12:15PM
3 half-pound grass-fed beef hamburger patties with bacon, Colby Jack cheese, and mayo
Diet Coke with Splenda
10:15PM
2 slices of Julian Bakery SmartCarb bread with butter and Colby Jack cheese
Diet Coke with Splenda
NOTE: Somebody posted their comments yesterday about what they'd be interested in seeing me do with my menus. I get a lot of unsolicited advice from people about how they think I should be eating, but this one sounded good enough:
I would love you to try to eat 3 meals a day and kick the sodas for a month...and see if this kick started your metabolism...
This isn't an unreasonable suggestion by any means, although I think forcing the issue by moving to three meals a day would require me to eat less food at each meal so that I'll be hungry enough to consume three meals daily. As for the diet sodas, I've documented my attempts to give them up in the past and I just don't see why it is such a big deal. I drank lots of diet sodas (mostly Splenda-sweetened ones) during my 180-pound weight loss in 2004 and continue to consume them today as part of my healthy low-carb lifestyle. I don't understand why they're so "bad" when they keep me away from truly horrendous sugary sodas and junk food.
I'm not sure why my metabolism needs to be "kick started," but I appreciate the idea. I'll ponder it.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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20 comments:
Both regular and diet sodas contain phosphorus, which leaches minerals from your bones and wears away irreplaceable enamel from your teeth. If you're drinking diet sodas to satisfy your sweet tooth, then your low-carb diet hasn't eliminated sweet cravings, which is unexpected given the metabolic changes induced by low-carb eating.
I have a sweet tooth, too, so I'm sympathetic. I used to satisfy mine with homemade chocolate bars from unsweetened baking chocolate and eurithrytol. However, I couldn't stop at one small square sometimes, so I've given them up completely. I still feel the urge to sweeten the palate at the end of a meal, but so far I'm toughing it out. The sweet tooth urge usually disappears within twenty minutes after finishing a meal.
Between meals I drink decaf and herbal teas when I want flavor, using a straw to protect my front teeth from staining.
If you really think a daily diet soda habit is absolutely harmless, then drink away. Your body, your choice. If you think this habit might be doing some harm, then look for a way to eliminate this habit.
I respect and admire your restraint in responding to blunt and sometimes cruel remarks from comenters.
Jimmy,
You said, “I’m not sure why my metabolism needs to be ‘kick started’…” The comment ASSUMED you weren’t satisfied with being obese and wanted to lose more weight. Was that person wrong in their assumption? You’re eating too much for a weight loss and that’s the reason you’ve stalled for 4.5 years. Some people would call that failure, not success. I suggested yesterday that you look into your psychological need for sweets. If you can understand the root cause of your dysfunctional eating you may be able to overcome it.
THANKS Coyote. Again, we're back to this definition of the word "obese." If I were following BMI, then certainly I could be classified as such if you need to put a label on it. I don't look at things in that way. Instead, how is my health doing, how do I feel, and am I able to do the things I want to do in life are all questions that go into my living strategy.
Right now, the answers to all of those questions are positive. Sure, I'd like to lose a few pounds, but I'm not going to obsess over it like it's the end of the world if I can't achieve it by next month. The whole concept of lifestyle change is to live your life one day at a time doing things that are making your healthier than you ever thought possible. And that is precisely what I'm doing right now.
ReL diet soda and phosphorous, from Tufts University:
http://jhcpan.nutrition.tufts.edu/consumers/soda_and_bones.html
I think people are confusing the desire to eat or drink something sweet with sugar cravings which are often a physiological response stemming from high insulin levels and the corresponding blood sugar drop.
If you can understand the root cause of your dysfunctional eating you may be able to overcome it.
Coyote, why do you think Jimmy's eating is dysfunctional? It is quite a harsh statement. His health markers had improved tremendously and the guy keeps telling you he feels better than ever before. What makes you diagnose his desire for something sweet-tasting as dysfunctional eating? There is so much unknown when it comes to human physiology that it is rather ignorant for you to make any kind of conclusion like that! I am not being mean by any stretch of imagination but you keep pondering on the same issue over and over and over again. What does Jimmy need to do to make his eating functional? Follow your advice? Why does he need to evaluate his psychological roots? He is not consuming whole cake or a pint of ice-cream that he did before. He is using low carb treats to moderation, very reasonable. Having a diet coke every day twice a day is not dysfunctional, having two litters of regular one might be! Having one piece of cake that is low carb is not dysfunctional. i dont see anything in his menu that is dysfucntional. But what I do see dysfunctional is a need for many people to impose their subjective opinion onto someone's else life or put tags on them , that is my friend truly dysfunctional!
Jimmy, on the link you gave for the item on giving up giving up soda it linked to your 2007 new year resolutions. I am curious. How many did you keep?
Sonagi92: Soda's do do horrible things to your teeth. But all the studies I have seen only women have bone leeching problems. Its worth women looking into as the amount of soda/week it occurs with is not very high! And no studies that I have seen have looked into the health of the unborn child.
