I'm sure you heard the old news by now about Paula Deen. What a shock. Eating crap her whole life and gets diabetes in her 60's.

Paula, and she defended herself and her cooking by saying things like "I'm not your doctor" and "practice moderation".

Let me lay out exactly what's wrong with that attitude and exactly what's wrong with our society when it comes to food.

1. We are surrounded by bad, but convenient food options. Try to eat healthy on the road.
2. We are all weak. You, me, everyone.
3. Food is like a drug. You get pleasure from eating. Bite into a doughnut. Slurp that coffee with cream and sugar. In your brain, the endorphins explode with delight.
4. Most chefs at any major restaurant can easily tell you that they slather food with butter, salt and sugar. They spike food to make it even more delicious.
5. Most of the processed foods in the worlds have far too much sugar and salt.

So the problem is - we are a trapped society, unless YOU make your own meals. The problem with making your own meals is time. Yes, some meals can be made quickly. But even last night when I decided i'd like to just have a steak & baked sweet potato, it still took me 90 minutes to get it completed. I didn't have steak on hand - so I had to walk to Garden of Eden to buy it fresh, along with the sweet potato. I baked the sweet potato at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. The steak was fast, about 5 minutes cook time, and another 10 minutes of 'rest' before I eat it (let the juices settle).

Now that i'm doing the paleo diet, i'm not going to turn into some born again diet freak shouting from the rooftops that we should not eat breads, pasta, sugars. I love bread. I love pasta. I do plan to eat them again. But i'd like to be a lot more moderate, in the future, about how I do this.

I was at work the other day and someone was telling me how they 'eat in moderation', but 'mostly healthy' and they 'hit the gym all the time'. Meanwhile this was clearly someone overweight. I have no doubt if this person kept a food journal they would quickly realize that they were not eating in moderation. Here's the new rule for eating in moderation: "You get three 'cheat meals' a week". That's it. So imagine you eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, 7 days a week, or 21 'meals'. You can eat poorly on only three of those. I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that anyone who says "I eat in moderation" cheats at least 8-10 times. Or, at the very least, have no concept of portion sizes or any concept of what is really healthy. They eat Yoplait yogurt and think it's healthy, while they are guzzling down 30 grams of sugar each serving. Do you know how many grams are in a teaspoon? It's 4. 30 grams is 7.5 teaspoons of sugar. Think about that before you have a yogurt for breakfast and think you are eating "healthy".

Also, It drives me crazy to walk by the gym and watch someone on a treadmill or stationary bike or cross trainer with a "US Weekly" magazine and doing some kind of easy going "la la la la" workout thinking they are just burning away the calories from yesterday's dinner of salad, chicken and 1/2 cup of ranch dressing (*on the side!).

You want to lose weight, it's the EASIEST THING ON THE PLANET TO DO. You don't need special diets. You don't need Weight Watchers. You don't need Nutrisystem. You don't need shakes. You don't need Atkins or Paleo. No special pills. No exotic drugs or fruits that are claiming to be a "breakthrough of science". If you use steroids or HGH, you are a fucking loser and you know it (especially if you are a trainer).

You need to do two things:

1. Eat healthy. Real foods - meat, vegetables, fruit (keeping sugars here in check). No refined sugar. No breads. No pasta. Trust me, you can live without them.
2. Exercise. I don't care if it's Crossfit, or whatever, you need whatever gets your heart beating and you are breaking a sweat. You need to do this more than 3 times a week. At least 4 if not more. You don't need to do it more than 30 minutes. Even if you are out there, jogging, for 20 minutes which breaks a sweat that is a million times better than on a stationary bike for 1 hour pedaling at 2 mph.

That's it. Not that hard. Am I God's gift to exercise? Nope. I'm like anyone else. I'm weak. I said this earlier. But we all know what we need to do, right? I'm trying to do something different and see if I get results.

So what's stopping you?

What has surprised me most after a week of eating Paleo, is how my food cravings have been fairly low. I fully expected to be "dying" for cookies or candy or cupcakes by now, and really it's been a non-issue. Also I have found this diet to be fairly easy, thanks to Robb Wolf's book The Paleo Solution.

It already has a 30 day mealplan in the book. So I have been following it nearly to the letter. I haven't had any refined sugar. No wheat. No grains. No rice. No dairy.

So far it has been smooth sailing.

My Crossfit workouts haven't dramatically changed. I still get gassed real fast like I used to. I am hoping that after a week on real food that I see faster gains. I went to class five times last week, and plan to go five times this week, whereas in the past I usually went 3-4 times a week to Crossfit.

