Hey y’all. I’m back.

Or I guess I’m still here…

As you know, blogs are lame now. Or something like that. Anyhow I’ve spent most of the last decade diverting myself at my BYU sports Twitter account (@geoffjbyu). But I still maintain the ol’ blog so I figured I’d slap up some thoughts on the latest turbulence surrounding Elder Holland’s speech at BYU a couple of days ago since this topic doesn’t really work there. Read or listen to Elder Holland’s talk here.

Based on some reactions I saw online, liberal Mormons (er, church members?) are severely disappointed in all sorts of things about the talk. They don’t like that it feels like a smackdown to them and LGBTQ BYU students in general. They don’t like how he quotes the “trowel and musket” analogy from church history and a previous Elder Oaks talk for fear it will inspire looney right wingers to violence. And they don’t like that he seemingly threw that BYU valedictorian who came out in his graduation speech under the bus, even though the speech was approved by BYU.

On the other side, there is evidence that the Mormon alt-right wackos are indeed doing some victory laps and using the musket talk somewhat menacingly online. This “DezNat” wannabe secret combination of Mormon alt-righters is a scourge. Anything that revs those turds up concerns me.

Anyhow, I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of the talk. I think, based on the freaking out some folks are doing, it’s safe to say that Elder Holland probably didn’t quite hit the mark he was aiming at though.

In this post I more want to step back and suggest a few ways BYU and the church might handle this LGBTQ issue in the future.

1: Move on from the gay marriage fight

It’s over. Gay marriage is legal. Accept that fact and move on. It’s the law of the land now and the church won’t change that.

2: Focus on the Law of Chastity only

In the end this is about the Law of Chastity. And by that, I mean the church teaches that any sexual behavior outside of a legal hetero marriage is a sin. It’s 100% within a church’s rights to believe and teach that. So stick to it. You’re gay? Fine, live the Law of Chastity as we teach it and there’s no problem with the church. You’re Bisexual? Fine — same. Making discussions and arguments about sexual identity is always going to be a losing battle. Focus on the behavioral standard and at least you can be consistent.

3: Because of the Law of Chastity, be ok with a permanent truce

The LGBTQ community will likely never be satisfied with the church until the Law of Chastity changes and gay sex (within marriage at least) is considered chaste. And it’s unlikely the Law of Chastity as I’ve described it will change. So at best the church will likely have to settle for a truce. Say and mean that we don’t focus on whatever sexual identity people claim. Say and mean that to be in good standing with the church (or with BYU) folks of any sexual identity just need to live the Law of Chastity. The church would benefit from having strict standards when it comes to sexual *behavior* and keeping the focus on that, rather than wading into the weeds of sexual identity.

Of course this gets messy because they’d have to determine what qualifies as sexual behavior. Does holding hands count? Snuggling? Kissing? What about just being transgender? There would have to be allowances for these things to be consistent. The church and its members would need to give ground on many of these things over time, but would not have to give ground on strictly adhering to the Law of Chastity.

4: Start reacting to violations of the Law of Chastity more consistently

Breaking the Law of Chastity is breaking the Law of Chastity. Seems to me that we will need to get to the point where the ecclesiastical reaction to Bryce and Breanna having sex outside of marriage is equal to the reaction to Bryce and Dallin having sex. If and when the Law of Chastity becomes the standard we are focusing on regarding this issue, we can’t wink at hetero indiscretions and freak out about gay indiscretions among members or BYU students. This one is gonna take some cultural training but I think it is required if we really aren’t going to be bigoted. The standard has to be “no sexual behavior outside of a legal hetero marriage” period. The breaking of that standard would need be equally and fairly dealt with when it comes to church discipline (and BYU discipline).

If #4 makes you uncomfortable then perhaps it’s time to ask yourself why hetero breaking of the law of chastity is more “ok” than gay breaking of it. It’s not. Or at least reason dictates it shouldn’t be.

