Musings of a neurotic

FAIL!  Why yes… the new dessert recipe failed so this means we have a tasty dessert that isn’t up to commercial snuff because of some breakage that occurred.  Held my own the rest of the day but we did try the dessert.  I’m going to dump it on my unsuspecting coworkers to avoid bigger stumbling blocks.

It’s beginning to look like a mandatory task to get the hell out of the house on weekends.  Hunger and food availability do not go together well.   We did that by going to look at some furniture and found an Amway store so we decided to look into the prices of the supplements sold to me by the nutritionist.  The prices actually seemed higher at this store.   $410 pesos for both supplements.  Now, I don’t recall the actual prices the nutritionist gave me BUT I do remember paying $520 pesos total, $150 of these being the nutritionist’s fee.  In effect $60 pesos less than the price store.

I also started to do some research on the CLA supplement and it look like

• I’m getting too little dosage
• There are disputes on whether the manufactured kind can actually harm one.

I’ll report back on another post.

Menu of the day:

• Breakfast: 1 cup of milk, 1 toast with margarine.  I’m starting to think there’s no point to these breakfasts.  They feel like imaginary breakfasts.
• Lunch: 1 bowl chicken broth, 1 cup steamed veggies, 1 kitchen spoonful of white rice.  Once again skipped the tortilla.
• Snack: Green apple, possibly, I can’t seem to remember these.
• Dinner: 2 scrambled eggs, 1 kitchen spoonful beans, 1 medium slice of panela cheese

As I write this I’m preparing to go to my next appoinment with the nutritionist.   Wish me luck.

Reading on Aug 8, 2009

You can see my toes in this picture.   Fortunately I don’t have fungus on my toenails .  As you can see, some definite progress so far: 244 lbs or 110.7 kg.  This is my unofficial record as the only one that will matter is the one recorded by the nutritionist BUT, this is encouraing since my starting weight was 253 lbs or 114.75 kg: 9 lbs.

It’s looking like the biggest hurdle will be weekends.  That and my wife lol.  She’s been a great help mind you, giving encouraging words and preparing most of the meals required.  The problem is, she bakes some awesome desserts.  Yeah.  Now, us being on a diet doesn’t mean she stops preparing these desserts, it just means she only sells them to customers BUT, failures happen every once in a while, specially when trying out new recipes.  She’s going to try out a new one tomorrow.  Pray for failu… err… success.

• Breakfast: 1 cup of cereal, the boring kind with a cup of milk
• Lunch: 2 chicken breasts, 1 cup of steamed vegetables, 1 cup raw vegetables, skipped the tortilla.
• Snack: 1 green apple.
• Dinner: 1 egg omelet with 1 slice turkey ham, tomato, onion and serrano peppers, 1 slice panela cheese.  1 cup watermelon.

Performed the experiment on the scale and I’m surprised to say that the scale performed admirably well.  I thought that exposure to humidity would’ve taken its toll and, given the fact that getting on it 3 times gave 3 slightly different readings (about 2 pounds is the range)  I was dead sure I was getting an underestimation of my real weight.

A zoom in of the scale reading

The bottle comfortably resting on the scale.

The first step was to find out the weight of the bottle itself.  I used a digital kitchen scale for this and came up with 750 grams or about 26 ounces   (I’ll never get used to the Imperial system, it doesn’t make any sense… but that’s another post.)  If the water bottler isn’t screwing me over then the weight of the bottle plus the water should be exactly 19.750 kg or 43 and a half lbs.  Now, the reading on the scale is 18.6 kg or 41 lbs.  Not the exact measurement desired but also not 2 or 3 kg less, as I had come to expect  from the measurement at the nutritionist’s office.  From what I saw the bottle was a little under filled and discount the effect of altitude on gravity (800 or so meters)  so let’s say that the actual weight of the bottle was 19.6 and not 19.75 kg.  This is an excellent and convenient excuse for me, the lazy folk that I am, who doesn’t want to remember that my scale is off by 1.15 kg, but rather 1 kg.  It doesn’t make any difference in pounds because… well because those units are just plain weird, there… I said it.  Actually it doesn’t make any difference because I still need fractions of units.  This gives me some confidence in reporting the weight reported by the scale.

