PhilsRHman

I'm 10 days in and still going strong. I'm keeping my calories to 1800 a day and using an app I found for my iPhone called Lose It! Started at 230 and weighed 220.5 today. I'm sure a chunk of that 9.5 pounds was water weight but now that I'm paying attention to my calories, I'm fairly certain I was eating 3000+ multiple times a week. Here's a link to my latest update: www.metro.us/diet I know that I need to add exercise into my routine, but it was a bit of a struggle getting myself into the swing of 1800 calories. As for the 5 meal debate going on, I'm finding that it's not too tough. Here's a typical day: 3 hard boiled eggs and Kashi granola bar (350 cal) at 10:30 ... Lunch (450 cal) at 1:30 ... Dinner (550 cal) at 6 ... Bowl of soup, crackers (400 cal) at 9. I don't go to bed until 1 am most nights, so I might have a banana or a hard boiled egg, or some cheese, just a 100 calorie snack so my blood sugar won't drop overnight. Whenever my lunch has a couple parts, let's say a sandwich and salad, I'll try to divide them up by an hour or so and then adjust accordingly. It's been a huge help with hunger to eat every 2-3 hours, and knowing I'll be eating again soon keeps me from overeating. I'm far from an expert. I've done a million diets and this is the closest thing to a lifestyle change as I've tried. In the past it was always more about the program/diet/gimmick and less about eating right and being aware of calories. I admit that today was rough, being home all day bored, I was going crazy. Even now, I'm out of calories but I'm dying for something to eat. I'll have 2-3 glasses of water and that should help.

Yeah, you can stick hard boiled eggs in the fridge. I'd say at least 5-6 days. I leave them in the shell, and also keep them in a container or ziploc bag cause they can stink a bit if one cracks. I make a dozen at a time cause they're a good snack (70 cal each egg) on the go. I know there are cholesterol issues but I'd much rather start my day with some protein than a cereal bar every morning. Funny you mention fast food. Working in NYC, there are a million delivery options for lunch and dinner but I always find myself ordering something awful, even from a somewhat healthy place. But the thing I'm loving about this Energy Kitchen place is they actually strive to make things healthy. Aside from the fact they are making a menu for me to start, but they all the calories posted, they don't fry anything, and they don't stick a lot of junk into the food. Even stuff like the chicken, whereas it seems so many places now use processed chicken-looking things, it's amazing how much better a chicken sandwich can be with a real piece of meat. That's not to say I don't have lots of temptations, but in my latest blog post, I write about how I look at the nutritional info of stuff I'm craving and realize just how absurd it is (especially in the volume I'd normally eat it). Watching football without junk this weekend was especially tough: http://www.metro.us/newyork/blog/post/740443--the-hard-habit-of-poor-eating

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the tips. I'm definitely going to pick up some egg beaters. My biggest issue with breakfast right now is that I need something quick that I can take on the commute to work. Hard boiled eggs just just the trick. But you're right, egg beaters will be better when I'm eating at home. As for the pepperoni, those 10 slices were not very much. Honestly, that 100 calories didn't go very far at all, but it gave a nice taste. Certainly better ways to spend 100 cal. I'll try the turkey bacon, sounds like a good option. I've had turkey pepperoni which is much healthier but it was on the dry side. All about experimenting right now.

My latest blog entry, about the challenges of cooking in a calorie-conscious fashion: http://www.metro.us/newyork/blog/post/738408--scary-to-fly-solo-over-weekend

I understand the idea of swinging better at a heavier weight, but I have to chalk it up to comfort level more than anything else. Personally, I have no doubt that my game has suffered because of my weight. When I see my swing on video I can tell how big a struggle it is to make a decent turn. Whereas when I was younger I had to worry about getting past parallel. Now I look like JB Holmes with the club pointing at the sky at the top of my backswing. I've lost some distance, but I would say it's made my iron game more consistent as I'm more under control. BUT, and it's a big BUT, my stamina is awful. It's hard for me to finish strong. During my best play during the summer, a couple times in a row I got to the middle of the back 9 at 2-3 over par and licking my chops thinking I had a shot at a career best round, only to finish 5-8 over par for the last 3-4 holes. Finally realized it was partially a case of putting pressure on myself, but primarily I just couldn't finish physically.

