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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

186

i'm in love with granola. i've been eating it with my yogurt the last week or two and it's wonderful. i bought the hannaford brand because apparently you have two choices for granola in bar harbor: store brand or hippie. and the store brand is a hell of a lot cheaper. and i've been loving the store brand. it's so yummy. and today i figured out why. 13 grams of sugar per serving. it only took me two weeks to read the back of the box. jeepers. 13 grams. no wonder it's so good. so, as soon as it's gone i'll be buying the hippie granola from the health food store. at roughly the cost of my soul per ounce.

it's one of those realizations that not everything that you think is good for you is. my sister and i have this argument every time we talk about coke and diet coke. she can't believe i drink coke. the real thing with all the sugar. i admit it's not a great choice, and i've been having more than i should. but it still amounts to about 5 cans a month, maybe six. she drinks 2 or 3 diet cokes a day. A DAY! for the love of god, how can that be better for you than full sugar coke 5 times a month. but this is the essence of my sister. she would rather have the shake for breakfast, the shake for lunch and a cake for dinner than give up on the cake altogether. but then she fears being fat more than i do. because she's skinnier.

i don't have alot of diet food in my house. only the splenda from my south beach adventure. i don't like it and i don't like eating chemicals if i don't have to. it's not the food's fault i have more than i should. so we will continue to argue the point about coke and diet coke. diet may keep down the calories but i defy her to find it better for you than regular. as if such a question is even worth being asked.

15 comments:

JessiferSeabs said...

I'm a big believer that it is much better to drink/eat the real thing and count the calories (or points), than to mindlessly indulge in chemicals. I mean, diet coke - come on, that just CAN'T be good for you (this said by the girl who drank like 5 a day for the better part of her life, and these days just sticks to water and the occasional coke)

Amy said...

amen.

Michelle said...

::sigh:: sadly I'm a diet coke junky. Good for you..prolly not, but it keeps me away from other things that expand my waiste & hips.
Granola heh? Gonna look into it.
~M
Ps. Congrats on your running. I'm way jealous. (o:

Jennette Fulda said...

But IF you're going to drink a lot of soda like your sister, you should definitely drink diet soda. My body is probably composed of 3% Diet Dr. Pepper, so I'm obviously biased. As far as calories go, a can of Diet Dr. Pepper has 0 calories (or at least less than 5 according to food labeling regulations) and Dr. Pepper has 160. When I think about all the soda I've drunk in my life, I think these last 60 pounds can probably be accounted just to Mountain Dew, the vice of my teens. It's liquid candy and SO many people don't realize it.

As a heavy soda drinker, I'm always a bit curious as to what non-soda fiends drink. Do you stick mostly to water? Juices? Teas?

Amy said...

mostly i drink water, and iced tea. i buy unsweetened when i can (hard to find) but usually i brew my own and put a tiny little bit of sugar in it. juices aren't any better than soda, i don't even know if you could say they have vitamins anymore, better to eat the fruit and get the fiber.

my deal with the diet soda is that she doesn't need to drink five a day. anymore than i would need to drink 5 regular. it's the idea that you can have as much as you want because it's diet that bothers me. like when snackwells was so popular. eating a box of snackwells doesn't get you any closer to being healthy than eating 2 regular cookies. it's like a liscense to binge.

Amy said...

but to be more liberal, and mirror what i wrote on michelle's blog, if drinking diet soda is the thing you need to do to keep sane, do it for heaven's sake. i just don't want to take the brunt of arguments against soda. i don't think putting chemicals into my body is better than sugar and i never will. but i don't think drinking soda is good for me. it's the thing i choose to do anyway. but i feel like i can reverse the effects of the sugar in part by exercise but it's harder to get the chemicals out of my body.

Jennette Fulda said...

I think the biggest negatives to all the soda I drink is that it means I get a lot of caffeine and that it makes my saliva more acidic.

As for the caffeine, it's hard to find non-caffeinated versions in cans which I bring to work, though I am able to find 2 liters for most of it to drink at home.

As for the acidity, my dentist suggested I chew gum with an additive called xylitol after I drink soda because it helps precent tooth decay somehow. So I keep gum at my desk at work and home. He also suggested I swish water around in my mouth, but that ain't happening.

Other than those two issues, I think drinking lots of diet soda is fairly benign. It's certainly better than binging on Snackwells like you mentioned or like eating all those South Beach bars like I did two weekends ago and have since banned from the house.

I certainly concur that it would be better if I didn't drink them at all. But when I weigh the negative impacts with how much I enjoy them, I'm willing to keep them in my life. If their were more negative impacts, like they were higher calorie or had lots of carbs, I'd probably ditch them.

Jennette Fulda said...

BTW, I don't want it to sound like I'm bashing you for not drinking soda. I agree it's not a health drink.

I've never really understood why people get edgy about chemicals though. Splenda is made up of molecules just like sugar is. The molecules have been manipulated by humans, but does that make them any worse?

Amy said...

my deal is with sugar is i have a reasonable expectation of what i'm ingesting, with the chemicals you just don't know. one day they say it'll kill you and the next it's fine. but like you say, you weigh your options and you make your choices and that's fine. i don't think choosing to drink diet soda if you want to is any worse than any other calculated decision. every body makes their choices. my boyfriend only drinks water and i always feel like an ass when i have any kind of drink with him around but those are his choices and he doesn't care what i choose. it's just how i feel about it. i think secretly my sister is pissed that i can choose to drink one soda and not five and she can't but there's nothing i can do about that. i can only make my choices, like us all.

pinky pinkerson said...

when I went to WW several years ago, I was shocked to find out how many calories were in white rice, bagels, and orange juice. Even now, whenever I'm "dieting" I always think of those three items as the Triumverate Of Evil, even though they aren't, really - they just aren't the best choices if you are trying to reduce your calories.

Debbi said...

As someone who rarely drinks soda (now), and chooses sugar-free when she does, about all I drink now is coffee and water. Once in a while I'll have some unsweetened tea. But with the amount of water I like to drink (four half-liter bottles, sometimes more), I don't have much thirst left over for soda.

Sometimes I want the taste, though. I then choose Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke. Crack in a can -- it's sooo good.

Jennette Fulda said...

Crack in a can, heh. Didn't they actually used to put cocaine in Coke, hence the name? I just checked and they did!

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocaine.asp

Amy said...

yeah, it was medicinal. no wonder it was so popular.

MayQueen said...

During the course of a day I tend to drink a whole lotta water (as opposed to a whole lotta milkah)liters of Liptons cold brew with no sugar, a glass of soy milk, perhaps a cup or two of slightly sweetened hot tea, and possibly some orange juice if I'm in the mood. I stopped drinking soda on a daily basis sometime during college and you know what? It is soooo good now when I do have it. I go out of my way not to drink it so it will retain that quality. I wish I could do the same thing with chocolate. And ice cream. And chocolate ice cream.

Teri said...

I'm with you on the coke-is-better- than-diet-coke side of the fence. My husband drinks probably 2 liters of diet pepsi a day (yes, a day!) and I'm convinced he's pickling his liver. He won't listen to me!

LOVE your blog. xo