Personally I like cronometer for tracking. It's best if you cook all your own food as some pre-packaged foods are missing, but the usda and canadian databases are all there. Probably harder for people not in an english-speaking country. But it gives massive amounts of data to geek out over, showing a lot more micronutrients than mfp in a much more clear display. It's also a lot easier to set your own goals.

I was wondering why on earth they didn't just write? I had a completely deaf student in a class once, and while her interpreter couldn't come to office hours, we were able to get along quite well with pointing/writing. I just asked her to let me know in advance when she was coming so I could make sure to have my laptop for longer sentences.

I for one live in a state of confusion.

If you ever wanna talk recipes, hit me up, baking is one of my significant interests :)

OP, if you are out of the ingredient you want to use, it is often interesting to google "cookies made with x" and see if you can find a substitute recipe. I was out of butter and not feeling like buying a pound just for cookies and googled "molasses cookies made with vegetable oil" and found a really great recipe that I have added to my permanent list. Also, here is an excellent Q + A on low-fat/low-sugar baking in general: http://www.cookinglight.com/cooking-101/techniques/the-art-of-low-fat-baking I have tried several of cooking light's recipes and been generally pleased with the results. I always add more spice than they say though. You may try looking at those instead of just trying to swap light margarine into the recipes you already use -- let someone else (their test kitchen) deal with the failures. If you can find a cookie recipe that works chemically and has the general texture you want, altering spices is simple.

This is a great point. Once you have seen people make sub-optimal decisions a sufficient number of times and suffer for it and often expect help from others, it is very challenging not to judge them for making such decisions.

I'm with you on the peace love rock-n-roll. (as for the phrasing, you wouldn't believe how many times I typed and erased to make sure my phrasing agreed with my meaning ;))

Honestly I don't think eating a sweet every day is intrinsically unhealthful. Yeah, it's an easy target for cutting calories, but life is also to be lived.

May not transfer into his program but looks just fine on a resume :)

Less about some things and more about others. Far less judgmental about lifestyle choices of individual adults. More judgmental about people who make choices that have the potential to harm others. A (hopefully non-controversial) example would be someone who is clearly affected by alcohol choosing to drive anyway, whether or not they are legally under the limit.

Yeah well, if you wake up every morning wishing you'd get hit by a bus on the way to work so that you wouldn't have to go, the money isn't going to matter too much. Seriously, loathing your job has an incredibly negative impact on quality of life for many people.

Margarine works fine (other than tasting blehhh :) ), light/whipped margarine doesn't because it's fluffed out with stuff that doesn't bake like butter. And just swapping out margarine doesn't reduce calories really. With you on the sugar content. If I swap in fruit I tend to reduce the rest of the sugar a bit to compensate.

A lot of times, you can swap out some of the butter in a recipe for applesauce, mashed banana, mashed pumpkin, or greek yogurt. I'd be more inclined to experiment with that than whipped margarine. Bonus: If it's fruit, I get to pretend it's healthy because I'm eating fruit, and if it's greek yogurt, I'm boosting the protein content ;)

How long is it for? If it's for a short period to shrink his liver, it's reasonable -- a short crash diet won't harm a normal person although it will make them feel pretty crappy.

I wish more schools did this. It's a lot easier to find just one qualified math teacher per grade.

Sequence or not, I think she'll do a lot better in the math classes she needs to take in college if she takes as much time as she needs to master the material rather than worrying about being "behind". Now, I *would* work through summers to minimize brain drain. MUS is going to be fine for a prospective el ed. I don't know about no nonsense algebra, although looking at the 3 star review on amazon where someone was miffed that they didn't get their promised "gift" for leaving a 5 star review makes me pretty suspicious about the 5 star reviews. Honestly I'd go to the beginning and breeze through the parts you already covered just to make sure that they're fresh in her brain. If she doesn't breeze through, well, then, it was clearly pretty necessary. Fractions show up a lot in college math, placement tests, and HUGELY in math for el ed majors (as they should). Given that this is a weakness of hers, I would strongly recommend ongoing fractions review on any day when it does not show up in her regular math. It does not have to be a lot. Like one problem each of add, subtract, multiply, divide, in a randomized order so she doesn't get to going on autopilot with "ok, the last one I invert the second" but correctly associates it with division. Geometry will be important too but MUS geometry will be plenty. If she has struggled with algebra I would recommend either proceeding slowly through algebra 2/geometry (treating as two challenging subjects) or integrating algebra review so that she doesn't forget it. Placing into remedial classes or doing poorly on admissions tests due to having forgotten algebra 1 will not be good. Plus, it'll make her college math much more challenging. Probability and statistics is showing up more and more in elementary math but getting her pre-algebra and algebra basics down is going to be more important. But if you don't ever play board games involving rolling dice as a family, I honestly think it'd be a good thing to integrate. I find that a lot of my students struggle with basic probability because they have no experience with dice. It doesn't have to be old stand-by's like Monopoly, but games like Settler of Catan-type games are fine too. One of my friends teaches math for struggling students in a middle/high school, and some Fridays the people who have their homework done get to play Yahtzee and count it as part of math class. I'd also make sure that she has some idea of basic statistics, but it doesn't need to be super advanced -- something on the level of "how to lie with statistics" (very cheap book, numbers are dated but the math is timeless, worth acquiring for anyone), and integrating that into social studies/current events so that there's ongoing review/discussion provided. If she changes her major (as long as she doesn't change it to a STEM major), this will be less relevant but it sure won't hurt. Imo everyone should understand basic statistics so that they know when they're being misled.

