Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

[suomalainen]

I dunno. It's not a method of weight loss, it's just a fact of thermodynamics. I see the statement of "if calories in > calories out, you will gain weight, and vice versa" is just a restatement of the laws of physics as applied to "living organisms". Your body can't choose to ignore the physics of energy intake / expenditure any more than it can ignore the physics of gravity or blunt force trauma. Some may say "well, that's fine and all but the statement doesn't therefore contain any useful information", and fair enough. My claim that it's useful is limited to the idea that it's useful to me.

The second step in analyzing why someone didn't lose weight when they say they "tried calories in / calories out and it didn't work for me" is not to examine why they defied the laws of physics, but to examine the body systems / mechanisms involved in taking calories in or expending calories out. On the in side, perhaps the body's hunger messaging mechanisms proved too much in relation to whatever method (diet) was tried. Perhaps the method wasn't sustainable for the person's dietary preferences, be they taste or cost or whatever. I did keto for 3 or 4 months and lost something like 20 pounds, but I gained it all back when I stopped keto because I found the diet too boring, and I just couldn't do it any more. In other words, the feelings generated by the method(s) proved "impossible" to manage.

On the out side, perhaps the body reacts to lower food intake and/or increased energy requirements of the attempted method (movement) by feeling lethargic or tired. The body is trying to get you to move less through various hormonal mechanisms. Perhaps a certain level of movement, be it non-exercise like walking or exercise like weights or cardio, is beyond what a body's preferences are. This may or may not be tied into short term mechanisms that can be changed, or they may or may not be tied into long term mechanisms / dna-coded preferences that cannot be changed.

To me, this distinction is very important. It removed what was, to me, a mystification of the process. Now, I'm able to see that it's not that I'm doing it "wrong" by not tapping into some mystical method that would "trick" the body into losing weight or whatever. It's just that the energy equation has been imbalanced in the wrong direction. Now, the focus is on my feelings. How do I address my feelings of hunger? How do I address my cravings for certain foods the consumption of which I know I can't easily control? How do I address my feelings of lethargy and "I don't want to go exercise?" These are much more real and addressable questions than the hocus pocus nutrition and exercise bullshit I've been sold for decades. And I know that I can do things even if I don't feel like doing them. The question is how long can I muscle through those feelings and would such an approach be sustainable? The answer is probably not. So I need to find ways to either avoid them or manage them or both in a way that's sustainable to me. YMWV since your dietary and movement preferences vary from mine.

EDIT: and I use the word "diet" here loosely and broadly to include all methods used to induce caloric restriction, be it food-group-defined diets from keto to vegan to mediterranean, etc. or time-defined diets like intermittent fasting and its various iterations or volumetric restriction like gastric bypass surgery or whatever else may be out there that I haven't taken notice of. I guess I'd loop ozempic into the mix too, as it's a hormonal intervention that makes you feel less hungry and thereby induces lower caloric intake.

[7Wannabe5]

I used to be able to construct a spread-sheet, multiply my body-weight in lbs. X 12, and count kcals in food/out overt exercise, and my weight would drop in almost exact alignment. These-a-days, I am struggling to make this previously successful tactic work for me. Likely due to the fact that my basal/background metabolism has greatly reduced due to age/menopause/inactivity-due-to-being-ill-with-Crohn's disease/loss of muscle. Possibly due to side-effects of the drug I am currently taking for Crohn's disease. Therefore, there do exist situations in which it might be advisable to focus on gaining strength/muscle/vigor towards increasing basal/background metabolism prior or in priority to attempting to achieve kcals-in/kcals-out fat loss. Also, the quality of the food you eat, in terms of the amount of fiber included in your diet will alter the kcals in calculation for the same reason that taking laxatives "works" for anorexics. Strong diuretics, such as spironolactone will often result in weight loss beyond just the water lost. Prednisone like drugs will typically result in weight gain. Similarly, ingesting caffeine will tend towards raising your basal metabolism. Thermodynamics are a given, but your digestive system is not a sealed laboratory calorimeter.