What has surprised me is how I tell people what i'm doing and the (mostly) negative reactions to it. You try to explain to people the plan and there's a tremendous amount of resistance. No bread? Not even wheat? No cheese??

Listening to people fret over the idea of not being able to eat their favorite foods anymore sort of reminded me when I quit smoking cigarettes. I remember when I quit smoking, how "drinking wouldn't be the same", "watching football wouldn't be the same", "a cigarette after a meal wouldn't be the same".

But once I quit, you got used to it.

Whatever the same pleasure receptors we have in our head for cigarettes must be tied to food. No doubt. That's why it's so hard to "diet". Plus if you look at most everything out there - there is sugar in everything. Or salt. The goal of the food industry is to pack sugar and salt and spike food like Marlboro spiked nicotine into cigarettes. It makes it really hard to quit, doesn't it?

I weighed myself yesterday. Started at 221 last week. I'm down to 218. 3 pounds in a week. Usually that's water weight. I don't have a goal for my weight, to be honest. I mean people put far too much stock into their weight. I'm just concerned about my mid-section, around my hips, stomach which seemed to retain the majority of my weight. Plus, I have zero interest in just losing weight if it involves losing muscle too. I took a 'before' picture with my camera (shirt off!) and will post that at the end of the 6 weeks.

My only issue with this diet is ONE thing. No alcohol. It's not about drinking, but it is about being social. I had two events to attend last weekend, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. I didn't attend either. It's not fun being the sober guy in a bar when everyone else is drinking. And I didn't want the temptation to "just have one".

Also, coming up with idea to do things with your friends that doesn't involve drinking is a bit of a challenge. Movies? Hang out and watch TV? I gotta start thinking about things I can do on the weekend besides hanging out with Rocco or this is going to be a looooong five more weeks.

1. Salmon with pecans and rosemary.
Grab a filet of salmon, coat a baking pan with coconut oil, top the salmon with pecans, rosemary and some sea salt, cook at 350 for 12 minutes. Fan-tastic. I'm not a fishy-fish guy and normally do NOT eat salmon, but this was the bomb. Simple to make and fast!

2. Burgers
There are a billion burger recipies out there. I found one and it converted me from allrecipes.com Chris' Bay Burger:
1 pound ground beef, 1 tsp basil, 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 1/2 tsp salt, pepper - cooked in olive oil on the stove (a grill would be perfect, of course) - left off the buns, just grabbed onion & tomato and wrapped it up in red leaf lettuce.

I joined Crossfit last year, and I found the gym revolutionary. I have tried to convince my friends and family about it, and most people aren't interested. Each have their own reasons, or routines and don't want to rock their proverbial boat they are in.

I, on the other hand, constantly like to try new things & explore new ways of doing things.

My gains at Crossfit have been...OK. I tried to stick to my "Old Diet" while at Crossfit, but was doing it Monday thru Friday 100% clean, but then Saturday & Sunday taking "breaks". It worked, but I found my energy and gains at Crossfit were less than optimal to what I was expecting. I still can barely do pullups, it's my weakest exercise. I got better at other areas, like box jumps. But still felt like I wasn't getting stronger like I should be.

Often, I kept hearing from the Crossfitters about doing the "Paleo Diet". For a long time I just kept thinking "I know how to eat clean. 5 meals a day. Protein/Complex Carbs/Veg, no sugars, dairy, breads, pasta..." I didn't want to change.

But I kept reading about others doing the Paleo Diet and having remarkable results while doing Crossfit. I was intrigued. Curious. I'm not a big fan of "fad diets". I am more of a fan of being smart about what you eat. Limiting my bad food intake. Staying away from sweets and sugars.

The problem? It's not really working well enough.

I decided that it's a new year, a new diet, and going to eat, starting on Monday 100% Paleo for 7 days a week.

What is the Paleo Diet? You can read more about it here. In the most basic description, you just want to eat food that we, as humans, were meant to eat before the development of agriculture. We should eat Woolly mammoth and Sabretooth Tiger steak? Well, no - pro-Paleo advocates claim that genetically our bodies are virtually the same as they were at the end of the Paleolithic era some 20,000 years ago - and have not adapted to agrarian diets. We see plenty of people we know who are lactose tolerant, gluten allergies, peanut allergies or other autoimmune issues.