• Breakfast: 1 cup oatmeal with milk, 1 toast with margarnie.
• Lunch: 2 kitchen spoonfuls of cortadillo (bBasically beef with tomato sauce.  We used ground beef), 1 kitchen spoonful of rice, 1 cup steamed vegetables (broccoli), skipped 1 tortilla.  Not a real fan of stand-alone tortillas.
• Afternoon snack: can’t remember.  Green apple in all probability.
• Dinner: 2 cans tuna with pico de gallo.  1 medium slice of panela chees, 4 habanera crackers.  These crackers are a extensively used in weight contol diets in Mexico.  I  despise those things.

I’ve decided to test the trustworthiness of my scale with a 19 Liter bottle of water (About 5 gallons).  Since each liter of water weights exactly 1 kg then the scale should mark 19 kg, plus a little for the weight of the plastic.

Doing fine with the diet so far although the quantities seem to be a little off.  Huge lunches, tiny breakfasts and dinners.

• Breakfast: 1 cup Orange Juice, 1 whole grain biscuit.  The menu doesn’t state wether margarine is allowed but we used some anyway.  I’ve read up on the Margarine vs Butter debate.  It seems that as long as you stick to trans-fat free margarine it will be the healthier choice.  That’s not real easy to do, I’ve only found oune brand.
• Lunch: 2 cans of tuna with pico de gallo.  This is basically tomato, onions and cilantro.  Serrano peppers optional. Used lime juice and salt for extra taste.
• Afternoon snack: green apple.
• Dinner: fruit from the morning snack, cantaloupe I think.  Sincronizada.  This is a quesadilla with a slice of ham.  In this case we used 2 tortillas, 1 slice turkey hame and 1 slice panela cheese.

No progress the first day, as is to be expected.  Body still has its reserves so it’s not expected to start shedding fat just yet.  Last night I felt hungry, only being saved by the amount of water I’m drinking and the left over apple from the morning snack.  As I noted in the previous entry I’m going to make that a routine.

Menu of the day:

• Breakfast: 1 toast with butter, 1 cup milk.  I realize this should feel like a huge sacrifice but in reality I’ve never been a huge breakfast person.  I can be a glutton if it comes to it but I can just as easily go without breakfast for days on end.
• Lunch: 2 medium “chunks” of grilled chicken, bathed in a lime sauce, which was great.  The boring rice which I spiced up with the Tajin.  In theory the nutritionist wants me to eat as little hot sauce or chili powder as possible but I’m not about to switch to tofu and white rice.  I want to lose weight, not stop enjoying food.
• Mid-afternoon snack: 1 cup papaya.  Nice.
• Dinner: one sandwich, 1 slice of turkey ham, two tomato slices, as much lettuce as you want and 1 slice of panela cheese.  Used mustard and a jalapeño.

No news today, we’ll see tomorrow.

Since the appointment with the nutritionist was last night and she ran so late I was unable to shop for ingredients.  We made do with what we have at home so not a total loss.  The amount of food is probably less than what I’m used to but then again, I’ve always argued that is my problem.  Theoretically I would only have my 3 meals but the nutritionist asked whether I though I’d get hungry and I thought to myself “HELL YES” but decided to go with a more demure “probably yes”.  With this she proceeded to add 2 snacks between meals.  Snacks being fruit or vegetables but a snack none the less.  the menu is flexible in that you can have any one day menu as long as you don’t pick and choose dinner from one, breakfast from another and lunch from a third and as long as you don’t repeat days.  Basically you get to move around the days as you wish.