[suomalainen]

Agreed. I'm not suggesting that counting calories as a method works for the various vagaries you noted, in addition to labels just plain not being accurate. It's just been helpful for me to focus on the specifics of the inputs into the calories in (or useful calories absorbed, if you prefer) side of the equation and the specifics of the inputs into the calories out side of the equation. And then further as to the mechanisms of the various inputs to the extent some of those can be teased out, i.e., do spiro and prednisone impact hunger? or perhaps metabolism making one run hot / cold? or jitteriness vs lethargy? or other mechanism? This is helpful to me because it has explanatory power whereas before the stuff I was exposed to (sold) was hand-waving magic (trust me and also give me money) with no logic or explanatory power. As you may have guessed, I like to be able to understand how things work, even if at a basic level. I don't need to be a phd to understand the basics of food ingestion -> digestion into usable glucose -> oxidation -> exhalation (and urination). And it's been interesting to start learning the layers / complexities on top of that. The body is truly an amazing machine.

Also, agreed as to your and @ego's point as well that diets can be optimized for different desired results. Weight/muscle gain requires a different diet than weight/fat loss requires a different diet than pregnancy requires a different diet than athletic competition requires a different diet than sedentary lifestyle requires a different diet than [insert value here] and so on.

[2Birds1Stone]

Reading your last update gives me the warm and fuzzies. Glad that my ramblings over the years have helped folks in some way.

Now, onto the discussion around diet, training, and hoopla.

I 90% agree with you, and I've both walked the walk (going from morbidly obese to competing at a high level in drug free BBing) and worked in this field for ~5 years helping hundreds of individuals manipulate body composition for sports, physique competitions and general health and well being.

The #1 nutrition plan is the one that you're going to stick to.......calorie is king.....but there are some serious caveats that many people don't understand which can lead to some misunderstanding, whether about their own lack of progress, or trying to correlate changes they make in their nutrition/activity levels and perceived results.

The first one being, weight loss and fat loss are not the same thing. If you take an untrained individual and they suddenly start resistance training correctly they can and will gain muscle (and lean body mass*) while potentially losing fat.

*there's even a difference between muscle and lean body mass! When you're training properly and your nutrition is on point, you're going to hold more glycogen and water in the right places....meaning you muscle will be fuller than someone who is not training, but this isn't actual muscle tissue gain.

So someone who starts cutting calories but training properly, could potentially lose fat, gain muscle, and not see much or any progress on the scale. The opposite is true as well.....

Weight can fluctuate dramatically based on so many factors besides caloric intake, including sodium levels, inflammation, stress from training, fiber intake, food volume, etc.

The human body is EXTREMELY adaptable. If you take a 300 lb male who is sitting in front of the couch all day, and get them walking 10k steps a day, that alone could be the catalyst to get the weight falling off of them, as someone that size would burn a serious amount of calories by walking 5 miles. There are diminishing returns on any type of cario/training, at least from a calorie burning standpoint. As you walk more, and lose weight, you get a lot more efficient at it, eventually you may need to walk 30k steps a day to burn the same amount of calories as you initially burned from 10k steps a day.

This is why a variety of movement is important, it keeps the body from adapting too quickly and also provides a more balanced stress level on all of your joints, muscles, connective tissue etc.

There are metabolic conditions, medications, health conditions, etc that can and do lead to some wonky data when it comes to tracking calories/exercise vs. weight and body fat levels.....this post isn't trying to touch on all of them.

So, to surmise***......diet is key, calorie is king, thermodynamics are real and there's no way around them, there are some best practices but hardly a one size fits all approach.

Get into a caloric deficit (no matter how small), move more, move in various ways, be consistent and the progress will come.

***there is also something that is rarely talked about, it's easy to obsess over body image, weight, and it's a slippery slope. I developed a severe binge eating/body dysmorphia issue due to cutting down to unhealthy body fat levels (4-5% as a male) for the purpose of physique competition, and it may have been even less healthy than being 300 lbs, so if you start seeing these patterns, get some professional help.

