I just wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow is Shutdown Day. Get outside, enjoy the beauty of the outdoors, spend some time with the family and get away from those time vacuums! Enjoy the life "outside of the monitor"! For those of you not familar with "outside" here's a quick list of things you can do.

• Go for a nature hike
• Go to a local park
• Visit Family (Seriously guys, your grandparents miss you!)
• Garden (You could even make it a green garden
• Check out the Library stick with the books!

Happy Life

The thing about gluten-free living is that it isn't something you can do alone. It's hard hard work, and you need someone to help you through the tough times. I'm very fortunate in that I have a very loving family that do their best to be supportive. My Beautiful Wife is amazing. She's basically had to relearn how to how to cook, because almost ever recipe calls for wheat. Things you don't think about like gravy or chicken. My Beautiful Wife has to read every label in the grocery store every time we shop because things that didn't have wheat in them last week, do this week. There is so much work that she has to put into each meal, and I greatly appreciate it.

My brother J actually ordered a burger wrapped in lettuce for me from In-N-Out and that's how we discovered protein style. My Mom when I lived at home had to learn what had wheat in it, and she also had to re-learn to cook family favorites.

It really isn't something you can do alone. I'm thankful to my family for wanting me to feel better and working so hard to do so.

After my last post, my Beautiful Wife and I were talking and she suggested that I write a follow up post about all the food that have wheat and wheat gluten in them that you wouldn't suspect. We've found these foods after trial and error. Now that I've been living without wheat or gluten in my regular diet, I find that I can taste wheat immediately in almost anything that actually has it. This has been as valuable as being able to read the labels. There is still somefoods out there that don't correctly list all the ingredients. However most are doing a really good job of it. Hopefully this quickly list will help you as in learning to live gluten free.

Candy
Unfortunately I have a sweet tooth a mile wide. So finding which sweets you can't eat is as important as the ones you can. As with all food, you'll learn that you have to read the package, even if you think it's safe.

• Red Vines: Wheat is it's main ingredient. I loved Red Vines, so this one was hard for me to give up.
• Twix: Twix has a cookie center, wheat...sorry
• KitKat: KitKat is just like Twix

Snacks

• CornNuts: CornNuts, as will most snack foods of this type use wheat as an agent for making the artificial flavoring stick to the snack. The last time I looked original CornNuts were okay, but any of the flavored ones, watch out for.
• Doritos Nacho Cheese Chips: Like the CornNuts, Doritos use wheat as an agent for making the artificial flavoring adhere to the chip.

Condiments

• Soy Sauce: Wheat is the second ingredient in Soy Sauce, water is the first. So as much as we may love it, we have to avoid soy sauce or using very sparingly.
• Hollandaise Sauce: While the original recipe for hollandaise is butter, lemon juice and egg yolks most chain restaurants use a prepackaged hollandaise sauce that they just heat up. Of course this prepackaged sauce uses wheat.

Like a growing number of people, I have an intolerance to wheat gluten. I've had this for the last 10 years, and it definitely makes meal times a little harder. My intolerance to Gluten is due to celiac disease. While I don't have the most severe case of celiac disease, it definitely has several negative affects on me. So I work very hard to avoid wheat gluten whenever possible, and believe me it's a lot of work. You'd be amazed how many foods use wheat gluten as a thickening agent (almost every brand and favor of soup) or just to add texture and crispyness (is that a word?).

So What is Gluten? ¹Gluten is a composite of the proteins gliadin and glutenin. These exist, conjoined with starch, in the endosperms of some grass-related grains, notably wheat, rye, and barley. Gliadin and glutenin comprise about 80% of the protein contained in wheat seed. Basically Gluten is a protein that cause a person with celiac disease not to be able to properly digest and absorb nutrients from their food. The side effect of that for me is severe fatigue.

My challenge is to find things I can eat that don't have wheat, or wheat gluten in them. So the obvious quick meal choices are out, sandwiches, pizza and any kind of bread product. But there are food that have wheat gluten in them that you wouldn't think of. For example French fries are out of the question at the majority of restuarants, however  I can eat the ones at In-N-Out.

Below is a short list in no particular order of fast food restaurants in my area. Some of them have many gluten free choices, and some have none at all.

In-N-Out: In-N-Out is simply the best because basically you can get any burger "Protein Style" Which means they wrap it in lettuce instead of serving it on a bun. Protein Style is listed in their "Secret Menu" Also their french fries are made fresh from potatoes that were wash peeled and cooked minutes before they are served to you. They simply have the freshest food of all the fast food chains in my area.