Didirine: The tuffs site you linked said there is no link. But a study by them in 2006 says that there is for women. Its very confusing atm. But lets face it, soda is not an essential thing so for women its worth hedging your bets and quitting. 20-25% of (old) people who have hip fractures die within 1year! And lets face it women have enough of a bone risk as it is!
Well, the most important New Year's resolution I did keep was the one I made on January 1, 2004 to start livin' la vida low-carb. I started it, stuck with it, and STILL do it today. So, yes, I stick with the most important resolutions I've made. :D
From the Tufts link I posted earlier:
More about Soda and Your Bones
Last month’s newsletter answered a question from a reader who had heard that carbonated beverages are harmful to bones. I replied that there’s no evidence of such a danger — so long as healthy drinks, like milk or fruit juice, aren’t replaced by the empty calories of sugary sodas. Many readers wrote to say that they’d heard otherwise. This query was typical:
Rumor in the health-conscious community has it that the phosphorus in carbonated beverages interferes with the body’s proper absorption of calcium. Is this not true?
Indeed, this is not true. Because there’s widespread misinformation about soda and phosphorus, I want to provide a fuller answer.
Phosphorus is an essential mineral, one of the body’s building blocks for bone. The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) for phosphorus is 700 mg per day for adult women. Though many women don’t get enough calcium in their diet, insufficient phosphorus is seldom a problem because phosphorus is abundant in many common foods. But calcium metabolism can suffer when you consume considerably more phosphorus than calcium. This is because both calcium and phosphorus require vitamin D for proper metabolism. If there’s an excess of phosphorus, less vitamin D is available for processing calcium, so calcium absorption is reduced.
Could soda consumption cause a phosphorus excess? Very unlikely. Many sodas have no phosphorus at all — and even those that do contain phosphorus have modest amounts compared to other common foods.
There’s no phosphorus at all in club soda or seltzer, according to the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (1998). Sodas that do have phosphorus contain well less than 100 milligrams per 8-ounce serving. Here are a few typical examples:
Beverage Milligrams of Phosphorus
Coca-Cola (8 oz) 41
Diet Coke (8 oz) 18
Tab (8 oz) 30
Sprite (8 oz) 0
Minute Maid orange (8 oz) 0
Source: Coca-Cola USA
To put these quantities in perspective, let’s look at some other foods. Among the most significant sources of phosphorus in the typical American diet are whole grains (including cereal), meat, poultry and dairy foods. Some examples:
Food Milligrams of Phosphorus
Whole wheat bread (1 slice) 64
Kellogg’s All Bran (1/2 cup) 294
Cheerios (1 cup) 114
Ground beef, lean, grilled (3 oz) 134
Chicken breast, no skin, roasted (3 oz) 194
Cottage cheese, low fat (4 oz) 151
Skim milk, 1% (8 oz) 235
In other words, you’d have to drink more than two six-packs of Diet Coke to ingest as much phosphorous as you’d get from a modest serving of All Bran and skim milk.
Reducing soda consumption to avoid phosphorus is like cutting back on carrots to save calories: Yes, carrots provide calories — but they’re very unlikely to be a significant source of excess calories in your diet.
Finally, there are two legitimate bone-related concerns involving soda. One, which I mentioned last month, is that some people — especially teenagers — may drink soda instead of milk and consequently they don’t get enough calcium.
The other possible issue is caffeine, an ingredient in many colas and other sodas. Caffeine has a diuretic effect and can interfere with calcium absorption if you consume more than 400 milligrams per day (the equivalent of about four cups of coffee). If you’re already close to that limit with coffee, and also drink several glasses of caffeine-containing soda daily, you might want to cut back or switch to decaffeinated. Typically, sodas that contain caffeine have about as much as teas that contain caffeine — considerably less than coffee. But check the label for exact amounts. For example, an 8-ounce glass of regular Coca-Cola contains 31 milligrams of caffeine; there’s none in the caffeine-free version.
Jimmy: I asked about your 2007 resolutions not 2004. I presume by the way you avoided answering my question the answer is non.
Didrina: why have you cut and pasted from a web page you have linked to? The link was pretty easy to follow. Though there was no date on it so its hard to know if anything has come later. I think that any items from the coca-cola company about anything that might slightly involve anything bad about their products should be taken with a pinch of salt. Info from independent sources are more useful. Companies like that would run an experiment 1000 times to get one positive outcome, they are not adverse to fiddling the figures. The fact is noone seems to have decided after all this time if its caffeine or what. Fine maybe there is more phosphorus in some foods, but its not floating around in an acidic soup there are other things in there too. This is not a natural food. If beef with a higher level of phosphorus has been leeching our bones all these thousands of years we would all be hunchbacked hobbit type people.
Most of the studies said cola and cola type drinks, not all sodas.
Actually, Amber, you weren't specific on which year you were referring to. But of that 2007 list of resolutions, I accomplished two of them--more consistent cardio and beginning resistance training in earnest. Both of those helped me tremendously.