Here's what the diet basically details:

1. You can eat foods that can be hunted and fished, such as meat (steak, chicken, lamb, pork) and seafood (fish, shellfish, etc), and can be gathered, such as vegetables (including mushrooms), fruits, eggs, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. All foods may be cooked, without restrictions.
2. Foods excluded from the diet, mainly grains, legumes (e.g. beans and peanuts), dairy products, salt, refined sugar and processed oils, although some advocates consider the use of oils with low omega-6/omega-3 ratios, such as olive oil and canola oil, to be healthy and advisable.
3. You are advised to drink mainly water, and some advocates recommend tea as a healthy drink, but alcoholic and fermented beverages are restricted from the diet.

So it appears that not only will I be on the diet for 45 days, but also on the wagon for 45 days. This will be...interesting. Anyone want to take odds on how long I last? I give myself about 21 days before I snap. But, with the Crossfit Challenge there is a $100 buy in. If I can stay on the diet for all 45 days, I will get $50 back. If I win the challenge, I win everything in the pot - more info on the Crossfit Hoboken website.

Suffice to say, I may be staying away from bars for the next 45 days. Sorry in advance if I am lame.

I have put in my order with FreshDirect yesterday, and using a diet plan from Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution".

I certainly will keep you updated here on my progress.

We, as a society, are selfish.

That's it. That's the answer. Each and every one of us, are basically selfish. Being selfish morphs into many forms and examples. One of the forms that being selfish takes is lack of consideration. Here's some examples of lack of consideration:

1. How many times have you held open a door for someone? Or said "Thank You". Or said "God Bless You" when they sneeze. Then get stone cold silence from the person you were considerate towards?

2. Stand by the PATH train exit and watch how many people blatantly disregard the walk signal and walk directly into traffic. I'm not talking about your basic jaywalking (which I do, too), when the signal is red and there are no cars. I'm talking about pedestrians who walk directly into traffic and expect cars to stop for them. Then glare at the cars for nearly hitting THEM!

3. Umbrellas. Walk down the street on a rainy day. How many assholes have the golf umbrellas which can fit about 4 people under it. They walk on the sidewalk, without a care in the world, and hit people with the edges of their umbrella - and glare at the people they hit like it is THEIR fault.

4. Double parked cars, cars parked on sidewalks, cars parked in yellow zones or on corners. Even Google Maps shows cars double parked outside of Piccolo's.

You ask anyone why they do it - and it's always "someone else's fault".

If someone runs a red light, it wasn't their fault, it was because everyone else is driving too slow.

If someone double parks, it wasn't their fault -- there's no parking in town!

If someone gets a parking ticket it wasn't their fault -- it's City Hall's fault for the signs not being easily understood, even though they have been in place for 10 years.

Selfish. That's the problem. Lots of my friends have gotten married or are getting married, a great example of selfishness are seen how people adhere or disregard the traditions of marriage, depending on how it helps them.

For example, who pays for marriage?

Traditionally it was the bride's family who paid for that. How often do you see the brides splitting that cost?

Who pays for the wedding ring?

Traditionally that would be the groom. How often do you see the brides splitting that cost?

Who takes on the last name of the groom?

Traditionally brides take the grooms last name. It's symbolic. Selfless. Showing that the bride is joining the groom's family.

Now what do you see today when people get married? Brides want the groom's family to split the wedding costs & they want to keep their last names - but the groom still pays $10,000+ for a wedding ring, a tradition they like to keep in place.

Lets look at American politics.

Taxes are a big issue right now. No one wants to pay taxes. But everyone wants healthcare. Everyone wants jobs. Everyone wants social security. Everyone wants the other guy to pay for it.

Perfect example is healthcare. You have people out there who are actors or artists, and they complain that they aren't getting healthcare. But they aren't paying their fair share into taxes. They say that they "deserve healthcare - Canada or Europe does it!!"

Have you looked at Greece or Italy lately? They are beyond broke. The rest of the EU is getting dragged down because of the selfishness of their people.

Is it being selfish to ask for healthcare? No.

But it is selfish to ask for healthcare and not pay into it. I personally think every TAXPAYER should get healthcare. Isn't that fair? You pay taxes, you get something in return.

You defend our country in the Armed Forces - you get healthcare for life.

You are a senior citizen who paid taxes their whole life - you get healthcare until you die.

You are an illegal immigrant who is getting paid in cash illegally? YOU DON'T GET HEALTHCARE.

You are a "staving artist" living in SoHo who thinks they are too good to get a menial job? YOU DON'T GET HEALTHCARE.

They are the selfish ones. Taking something without giving back. To me, healthcare should be universal for everyone who is paying (or had paid) into the system. Citizens of America, with the only exemption for those in religious services.

How is this different than, say a generation ago?