Wendy's: First off, bravo to Wendy's for having menu items without gluten listed on their website. Not all of the bigger chains do that. Basically all of their hamburgers can be order without a bun. All of their salads that have curtons on the side so you don't have to try and pick them out. Their baked potatoes and chili is gluten free.

Taco Bell: According to Taco Bell's Allergen chart there are only three things on menu that are gluten free.

Side of Rice

Side of Pinto Beans and Cheese

Tostada

Panda Express:  Panda Express' site is very to the point on their FAQ/Contact page , the question is "Which of your menu items are gluten free?" the answer "None of our food is gluten free".  I actually just found this out today doing research for this blog post, and man was I surprised!

McDonald's: I personally don't eat at McDonald's. However I did look at their site to see if they posted an allergen chart. Which they do but they don't. They've mixed the allergen information with the "ingredient" list of their food. Basically they've made it hard to find which items do and don't have gluten in them. With other fast food chains being so forth coming with this information McDonald's hiding it in such a way that they can technically say it's on their website, makes them seem a little shady to me.

Subway: Subway does actually have a few items on their menu that are gluten free. It took a little looking but they do have a allergen chart on their website. Of their 16 salads listed on their menu, 13 are gluten free, 3 are not. Here are the 13 that are gluten free.

• Chicken & Bacon Ranch (includes cheese)
• Cold Cut Combo
• Ham (Black Forest)
• Italian BMT®
• Roast Beef
• Roasted Chicken Breast
• Tuna
• Turkey Breast
• Turkey Breast & Ham
• Spicy Italian
• Subway Club®
• Subway Club®
• Veggie Delite®

Jack in the Box: Like McDonald's Jack and the Box does List the Allergens with the Ingredients of each item, however they did do a little better job of highlighting which items have which allergens. That being said I didn't find any entree that was gluten free.

Carls Jr: It took a little digging around on their site to find the Allergen chart, but they do have a pretty good one. That's the good news. The bad news is that there are really only two items on the menu to eat.

• Lo-Cal Six Dollar Burger
• French Fries (maybe)

I hope you've found this helpful in your search for gluten free fast food.

Bon Appétit

^{1. Quoted from Wikipeda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten}

Hi Y'all, it's been a while, you know it, I know it, lets move on. I've been reading a lot of blog post lately that have to do with being more productive. There are a whole laundry list of them, zenhabits.net, lifereboot.com, 43folders.com, Tim Ferriss ..etc. Of course I'm aggregating these sites through Google Reader (an amazing time saving tool if it's used correctly if used incorrect, a time vacuum). One of the common threads that I'm seeing with these sites/blogs is that they are helping Common Sense make a comeback.

Now it seems to me that Common Sense and the business world as we know and work in it have very little to do with each other. For example, lets say your have a company policy that says all emails and calls need returned within the business day. This is pretty typical of most places. In itself this is not a bad policy, but what ends up happening is you have Senior staff that expect instant responses to email. Now email is being used as a poor substituted for Instant Messaging (Which is a whole other subject). So now you have your email client open all day long. You have the little outlook window popping up to say hey look at me, and you are living in this world where you are trying work and concentrate with a non-stop distractions of emails popping up. Whether they be legitimate work emails, spam or bacn.  So we've all learned to live in this haze of email clients flashing message in our face like flashing lights and ringing bells in a casino. Well this makes no sense, no sense at all. Well  there are growing number of people are demanding that Common Sense makes a comeback. And you know what, it is.

So lets take my email example. There is tons of material written on how to handle email, but I think none are quite as good as what Merlin Mann is doing. His Inbox Zero concept is brilliant and is something I think everyone could truly use and gain from. I highly suggest that you watch the video as well.

Lets talk about eating habits. Something I've not been very good about as of late. Well Zen Habits, had a great post on this topic. It's called " A 12-step Program to Eating Healthier than ever before". I high suggest reading it, it's well worth the 15 or 20 minutes it takes to read it. The best part about it, is it reminds you of things you already know. Eat more fruit. Eat more vegetables. Eat at home. This is all Common Sense stuff, yet he softly reminds you that you already know it, and gives you a new way to try it. For example Number 6 of the steps is pizza, who doesn't love pizza, I know I do. So check this out.

6. Make pizza instead of ordering. Homemade pizza is the best, and if you haven’t made it yet, you should. The simple way is to get a ready-made whole-wheat crust, although making your own tastes even better. Start with the simple version, though, as you don’t want to make things too difficult. For the simple version, just add some gourmet spaghetti sauce (not Ragu), cut up some veggies (I like tomatoes and mushrooms and spinach and olives, but you can use anything, even potatoes). Brush the veggies with some olive oil. You can add grated cheese or soy cheese if you want, though it’s not necessary. Bake till it looks cooked. Mmmm.
-Exerpt from zenhabit.net

You can't tell me that doesn't sound better than that greasy delivery pizza that they are pushing on Tuesday nights with their 10 pizzas for 20 bucks deal, and it takes the same amount of time.

