28 February 2007

Winter's Nearly Done

hand over the keys to the freezer and nobody gets hurt

Just about through with this thing that we call winter. Still lots of snow on the ground but the temperature has risen to a more playable level. Sent the boys out to play in the snow for the first time in a long time- it was just over the freezing mark yesterday. Hopefully it warms up a bit more though as we are supposed to have football game outside in less than two weeks.

17 February 2007

No More Soda Or Pop

What You Drink Is as Important as What You Eat

By Al Sears, MD

A few days ago, a patient walked into my office with one of those super-sized soft drinks from a fast-food place near my office. It wouldn't have surprised me - except that it was 8:30 in the morning.

I wondered how common this breakfast-soda habit has become, so I did some research. It turns out that more than 15 percent of people now order a soda when they go to a restaurant in the morning. That's a jump from less than 8 percent in 1990. And there's an even bigger jump in the number of people who open a can of soda at home every morning: 2.5 percent, up from less than 0.5 percent 20 years ago. That's a 500 percent increase!

What you drink is just as important for weight loss and overall health as what you eat. And both diet and regular sodas are dangerous... for different reasons.

Regular sodas spike your blood sugar almost immediately, which triggers your body to produce waves of insulin. Insulin stimulates fat production and fat storage. Diet sodas usually contain aspartame, a neurotoxin that prevents the hormone leptin from communicating with your brain. This is critical, as leptin is the messenger that tells your brain, "I'm full." As a result, you are far more likely to overeat.

The best thing to drink with breakfast is water. It's the way I start my day. But if you need a pick-me-up, green tea is better than soda. It gives you a gentle energy boost and is full of disease-fighting antioxidants. (Even regular tea or coffee is better than soda.)

[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor's Heart Cure, is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]

I drink a lot of pop. A lot. It's not good for me, I know. It is just so tasty.

03 February 2007

I Don't Drink Diet Pepsi

I'll stick with my life, thanks

There are a lot of things I don't do and drinking Diet Pepsi is one of those things. If you have seen any recent television ads for Diet Pepsi you will see a person asked to drink a can and they get asked if there is anything in their youth that they want to relive or have back again. The commercials cut to a shot of them in their desired state but with the awkward twist of being who they are and it doesn't work the way it used to. Wearing the tight (leather) jeans of the '80's and going to a business meeting in the '07's and falling on the floor because the pants were so tight and they couldn't sit down. When the flashline stops the commercial cuts back to the person and they say 'on second thought, I'll just stick with my Diet Pepsi'.

Great ad series really. Somethings never change and most other things always do and it's best to let things end where they should instead of trying to recapture the glory days gone by. Pepsi of course is saying that their Diet Pepsi is still the same as it was in the old days and that of course it is an easy thing to work into your life of today.

All of this is to say that I am having my Diet Pepsi moment right now. Not with something to do with me directly, but with my wife. She wants to become a respitory therapist someday and will have to go to community college at some point to pursue this desire. One of the classes she needs to take is either chemistry or physics. To take those course at the college would cost a couple of hundred bucks plus books and time to get to the school (45 minutes away). So enter the Diet Pepsi moment: I am married to a high school student! She can take either of the classes at our local high school (8 minutes away) for free and have it count to her requirements for the respitory therapist qualification. So she is taking a physics class at the high school with everyone else in the class being half her age (except for the teacher, maybe?).

Nothing wrong with persuing knowledge or bettering yourself educationally and she seems to be doing well with the course. It just seems that we are going through a series of Diet Pepsi moments with everything from the clothes see wears to class, how she hauls her books to class, the new lingo, dangle earrings, music interests and more. Not to mention the MILF factor that I know is running through the halls, which is kind of cool- knowing that I have a hot wife- but not in that I cannot capitalize on it. The changes are a bit overwhelming to me and makes it difficult to know who is coming in the door. Basically, keep your Diet Pepsi and your flashbacks, I'd like my life back.

The flipside of this maybe she will ask me to her prom or the any of the dances they might have. Better go get some lessons.