This week Chuck and I are on the road and hoping from one house to another visiting friends and family.  We brought along our weights and exercise guide and have been pretty faithful to our routine but I do find it more difficult to eat well when we are visiting with others.  There is a lot of tendency to grab something quick and easy and other folks don’t necessarily cook what we would.

Twice in my life I’ve have quit drinking Diet Pepsi. Both times I quit cold turkey, just stopped entirely from one day to the next. In fact, the last time I quit was 3 or 4 years ago and I have not gone back diet sodas since then.

photo credit: jacreative

Why I Quit Drinking Diet Sodas

My reason for quitting is simple.  I came to believe that the chemicals composition of diet drinks was bad for my health.  I was having lunch with an old friend. I order lunch and a Diet Pepsi and she starting telling me about all the reports on aspartame side effects.  I gave up the drink I had ordered and went home and did some research on the topic.

This blog is a labor of love, self-love that is.  I write it because I am learning the the lessons I write about as I write them and LABOR is definitely the right word.  Writing about this topic is hard work.  I would prefer to ignor this subject most of the time and pretend that everything is under control and in order.  It isn’t.  I find myself daily eating my breakfast or lunch with the laptop open before or a at least a book.  I really have trouble with the practice of just eating, not doing something else at the same time.  As a result, I forget to chew my food thoroughly and slowly and eat more than I need because I am not paying attention to the ‘full’ signals when they come.
photo credit: WTL photos

As I write, I am sitting here munching a bowl of popcorn.  Granted it’s “healthy” popcorn, not heavily buttered or sweetened but that’s not the problem.  The problem is I am eating unconsciously and by habit, not because I am hungry and need fuel to function.  The problem is I am doing something else (reading email and browsing the internet) and not focusing in the taste of the food or the signals my body is trying to send me, saying I’m full and don’t need to eat more.

• What's the best type of FAT to eat?

July 4, 2009 – Some really interesting food facts here. Some people forget that our bodies need some fats.