So to recap, Common Sense is making a comeback....Thank goodness!

Happy Life

An article in the LA Times mentioned the unhealthy air quality today. This is something I've been watching closely. I've not been outside since yesterday morning for a very short time. Where we leave is about 15 miles from the Ontario fires, and south west of the Arrowhead fires, so that smoke is going right through on it's way to the ocean. The article titled "Windblown soot, gas, and dust pose threat", says "Health officials urged the young, the elderly and those with breathing problems to stay indoors until further notice as Southern California's wildfires continued to pollute the air with smoke, gas and dust."

So even if you don't live in the immediate area of any of the fires, take precautions and stay safe. For those of you who do, please at least wear a mask, smoke inhalation even after the fire is out is extremely dangerous.

Stay Safe.

Update: Check out this map from flashearth. It shows the smoke really well.

The reports this morning is that more than 250,000 people have been evacuated from the San Diego area, and more than 1000 homes and business have been lost since Sunday. Here is a map of the fires and the evacuation centers.

Update:
Here is an updated sat image of the fires and the smoke billowing from southern california and the San Diego area.




Stay Safe.

Update: 10/24/2007 10:15am PDT: updated the link to the map, the previous version of the map had stopped being updated due to usage, the new map is from PBS.

Being asthmatic, I play a lot of attention to the weather and natural disasters. Well the fires that started yesterday completely fall into those categories. ABC7 has done a great job of keeping us update on where the fires are and where things are at with them. I was very impressed to see that they've added a mash-up map to let you know where the fires are at, check it out here.



The smoke is very very heavy today, I've stayed inside and close to my air filter. To see the path of the smoke driven by the wind, check out this sat image from NASA.

Stay safe.

So as I'm sure you can tell from me previous posts, I am working on getting healthier. I have a phsyical coming up next month and of course have to get my blood drawn next week for the lab work. So like anyone in my position I am studying for me blood test. However being the geek that I am I want a way to measure what I'm eating and how my exercise affects that, and I want to keep track of it online. Well after a quick google search, volia, The DailyPlate. This thing is great, almost anything you'd eat is already in their database, and if it isn't, you can added it and use it immediately. It's a great site. I think of it like flickr for my food. You can sign up and use the site for free, or you can be come a gold member for $29.95 a year.

As I mentioned before I am working on riding more. I just finished the Long Beach Marathon Bike Tour, and that was so much fun. However I had to train for it, and being a geek I need to have a away to keep track of my mileage. So I started using Google spreadsheet. This works just like Microsoft Excel, so I have it caculate my distance for the week and keep a running total of mileage. I can see what weeks I did good and what weeks I did not so good. It really helps. And somehow for me looking at the spreadsheet with a lot of blank spaces makes me want to go out and ride some more.

Today I rode the Long Beach Marathon Bike Tour. I rode 26.2 miles in 1 hour 49 minutes. I and Ivan rode at an average 14.7 miles per hour. I had been working upto it since August and I can't believe I actually rode it in under two hours. It's the first organized ride I've done and I have to say that for my first large group ride it was a fantastic experience. I was really pleased that Dad decided to go down with me so he can be there when I finish. I really and truly appreciated his support. Of course my Beautiful Wife has been amazingly supportive and I really couldn't of done it without here love and support. Well now that I've done a 26 miles ride, I'm online looking for something just a little farther to ride.

Update: Check out the photo gallery

Since august 28th, I've ridden approximately 220 miles on my bike. It's not a lot by some people standards, and it extremely far by others. I've ridden that far for Three reason. 1. My family, I want to be around for a long time for them, and they need me, so I need to get my weight down and my heart health so I can do that. 2. Training, I've been training for a big ride coming up this weekend. My Beautiful Wife has been very very supportive. She's said I could do it from the begining even when I had my doubts. 3. I love to ride, I don't know how to explain it other than that. I've tried several times but I've always come short of being about to express it. So instead I thought I'd show you of all things a commerical. As dumb and as silly and as wussy as it sounds I almost always get teared up when I see it. Often times this is the music that is playing in my head when I ride.