Menu of the day:

• Breakfast: a cup of fruit with skim yogurt.  Had no skim yogurt, made do with the regular kind.
• Mid-morning snack: apple.  Skipped it because of too much work.  given the volume of the dinner, I’ll probably tack on the mid-morning snack to dinner from here on out.
• Lunch: Fish with onions, bell peppers, wrapped in aluminum and cooked.  Two fish fillets.  Pretty good.  The white rice is another story though.   1 cup steamed carrots.
• Late afternoon snack: cucumbers with lime juice, chili pepper powder (known here by the most popular brand name: Tajin).  Awesome.
• Dinner: Entomatadas, consisting of two maize tortillas, with panela cheese (a fresh cheese, crumbly in nature, will not run when heated, has little fat… sort of like feta cheese) and bathed in tomato sauce.

My wife has decided to join me.  For the life of me I can’t fathom why, other than solidarity.  She’s thin.  Like VERY thin.  Still solidarity is appreciated and it makes things easier while cooking.

No scale photo today as my reference weight should be the same as yesterday.

Following up on my Battle of the bulge post, I have visited the nutritionist to get an assesment of my current situation, some help on my day to day diet and, most importantly, to set up a 3rd party observer who will be neutral.

First Impressions.
We’ve all heard the expression: You only get a first impression.  Well, unfortunately my first impression with the nutritionist wasn’t the best.  Contributing to an overall feeling that I might be in the wrong place are these facts:

• As I had mentioned, her “office” is in a bad part of town.  Bad as in gangs, drugs, at least one murder a month, probably more like every two weeks though.
• The office is in the second floor of her home.  This by itself is not bad, it’s just that the arrangement is not carried out very well.  The waiting area is the home’s living room, a tiny one at that: perhaps 4 people can fit.  Snugly.   By itself this fact is not something I would normally hold against anyone, more on this later.
• Graduation photo.  State university.  Early 90s.  Dear lord, did we dress so ugly back then?
• 40 minute delay to get in.  Ugh.
• Standard office, not bad.
• The nutritionist is thin.  Score some points there.
• Measuring instruments are second rate: the height measurement was performed against a felt “ruler” and, given the fact that the woman is about a foot shorter than me, wildly inaccurate.  She misjudges by 2 inches.  The scale is not a professional one but rather one for consumers, although digital and with body fat measurements.
• The diet is pre-printed out, a standard one, no customization.
• The recommendations and diet printouts have grammar and spelling mistakes.
• The nutritionists pushes supplements.  From Amway.
• Units on the menu say things like “a medium sized chunk” of fish, chicken, cheese, etc.  No caloric or measurement information except for “1 cup” of some fruits/vegetables.
• I’m given a sheet that will keep track of my body measurements, which I have to take in for every consultation.  Why is this not in her computer?

My status
I received the following measurements and observations from the nutritionist:

• I weight 120 kg (265 lbs).  Account some 3 lbs for clothes and another 5 for time of day variations (I check in lighter in the mornings) and the result is not bad for my home scale.
• My blood pressure is 120/90.  According to this chart, I’m borderline.
• My habits are not all that bad.
• Not much else.

The veredict
While the overall first impression is well below expectations because I feel that someone who’s been working that long should have built up a reputation and probably moved on to nicer digs, it is not up to me to judge any ones person’s circumstance.  She has much to learn about handling her computer, some newer instruments would be nice but she also charges very little.  About 10 USD per session.  This was so cheap I even bought her supplements to help her along.  I shall give her a month and see how it works out.

I’ve decided its time to follow in the tracks of such august luminaries as Jared Fogle, Oprah and other bloggers and start documenting my battle of the bulge.  I’m not aiming for an audience but I realize at some moment or other someone might walk in here and find this.  With this in mind I’ll try to document as much as possible in case anyone finds this helpful.