I was just looking at that book today and could only wonder how he claims you can lose 30 pounds in 30 days without exercise, "enjoy 15 minute orgasms" and thrive on just two hours of sleep a day. A bit extreme. Can you give us a little synopsis? I've had my best success on Atkins but it's no sustainable, no matter how many times I've tried. Thanks for posting a link to my blog above. I have a feeling it's going to be an eye-opening month. Just two days in, it's amazing how seeing what I SHOULD be eating is so far off from what I HAVE been eating.

1. I've done the 13-hour drive and it's tolerable on the way down but brutal coming home. My quick math says $350 to fly, plus a low-end $50 travel bag (which you'll have for future travel) is $400. The drive will be close to $300. Depending on how far you are from the airport, you're looking about about 4-5 hours travel each way, 10 total. The drive is 26 hours. If you've got no problem with getting the days off, then maybe it's worth it. But if it's just a quick golf getaway, hard to waste that much time on the road. 2-3. I've have very mixed results with travel bags. I've had Golf Galaxy bags last two trips and others last 15 or more. You want to go with a soft case cause a cheap hard-side case is more prone to popping open, plus they're a real pain to travel with, get in the trunk, etc. Wrap towels around your clubheads. The driver is most vulnerable so if you have a backup, take that. I travel a fair amount with my clubs, so I got a 5' piece of 1"x2" wood, cut it down about an inch longer than my driver, then nailed a little piece of the cut off wood to make a litle 'T' which is the keep your driver from absorbing the blow if your bag drops head-first. I've also had the stand on a carry bag crack, and general bumps and bruises, so I always take a beaten up bag now. But keep in mind, I've flown with my clubs several dozen times, so stuff's bound to happen. I just got a really sweet Club Glove for Christmas but I don't think it's worth a $200 bag if you rarely fly. 4. There's an abundance of golf. But a really nice combo of fun golf and value is the Mystical group http://mysticalgolf.com/ of Witch, Wizard, Man O' War. They're running some awesome deals and if you don't need lodging, I'm sure you'll find some nice deals. If you'll be playing as a single, call around the afternoon before you want to play and see if they have any last-minute specials. I've done this in Myrtle and had great luck. Make sure to ask them to pair you up. Nothing's worse than a pretty light day of play but being surrounded by foursomes (they might only have 3 groups in the hour before you go out but if they're all 4s, you'll catch them quickly and hate life). I've traveled alone so many times, or been the only golfer in my group, I've learned to ask for brutal honesty and press them to answer if I'll be paired up or stuck on my own among the masses. Now that there are a lot of online tee times, you can probably figure out a lot of this on your own before even calling. Sorry for the long-winded response but I've done a lot of the sort of trip you're talking about. Hope it's helpful. BTW, I'm jealous. I was thinking about heading to Myrtle this week. Glad I didn't book the flights, I never would have lived it down if I left the wife home to deal with two feet of snow on her own.

Agreed about the weird/superfluous choices. It definitely seems like it's pulling from a database that includes a retailer who sells used goods, right? I've got a lot of older equipment (didn't realize it until i started my lists), so I was finding the "secondary" database to have a lot of these. My guess is it will be difficult to have people editing the product though because that defeats the purpose of a database that pulls in reviews, etc. The "plainer" the better, and then you can put your shafts as another item. So ideally you'd have your iron set without mention of shafts. Then select Dynamic Gold or Project X, etc. Same with grips, it's easy enough to put them into the list separate, which would also let people review their grips, shafts, etc., especially with how many times we see threads asking "which grips are perfect without a glove in the humidity" etc.

A victory? TGC channel guide says Analyze This but seems like a top 10 marathon. Are they listening?

Following up on my note about the site being awfully slow, which I think a few others have noticed. I'm finding it to be much better today. Not sure if there's been an adjustment on the back end or what, but it's moving pretty nicely now.

When I lived in Philadelphia for a while I had a weird cable service that didn't include The Golf Channel. I think I paid less attention to golf in those two years than in my entire life. I'd say that TGC is my default channel, I always start there before flipping around, and if nothing else is on, I'll end up doing work, or messing around online with TGC as the background. It's also the one channel my wife and I can agree is good for going to sleep to (she says Fox News and CNN give her nightmares LOL). I also have DirecTV for a year or two and didn't love it as much as everyone told me I would. I always had trouble with my dish, which I don't think was installed properly because if more than two TVs were on in the apartment it would start losing the signal and too often we'd lose the signal entirely. I found they were very difficult to deal with and they wanted to charge a lot for a service call despite my insistence it was done wrong to begin with. At this point, I have Comcast and while they're far from perfect, I think they're quite good, far better channel selection than Cablevision, and they include ESPN3.com online, which is awesome during college football season (some saturdays you'd get 10 games online that you couldn't see on TV, all in decent quality). Funny that this story broke as the hubbub over Point Break. I wonder if that was a test to see what sort of response they get (even a negative response could show how many loyal viewers they have).

http://www.thegolfchannel.com/executives/ I tried first initial, last name at thegolfchannel.com which didn't bounce back. There are also phone numbers and a general contact form in which you can submit comments.