Anyhow, that’s what I got for you today. Is it controversial? I hope not. Doesn’t seem like it should be. I think I’m just trying to be pragmatic and fair. But let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

(I know this is a heated topic for many, but please try not to be obnoxious in the comments — I’ll be moderating the comment section to keep things productive. Thanks!)

In the first installment of this series I talked about how the first step I took to getting into better shape and cutting body fat was to start counting calories. That works. The problem is that if you do it wrong you’ll consistently be hungry and no one wants to live the rest of their lives feeling hungry. The persistent hunger is largely why my previous calorie counting forays worked for a while but ended up not lasting. Basically the normal pattern was I’d injure myself somehow, stop exercising, and with the extra calorie-burn from exercise gone from my counting equation I’d give up and stop counting calories since it was too easy to get into a calorie surplus daily with no exercise anyway. Then I’d go back to that 185-195 lb range I had drifted into over the years. Like I said, at just over 6’0″ I was never all that fat, I was just a bit… what’s the right word… Squishy? Flabby? Soft? (And for the record, the BMI scale indicates I am “overweight” at anything over 185 lbs. I know BMI gets a bad rap, but the fact is that most of us would benefit from believing it.)

Anyhow, I believe that trying time-restricted eating was a key ingredient this time to help the calorie counting stick and to me getting much better results this time around. More on that below.

Various Fasting Protocols

First of all, we Latter-day Saints know a bit about fasting. Most of us have been fasting at least once per month since we were wee Mormons. Turns out there are all sorts of ways one can fast, including the standard 20-24 hour no food or drink method I grew up with in the church. Here are some variations that get lumped under “fasting” when it comes to health.

1. Straight fasting

A little studying revealed to me that as long as you keep your sodium levels up (for electrolytes) and a few other things like magnesium and potassium you can fast (with water) for many days at a time. Our bodies are pretty good at keepin’ on it seems. I haven’t tried a long fast but I do fire up an occasional 24-48 hour fast now that I’ve been sold on some of the benefits of fasting, not the least of which is autophagy. It’s not always comfortable but the reported benefits make it worth trying I think.

2. Time-restricted eating

This is probably the most popular method of “intermittent fasting” these days. It basically means you do all of your eating for the day in a specified window of time. Probably the most popular version of this is an 8 hour feeding window per day with no calories the rest of the day. So for instance, maybe you skip early breakfast and do all of your eating for the day between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Or maybe you go from Noon to 8:00 PM. Or maybe 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM works best. The hours you choose don’t matter much — the key is no calories outside of that eating window. Many folks will take this a step further and cut the feeding window to 6, 4, or 2 hours per day. With the One Meal A Day (OMAD) method having lots of champions — especially for when trying to cut fat.

The reported benefits of this kind of fasting are myriad. Just do a search on the term “intermittent fasting” in a search engine or YouTube and hundreds of results will pop up. But here are the things I personally like best about it:

A. I just get less hungry. Especially now that my body has adapted to the eating window. I get hungry basically at 10:00 AM every morning because that’s when I normally start eating every day. Other than that I might have some mild hunger in evenings or just before 9:00 AM but it’s just that — mild.

B. When I do get hungry I know it will pass and knowing when I’m eating next makes getting past any hunger waves way easier.

C. It’s not that easy to massively overeat in a shorter feeding window. I mean you can do it — but it’s much harder than it is when you are grazing from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM.

D. My migraines have gone away. I don’t know which of the magical aspects of fasting made this happen but the migraines I used to have to stave off with Excedrin once or twice a week have basically gone away. Love that part.

E. I haven’t had the bouts of melancholy/depression this year that used to come on for a month or so at a time. I just feel better.

I want to note that while I keep my eating window pretty similar most days, I am flexible about it. For instance if I know I am going out to a restaurant that night I’ll usually just hold off longer before I start eating that day. Or some days, like holidays, I’ll just scrap the eating window and pick things up again the next day. I don’t recommend being fanatically strict about the hours. The goal is to find something that is sustainable and fanatical hour watching is not sustainable long term.