[suomalainen]

Thanks, @2b1s. Agree there's so many intricacies. I'm just now starting to sort through the bullshit, so my observations are really limited to just a normal, relatively healthy guy who's a bit pudgy and kinda tired of trying to figure out how to not be so pudgy, and my a-ha moment borders on "well, duh", but, you know, you gotta start somewhere. I'm not obsessing too much about the scale, but I would like to get from my current 240 down to about 200 and see where I'm at. I'm not sure what that means for me health / body fat % wise if I'm doing some modest lifting, but I can't imagine I'd be too low at 6'2" 200lbs. Definitely too high now!

And yes, your journal has been great. Both because of your flexible (and, to me, courageous!) approach to getting to FI (and balancing your and your dw's different starting points), but also because you seem to have managed the freedom-to so well and have great story-telling to boot! Lots to learn from you and the handful of other retirees who have kept up your journals. I may be missing some, but even the handful I read have given me lots to think about / prepare for "the other side". In theory, I'll be there in 4 years, with who knows how many "1 more years" to follow as I try to balance my desires for my own life with my desires to keep the money fire-hose going for the benefit of my loved ones.

[white belt]

Agree there's so many intricacies. I'm just now starting to sort through the bullshit, so my observations are really limited to just a normal, relatively healthy guy who's a bit pudgy and kinda tired of trying to figure out how to not be so pudgy, and my a-ha moment borders on "well, duh", but, you know, you gotta start somewhere. I'm not obsessing too much about the scale, but I would like to get from my current 240 down to about 200 and see where I'm at. I'm not sure what that means for me health / body fat % wise if I'm doing some modest lifting, but I can't imagine I'd be too low at 6'2" 200lbs. Definitely too high now!

I've written about it before how I think Renaissance Periodization provides one of the most complete guides based on the body of scientific literature related to diet/fitness: viewtopic.php?p=214918#p214918

The biggest issue I see with your plan to go from 240 down to 200 is if you try do it in one fat loss phase. Best practice is to not exceed 10% of BW in weight loss without having a maintenance period to reset all sorts of physiological/psychological markers. So basically if one wants to follow best practices, you would do something like lose weight down to ~220 lbs over a 10-12 week period (.5-1% a week). Then you would do a maintenance period for about that same amount of time until your physiology and psychology return to normal. Then you would do another fat loss phase followed by another (indefinite?) maintenance phase. Most people screw this up because they try to prolong a (by design) unsustainable fat loss phase forever.

[suomalainen]

Ah, interesting. Yes, need to noodle on how best to structure this for me. With work and family stressors and travel and school vacation schedules and all the rest, it's really hard to get into a consistent groove. So far, all I know I want to do is to make sure I don't eat when I feel "not hungry", i.e., trying to avoid eating until I feel "full", because if I do that, it generally means I'm eating for emotional reasons rather than for fuel.

[Hristo Botev]

Great update Suo; thanks for sharing.

I've mentioned before that DW is a clinical dietitian, and she "figured out" food a long, long time ago; not just the science of it, but what a healthy relationship with food looks like. It's all second nature to her. She came to mind a lot when I was reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, about how you can habituate yourself in a particular virtue (here, temperance/moderation) to the point that it manifests itself in your very character--as in, temperance for DW when it comes to food is not something she DOES so much as it is something she IS. My notes from the relevant book:chapter of NE (3:11) are as follows:

"The moderate person does not take pleasure in those things particularly pleasant to a licentious person--he is disgusted by them--and generally does not take pleasure in things he ought not or to any thing in an excessive degree; though he will long for (in a measured way) pleasures generally conducive to good physical and mental well being."

That is DW wrt food to a T; and it's an utter mystery to me, as I have always had an unhealthy relationship wrt food. To be clear, DW thinks about food, and the pleasure it brings, all the time; she's not at all deficient when it comes to the category of pleasure/pain to which moderation is the golden mean and licentiousness the excess/vice. Indeed, if I remember correctly, Aristotle didn't even have a word for the deficiency wrt to the pleasure/pain category, as he said something like it is so infrequently encountered in humans to be insensible. Though I guess some sort of extreme asceticism would be the deficiency, and DW is certainly not that. She just is the every definition of moderation when it comes to food.

Anyway, when it comes to things like weight loss and healthy eating, it strikes me that the solution lies in exercising the moderation muscle and habituating virtue at a general level more so than getting into the weeds of various diets, intermittent fasting, calorie counting apps, etc. etc.