But I said 2007 in my question! Your slippy like an eel! You should go into marketing....
How about 2010 resolution: answer questions straight.
Amber, there's no need to be childish in your responses. THANK YOU for your feedback.
Not childish, just frustrated. I cannot see why you cannot just answer a question.
You set yourself goals and you gave up/failed. Fine, your human. People do that. They do it for many reasons, it does not make you a bad person. It just makes you a person.
Maybe you will set yourself the same goals next year and complete them, because YOU are ready to do them. There is more to goal setting than people think. If there was not desperately unhappy overweight people would decide to loose weight and manage it. But they do not. Even knowing the life they live and way their weight effects them being morbidly overweight they still eat excess or yo-yo the weight back on.
Its better to be honest and just be the person you are than being something you think people want you to be. And sometimes that means failing. There are lessons to be learned from failing too.
I learned many lessons from failed New Year's resolutions to lose weight in the past. As the classic gospel song says, "we fall down, but we get up." Thankfully, all those times of falling down prior to 2004 enabled me to get up strongly when I lost 180 pounds that year. :D
Amber, I posted the information because you said "Didirine: The tuffs site you linked said there is no link." I interpreted this to mean that you couldn't access the site.
If you don't believe the information supplied by the Coca-Cola company, perhaps you'd trust the USDA website.
As for soda being an acid bath, Snopes says, "... the claims offered here are specious. Coca-Cola does contain small amounts of citric acid and phosphoric acid; however, all the insinuations about the dangers these acids might pose to people who drink Coca-Cola ignore a simple concept familiar to any first-year chemistry student: concentration. Coca-Cola contains less citric acid than does orange juice, and the concentration of phosphoric acid in Coke is far too small (a mere 11 to 13 grams per gallon of syrup, or about 0.20 to 0.30 per cent of the total formula) to dissolve a steak, a tooth, or a nail overnight. (Much of the item will dissolve eventually, but after a day or two you'll still have most of the tooth, a whole nail, and one very soggy T-bone.)
Besides, the gastric acid in your stomach is much stronger than any of the acids in Coca-Cola, so the Coca-Cola is harmless."
And this was for the sugar varieties (which, of course, WILL rot your teeth), not diet.
The point here is that consuming a few diet sodas a day is hardly a health threat. If caffeine/calcium absorption is a concern, eat another piece of cheese or have some yogurt.
"If beef with a higher level of phosphorus has been leeching our bones all these thousands of years we would all be hunchbacked hobbit type people."
The question was not whether foods with high levels of phosphorous (from whatever source) weaken our bones; it was whether soda really contains high levels of phosphorus that will damage our bones. The answer is no, there's not enough phosphorous in soda to cause an imbalance. The caffeine in soda MAY contribute to calcium deficiency if a person consumes over 400 mg./day and isn't getting enough calcium (or vitamin D). As the article stated, "If there’s an excess of phosphorus [from any source], less vitamin D is available for processing calcium, so calcium absorption is reduced."
Didirina, you post the same info about soda every time. I think it's laughable that anyone would trust information from the coca-cola company. All they want is your money. They don't give a darn about your health. Wake up!
There is a massive amount of scientific information out there that clearly shows that all sodas are bad for us. Those kind of chemicals were not meant to be entered into the human body. Period. It's empty nutrition to satisfy a craving or addiction. Every single person I know of who has removed soda from their diet has noticed health benefits. Myself included.
Jimmy- I can see you are getting a little irritated with the "obesity" talk on this post and the other one. Nobody means you harm; but a straight-out kind honesty is what you need. People are too afraid to be honest with people over fear of hurting their feelings these days. I have a friend who gives it to me straight out yet kindly, and I love him for it. Everyone else just lies.
Don't take it to heart; just be firm with yourself, be honest with yourself and be prepared for some hard work. It's not easy slimming down as you know. But if you do it right, this will be the last time you ever HAVE to do it.
THANKS Rian! Nope, I don't get irritated by the "obese" talk because I don't buy into it. If others do, then that's fine...but I am not at all unhappy with my current state of health that way it is. Do I have a few extra pounds? Sure. But my health is spectacular and that is an indisputable fact that nobody can really argue with. I don't mind getting my feelings hurt if there was some kind of truth I needed to hear, but Jimmy Moore is doing quite well. Thank you again!
"Didirina, you post the same info about soda every time. I think it's laughable that anyone would trust information from the coca-cola company."
And I think it's laughable that people such as yourself who are so dogmatic about your views can't even manage to completely read what is posted without misinterpreting it. The information didn't come from the Coca-Cola company, Rian. It came from Tufts University. And it hasn't been the same information every time.
"There is a massive amount of scientific information out there that clearly shows that all sodas are bad for us."
I've asked this before, but no one can give a straight answer. What bad things, exactly, will soda do? Specifically. Scientifically proven, not internet hysteria. Fill in the blank: Drinking diet soda will _____________________________.
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