Its coming up on a year since I've started on the "lifestyle" change. I can't say that I kept to it perfectly. In fact from about February from July or so, I had slipped. I wasn't really bad, but I wasn't being really good either. I had let the stress of work and the biggest project we had ever done. So grapes gave way to M&Ms. Well as the sugar intake went higher, the flushing side affect of Advicor got bad. Well I have had enough of it. So I've started back on my routine of exercise and health food. I don't want to say diet because it has a very temporary connotations to it. I really do want it to be a life style change. So I’ve been studying. I came across this great article in men’s health about the top ten new things you can do to keep your heart health. Check it Out

So as I mentioned I am working at exercising more and eating healthy. However I have asthma, allergy based and exercise-induced asthma. So it was kind of a catch 22, I needed to exercise to get healthy, but if I exercise I have an asthma attack. Well that doesn't sound like much fun does it. Well, I started slowly. Lifting weights, with just some dumbells and work up from there. Men's Health again has a good article on how to exercise when you have exercise-induced asthma.

So I found out Friday that my triglyceride levels were well, a little high, and by a little high, I mean very high. Apparently normal triglyceride levels are about 150. Mine however were a little higher. In the first blood test their were around 709. Of course the doctor thought that was high enough to be a mistake so I took another blood test, the day before that one I drank lots of water. The triglycerides were around 569. Kind of high. So I am on a medicine and a complete diet change. No more sodas, sweets and I have to watch the fats. Well those of you that know me, know I have a sweet tooth a mile wide. So that is going to be a little tough. Coke-Cola flows through my vains I drink so much of it, so that well be a little tough too.

So as I said, the whole diet thing has to change. Gone are the days of the "cheese plate" at Grandas for lunch. But that is okay. I am taking to the new "diet" (lifestyle) pretty well. Mostly because My Beautiful Wiffe is amazing. She is so supportive as always. She is even making the transistion easy and even promised to eat the same stuff I do. So this morning we had oatmeal with apples instead of bacon, eggs and toast. She even smiled while eating the oatmeal, is she amazing or what? I would be so lost without her.

So why change the whole diet thing over a few triglycerides? Well, once they move in they invite some friends that I'm not ready to live with like, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease (CHD). Being that I am only 32 I am not ready to live with these guys just yet.

Here are some links I found while doing some homework on the whole triglycerides.

http://www.henryfordhealth.org/11659.cfm
http://www.medic8.com/healthguide/articles/triglycerides.html
http://www.healingdaily.com/conditions/triglycerides.htm
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4778
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1085
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=531
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1104
http://www.clevelandclinic.org/heartcenter/pub/guide/prevention/nutrition/triglycerides.htm
http://www.healthgoods.com/Education/Nutrition_Information/Nutrition_and_Health/diet_lower_triglycerides.htm

It kind of a been stressful weekend. Thursday morning I was having some "Male problems" (I'm not talking about commitment issues either), one of the boys was acting up. So it was worrisome enough to make me go to the doctor. That was a little tough, the doctor poked and prodded and grabbed me in such ways that we are now considered married in 12 states. (no dinner or anything, men are so grabby). After that little ordeal, he orders an ultrasound, or as a friend likes to call it a man-o-gram. Of course they couldn't fit me in until Monday. So the good doctor gives me something for my nerves, because I would have been freaking out all weekend long otherwise.

Since The Little Boy's Disneyland annual pass was going to expire on Monday we took him on Sunday. I don't think I've ever been on so few rides. Turns out, that when you are on "something for your nerves" and hurt, it's a small world is a pretty damn good ride. We also descovered a new character at Disneyland, "Capt'n Cranky". We've even got photographic proof.

Yesterday was the man-o-gram. I think the most interesting thing about the experience is all of the little rooms they make you wait in. Three of them to be exact. You just wait, they call your name and then you go to another room to wait to be called. Finally Andrew came for me. Andrew was about 6 foot tall, dark hair, and eyes, and sounded as if he was from eastern European descent. Andrew asked that I step behind the current and remove my clothes from the waist down. I involuntarily shouted out where my grandma hides her money. He asked me what I said, and I replied "nothing". Then he had me put the gown on, and lie on my back on table. I complied. Then he dimmed the lights and turned on some smooth jazz. I have to admit this bothered me a bit, but it is only a test I tell myself don't get up and run down the hall, (the gown that was opened in the back was one of the deciding factors.) After twenty minutes of the procedure which felt like two hours, Andrew said I was done, and that my doctor would get the report in two business days. He wished me good luck. Which I took to mean, there wasn't going to be that awkward moment when he asks for my phone number, and I'd have to explain to him that I am already married to the doctor.

So I am back at work today, trying not to think about the test results. And hoping the doctor will call me in a couple of days and just say it's some sort of infection caused from sitting on my butt too much and not the dreaded "C" word.

Update: It was just an infection. Not the "C" word. Yeah!