That said, I don't really know how one goes about exercising that particular muscle.

[delay]

I dunno. It's not a method of weight loss, it's just a fact of thermodynamics. I see the statement of "if calories in > calories out, you will gain weight, and vice versa" is just a restatement of the laws of physics as applied to "living organisms". Your body can't choose to ignore the physics of energy intake / expenditure any more than it can ignore the physics of gravity or blunt force trauma. Some may say "well, that's fine and all but the statement doesn't therefore contain any useful information", and fair enough. My claim that it's useful is limited to the idea that it's useful to me.

Thanks for your reply. Imagine two situations. First case: you eat sugary cookies, and your intestines work on them for a few days. Second case: you eat sugary cookies and your body removes them as quickly as it can in the form of diarrhea. How would the law of conservation of calories hold in these cases?

I did keto for 3 or 4 months and lost something like 20 pounds, but I gained it all back when I stopped keto

I have yet to find a single person who stabilized his weight after a keto diet. When I tried keto myself, I lost 40 (?) pounds and got back to my original weight a few months later. This was similar to other diets I've tried. You can starve yourself with a diet, but you can't keep it up.

Last year I tried intermittent fasting and that works well. Instead of fighting my body I listen to it. What I fight is my mind's urge to rationalise sugar highs.

Anyway, when it comes to things like weight loss and healthy eating, it strikes me that the solution lies in exercising the moderation muscle and habituating virtue at a general level more so than getting into the weeds of various diets, intermittent fasting, calorie counting apps, etc. etc.

That sounds right! Like how you imagine yourself at a destination and the required change in behavior will come by itself.

[suomalainen]

Thanks for your reply. Imagine two situations. First case: you eat sugary cookies, and your intestines work on them for a few days. Second case: you eat sugary cookies and your body removes them as quickly as it can in the form of diarrhea. How would the law of conservation of calories hold in these cases?

Well, by definition, calories in would still equal calories out. You'd just absorb some of them and shit the rest out. An unabsorbed calorie out is still a calorie out. As I said before, CI/CO is not really all that earth-shattering of an observation. It's just that I was finally able to see the distinction between the principle and the methods. Every single method is just a way to implement the principle, focusing on one or more pathways. So arguing about methods is really just arguing preferences (i.e., not all that useful), rather than arguing about Truth (i.e., whether thermodynamics applies to humans at all times and in all cases).

As to intermittent fasting, I think this is a way to exercise the "moderation muscle" for people for whom it's not natural, like me as opposed to @hristo's dw. It provides clear boundaries, a "red line", etc. Maybe it's tied into psychology as well in that you remove decision fatigue or some similar thing. So, yeah, I mean, in principle, it's still just constricting the CI part of the equation, but that particular pathway may avoid some of the more challenging parts of the psychology of food consumption. At least here in the modern (1st) world where food is abundant, cheap and delicious.

I've done intermittent fasting before and it just doesn't work for me consistently. Something seems to always come up. So I'm working on the psychological aspect of it - to let go when I break a streak. To realize that even if CI>CO one day, that doesn't mean I have get upset or annoyed or disappointed and rage eat the next day to punish myself. I can just let it be an off day. The pattern over a month or 6 months matters way more than any single day. I suppose in this way, my current approach (my 74th time trying to lose weight!) is to eat when and what I want to eat, but to allow myself to get hungry before I eat again. Partly, this is just to listen to my body, without any particular goal in mind. I'm just trying to get a feel for when I stress eat vs when I eat for fuel. I dunno. We'll see. If I don't drop weight and keep it off, I may have to choose something more formalistic.

[delay]

You'd just absorb some of them and shit the rest out.

If the body can choose to shit some out, why would it not have more choices?

Whatever the benefits of the calorie theory, my experience says it's not useful for losing weight. I've never met anyone who lost weight using a diet or by exercising more.

(my 74th time trying to lose weight!)

I'm not quite up to my 74th try, I've lost 40 pounds around 10 times before I landed on intermittent fasting. I'm now stable for a year at a healthy weight. Intermittent fasting for me is eating between 14:00 and 20:00 on five days of the week. I also started eating whole food at the same time: vegetables, fruits, meat, milk, nuts, and so on. I try to reduce processed foods (= food with an ingredient list.) I drink beer on two or three days a week, for me alcohol is no obstacle to weight loss.

