Drinking Coke?

This post is a scary read on what happens when you drink a glass of coke (via).

"Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant."

Between that and the number of points (5 points, 350 calories) in the non-diet version, it's enough to stop drinking it all together. Not that I bother very much, since I've started this getting thinner lark it's mineral water for me, largely because I don't like the taste of artificial sweetner very much - certainly not in the quantities needed to make coke palatable.

I've been experimenting with artifical sweetner in my coffee this week, since I'm in the US and it's as easily available as sugar here. It still doesn't taste quite right, but aspartame is much less nasty tasting than saccharine. Both are probably worse for you than the sugar, though, in the long run. Even though I've cut the sugar in half, I'm still using 3-4 points a day on sugar in my coffee (yeah, I know, far too much, but I'm changing enough habits in one go here right now!).

Even with that help, I still topped out at 43.5 points yesterday, and I thought that was a pretty good day for me. Salad and zero fat dressing for lunch today. And I can't find a scales here!

Andy

The Self-Delusion Diet

A post over at scienceblogs talks about The Self-Delusion Diet, based on a study where those who told their lifestyle was healthier lost weight. It's suggested that "feeling generally better about themselves, also made small changes to their eating habits, like eating slightly smaller portions, without really thinking about it. That could account for a weight loss of .5 lb per week."

I'm not sure it would work for me, since I'm basically lazy.

After a huge pig-out on Saturday, I see to be going up and down around about 18st 11 this last week. No bad thing, the trendline is still going down so far.

Friday Weigh In

A disappointing result this week, since I stayed the same. I think there were a couple of contributing factors:

• more than a couple of drinks and lots of nibbles at a neighbour's last weekend.
• Points average for the week came in at 40 - almost two points higher than the previous week.
• The last two weeks I've had one sub-30 point day, this week I didn't.

The other thing is that I think I've been more in a frame of mind of "what can I get away with eating" rather than "do I really want/need this?". That certainly hasn't helped. I do still have the consolation from my daily weighing that I did reach a new lowest weight during the week, so it's not all bad. I need to watch it for another couple of days and see if the changes so far are going to be sufficient to keep losing it.

I've got another week before my trip to the US, so I need to try and have a good week this week.

Takes deep breath, hardens resolve....

Lifehacker on diets

One of my favourite websites, www.lifehacker.com has an excellent diet post from Kyle Pott with some "unconventional" tips.

I'm not sure how unconventional they really are, though.

First off, Kyle recommends getting a digital scales. Makes sense to me: more accurate than a mechanical one, and ours has a feature where the weight stays on display for a few seconds after you step off. Perfect if you're tall, short sighted and bleary eyed in the morning!

He also recommend daily weighing, which most diet plans don't. You need a very positive attitude for this to work, but I'm in favour of it as well. In fact, his only tip that I don't already follow to some extent is to drink lots of water and exercise.

I hate exercise. I always have. I don't get this endorphin thing, I just get out of breath. I don't mind a walk if the weather is nice, I don't mind snorkeling since I don't have to work too hard. I can't think of anything more boring than pushing some machine around for an hour!

And as far as the water is concerned, I think the important thing is to drink lots of liquid. It doesn't have to be pure water. I drink mostly coffee, fizzy flavoured water, and beer. None of these will cause you to lose more liquid (from their dieuretic effects) than they provide, so I'm not out to change those habits.

I seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. Staying under 40 points (thats 2800 calories or so) seems to be the way to go for me. 18st 11¼ this morning. Certainly hitting 18st 7 before the end of Feb is looking easy at this point, even with a week in the States coming up. And that allows me to put on a few lbs on holiday!