A Few Thoughts on Soda

I love a nice cold soda.  On my off days, I guarantee that I will have a tall glass of my fizzy caffeinated friend at some point.

One might be inclined to ask the following: "Why not just switch to diet sodas?"  It seems like a logical choice.  After all, diet sodas have zero calories (that's good), zero sugar (that's good, too) and caffeine.  A pretty simple decision, wouldn't you agree?  I should drink diet sodas.

Or not.

Despite the obvious benefits of zero sugar and zero calories, there are a host of other problems with diet soda, the first of which begins with the artificial sweeteners.  The big culprit here is aspartame (branded as Nutrasweet).  The jury is out on the deliterious effects of aspartame on the body, but the 5500+ complaints received by the FDA have to have some merit.  Just from what I've personally experienced as a result of consuming diet sodas, aspartame is a substance to be avoided.  I've suffered debilitating headaches, memory loss, moodiness, and a variety of other physiological effects that can be attributed to aspartame.  My father suffered from similar effects before switching his intake to water only.  In all, there are over 90 side effects linked to aspartame consumption ranging from headaches to brain damage and death.  Pretty good reasons, IMO, to just avoid the stuff altogether.

Another trap of drinking diet sodas is the fact that the consumer is led to believe that it's a zero-sum game.  Zero calories means we can drink as much of it as we want with no effect on the body.  I'm no scientist (never claimed to be) but I have to think that drinking gallons of phosphoric acid, citric acid, caffeine, aspartame, and caramel color each week will have some physiological effects - and they probably won't be very good.  People also tend to over-consume in other areas because they believe that the zero calories in diet soda provides some flexibility in other areas of the diet.  The old "I can eat an extra slice of pizza because my diet soda has fewer calories than regular soda" approach to eating.  Silly, but you'd be surprised at the number of people I've heard talk this way.

So here's the situation: I want my caffeine, but I don't want all the extra sugar that comes with a regular soda - and I certainly don't want the possible effects offered by diet soda.  So where does that leave me?  Thankfully, my wife works at a coffee shop where I can buy a double-shot latte made with skim milk.  Zero sweeteners, low fat, and enough caffeine to keep my head from exploding at 4:00 PM.  Eventually I'll wean my way off the stuff, but such things take time.

Be well.

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Links

Sugar-Free, Artificial Sweeteners Sickness

Aspartame Side Effects

Nutrasweet

Ouch.

Let's talk a little about pain.

When I just spent my time sitting on my butt all day, my body hurt.  My back, my shoulders, my head, my legs, my knees, my feet.  Everything hurt.  It also hurt to look in the mirror and see the bloated and paste-colored man that my lifestyle had produced.  My life was encompassed with pain.

Today, I feel a different kind of pain (in addition to all of those other pains, which haven't subsided yet).  My calves still hurt a bit from the lower body workout I did on Wednesday, a fact that makes going up and down the stairs at home a little less comfortable.  Far worse is the pain I feel in my shoulders, back, triceps, and biceps.  The upper body workout I did on Friday is leaving its mark in the form of DOMS - delayed onset muscle soreness.  Yesterday wasn't so bad, but today is just painful.  Every little move, every stretch - it all hurts.

While it may seem like I am complaining, I actually feel a little pleasure in the fact that my muscles are sore in this way.  I think of it like this: in order for the other pain to subside, it has to be counterbalanced with a different kind of pain.  The difference being, of course, that DOMS is temporary.  My previous aches and pains were anything but temporary; in fact, continued progression down that path would have eventually led to my early death.

My pain before was the pain of protracted suicide.  My pain today is the pain of progress.

Weekends weren't made for weight loss.

I can see I'm going to have to be careful with myself on the weekends.  It's just too darned easy to let it all go and revert to the old ways of living life - the ways that were killing me before.

Chances are this weekend created a zero-sum game for this week as the eating and drinking habits returned to their previous state.  Very little water.  Too much food of the wrong types.  This hasn't been a productive period for me.

There is something to be said, though, about letting yourself go for a short time every so often.  That's the key though - it has to be for a set time of no longer than 24 hours or so.  And even then, some moderation should be observed.  After a week of eating grilled chicken, steak, and fish with veggies and whole carbs, a pepperoni pizza or burger and fried begins to look really enticing.  There's a reason behind the idea of taking a day off from the usual lean menu.  I'll touch on that idea in a sec.

There are multiple ways to work in a free day (or cheat day) when eating to lose fat.  I've heard of some people doing it every Saturday or Sunday - eating what they want on that one day during the week.  Others might have a free day or cheat meal after they achieve some sort of goal - losing 10 pounds, fitting into a certain size pair of pants or dress, or staying clean in their diet for a certain period of time, for example.   I personally like having a certain day of the week that I can make decisions that allow me to splurge a little bit.  That way I've only got to tell myself  when temptation strikes, "You only have to wait until Saturday.  It's almost Saturday."  No matter where I am in the week, it's always 'almost Saturday'.

Now, why the cheat meal or day off?  The way I've always thought of it is to think about a campfire.  When you first build the campfire, you have to put little pieces of kindling and leaves on it to build it up.  If you take a slow burning fire and drop a huge log on it, the fire just gets crushed out and can't burn the fuel being provided for it.  It's too much of a good thing.  Think of the body's metabolism in the same way.  When I just sat on my butt all day and ate crap, my metabolism was like an unattended fire that had died to a few glowing embers.  Every time I dropped a fast food meal or bag of chip

s on my stomach, my already dull metabolism barely had the ability to consume the meal and ended just storing most of it on my butt and belly.  However, after working out for a week, my metabolism is amped up and burning like a fire that's been fed to grow.  Now on my cheat day, when I drop a big meal on my stomach, my body has the ability to burn up that heavy meal and not just store the overage as fat.

