MSN.com just posted 10 great reasons why you should cut soda from your diet today. One of my favorites besides all the great metabolic reasons, is the fact that it can be a huge help in losing weight. For instance, a 20 oz Coke has 240 calories in it. If you are consuming two a day then you are putting on an extra 3360 calories a week. A pound is only 140 calories more**. So you are practically adding an additional pound a week just from drinking that sugary soda. Thats 52 pounds a year. If that’s not a good enough reason to quit drinking soda today then check out the article for 9 other ones that are.
Recently I have read that sugar is actually addictive and you can suffer withdrawal from it. Here’s a first person account that is interesting reading…
Recently Popular Science had an article called “Your Sandwich is a Sodium Bomb“. It explains how many take out sandwiches are full of sodium and how in many cases they can exceed the recommended daily allowance of 2300 mg for someone in good health. If you need to restrict your sodium due to a medical condition then it is only 1500 mg. Since I started really watching what I was eating I found the exact same thing. I used to be a big Subway eater. However, I quickly found that many of their sandwiches are full of sodium as well. However, if you look you can find sandwiches that don’t blow your RDA. In the case of Subway their 6″ Oven Roasted Chicken sub only has 610 mg. This is without cheese or dressings. Be careful with those as they can pack on a lot.
Eating out is not the only place you have to watch for too much sodium. It is also in many of the foods we take for granted in the home. Take for instance Progresso Light Beef Pot Roast. At first look it looks like a very healthy alternative with only 80 calories a serving (2 servings per can). However, those 80 calories pack a whopping 470 mg of Sodium. For an average adult that is almost a fifth of their recommended daily allowance of sodium in only 5% of their calories. The numbers just don’t work.
One easy way to address the problem of too much sodium is to cook from scratch. I have found that by making my own soups and stews I can get the sodium way down. I also cut out all processed foods. Now instead of regularly taking in 4000 to 5000 mgs of sodium a day, I barely get 1000 mg. I also feel a lot better. I have also found that I don’t miss the canned and process stuff either. In fact, on the rare occasions I do eat them, I can now taste the abundance of sodium in those foods and they are way too salty for me.
Almost two years ago I had a very serious conversation with my doctor over the state of my health. I was in pretty bad shape physically and had a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Since then and after a couple of false starts, I removed that risk completely and no longer have to take cholesterol lowering prescription medication. Accomplishing this wasn’t easy and it took a ton of research and reading to learn the best and healthiest ways to get back to where I needed to be.
So in order that others can benefit from what I learned, I am going to start sharing what has worked for me so that others can hopefully achieve what I have. This will include all the little bits of helpful health related information I find here and there.
That being said I am not a doctor, a licensed nutritionist or anything else for that matter. I am just someone who fought to regain their health and want others to benefit from that fight. To that end the focus of my site will pivot to more of a health focus. I hope you enjoy it.
My ramblings about tech, politics, health and anything else I can think of.
