According to the New York Times, there is new evidence that suggest drinking diet soda may not be healthy for you.  I’m really running out of things I can bad habits that won’t kill me.

WebMd.com has a great article on some of the diet mistakes people make.  Personally, I’ve committed all six, probably at one point, all in the same day.  

I love ThomasHawk.com but he mostly he blogs about technology and photography, so I don’t have him on my blog roll which is focused on health and fitness. Still, he came up with a doozy of a post on the worst foods to purchase when going out to fast food. My favorite is the Arby’s Pecan Sticky Bun 4 Pack, which packs a whopping 2,700 calories.

See the whole list here.

Small Bites has an excellent post on the effects the holidays have on consumption. According to the post, the average person consumes an additional 460-900 calories a day, every day, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Just a quick calculation of 6 weeks multiplied by 500 additional calories a day makes the potential weight gain of 6lbs (3500 calories a pound).

The money quote for me:

The biggest culprits aren’t holiday family meals astronomically high in calories, but the barrage of food we encounter in our daily lives throughout that six week period.

It’s not the big meals but all the little temptations that kick off with excess Halloween treats to the Christmas cookies my daughters love to make. A snack here and a snack there and it’s easy to see where the 500 calories extra comes from.

Diethack.com has an interesting post on ginseng, including it’s purported health benefits.  I’m a bit of a nutritional supplement skeptic, but a colleague brought some candied red ginseng from Korea and I have to say it worked better for me than my daily cup of coffee for waking up and staying focused.

I’m a podcast addict these days, listening to shows on my daily commute as well when I workout. One show that’s on my weekly schedule is NPR’s Science Friday, and recently, they had author Gina Kolata who recently wrote,
Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss–and the Myths and Realities of Dieting. I plan on reading the book and doing a book review, but for now, I highly recommend the podcast which I found very interesting.

The book focuses on all the recent studies on nutrition and dieting, trying to be the objective observer in a world that is fraught with agendas and the lure of fast cash. People spend a lot of money on diet and exercise related products, and it’s hard to separate out the good data from the bad. Ms. Kolata, who is a science reporter for the NY Times, seems to have done a lot of research on many topics I’ve wondered aloud myself including how successful diets really are, why it’s so hard to keep weight off, and how really bad is being overweight to begin with.

One of the things that struck a chord with me is her discussion on how the body wants to gain back weight after a diet. I’ve been fighting this right now, having lost a significant amount of weight and now unable to keep it off unless I cut my calorie intake down at least 30% from what is the recommended amount. I think it’s a significant reason why people yo-yo so much on diets, and by the sounds of it, it will be something I have to do for quite a while if I want to keep this weight off.

Keep an eye out for a review as soon as I have a chance to read this book.

Diet Blog has a nice, no nonsense approach to dealing with your favorite foods and how to avoid overeating them. One of the problems I have had in the past is the yo yo phenomenon were I lose weight and then pack it back on again after I get off the diet. For me, the biggest struggle is dealing with the reality that a diet isn’t a one time thing but a change to a new lifestyle so that post is a good start for me in enjoying foods that I love without sabotaging my own health.

(Original Source: Haven Logan)

One of my biggest issues with eating is that I tend to eat for other reasons that being hungry. Sometimes it’s emotional, other times it’s that I’m tired and food acts as a quick pick-me-up. At other times, I eat because my friends or family is eating and I want be part of the group.

Diet Blog has a good post on Indicators of Emotional Eating. Many times, I can check off 4-5 from that list.

As I’ve been dieting, getting enough water has been top on my health agenda. Drinking more water make you feel more full and satiated, but it also replaces some of the water you normally would get from eating food. It also is beneficial to your kidneys which is battling all the waste produced from burning fat.

How much you should drink has always been a question for me. My typical answer is to just check my urine color and try to make it as clear as possible. Diet blog has a better answer to that question.

Small Bites posted their take on diet soda and it’s well worth a look.

As a long time diet soda drinker, I’ve been cutting back quite a bit and shifting to water during the work day. I stopped using products with aspartame for a couple months to see if it made me feel any different, but in my case, I couldn’t feel any noticeable differences in my body, so I started adding a bit back (mostly via sugarfree chewing gum and toothpaste) over time.

My new hobby is making my own sodas with a home soda machine from Soda-Club Home Soda Makers, which is a lot of fun. It doesn’t really save you much money, but it uses a lot less resources on the environment as far as waste products, and it’s fun to be able to tweak the recipes to your liking. My family uses the pre-made diet mixes, but we also just carbonate some water and throw in some sliced fruit to get a Calistoga Water style drink which is also very tasty. The additional benefit for me is that their diet soda mixes use Splenda as opposed to aspartame, which I prefer.