3. Quasi-fasting (calorie restriction on certain days)

One form of “intermittent fasting” has people restricting calories to 400-600 per day periodically. I blogged about this some years ago. Some people do this every other day, some recommend it once or twice per week. I tried this back in 2013 and my problem with this approach was I got ravenously hungry when I tried it. In retrospect it was probably from trying to spread the 600 calories out throughout the day (thus never really entering a “fasted state”). Plus for my 600 calories I was eating too many carbs which spiked my insulin and made me way hungrier by the afternoon. If I were to do this again I’d just treat it as an OMAD day with low calories and would probably go straight protein and fat on the 600 calories to avoid insulin spikes. That would make it more of a real fast anyway.

I’ve learned fasting ain’t for everyone

The time-restricted version of fasting in conjunction with calorie counting has worked wonders for me. I’m back to my wedding weight and KJ and I got married back in 1992. But it doesn’t work for everyone. KJ tried time-restricted eating and hated it. Her hunger would get ravenous — especially late at night and it would interfere with sleep for her, which was already an issue. In the next installment I’ll talk about the approach that has worked wonders for her: The Keto Diet.

So I’ve cut like 30 pounds of fat this year. I figured I’d blog about it.

First, the basics: I’m just over 6 feet tall, turned 48 this year, and at the start of the year I was up to 196 pounds. No one considered me fat, but I was sporting a fairly standard 21st century middle-aged-man dad bod. I was convinced that if I could get down to 180 pounds I’d have super low body fat. Turns out, I had WAY more body fat on me than that. But more on that later.

Phase One — Calorie Counting:

First thing I did was I started counting calories in and calories out. Don’t let anyone tell you that doesn’t work — it does. I like to build me a good spreadsheet so I determined that the number of calories it took me to maintain my weight (at the time) was probably about 1800 per day (assuming basically no exercise). This is generally referred to as basal metabolic rate or BMR. You can easily get an estimate for your BMR by googling some online calculators.

So I started recording how many calories I consumed daily. Then when I exercised I’d subtract the extra calories I thought I’d burned from that. For instance, I roughly assumed I burned about 100 calories per mile of walking (again based on basic internet research) so if I went on a three mile walk I’d subtract 300 calories. The cardio machines at the gym give you a calories burned number so that’s easy. And I basically assumed an hour of weight lifting is about 500 calories. You get the gist. My goal wasn’t to be exact because that’s not feasible, but I didn’t want to cheat because that defeats the purpose.

Every day I’d tally things up. If I consumed 1500 calories but lifted weights for any hour at -500 that would be 1000 net calories that day. The assumption I use, again from internet research, was that -3500 calories was roughly one pound of fat. So my initial goal was to get to -35,000 calories which would mean I cut 10 pounds of fat.

Side note: Having tried this on and off in years past I discovered that my biggest problem was under-counting calories. So to offset that, I set my BRM number at 1500 rather than 1800. I figured that would balance out my persistent under-counting problem and it has proved to be effective.

Solid Early Returns

I went at it pretty hard that first month or so, and sure enough, it worked. I was consuming an average of about 1300 calories per day and burning off an average of about 700 per day, putting me at a net of just 600 per day. In less than forty days I was at my -35,000 calories goal. And sure enough, I was tipping the scales at just 184 — 12 pounds lower than when I started. Success! Plus I was actually slowly getting stronger by hitting the weights maybe 2-3 times per week.

I kept on for a few more weeks and pounds kept coming off. By day 50 I was down to 181 pounds and feeling pretty stoked about it. Then came the work trip to New Orleans and I encountered my first hiccup. More on that next post.

But for now I’ll just say counting calories works like a charm for me. At least to lose weight at first. My spreadsheet is crucial to it all though. I’m already in front of my computer all day for work so having that spreadsheet there all the time helps when it comes to recording the calories in and out. Plus I have made a nifty little graph that makes it all super visual and motivating for me.