Families were brought up more concerned about their neighbors than themselves. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country. Parents taught their kids right and wrong. There was 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Not "achievement ribbons" for every child. Every kid isn't going to be an astronaut or a lawyer or Michael Jordan. You can't coddle kids, tell them that they are all special, and that they can never do wrong. What you get is exactly what's wrong today: a generation of kids who are entitled brats.

A generation ago words like "Please, Thank You, Excuse Me, Sir/Ma'am" were taught to children by their parents, not something kids said while rolling their eyes. How many times are you on a crowded subway and someone blasts through the door snarling: "EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!" because YOU are in THEIR way.

Remember a key term: It's always the other person's fault.

You can't find a job? It's someone else's fault.

You can't pay your loans? It's the credit card companies fault for making it too easy to apply.

You can't pay your mortgage? It's the governments fault you put 0% down and paid for a home you couldn't afford on your $60,000 salary.

You can't pay your student loans? It's Bush's fault for destroying the economy so I couldn't graduate with a BA in Rhetoric and make $250,000 a year starting salary at a dot com.

It's always someone else's fault. No one is allowed to take ownership of their actions. Ever. This goes back to the entitlement. Me first. I'm special. It's not about you, its only about me. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

When lunch rolled around, I had lots of choices and figured i'd try out Marty O'Briens. Over the last two weeks I have been out walking Rocco and seen lots of crowds at the bar for dinner service. I have looked over the menu and it seems like a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

Now, I have written it once and I will write it a thousand times but here's my issues with blogs who write their so-called reviews of new restaurants:

1. Every restaurants will put on their "good face" for the first three months. The owners usually are on hand daily and are watching to make sure everything is going well. You can really tell how good a restaurant is after a few months if people are coming back again and again.

2. People write "one and done" reviews. I personally think a restaurant should be attended at least three times before someone writes an official review. I write "first impressions" just for fun, but when I sit down to write something concrete I do my homework on the place.

3. The worst culprits are so-called-reviewers who are also paid by the establishment for advertising. I know a few people in Hoboken who blatantly write glowing reviews of their clients restaurants and they have no shame. It's sad. There should be people who have some kind of integrity when writing reviews to state that they have been compensated with a free meal.

Anyhow, i'm sure aside from my three rules you wonder - what did I think?

Lets talk first about what I liked. I love what they have done to the old Buskers. I like their waiters uniforms which are black shirt with black tie. Very "mob" like Italian sharp look. They have a standard beer menu, with a few specials. They have a decent wine-by-the-glass list, which is nearly unheard of at downtown restaurants aside from Brass Rail. Lots of outdoor seating, and very "dog-friendly" attitude by the restaurant to bring your pooch out to eat, outside too. The bartender Chris who served me was very cool, and had a great personality - which I think is more critical than people know for a success of a restaurant or bar. People come BACK to see bartenders that they like. Chris heard it was my first time there, and my first beer was on the house.

I ordered Buffalo chicken wings & the "Philly" cheesesteak.

The wings were good. Not great. Good. I'd order them again. They had a decent buffalo sauce, with just a light bit of spice and not like someone slathered on Frank's Hot Sauce and called them buffalo wings.

The Philly cheesesteak was below average. The roll was fantastic. Great roll. Big pluses there. But the steak had some kind of brown gravy with it...and the cheese looked like two slices of deli-style yellow American cheese slapped on top. To the owners of M.O.B.:

I am available as a consultant to fix your cheesesteak dilemma. Please email me at philly2hoboken@yahoo.com - it's really not THAT hard to make a good steak, especially that your rolls are so damned good. You don't need "whiz", just get provolone cheese instead of whatever you were using and give the steak more than just two slices. The meat itself was actually fine, but the brown gravy-like substance threw me off. I mean if you didn't call it a Philly cheesesteak, and called it Marty's Steak Sandwich, and told me that i'd get some kind of gravy in there I wouldn't have ordered it. I was secretly hoping that someone in Hoboken finally learned how to make a good steak, like Carl's makes in the city.

But one bad steak won't stop me from going back and trying again. I mean, it was their new "lunch" menu, so i'd like to try dinner one night. The cost of the lunch wasn't terrible, especially that I was comp'd a beer - it was $21 with a $6 tip - $27 total. I'll be back to try some more of the food, especially that I love wine and always look for a place on Sunday nights to replace my lost long love, Court Street - it's just too far to walk 11 blocks now, and I tried a few dinners at Clam Broth House, but CBH is just too expensive for the kind of food they are serving. I'd rather save my $60 and eat somewhere in the city like Raoul's!

I'd say that Marty O'Brien's is off to a good start, but I remember when Buskers was hot out of the gate, and fizzled. I guess I better go out there and try it a few more times before passing judgement.