Sunday 26 August 2007

The First Step

I, like many other people on this continent, have a problem. I am on the road to ill health. That means I am overweight, eat crap and don't exercise.

I plan to change that. I am going to try to change a number of things, but concentrate on something specific. First, I will try to change my eating habits. Not all of my eating habits. I am going to pick one thing that I can do better and do that.

What should I choose? This was something that required some thought. When the news about drinking pop or soda every day hit the news, at first I was like, "Those people get diabetes because they are obese, not just plump like me." Then I theorized that it was because they drank regular pop that they were fat. Wrong. Turns out that even diet soda leads to these unhealthy findings. I still didn't want to apply this to me. I like my pop.

Then I saw a study done at Mt. Sinai that suggested that it wasn't the calories in the pop that was the problem. The problem was that the sweetener stimulated the sweets receptor in the gut. Which led to greater absorption of calories. So it didn't matter if the sweetener itself had calories. Aha!

So now I have my contender for my first baby step. Soda. Diet or otherwise. On average, I drink 3-4 sodas a day. Partly because I work in an environment where there isn't always the ability to get away from the counter and go buy something like water. So grabbing a couple of cans of pop from my fridge and bringing them to work is easy. I also like the fizzy drinks and find that tap water tastes funny. Actually, not just funny. Tap water makes me gag. Perhaps that is why I got started on the fizzy drinks in the first place? Then at home in the evenings, I often grab another can or 2. Again, because it's there and I like it.

So this week I pledge to not drink any soda until Saturday. I will not say I won't have any pop on the weekend. After all, it is the weekend.
Besides, the studies all said that daily consumption was bad. That means I can still have some pop, occasionally, without it being all bad.

I also plan on increasing my vegetable intake this week. This is not the pledge. This is going to be a secondary goal.

And just for kicks, today I pedaled for 7.29 miles in 30 minutes on my stationary bike for a whopping calorie burn of 263.

1 comment:

Kari said...

Interesting how diet soda is just as bad for you. I haven't drank pop in over two years. It burns when i try to drink it now. The last time I drank pop it didn't have the flavoring in it and i couldn't even tell, lol.