[suomalainen]

Given the other deleterious effects of diarrhea, it doesn't seem to be a positive-value long-term strategy.

Edit: and to the extent of your body having more choices, it does. Hormones affecting hunger levels, activity levels, stress levels, etc., all contribute to weight and health in general. But your body doesn't have a choice to disobey the laws of physics. CI/CO (calories in can be "calories absorbed into your bloodstream", if you prefer) is just a restatement of thermodynamics applied to living things. Agree it's not generally "useful" in that it doesn't tell you anything about what to do, but it was a useful insight for me.

[suomalainen]

Imagine that. 999th post and still not FIRE:d as fuck. I'm on the remedial ERE program.

Anyway, as you may have read in @gravy's journal, we had a little bit of a storm roll through Houston, which was both fascinating and terrifying to watch from our bedroom window, prepared to dive into the closet if the tornado warning proved prescient. As it turned out, we did not experience one of the two tornadoes in the area that touched down briefly, but the straight-line winds were nevertheless awe-inspiring. I've never seen anything like it and would be most happy to never experience it again. A tree branch fell on our power line, ripping the weather-head and the meter off the wall (but both still dangled by what appeared to be a ground wire that disappeared into the siding), and it took five days to get power back. The first few days were fine, as the weather remained in the 70s and low 80s. The final 3 days were miserable, barely cooling down to 82 degrees inside at night. Without a battery-powered fan, it would not have been possible. And this was mid-May. Imagine in August.

This has lead me to start looking at (portable) generator options for emergency back-up power in our rental home (so no rooftop panels or whole-home generator options). One neighbor borrowed a propane generator from a friend and we could barely hear it. The other neighbor had a gas-powered generator and it was gawdawful loud. I have also been looking at solar panels and a battery system (either DIY or prepackaged in a system like Bluetti or similar). The gas generator idea is just a flat no for me. I hate maintaining gas engines so I just won't do it. Given the likely intermittent use case, gas and oil will just sit in their respective tanks for years at a time. The propane generator is probably the cheapest option, but would still come with some maintenance and/or noise and/or pollution issues to address. The solar panels / battery system is probably the most expensive option, but would be quiet and wouldn't require any maintenance.

I assume our needs would be limited to at most 700 watts at a time - running a window AC unit a few hours a day (at night) in our bedroom to make sleeping bearable, plus a few hundred watts for running my work from home necessities (laptop and router power) and charging phones, fans, etc. We just don't carry a lot of food in our fridge / freezer, and so when our power went out this time, we just ate what we could and threw away a few things we couldn't get to like a jar of mayonnaise and some frozen veggies that went all soggy. So, our needs would be quite reasonable, and presumably we could store enough energy (propane tank(s) or solar panels + battery) to power us for maybe 2000 Whs a day for up to a week.

Anyone out there have experience with various backup power systems and have any thoughts? I've watched a bunch of youtube videos and whatnot, so I have some information / opinions, but wanted to tap this venerable crowd (not seeing a thread quite on point despite having searched for one) for perhaps some pointers in narrowing the seemingly infinite options. I don't see much benefit to the DIY solar / battery compared to the pre-packaged kind (unless I'm missing something) for a system that's in the <3kWh range, so it seems to be down to:

Cheap but loud(er) propane generator vs expensive but quiet solar panel / battery. Am I missing anything?

Edit: we have natural gas for the stove-top and for the water-heater, so presumably we are most likely only needing to address cooling needs for a long summer and less likely to need to address heating needs in the short winter.

[AxelHeyst]

Are the PV systems you're looking at paired with DC air conditioning units (like this)? Or are they kits billed to meet the surge amp requirements of the AC window unit? (I'm sure you're on to this but it's not enough to match inverter rating to operating wattage of equipment. Most compressors surge at 6-8x rated amperage, unless they're fitted with soft starts etc which isn't something I'm super familiar with).