Agree. If it's cold I'd treat it as if it had been refrigerated and use it now. This is one reason it irritates me when the grocery clerk ignores how I have carefully placed all my items on the conveyor -- shelf-stable, then refrigerator, then frozen -- and just starts bagging them by 'grab the big stuff and put it on the bottom'. I try to stop them but sometimes I get distracted and don't notice.

One good reason to actually consider audit instead of for-credit. At least it's easy to explain on a grad school app -- "I was very interested in x, y, z, but to preserve financial aid eligibility chose to audit" -- this is what I have recommended to my "But I want to learn EVERYTHING" students.

Here's an FAQ that looks decent -- http://www.byui.edu/financial-aid/program-applicability/faq

Only courses that are required for your degree program count towards enrollment for federal financial aid. It's intended to make sure that students are continuing to progress towards their degrees instead of just taking random stuff all the time to milk the financial aid system. And for students who are trying to do the minimum possible, it works fine. But for someone who's (for example) taken extra classes, used all their general electives, and is now in a semester where there are less than 12 credits that tick specific boxes on their degree progress, it means that they can't reach full-time enrollment. Some of our students who have always enrolled for 18 credits/semester are running into this issue and it's very frustrating in advising to be telling people that they shouldn't take ___ elective that they're interested in because they will need a degree-required class to be enrolled full-time for senior year when they're taking the 3 classes that they need to take as a senior. Or, in tabular form: Freshman -- tick 36 credits of boxes (possible at our school). Sophomore -- 36 more. Junior -- 36 more. Senior -- now has 108 credits counted towards degree. Since many jr/sr classes are offered every other fall or every other spring, this student needs to be enrolled in both fall and spring in order to graduate, but there are not 24 credits of required classes left to take. There are also caps on how many credits you can accumulate before you can no longer receive aid. The caps are at least sufficiently generous that most students don't hit them, unless they change their major/degree focus a few times -- for example, someone who enters a 4-yr with an associate's of applied science in welding or something else which doesn't count as anything other than general electives but still transfers will often hit them.

+1 for do what he enjoys. He'll have so many required classes in college and the federal financial aid rules are making it harder and harder for students to get a chance to throw on random classes just to see what they're about.

Or until you can deadlift HIM :D

In deadlifting, you shouldn't be lifting it to where it might fall on you -- the worst would really be dropping it on your toes. I don't think that should be seriously concerning. But you can always use dumbbells too. I agree with you about squats -- I wouldn't squat alone with more than dumbbells either. One of the reasons I went for bodyweight training (single-leg squats) was because if I failed the worst that would happen would be that I'd fall on my butt. Whoopy-doo.

I would also consider modifying your exercises as well as decreasing the number. For push-ups, you can modify them by elevating your hands. A staircase works well for this. As you become stronger, you can gradually move your hands down one step at a time until they are on the floor. For pulling, you can do horizontal rows. Here's a progression. http://www.startbodyweight.com/p/horizontal-pulls-progression.html Once you get to where you can do, like, 3 sets of 10 for step 4, try going back to pull-ups. If you have a machine that can do lat pulldowns, that works as well. Maybe if you're only going into the dungeon for one exercise, it won't be so bad. Modified reps with good form > standard reps with crappy form. Don't push yourself to do reps with crappy form even if you "fail" the challenge. Make the challenge fit you instead of you fitting the challenge. A modification suggestion -- if you have to take a break, do it, then complete the set. You'll still be cranking them out, and getting your muscles to the point of where they can't continue with good form is what helps them grow.

Definitely the attitude my mother has always had about smoking. Now, after her heart attack she's still smoking.