I found that the more specific equipment details come when you have to search outside the available options. Seems like it's pulling out of a retail database that includes some used clubs, some labeled as you'd find them on ebay, etc. Don't think there's going to be much to fix that for gear more than a couple years old, at least that's when I mostly ran into it.

I emailed their head of programming and their acting president to ask what's up and see if this a change in direction for TGC or what. I made sure to tell them I wasn't impressed. Will be interesting to see if they respond.

Wondering that myself. Not just once, it's been all day and it's on again tomorrow. A real head scratcher. I've never seen it but I wasn't aware of any golf theme to it.

My preference is a casual hello and let me know they're around if I have any questions. That lets me float the type of question that I can use to judge their response and know right away if they're full of crap or might actually be worth shooting the shit with. I find at Golf Galaxy it's extremely hit and miss. My favorite guy was at the Woodbridge, NJ store, named Gary. He was definitely the kind of guy who spent time here and at gofwrx and other sites. And when he didn't know something, he wouldn't try to make it up. He's moved to the GG in East Hanover which is much further for me, and sadly, the new guys at Woodbridge have been especially clueless. I don't know if it's self punishment, but I too often find myself asking more and more specific questions the more clueless a salesman is, just to hear the BS they come up with. It's both maddening and humorous at the same time.

I had the chance to demo an Optishot and it's a really neat system. If I had the space I'd seriously consider buying one. However, a few things to be aware of. First, you need a room such as a garage that doesn't get much (if any) light. The sensors don't work right if they pick up any sun. To be honest, even at night in my living room I couldn't get it to read properly, and that was likely because the light was just not the right type. Secondly, to optimize the system and actually play the high level courses and hook it into your big screen TV, you need a pretty high-end computer built for games and with a good video capability. My Dell laptop couldn't handle it, so the most I could do was the driving range, which was still cool. You can see swing speed, face angle/path, ball flight, etc. I was able to take full swings in my living room, even with a driver, but it's hard to make a comfortable swing without plenty of room around, and even the foam balls really rocket off walls and stuff and while they wouldn't break a window or anything, they could knock something over. Finally, think of a way to build up a stance, because the mat is about 2.5" thick, which would surely make throw off your stance if you're on the ground and the ball is a couple inches higher. Don't get it as a substitute for a Trackman, but as a game, I could see it being really fun if you've got the space and the computer capable of handling it.

I've always wanted a staff bag, but I have to agree about how impractical they are. My grandfather just gave me a Palmer staff bag he had in the garage for decades and I'm using it as a decoration/storage piece in my basement den. The thing is beautiful but it's also massive. Right now I've got two full sets of irons, three drivers, a 5w, a 1 iron, and six wedges. And as I look at it while I type this, I can definitely fit another set of irons. Why I'd need that much space on the course, I have no idea. I'm hoping to pick up another older cheap staff bag or two for the den, they really look cool. But not really tempted to trot it out, even though I wasn't very happy with my Wilson stand bag this year on a cart (which I usually ride, sadly).

I have to agree about Ju Ju's service. I found her through Dan's posts and she's been great. I was really indecisive, couldn't decide if I wanted burgundy/gray/black to match my bag, or if I wanted scarlet/white/black for my alma mater Rutgers. She sent me so many pictures to help choose, different primary colors, different highlights, etc. Since my wife was bugging me for Christmas ideas, I gave her Ju Ju's email and told Ju Ju exactly what I wanted and told her that if she hears from my wife, she'll know what to send, and if she doesn't she can expect my to buy them for myself on Dec. 26 LOL I decided that I liked how the lines look on the 3W covers, so I asked for that on my driver, with a pom pom. Then the same design with a tassle on the 3W and then nothing on top for the 5W/Hybrid (I think that's how we did them, but I went back and forth so many times I'm not sure what we settled on). I'll post the pictures when I get them. Very excited, I think they're going to look classy. Also, Ju Ju will do a putter head cover now, but she asks why style putter you have. Guess there was enough demand for them.

