Diet Drinks

For a long time, I avoided diet drinks. Give me my pure sugar please. Oh sure, it wasn't always pure sugar. Stuff's gotten expensive, don't you know. High fructose corn syrup. But whatever. It wasn't saccharin. It wasn't aspartame. It wasn't sucralose (that's Splenda). No pink, blue, or yellow packets for me (the shades would make good colors for baby outfits).

But software development isn't noted for its active exercise, and the first few months I was eating out all the time, and wouldn't you know. I was gaining weight.

This had happened to me before. I had ballooned up to 170, and decided to really give exercise a serious try. I had tried it before to minimal results. So I'd hit the gym, bike an hour a day, and try to limit what I ate.

Slowly (or quickly), the weight came off. I was losing about 1/3 a pound a day, so that was around 2 pounds a week. After five months, I had lost 35 pounds. I needed new clothes. I looked emaciated.

The exercise was rather time-consuming. When I cut down, it seemed fine. I was still at a reasonable weight.

But then full-time work came, I was at 150, then 155, then 160, and I said "uh oh". So I tried diet drinks.

Now, at the time, I was downing maybe 1-2 Cokes a day. More than that, I didn't need the sugar. A coworker had more prodigious amounts of caffeine, something like 6 cans a day. I thought that was outrageous.

But since going to diet, I find myself grabbing 4-5 cans a day. To be fair, I tend to forget I'm drinking a can, and often leave it half full for hours at a time, then toss it because I want it cold. Wasteful, to be sure.

And I haven't really lost any weight. Indeed, diet drinks may lull you into this false sense of security. First, you think, why should 5-6 cans matter? It's diet! Ah, but there's other stuff in there. But I only care about sugar! But the problem is that I am drinking more.

Let's think about that otherwise. Skip the weight gain issues or whether diet actually helps. If I drink 2-3 times more, that's 2-3 times more soda I would buy (were it not free, of course, god bless the software development industry that practically mandates free soda!). But worse, it makes me immune to normal soda. I mean immune to the idea that drinking 5-6 cans is outrageous.

I used to laugh at the idea of light beers. You know. Only 90 calories! But when beers have as many calories as sodas, and when consuming 6 beers (which for me is really never) is considered par for the course, that's like drinking 6 sodas. The bitterness of the beer is mere illusion. Just because it ain't sweet doesn't mean it doesn't have calories.

Anyway, ever since I had to think about my weight, I think about food a lot, usually, on the losing end. I've thought about it more lately because I had been steadily around 163 lbs, but now it's 166. Much of it from just the few days of holiday and sedentary TV watching. I was thinking of investing in a bike for my parent's place, but I'd only use it a few days a year.

It makes me think of Mike Wilbon. He visits his folks only a few days a year, but insists on paying for a year's worth of satellite TV so he doesn't miss anything when he's there. I'm beginning to think that I should do that too, just for the few days I'm there.

Exercise stuff replacing satellite TV, that is.

Ah, the wretched excess of holidays.