip back home without any incident.