Counting Calories In

In order to count calories in I ended up eating a ton of frozen foods that first couple of months. I liked the food well enough, it’s mostly easy to microwave, and the exact calorie count is easy to see with those. Same with canned food. For other foods you often have to just google the stuff you’re eating. Occasionally I’d even weigh some stuff but I’m too lazy to do that much. After a while you kind of get a hang of figuring out how many calories you’re taking in. If you cheat the scale (and the tightness of your waistband) won’t lie.

I do a lot less frozen foods now, as I’ll explain later, but those easily calorie-countable items are still useful as part of my program.

What Next?

In follow up posts I’ll go over what I did when I got off track, my experiences with intermittent fasting (aka time-restricted eating), the ketogenic diet, creatine, weight training vs cardio, and more. Stay tuned.

But of course, chime in on the topic in the comments here. I’ve been away from my blog for years so we can make it like old times!

Hey look! I just noticed I still own this blog… nice.

Ok, I knew I still owned NCT. I just haven’t posted here in more than three years. These days I mostly get my online fix by talking BYU sports on Twitter. (See @GeoffJbyu) The thing about rooting for BYU on Twitter is it means I get to argue with Utah Utes fans a lot. Of course arguments in the 140 character format of Twitter mostly consists of taunting and insulting. I get a lot of Ute challengers appearing in my Twitter mentions these days because I’ve developed a bit of a reputation for being highly optimistic about BYU (which infuriates and frustrates many of them to no end) and for being somewhat pugilistic in my responses to Ute antagonists who come after me. My go-to insult with most Ute fans is to call them imbeciles in one form or another. Some variations on that theme have included: moron, dimwit, stupid, dumber than a box of rocks, illiterate, fool, dullard, ignoramus, simpleton, pea brain, numbskull, and knucklehead. Such insults tend to get under their skins, which of course is my goal.

Not sure if I should feel bad about all the online arguing and insulting or not. I normally don’t. Although sometimes I get the feeling the rough-housing has gotten too heated and sort of feel bad when that happens.

Anyhow, in some ways the whole Twitter fighting process is kind of cathartic. I have long been a bit of a fan of evolutionary psychology theories that posit that we have all sorts of instincts that we’re born with as a result of the evolutionary history of humans. (And yes, I do think human evolution can square with a Mormon cosmology just fine with the right assumptions). So I kind of suspect this sort of raw tribal fighting is coded into all of our DNA. It sure seems to come naturally to us all.

If that’s the case, seems to me that the low stakes, almost ritualized sparring associated with this literal Team Blue vs Team Red serves as a useful and largely harmless outlet. It is undoubtedly a lower stakes fight than the ugly political fighting we see between Team Red (conservatives) and Team Blue (liberals) so many other places these days. Likewise, the religious fighting I used to do with anti-Mormons here and elsewhere online seemed to have higher stakes (even if that was just my impression).

I recently saw someone make a prediction for the future of humanity that went something like this: “Unrelenting Tribalism”. I tend to agree. I think tribalism is probably in our DNA. So I’m hoping that getting my tribal warfare fix via low stakes sports team rivalries is actually a useful pressure release valve rather than just an excuse for me to be rude to a bunch of anonymous Ute fans online.

If unrelenting tribalism is in our blood and inevitable, maybe finding a low stakes outlet like a sports team rivalry for it would be good for all of us. Especially if we could then let cooler heads prevail when it comes to higher stakes issues in society.

Just saw a news piece that mentioned a brand spankin’ new group calling themselves “Strangers In Zion”. The group has a fancy new web site and everything. The stated purpose of the group is this:

Strangers In Zion is a grass roots movement for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are requesting to subject themselves to church discipline in solidarity for other wrongfully excommunicated and otherwised [sic] disciplined Latter-day Saints.

Well alrightee then.

Why just fade into inactivity in the church when you can try to leave the with a bang? I guess I can see the appeal on some level.

Of course folks will probably end up surprised by how hard it really is to get excommunicated from this church.