Agreed, especially as we try to bounce all over the site, there are specific thing that take too long to load. My hunch was anything with images, but I can't say for sure. Just annoying enough that if we weren't trying to get to certain spots on the site you can see being turned off and heading elsewhere. Love the idea about a hover to get signatures. As I poke around, I realize how much I like to see what someone plays. Having to click on someone's List, scroll down, figure out their WITB it adds too many steps. For instance, if a guy is writing about how awful Callaway is, and has nothing but Callaway in the bag ... or vice versa ... it gives context. If we could hover over their list and see a snapshot, that would be excellent. Or, if there's a way to "hide" signatures until you click on them, we'd have a cleaner forum, but an easy way to open someone's WITB.

Quote: Cool. Did you move the map around so the little thing went in the right place? Kind of a pain... also, when golfnow.com puts their stream of data out in January, we'll populate the courses section with a lot more courses. Right now there aren't many at all. I guess this explains why when I click on New Jersey courses I get a map of Ivory Coast? Haha Do you suggest we start adding courses, or be patient until it populates in January?

I'm really enjoying the look and feel of the new platform. Looking forward to doing more exploring, but I especially like the new homepage with "highlights" from all sections of the site. Agreed on the speed, yesterday was very slow but today seems better. I'm finding that it's oddly slow to load the homepage, but then browsing within the site is decent speed wise. Seems to be some of the pages that have maps and images that are extra slow to not only load, but to navigate away from. Almost a mini-freeze. Really excited for the courses and equipment features, seems like they'll be great once we all start populating those sections. I tried to click on "own it" on a few equipment pieces and it wouldn't register as me owning, it would just take me to the list of those who "own it". Playing around I realize that you need to click on "List This" which tells me I've got some more playing around to do. Erik, thanks for the time and effort you put into this transition. Looks great and certainly has tremendous upside with all the new features.

This is a great idea, I'm definitely in. Actually, I played mine today because my home course is aerating the greens tomorrow (and it was empty as could be this afternoon so there were no pride issues for playing the forward tees LOL). My recent average from the Glenwood CC blue tees (72.8/134) is 84 and from the tips (74.6/137) is 86. From the Gold/Senior tees, the men's rating/slope is 66.8/125. I went out there today expecting to shoot 77. Glenwood is very tight and penal. Taking a lot of the trouble out of play off the tee should bring my score down. But I know there are shots I lose around the greens that seem to happen if I'm playing the tips at Glenwood, or a piece of cake muni. I will hold off on posting my score and my thoughts until the rest of the group has gotten to play. Very fun idea though, great thinking Erik.

I agree with you on most of these fronts. The game has not been destroyed. Long drive champions have not taken over the sport. If we're talking about the Tour: I'd prefer to see them make the courses smarter and harder, not longer. Put a real premium on hitting fairways, and a real penalty on hitting it wayward. Only a handful of events a year have a really penal setup, but for these players, that's what's necessary. It levels the playing field but still gives an advantage to the longer hitter because he might hit 3 iron 260 and straight as opposed to a short hitter who still has to hit driver down the middle. I believe distance is as much of a skill as putting, so to handcuff a guy who can hit it long is wildly unfair.

I've done the solo trip to Myrtle and if you're going in the summer, it could be a real winner. The courses are charging off-peak rates, and as a single your best best is to have a list of 4-5 places you want to play each day and call the night before to see if they've got any last-minute deals. Since you can't really book tee times as a single too far in advance, that will also give them a chance to pair you with twosomes, etc. The other advantage to Myrtle is that you can likely go 10-deep on your list on any given day and still be within a 20 minute drive of where you're staying. The knock on Myrtle in the summer might be the hotel rooms, which are pretty high because it's family season. Love the idea of heading up into the Canadian Rockies, but when I was there, I found the courses were more of an opportunity to relax and enjoy the environment, less about hardcore golf, and I think you'd get more out of that trip with some buddies. You'd also be hardpressed to spend a week there on your budget. Depending on where you live, have you considered Mississippi? I bet you could get some great deals down around the coast because not only is it their down season but their business is way off because of the oil spill. If you like gambling, there are casinos there and in Tunica, although they're several hours drive apart. All in all, I think Myrtle would offer a pretty good option and there's enough golf that you could play 36 a day without a problem.