"How Far Would You Have to Ride a Bicycle..."

by Jonathan Bailor
"...to burn off the calories in two slices of bacon?" asked a headline on the front page of yesterday's Denver Post. The answer on page 16B? Four or five miles! And lord help you get any work done if you had a pat of butter and a Starbucks grande skim latte with that breakfast bacon indulgence because now you'll never get to work on time-- you'll be walking 1.25 miles on the downtown mall and jogging around City Park lake 1.5 times to work off the extra calories for those bad boys. Or...you can lift and lower Mr. Bailor's book over several weeks and change your mindset and your midriff!

I gave up preaching the calories in/calories out theory of weight gain some time ago, replacing it with "you can eat but you can't eat that" sermon, with that being the bread, tortillas, rice, potatoes, and sweets with which my patients snacked their way through long, sedentary days. This book while a bit repetitive and disjointed will supply you with the physiological facts supporting this nutritional sea change. I'm not sure if Mr. Bailor's program will fit your meal planning any better than it does mine, but it certainly is food for thought, and his suggested foods may well sneak their way into your grocery cart as more and more of them now arrive in mine.

The Casual Vacancy

by J.K. Rowling


I've mentioned this book and how much I enjoyed it to several friends.  "Can you pronounce the names in the book?" asked one; another simply stated "I don't like fantasy."  The location, a small village in England; the time, the present; the characters, believable if not always appealing and often tragic.  If you've ever wondered how life will go on after you die, this well-written work is a most interesting exploration of the ripples and waves in the wake of one man's demise.  No fantasy here but a rather engaging and grim reality.