I know offgrid PV systems but not paired with AC, so I'm curious what you're finding. My intuition tells me that a PV system to run AC even a few hours at night would be $$$$. Having built 4 PV systems, my intuition for such an intermittent use case is just get a propane generator and stick to a test run/maint. schedule so it actually functions in N years during the next outtage.

But I'd love to be proven wrong.

[suomalainen]

I'm just thinking some shit 5000 btu window unit for $150 that plugs into a standard 3-prong 15 amp outlet. Based on a brief look, these look to be ~500w continuous and ~1500w startup, but I haven't looked very closely at any specific models.

For power, my understanding is I could get a ~1000Wh battery for $300 plus $150 for a 2kW inverter plus $150 for a charge controller and some wires and DC ports and mounting board and hardware, etc. for a $600-$700 build vs buying a pecron 1500 from amazon for $700, which basically has the same specs but nicer form factor. Add in maybe $500 of portable solar panels for 400w and you're at $1300 all in for the solar option.

On the propane side, you can maybe get roughly the same specs for $450 like this pulsar propane generator which runs on about $2/hour of propane.

I guess another factor to consider is that you have to bring the solar unit outside to charge and then you can bring it wherever you want inside the house. The propane generator is the opposite where you have to run the unit outside and bring items outside to charge / use, limiting the location of where you can use stuff that is plugged in via an extension cord. So, I would think the solar battery option is preferable from that perspective.

Edit: With time, energy and inclination, I'm sure I could second-hand many of these parts / things over time, but at this point I have more dollars than sense (I don't have expertise or even much amateur experience in electrical systems and would be uncomfortable patchworking something together on my own).

[jacob]

Anyone out there have experience with various backup power systems and have any thoughts? I've watched a bunch of youtube videos and whatnot, so I have some information / opinions, but wanted to tap this venerable crowd (not seeing a thread quite on point despite having searched for one) for perhaps some pointers in narrowing the seemingly infinite options. I don't see much benefit to the DIY solar / battery compared to the pre-packaged kind (unless I'm missing something) for a system that's in the <3kWh range, so it seems to be down to:

Cheap but loud(er) propane generator vs expensive but quiet solar panel / battery. Am I missing anything?

I have experience with the 2003 European heat wave. Three weeks of misery with 37C days (98F) (+humidity from unusually regular thunderstorms coming through every other day) resulting in some 50,000 heat-related overdeaths. Heat mainly affects the elderly (65+) and young children under 5. For the rest of us, it's more like an endless death march for the circulatory system with an elevated heart rate that never goes down. People slowly go stir crazy.

The main reason it was so bad is because Europe was completely unprepared both in terms of infrastructure and how heat adapted people were(*). IOW, no one had A/C, fans hard to get/sold out, ... but people made it through it, well except for those who died.

(*) Also see the Portland heatwave a few years ago or the Texas snow storm ditto. These events would be trivial if they happened in Chicago, but they happened to people who have never experienced something like that before.

I'm going to suggest some alternatives, because in all likelihood, while building a fancy system right now is fun, it's going to sit unused for many years and take up space and what not. If you divide the $1300 cost of your system with the 5% chance of using it, it's more like a $26,000 system.

My 80yo+ neighbor likes to brag about how she never switches on the A/C. It easily gets over 80F here at night in a brick house if you don't do that but she slowly adapts as the seasons change(*) just like people did before A/C was invented. Whereas, someone who spends their days in a super-cooled 65F office wearing sweaters in the summer would be in for a rude shock. Actionable suggestion: Adjust your regular A/C upwards for increased heat robustness. Ours is set at 82F.

(*) Something something sweat glands. It also helps not being fat. Each 1cm of subcutaneous fat ~ wearing one extra layer of clothes, which of course has the opposite effect in the winter.

Moving air helps a lot. This is available outside. People used to sleep on their balconies. Stay in the shade. This will require some change in routine, but it's only for a few days or weeks, so I think of it as an adventure.

We're still talking free solutions here. If money is to be spent, it's best spent on fans. Fans are electric, but they require far less electricity than an A/C. If I were you, I'd get a large UPS (uninterruptible power supply)(*) and run 5V DC fans via the USB ports. You might even be able to run a boxfan for a while. I haven't done the math. Even a Japanese style hand fan is not a bad idea at all!

