Could some info about ED help you as much as some info about J.J. helped me?

J.J., in case you don’t really follow college football, is Jonathan James McCarthy, the quarterback who led the Michigan Wolverines to an undefeated season and the NCAA national championship title. Something McCarthy does that helped create that result got me thinking, which got me doing.

Which has improved the functioning of what I abbreviate in my workout log as my IA. Injured area.

The right-handed passer forces himself to brush his teeth with his left hand. He believes that change, as sideline reporter Holly Rowe explained during the big game, alters the way his nervous system works to create alpha brain waves.

According to a 2015 Psychology Today article, this fine tunes your consciousness and increases creativity. Both of which, as you can well imagine, really benefit anyone playing QB.

Especially when the passing pocket collapses, and you either improvise or get pulverized.

I got pulverized about five months ago, so I painfully walking-caned my way into an urgent care facility to find out if that had also fractured my left hip.

The truly bizarre “hit-and-run” bicycle crash occurred on a group ride after I slowed to let the others pass so I could relieve myself. That’s when an inattentive cyclist not part of the group battering rammed me from behind.

He drove his helmet into my shoulder to keep himself upright (I assume) and then rode away.

I walking-caned away from the urgent care with the best possible news - and an ominous addendum. That even though the X-rays showed no fractures, X-rays don’t show soft tissue damage.

And since soft tissue damage had certainly occurred, it could be a long time until I was 100%.

I’ll say. I’m still not.

When I’m standing still, for instance, I lean to the right and put all my weight on that leg because for weeks when I did otherwise, I had pain. It’s become a habit I can’t seem to shake.

So the morning after the college football season came to an end, more out of curiosity than anything else, this left-hander brushed his teeth with his right. It felt awkward at first, awkward enough that I needed to concentrate.

So it took me a while to realize I was no longer leaning to the right.

Intrigued, I tried my next tasks right-handed: pouring water and then coffee; stirring stevia in the latter; raising a cup to my lips; unscrewing the lid to the vitamin C; cleaning the kitchen sink.

Each time I did, I maintained a close-to-equal distribution of my bodyweight between my legs. As a result, I’m now doing left-handed tasks with my right - that is, when I remember.

It seems to be helping. My left hamstrings don’t feel as tight. My left quads and glutes seem to be producing a bit more pedaling power on the bike.

Now you can call me crazy if you want, but what I call crazy is not remaining open to all possibilities. Such as the chance that all you need in order to control your hunger and body weight is an understanding of ED and access to the internet.

ED, or energy density, refers to the calories in a particular weight of food. Foods that contain fewer calories than grams per serving are said to have a low ED, so a typical apple, weighing 138 grams and containing 81 calories, qualifies.

A typical slice of homemade apple pie, weighing 135 grams and containing 411 calories, doesn’t. In fact, the pie’s considered the opposite, a high-ED food since it has more than twice the number of cals as grams.

This comparison makes it apparent how replacing high-ED foods with low-ED foods can lead to weight loss.

Years before the advent of the internet and any knowledge of energy density, I was already using calories per gram to keep me lean for cycling and make my diet better. All it required was a copy of Bowes & Church’s Food Values of Portions Commonly Used - a book that contains all the important the nutritional information for 6,300 common foods - and a calculator.

By dividing calories by grams for hundreds of fruits, grains, vegetables, and processed foods, I learned how to save calories while still receiving optimal nutritional value. When I subsequently read about how to use the concept energy density for hunger management and weight loss, I realized my practice was actually more precise.

So precise, for instance, that I stopped eating a vegetable combo I really like, succotash, and replaced it with Brussels sprouts, broccoli, or cauliflower.

While all four are really healthy, consulting a nutritional guide book and doing the aforementioned math reveals succotash has far more calories per gram than the other three. Or you can go to MyFoodData.com to find that 100 grams of succotash contains 105 calories; Brussels sprouts, 43; broccoli, 34; and cauliflower, 25.

In other words, you can eat four times as much cauliflower by weight than succotash for the same amount of calories.