The motives.
I obviously have to admit that my habits are not helping.  My personal rationalization states that I don’t eat all that bad, I just eat too much.  I do have some evidence of this as in 2008 I had blood work done to find out how bad things were, the result being an encouraging “all clear” in the cholesterol and tri-triglycerides (my wife is thin, yet she has higher levels of both), along with normal blood pressure levels.  However, since that time I’ve gained even more weight and started to get into the high blood pressure range.  This has finally nudged me into action, so here we are.  Will this work? It better or I’ll be in big trouble health wise.

The professional
Since I’m admitting that I’m in trouble implies that I’ve been doing things wrong, I’m going to work with a nutritional expert.  I’m going with a recommendation from a friend of my wife although I’m not entirely sold on this person as she has her office in the second story of her family’s home in a rather seedy part of town.  I’ll give her a month unless she completely turns me off.  The idea was to get this published before my first visit but, as it turns out, I’ve already had my consultation.  I’ll create a follow up post for that.  Since I’m not entirely sold I will withhold her name.

253 lbs / 114.75 kgs on my untrustworthy scale

The starting point
I have a scale at home, although I’m not terribly confident in its reliability but its the one I have.  That scale read 253 lbs (114.75 kgs) although this is subject to a little calibration experiment I want to try and run.  I’ll posts the results on that as well.

My height is 1.75 m (5 ft, 9 in) so inputting those values into a BMI calculator I get: 37.6.  Yikes.  Technically this only makes me “obese”.  For some rather interesting results I took these values to the Wolfram Alpha.

The goal
Before starting I didn’t have a goal beyond getting into a healthy weight range, I haven’t been thin in many years so its very likely I’ll never be so again, but I must have a goal, otherwise there’s no accounting.  As a motivational ploy,  I’ve made a friendly bet with a friend regarding this, the terms of which I’ll keep to myself.  Suffice it to say that it’s a good motivator and to win the bet I must reach 80 kgs (about 176 pounds.)  Theoretically this is above my ideal weight of between 128 (58 kg) to 169 lbs (76.7 kg)  based on my height.  Are you kidding me? I’m not going for the concentration camp look, I just want a normal weight so I’m standing pat on my 80 kg goal.

Now, I read somewhere that nutrition experts want people to lose 10% of their weight a year until they reach their ideal weight, so that the gains (or losses in this case) can be made permanent.  At that pace I would need way more than a year, which just goes to show you how much overweight I really am.  With this in mind, my yearly goals would be:

• Year 1: Starting at 253 lbs, drop 25 lbs (11.34 kg), reach 228 (103.42 kg).  I have previously lost up to 13 kgs in about 3 months so this is perfectly attainable.
• Year 2: drop 23 lbs (10.43 kg), reach 205 (93 kg).
• Year 3: drop 20 lbs (9 kg), reach 185 (83.9 kg).
• Year 3.5: drop 9 lbs (4 kg), reach 176 (79.8 kg).

I’m not sure the nutrition expert will take me along these goals but I will ask her about them (on my second appoinment as the first one has already gone by.)

Vaya con los budas

After a very drawn out set of posts, my humble (ok, not so much) conclusion is that voting fraud simply CANNOT happen in this system. There are other ways, but directly manipulating votes is not the way to go. Parties CAN and WILL try to bribe, co-opt or otherwise influence voters beforehand but the cannot modify the outcome once the votes are cast.

I will, however, make a note here. The Electoral Tribunal (independent from the IFE) has handed down some strange precedent setting decisions in the past that can have a negative effect on these safeguards. Most notably, if the irregularities in a voting package are deemed insufficient to change the outcome OF THE BOOTH, then the package will not be open and the votes recounted. This is simply STUPID. You have everything you need there, ensure voter will is respected.

Given the above ruling, there could theoretically be an instance of a party controlling a whole booth (it happens in rural areas and it’s also statistically possible) and changing the outcome by say, 5, 10 votes. Enough not to draw attention and fall bellow the threshold set by the Tribunal but, once all manipulated booths are aggregated, potentially enough to change a close election. THEORETICALLY. This is the thread by which conspiracy theorists will forever hang on to their claims of fraud in this particular election.