Sigh.

I saw this provocative Slate article today. It was inspired by this recent study. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Overall, the authors found that the relationship between sadism and trolling was the strongest, and that indeed, sadists appear to troll because they find it pleasurable. “Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others,” they wrote. “Sadists just want to have fun … and the Internet is their playground!”

So the basic take away I get from this is that chronic internet trolls are pretty much sadistic psychos. (Seems like an apt description of some of the rabid anti-Mormon trolls I have encountered over the years.)

Anyhow, three cheers for active moderation of comment sections! We may not make trolls cease to exist, but we can at least keep these psycho sadists out of our own blog comment sections with a little effort.

First, here is the BYU-Idaho video that has apparently caused a small stir this week:

It is a video warning about the dangers of pornography addiction. The dangers of pornography addiction are well documented and opposition to pornography is certainly not only a Mormon thing.

So here’s a question for you: How many times did you hear the word “masturbation” used in that video?

If you answered “none times” that means you are brighter than numerous writers and bloggers across the country who railed against what they called an “anti-masturbation” video.  Here are some of the headlines from these clowns:

The Daily Beast: “BYU to Undergrads: Self-Love Is A Battlefield — The Mormon university is urging its students to narc on chronic masturbators, whose fight against self-pleasure is like rescuing a fallen soldier during war.”

The Stir: “College Wages ‘War’ on Masturbation With Video That Offends Soldiers”

The Daily Caller: “War-themed BYU video implores students to rat out masturbating roommates”

Look, I realize that people who view porn often masturbate too. But this particular video is not about masturbation. How is that hard to comprehend?

I am a little baffled by these stories. They actually link to the video and write entire posts saying it is about masturbation when it never even broaches the topic of masturbation. Is this just a copycat situation from writers not bright enough to comprehend the video? Were these writers too lazy to actually watch it? Or is the concept that pornography addiction itself might be a bad thing so foreign to these writers that they miss it entirely?

At any rate, the ridiculousness of the articles irritated me enough to get me to post about it. Feel free to sound off in the comments.

Has anyone seen this video before? It is a young entrepreneur pitching her line of modest women’s swimwear. She obviously has a financial incentive here but her arguments are provocative and sound pretty compelling to me. She cites studies that claim that the more skin women show the less the male brain tends to see them as people. Some sort on evolutionary instinct thing I would guess. Check it out:

So what do you think? Do you find her arguments persuasive? (See her business site here: http://www.reyswimwear.com/)

A little more than a month ago I came across a BBC program on the subject of fasting. You can watch the whole thing here.

If you don’t have a whole hour to watch I recommend picking up around the 36 minute mark where they start discussing intermittent fasting, or alternate day fasting. The basic concept is to alternate between fasting days and “feasting” days. A fast day consists of 400-500 calories for women or 500-600 calories for men. (You are encouraged to drink all the water you want on fast days). On the feed/feast days you eat whatever you want.

What are purported benefits of alternate day fasting? All sorts of things according to the researchers interviewed. Here are some mentioned in the documentary:

1. Weight loss. It turns out that people doing this intermittent fasting don’t normally eat double their daily recommended calories on feed days. They are more likely to eat about 110% of recommended caloric intake so there is a net calorie deficit every week and that means steady weight loss.
2. Reduced blood sugar levels. Warding off diabetes is always a good thing, right?
3. Reduced levels of triglycerides, bad cholesterol, and blood pressure. They say this is a good thing. Reportedly reduces risk of heart disease and whatnot.
4. Improved brain function. Mice on intermittent fasting remain mentally sharp far longer than the mice that were fed well daily. The theory is that humans see similar benefits. Fasting reportedly causes brains to grow new brain cells. Researchers interviewed for the piece think that this is an evolutionary survival mechanism; as we fast our brains quickly get stronger to give us better odds of wrangling up some food to stay alive. (I’ve been told that other studies indicate fasting has been shown to improve student test scores as well.)