(*) Also useful in case the independence-minded Texas power grid conks out again

You can supercharge the fan-effect by wetting your face with water and pointing the fan at it. In fact, back in 2003 when I didn't have a fan I'd splash my face and shirt and simply walk fast enough down the hall for the "headwind" to cool myself for a minute. If you have access to a basement, even 10 minutes of relief (from the death march) also makes a difference.

Cold showers are also your friend. I regularly take one before going to bed w/o drying off (because 82F, see above). This makes the sheets damp and the ceiling fan takes care of the rest. Cool enough to fall asleep. If I wake up too hot, I take another cold shower.

These suggestions are not for everyone. Just throwing out an alternative to buying a bunch of gadgets.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Really appreciate the alternative suggestions. Unfortunately, the NOAA is predicting an “above-average” hurricane season for the Atlantic, with 17-25 named storms, and we have small children in the house. Houston also has very high humidity and swarms of mosquitoes during the summer, and we don’t have an enclosed or screened patio. I used to sleep on bamboo mats in China during the summer, and that helped, but while the adults can endure discomfort, the kids are too young and one has a health condition/is puny. My sister offered to host us all in her McMansion in Austin whenever a hurricane hits Houston, and that will probably be the cheapest and safest alternative, although it does involve driving and far too much family-togetherness.

ETA: I felt really smug and clever when multiple people complained to me they had to throw out “hundreds of dollars” worth of food from their refrigerators. One even made a claim with their insurance company to get reimbursed for the extraordinary excess of food they keep on hand.

[Hristo Botev]

We have the ubiquitous large Sam’s Club gas/propane generator that we’ve used once before when a storm took out our power, just to keep the chest freezer and fridge going. If needed (and it might, we live in hurricane land), we could all sleep or cool off in the shoffice, which although small has a futon, a small window ac unit, and is by far the most well insulated room on our property, so it actually maintains its temperature pretty well such that the ac unit is only needed intermittently. I wish our generator were quieter, but where we live the sound of generators running when the power is out is normal, so we aren’t pissing anyone off by running it.

Of course, if a power outage lasts more than a week then we hit the road in the Prius (500 miles on 10 gallons of gas) and seek out family.

[AxelHeyst]

Honestly I think if I were in your situation I'd go with the generator and maybe take an afternoon to install a legit penetration of some sort so you can easily get power inside without cracking a door or window. I'd only go PV if I also were trying to build and operate a parallel off-grid PV system for fun to get off the grid on a normal basis. Otherwise, that's a lot of money for what is a bottom of the barrel pile of components that won't come close to performance of a generator (which is very mature tech by this point), relies on sunny days, and will deplete by 11pm or so.

[suomalainen]

@jacob, thanks for the non-consumerist perspective. We did cold showers, recharging / working / cooling off at starbucks for a few days, and it was fine. But once it got into the 90s outside and 82 + humid at night inside, "people" (certainly not me) started to get cranky, partly because hot and humid is not conducive to certain activities that reduce crankiness. Luckily, the kids' dad got power two days before we did, so they were able to go there to allow us to suffer with that stressor removed. And then there's just the fact that this happened in May. If it happens in August, you're right that we at least need some power base to power a lot of fans and it would be nice to have a small AC unit to take some of the humidity out of the air in at least one room in the house.

@axel, haha, legit penetration to avoid cracking a door or window. Man, if you could see this house, you would die. There are penetrations through every. single. door. and. window. frame. in the entire house. The thing leaks like a sieve, and I'm not even exaggerating a little bit. When we first moved in, there were quarter-inch wide, eight-inch long cracks between some of the panes and the frames in our bedroom window. I caulked all around those cracks and eventually built a 3-pane plexiglass window insert to block out some of the noise that our apartment building backyard neighbors make. Tejano music gives me PTSD now. But yeah, maybe I could recoup a little bit of money / learn some things if I used a simple PV system to power my work-from-home office. I do have dreams of going out in the country off-grid at some point and being able to run a laptop, a router and a couple of screens. As it is, we're geographically tied to this huge city and neither of us wants to own property here given the flooding risks.

@hristo oh to have insulation.