The conspiracy theory goes like this: a rather corrupt teacher’s union leader named Elba Esther Gordillo, who was kicked out of the PRI and formed her own party (Partido Nueva Alianza, known as the PANAL) positioned her minions in control of several booths. The rather complicated conspiracy theory says that teachers would line up well before opening time and wait for booths to open up and when the usual number of booth functionaries failed went AWOL, they would step up as “draftees”. This would’ve placed teachers in strategic booths around the country and allowed them to manipulate results in the manner stated above. The theory goes that the PANAL worked out a deal with the PAN to manipulate the votes to take some away from the PRD, give the presidential votes to the PAN and the rest to the PANAL. What a fantastic tale. I find it easier to believe that the mafia and CIA conspired to kill JFK or that Bush ordered the felling of the WTC. Why? I don’t believe this happened and I have one simple reason: it has been almost 2 years and not a single soul who participated in such a huge scheme has spoken out to denounce it. Thousands of people, not ONE person has bragged, gossiped or spoken out. Now THAT would be an accomplishment. What is much more likely is that Gordillo worked out a deal with the PAN. Traditionally all unions voted for the PRI, as instructed by their “leaders”, if Gordillo were to instruct the hundreds of thousands of teachers to vote for Calderon but still vote for their own candidates for congress and senate seats it could have made the difference in the outcoume.

As it happens, a recent reform has changed some things that I have written about. I will finish the series none the less and then move on to examine the changes implemented. I’m afraid most of the changes are not good.

As stated in the previous post, years of watching various fraud tactics had forced the opposition (led, ironically, by the PRD) to examine how a voting system could help keep away most of those tactics. The first step was establishing an independent electoral body, the IFE with its budget assigned directly by congress, the directors chosen by congress and with specific rules governing their removal. The actual safeguards and their reason for being are these:

• Compulsory secure voter ID card. For many years voter ID cards were quite easy to forge and did not require much in the way of proof to be acquired. Even worse, there was no way of corroborating the card belonged to the person carrying it. This led to several ways of defrauding the system:
  • 

    Sample Voter ID Card

    Registration of dead people. No, not a case of “I see dead people”. Actually, since there was no cross checking of databases, anyone could register using any name they wanted, as long as they had a birth certificate. Come voting time, a single operative could have dozens of voter ID cards and vote several times.
  • Exchange of money or goods for voter ID cards. Operatives would offer money, construction materials, food, payment of utilities debts and/or anything poor people have a need for, in exchange for them handing over their cards. The system was very complex because the PRI had representatives in every block of every poor sector of every city and town in the country, so the PRI had knowledge of everyone and whether they handed over their cards or not. Failure to comply did not mean simply missing out on these “incentives”, it also meant harassment from the block representative who would make sure relief programs, subsidies, schools, utilities and other programs these people had a right to would be cut off. Federal subsidies for farmers were released only if they handed over their cards, for example. With the inclusion of a photograph imprinted in the actual plastic card plus hologram markings on top of the photographs, these practices were essentially ended, although some lived on in different ways, as we shall see later.
  • Outright forgery of the cards. This was not specially difficult. These cards were to be used in special voting booths intended for people who were traveling. These people were allowed to vote in presidential elections but not in any other type of election.
  • Voter lists with photo. Since the registration process includes a photo which is scanned and imprinted into the ID card, the capability of producing voter lists that include the same photo is a natural extension. This list is not made available except during election days, when station officials and party representatives receive a copy so they can confirm the identity of voters. This list is also available for voters to verify that they are indeed registered, but they cannot take a copy of the list from the IFE premises.
  