(more…)

I just saw an article by Joanna Brooks titled “I Died Inside”. Here is the first paragraph:

Emmett C. is a twenty year-old community college student in the Pacific Northwest. Last year, he applied to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a religious obligation he had long prepared for and looked forward to fulfilling. But in the course of preparing his missionary application, Emmett came out to his local LDS Church leaders—not as a gay man, but as a straight Mormon who believes that LGBT people are equal in the sight of God and should treated the same as straight members of the LDS Church. And on these grounds, he was told that he would not be permitted to serve.

Nonsense.

If Emmett was told he couldn’t serve a mission due to his views on the LGBT topic, I can guarantee that it was not for him believing “that LGBT people are equal in the sight of God and should treated the same as straight members of the LDS Church”. How do I know this? Because the church openly teaches that LGBT members are equal in the sight of God and should be treated the same as all other members. That includes holding all Mormons to the exact same Law of Chastity. The Mormon Law of Chastity states we should have no sexual contact with anyone besides our opposite-sex, legal spouse.

It is more likely that Emmett was advocating that LGBT members should not be treated the same as straight members and should not have to follow the Law of Chastity as it currently stands. Perhaps he was advocating for the Law of Chastity to be amended to give the green light to gay sex (within gay marriages) or something.

I’m sure Ms. Brooks meant well but I find her attempts at spin in that opening paragraph irritating and counter-productive. If you want to lobby for gay sex (within gay marriage) being permitted in the Mormon Law of Chastity just say so. At least we’ll be talking about the actual subject rather that completely dancing around it.

I just read an article/post by the always interesting and intelligent Kristine Haglund over at a site called ReligionAndPolitics.org. Kristine’s post is titled “Why Mormon Men Love “Church Ball” and Are Scared of Homosexuality“. Sounded interesting. And the article is interesting. But I have some questions and quibbles with it so I figured this would be a good place to bring them up.

1. Is being kind really “coded feminine”? I see this idea passed around as if it were some self evident fact but it just isn’t. Mormonism, like many other religions, teaches men (and women) to have self discipline, bridle our passions, and be generally good and productive members of our families, communities, and overall societies. I don’t really see what is particularly feminine about that.

2. Church ball is not really all that different than pick up ball anywhere else. Most church ball happens on weekdays either before work or after weekday activities. The games are pretty similar to any pickup hoops game you might get into at the local gym or YMCA. The fact is that men at church ball tend to be significantly less likely to get into fights or start dropping F-Bombs than the guys at the local gym. But perhaps the church ball gets its reputation because expectations for Mormons are extremely high, and yet those blowups, while rare, are not completely absent in church ball.

Also, we rarely bro-hug after ball. Who wants to hug some sweaty bro?

3. I’m not sure Mormon men cry more easily than any other men. Most men love their families intensely and given the proper circumstances would get choked up discussing them. I think Mormon culture just gives men a platform and reason to publicly discuss their loved ones more often than most cultures.

4. Why is effeminate being treated as interchangeable with gay in this conversation? Aren’t there a lot of non-effeminate men who are sexually attracted to other men and a lot of effeminate men who are only sexually attracted to women? Seems to me that treating these two as interchangeable further clouds an already cloudy issue.

(Anyone remember Dana Carvey’s “Lyle, the effeminate heterosexual“? (Warning: PG-13))

5. Mostly, the dots in your post just don’t connect for me. What exactly are you saying? It seems to me that you are implying that because there is a strong fraternal aspect to Mormon culture, that makes Mormon men “scared of homosexuality”. But there are lots of groups that have similar strong fraternal aspects — the military, firefighters, police officers, male sports teams, and so on. In my experience there is nothing about Mormonism that makes Mormon men more “scared of homosexuality” than anyone else. In fact in my experience on sports teams, Mormon men tend to be a lot less mean about the subject than others.

I guess the real problem I see is there is nothing in the article that indicates that there is any significant causal relationship between being a Mormon man and being “scared of homosexuality”.

What say you all?