The second good reason for the cheat day is it fools the body into believing it's not starving.  The body has this funny self-preservation mechanism - a feast or famine instinct if you will.  When food is plentiful, the body doesn't have a problem giving up stored body fat for fuel whenever it's called for.  So a week's worth of exercise is tolerated fairly well when at the end of that week there's a period of abundance which alerts the body to the fact that it's not a time of famine.  If one were to attempt a starvation-style diet with severely limited calories, the body would eventually go into preservation mode and desperately cling to stored fat - the opposite of what the dieter really wants.

Finally, there's the psychology of it all.  If I had started this lifestyle change knowing that I would never again have a cheeseburger, fries, or soda, I would have quit long before I ever began.  It's just too impossible to conceive that I would go for an entire year without foods that I've come to love but are not so good for me.  Knowing that I only have to get to Saturday before I can let myself go a little makes Sunday through Friday a lot easier to endure.

As it is, I actually had 2 off days this weekend.  I can't let that happen every weekend or I will undo a whole week's work in two days of oblivious consumption.  There's a 6-pack set of abs at the end of this rainbow, and I don't want to sacrifice progress with a lack of self-discipline.

Take the Pee Test

We take the Pee Test every morning when we wake up, and we probably don't realize it.  That trip to the toilet upon rising can tell us a lot about our health.

Hydration is a critical issue when it comes to losing fat.  The body needs an ample supply of water in order to function efficiently.  In extreme situations (like desert survival situations), the body can become so depleted of water that the blood becomes more like syrup and is all but impossible for the heart to pump.  Since most of us aren't trekking through the Sahara any time soon, you might think such an example is pretty irrelevant.  However, it is worth noting that a great majority of people walk around dehydrated every day, putting a strain on their heart, kidneys, and liver.

Here's how it all works.  You drink things like soda, coffee, and other non-water beverages all day without taking in the infamous 8X8 water supply (8 - 8-ounce glasses of water a day).  Worse, the caffeine in the soda and coffee deplete even more water from your body.  The heart has to work overtime to pump a thicker blood supply through hardening veins and arteries.  The kidneys need a good supply of water to perform their functions, so the lack of water causes them to fall behind in their duties.  The liver picks up the slack and is then unable to perform its regular duty - metabolizing the fat that I so desperately want to lose.  The end result is fat retention and frustration that changes don't seems to be occurring.

So what does all of this have to do with the pee test?  Simply this - a hydrated body doesn't pee yellow.  It pees clear.  If you can see your urine in an otherwise clean bowl of toilet water, you're probably not hydrated.  Before I started drinking more water (like the glass that's sitting right over there <~~~~ right now), I peed a golden yellowish-orange.  It also smelled strongly (another bad sign).  My urine is now fairly clear, indicating that I'm in much better hydration today than I was yesterday at this time.

64 ounces of water might sound like a whole lot, but let's put that in perspective.  A supersize value meal can have a beverage cup that holds 32 ounces.  I could put away a whole 32-ounce cup of cola without blinking and go back for a refill.  It's all a matter of priority.  The glass of water I've nearly consumed entirely while writing this article knocks 16 ounces off my 64-ounce total.  I drank 20 ounces while working out this morning.  I've had a few glasses here and there in between.  The less I've thought about it, the easier it's been.

Every trip to the bathroom is an assessment of my level of hydration.  So, if you'll excuse me, I have an assessment to perform.

Meal Plan - Day 1

I won't do this every day, but I will post meal plans from time to time to give you an idea of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it a certain way.

Ideally I want to eat every 2.5 - 3 hours with 3 whole-food meals ('meat-and-potato' meals) and three supplemental meals.  Each meal has (ideally) a protein and a carbohydrate portion.  Veggies will be added whenever I can get them to fit.  So, here's what tomorrow's meal plan looks like:

8:00 - 1 cup whole-grain cereal w/ 1/2 cup skim milk
10:30 - protein bar (23g. protein and low sugar), water
12:30 - (post-workout) MRP (meal replacement powder), sports drink
3:00 - Mandarin Grilled Chicken Salad (see recipes section), water
5:30 - Baked whiting fillet, brown rice, broccoli spears, water
8:00 - protein bar, water

You might notice the tight time-frame between 10:30 and 12:30.  That is to accommodate my workout time at about 10:45.  I want to have a meal right after I work out (weight training), and I don't want to lift weights on an empty stomach (last time I tried such a stunt, I nearly passed out and felt nauseous for a few hours afterwards).

There are reasons for eating so often.  First, it provides a constant stream of nutrients to the body.  We tend to eat every few hours anyway, the problem is that the between meal snacks are usually calorie-dense foods like chips or candy.  Eating every couple hours also keeps the blood sugar levels fairly consistent.  Pretty much everyone understands mid-morning and mod-afternoon "crashes" - those times between meals when we start to feel sleepy and lethargic.  Usually that's about the same time I would head to the snack machine for a soda and a bag of chips.  Preventing crazy spikes and falls in blood sugar will do wonders for preventing problems with insulin that can lead to diabetic issues.  Finally, a meal every few hours keeps the body from thinking it is starving.  A body that thinks it is starving will preserve body fat  - obviously counter productive (and a key reason why starvation diets don't have the desired results).

I've heard of people who eat the same stuff day in and day out while they're trying to get in shape.  That's fine for some.  Personally, I like variety in my food choices, so my day-to-day nutrition plan will vary somewhat.  The one thing that will not change is the content of the meal (protein, good carbs, veggies, and water) and the timing (every 2.5 - 3 hours).

Be well.