dtougas

This link has everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about what fuel you can burn in an alcohol stove: http://zenstoves.net/Fuels.htm#Alcohol

I am a big fan of alcohol stoves. They are simple, reliable, and can be really inexpensive, especially if you are willing to make your own. There are tons of plans online for various versions made out of all manner of soda cans and the like. Many people who do long thru-hikes (i.e. the Appalachian trail) use a simple home-made alcohol stove. If you don't feel confident making your own, there are several different brands of alcohol stoves on the market, one of my favorites being the sets (including stove, stand, windscreen, and pot) sold by Clikstand (http://www.clikstand.com). If you want any more info, let me know, I would be glad to help out in any way I can. If you haven't been there already, a great resource is the forums on backpackinglight.com.

For those of you who are into backpacking and hiking and are looking for some great trail food recipes, I am starting to compile a list on my website. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or recipes that you would like to share that would work for this kind of thing please let me know! We only have two recipes posted at the moment, but more are forthcoming as we get time to put them up. Also, they are gluten-free, which might be beneficial to some out there! The URL is here: http://www.adventureinprogress.com/backcountry-recipes

Hello veggiechik, welcome. For good information on how a vegan diet can help a whole bunch of different conditions, I love to point people to this page: http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/implications.html. It touches on almost everything, including IBS. Probably stuff you already know, but still good to read through. My wife and I have just started teaching a course which focuses on using a vegan diet to cure health issues. Sometimes the process of figuring out a health issue can involve quite a bit of sleuth work, but it's well worth it in the end. I was able to cure my eczema problems I had by moving to a vegan diet, as well as fine tuning my food preferences and our family's use of houshold products (detergents, etc.). I hope you get it figured out! If you need any assistance with this process, please ask, I love to help people work through this kind of stuff.

The results I get from mybodycomp.com are 9.45% and from Covert Bailey's formula, I get 11.8%. I know which one I like better sirdle, when you go to mybodycomp.com, login, click on "My Body", you should see a list of saved reports. Click on one of them to see your body composition. Does that work for you? I didn't have to pay anything to get this basic service for free. I would have to pay for anything else though...

Measuring with with a cloth tape is supposed to be very accurate (depending on the formula you use, and there are lots to choose from). Some formulas can be almost just as accurate as having it done in water. The mybodycomp.com formula measures all kinds of places on your body. Some of the areas measured are your wrist, ankle, and knee, which are used in the formula to determine the size and weight of your skeletal structure. When they take all those measurements together, along with your height and weight, they get a number for how dense your body is. The density is what determines how much fat you have. sirdle, I would be very interested in seeing the formula you have, and try it out. Would you mind posting it? I would like to find some formula that was reasonably accurate that I could do own without requiring a website.

A great site for measuring your body fat is http://www.mybodycomp.com. It's free, and all you need is a tape measure.

I got 1:37... and that killed!!! Ouch!

This one is by far my favorite, when he was a little younger... http://www.cbass.com/IMAGES/BB-C-abs.gif

Hey, A site you might be interested in looking at is this one: http://www.cbass.com This is Clarence Bass' site. This site has tons of great articles on how to balance weights and cardio to maximize the benifits of your time spent working out. I also bought a couple of his books, and I really like those too.

I eat a very low fat vegan diet. I am typically around the 8-10% fat range, although I do splurge from time to time. These are my thoughts based on my experience. - I eat 6 meals a day, eating every 2 - 3 hours. - I try to make them about equal quantity to keep blood sugar regulated. - If I get hungry before I eat, it is usually too late, and I pig out, so the trick for me has been to eat before I am hungry. - It takes a lot of planning and patience to pack food in advance of being away from home (I work at home too). I always pack a snack whenever I go out just in case. I also read somewhere that a good trick is to keep a stash of healthy snacks in the car, just in case. Dried fruit are good for this. - I don't know if you eat whole grains or not, but I find that the less refined the food, the longer it sustains me at the same calorie level. I think the fiber helps to slow the release of carbohydrates into your system, making them last longer. - Beans are also really good at packing in calories, plus all the fiber also makes them sustain your energy longer. - Fruit juice and dried fruit can also help to increase calories, but be careful, it is really easy to eat too much. Don't know if this helps or not, but it has been working good for me.

Ok, I know I said I was done... Well, but let me say this. I have had a hard time understanding the stance of ethical vegans for this reason. All of the impressions I have gotten from ethical vegans in the past has left me with the impression that under no circumstances can animal products be eaten as food. Now, I am hearing that there may be unusual cirumstances where it may be acceptable, i.e. "a struggle to survive". This is good, and I really appreciate an ethical vegan is willing to say it, because honestly, you are the first one that I have heard say that. I started being a vegan for health reasons, and I now also have many ethical reasons for being a vegan (which at this point revolve largley around the environmental, human impacts, and animal cruelty).

So, then, what you are suggesting, is that if lions were capable of making moral decisions, then they would choose not to eat meat? They would die, because their bodies are designed to eat meat. And if frogs had wings, the wouldn't bump their asses on the ground. Come on, guy. Even ignoring the hypothetical, that's a poor argument. Actually, what I thought was a poor argument was the fact that compassionategirl suggested that because animals could not make moral decisions, they killed. The point I was trying to make is that it is not always about making moral decisions, but about the design of nature. I couldn't agree more. Which is precisely why I specified "people that I come into contact with". Yes, there are people who live in climates that won't support plant life. The Inuits are a prime example; their diet is almost completely animal-based. Are they immoral? Not in my opinion. (And I'll leave it at that.) Ok, now I feel bit better. Someone has admitted that there might be a slight possibility that humans eating animals is not necessarily always an evil thing. I am going to sign off this discussion now. I think I have done enough damage to the "first impressions" the ethical vegans are getting of me . Maybe I should change my avatar, I think it is probably giving the wrong idea...

So, then, what you are suggesting, is that if lions were capable of making moral decisions, then they would choose not to eat meat? They would die, because their bodies are designed to eat meat. There are people on this planet who really don't have much choice. Take people who live in extreme climates, for example. I am not going to judge them and say that because they have to hunt some animals to be able to survive the winter, that they are somehow immoral. They have had no choice for centuries. Just because you have the privilege to live in a country where you can have anything you want, and can make the choice to live every day of your life as a vegan, does not mean that someone else who does not have that privelege is living a life of sin. I think that there is a certain design to nature, and some of that design involves creatures killing and eating meat. That may not be pleasant to think about, but I beleive it is true. I don't think that there are always moral issues at stake. I think the moral issues come into play when we look at cruelty, and exploitation, and excess and how it negatively affects the world around us. I may come across as a meat lover, but I am not, by far.

Animals kill each other. Therefore, animals are evil?