  Sample voter list

  • Semi-permanent dye on thumb. A special dye, which is acidic in nature and burns a small layer of skin is used to mark people who have already cast their votes. Since a thorough scrubbing and removal of a thin layer of skin is required to get rid of the mark, it’s nearly impossible for a person to vote twice without getting noticed. The natural replacement of the skin otherwise gets rid of the mark after a few days.
  • Presence of party representatives at voting booths. In previous elections, it was quite easy for the PRI to manipulate results by simply being in charge of a voting booth. Since nobody outside the PRI oversaw the counting of votes, they could simply report a “carro completo”. This slang term could be translated as “the whole enchilada”: PRI: all the votes, everybody else: 0. To alleviate this problem, every party is allowed to have one representative and a replacement per booth and an additional “general representative” per 15 booths. The names of the representatives are handed in to the IFE and they receive a certificate granting them access to the booth, as well as receiving a copy of the nominal list. This allows for a multiple check of the amount of voter participation and amount of votes cast. After the voting has ended at the booth, every representative gets a copy of an act stipulating the results (see below) and has the ability to submit written protests that are included in the “electoral package” (see below).
  • Lottery designated voting booth officials. Instead of having officials named by the IFE or anyone else in particular, there is a lottery held to determine who will be named President, Secretary and 2 Vote Counters as well as their replacements for every booth. The lottery is held per booth so that the officials will handle the voting in the booth they would normally vote in. This is done to avoid the manipulation of results by any one party. Obviously, in places with a dominance by any one party this would be questionable, but the party representatives can still avoid the situation.
  • Locally counted votes. At closing time, any ballots that went unused are voided, the urns are emptied in the presence of all officials and representatives and any invalid votes (more than one party, blank votes) are separated. The votes are counted by the Vote Counters (duh). This ensures that no one person is able to manipulate the results by either purposely miscounting or votes being somehow replaced in route to the IFE offices.
  • 

    Voting Results Form
    (click for larger image)

    Signed voting act. While the votes are being tallied, an act is filled with the results, number of voided ballots and invalidated ballots. Any discrepancies must be noted. Believe me, they will happen: voters will go home with their ballots (I don’t know how that happens, a typical booth is manned by 8 people and they all miss it and I have been at booths multiple times) and voters will cast their ballots at adjacent booths. This means that some booths might have more ballots than voters but this will balance out with the adjacent booths that will have less ballots than votes. It happens. It’s not a big deal: you have 3 extra, the next booth is missing 4 (someone took theirs home.) The booth officials and party representatives are required to sign the act but are free to sign under protest. Most importantly, every party representative gets a carbon copy of the act, ensuring that it will not be altered along the way (you have your own copy to corroborate the electronic results which are reported booth by booth.)
  • Complete electoral package. Once the act has been filled, all votes and voting material are put into a box that is sealed. The voting act and any protests are taped to the outside (sometimes officials will make the mistake of putting the act on the inside, necessitating the opening of the package, but this is supervised by party representatives at the IFE offices) and the package delivered by the booth President and any representatives that choose to accompany the President. If ANYTHING at all doesn’t add up, the booth can be challenged and a tribunal can order the package opened to verify/recount the votes.

  As you can see, the voting safeguards are plentiful. There are more safeguards at the IFE itself, but I wont go int detail on those: they are among the same lines. There are some weaknesses to the system: by its very nature, the complexity of the process is prone to errors if the officials don’t know what they’re doing. Sometimes party representatives have to hand-hold the officials through the process. Poor areas are also prone to basic math errors. If the President’s handwriting is atrocious this can lead to capture errors (although this can be challenged by the parties.) Still, when you consider the sheer magnitude of the effort needed to co-opt a statistically meaningful sample of booths in order to affect the outcome of an election, it should be pretty clear that an old-fashioned fraud is simply not going to happen. Even if the voting is altered down the line, the parties still have copies of the acts for every booth (in theory, sometimes this isn’t the case when a party is not strong in certain areas. Think democrats in Utah) and can double check the results.

  Ariel R. Orellana