Macronutrients- Protein, Carbohydrates, and Lipids (Fats).

To most, these 3 things are just what they look like here, words. Let me tell you exactly what each macro-nutrient is, what it does for you, how it does it, and why it does it. I know most readers like to just have the concrete information about things rather than the complicated science behind it, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do for you curious George’s. Break everything down for you that your science teacher made so complicated. I’m going to make it bare-bones simple so everyone can understand what to put in their bodies, why, and how much of it and when. There will be a part 2 to this article down the road which will explain all of the biology and chemistry of macronutrients, but for now, let’s take it easy. Take off! Here we go!
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Read Part 1 here.

The health problems.

On average, one soda provides Americans with 12 teaspoons of sugar a day, while the U.S. Department of Argriculture only recommends 12 teaspoons for a 2,200 calorie diet. Most people are getting all of their recommend daily value from one soda alone! Just think of all the people who drink soda throughout the day (i.e: Myself freshman year) and you can only imagine how many of our recommended calories are filled up by the refined sugar in soda.

Obesity

Since the good calories and nutrients we’re supposed to eat are being replaced with refined sugar, heavy soda drinkers encounter more health problems than non-soda drinkers. Obesity, which has more than doubled since the 1970’s, can be attributed to poor diet and lack of exercise, but our increased soda consumption definitely plays a factor. Obesity causes diabetes, heat disease, stroke, cancer, depression, and truck load of other problems. “An analysis of USDA 1994-96 dietary-intake data found that obesity rates have reisen in tandem with soft drink consumption, and that heavy consumers of soda pop have higher calorie intakes,” says the “Liquid Candy” study.

Bone decay and osteoporosis.

Due to the rise in soda consumption, there has been a significant decline in calorie intake from milk and other dairy products. Calcium has been replaced with refine sugar which leads to increased risk in oeseoporosis, which is a disease that causes fragile bones.

Tooth Decay

What did your mommy always tell you? Eating all that sugar will cause your teeth to rot out! Good thing you listened, right? I can speak from personal experience on this subject, since I put holes in teeth with my excessive soda drinking. When I got my cavities filled, I gave up drinking more than one or two sodas per week and almost five years later have not had a new cavity. Experts recommend that if you are going to drink soda, have it with a meal and brush your teeth afterwards with fluoride toothpaste. The increase in preventive tooth care has actually declined the rates of tooth decay in the US, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I know from my own experience why soda wasn’t good for me. If you’re an avid drinker, you may have a hard time giving it up so easily. Trust me on this, once you stop, you really can’t go back. Drinking more than a can of soda in a given period usually makes me ill. I’ve gotten into the habit of drinking so much water throughout the day that it doesn’t leave room for soda. Water doesn’t have taste, but the refreshing feeling you get from a nice cold glass of water is unparallel to the stinging you get in your throat and acidy feeling in your stomach that you get from soda. Treat a can of soda like a candy bar, a liquid candy bar if you will, and enjoy it with a meal maybe once a week. Hopefully, you can limit your intake substantially and begin replacing those bad, empty calories with something nutritional, or better yet, nothing at all!

Source: Liquid Candy (pdf)

Shoulders for the Masses

Before I was a software engineer, before I was a personal trainer, before I was a nutritionist, and before I could shoulder press my own bodyweight, I cleaned playgrounds to help pay my way through college. You know, those tall, colorful, fun playgrounds at your local McRestaurant or Burger Fling? Yeah I cleaned those. We needed a modicum of strength and endurance to climb all around the outsides of these things, so I would frequent the weight room several times a week. Over the course of a couple years I had actually built myself a pair of respectably sized shoulders using machines and side raises with dumbbells. These were shoulders that received questions such as, “dude, have you been going to the gym?” and “hey, you lift weights right?” Wow, please guys don’t let the praise rain down too hard!

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If you are a normal person, then you’ve probably tried to diet. If you haven’t been suckered into one by television, books, or the internet, then you have probably tried to on your own. Whether you’re too fat, too skinny, or just right, it doesn’t matter. Advertising and pretty much everyone around you is promoting dieting that will get you into the shape of your life if you just eat between the first and third Sundays of the fourth month of the nocturnal calendar. Oh yeah, and you have to be wearing slippers and red meat is forbidden from this diet.

Let’s get real. When you diet, you basically set goals. Some goals are more far fetched than others, but the bottom line is that they exist so that you can reach some sort of fat loss, muscle gain, or combination of both. When dieting with the “Atkins,” “South-Beach”, or “No Belts while Eating Diet,” you’re using the verbal definition of the word.

diet verb - to eat sparingly or according to prescribed rules

For a period of time, you are following a set of specific rules to lose weight. What happens when you can’t follow these rules for more than a few days, or if you’ve reached your dieting goals and go back to your original way of eating? You’re either not going to follow you’re not going to get far in the first place, or gain the weight back which an all too common story. The goals are noble, but the method is flawed. I believe in dieting only when you are using it for a specific weight loss or weight gain goal, and then you return to your healthy eating style afterwards. What I don’t believe is in the bullshit “mainstream” diets that are basically tricks with smoke and mirrors to help you lose a few pounds in the first week or two that will make you forget you just paid $20 for pages of nonsense.

Now, what happens if you treated diet as the noun word type?

diet noun - food and drink regularly provided or consumed, the usual food and drink consumed by an organism.

An animal’s diet is what it eats everyday. A lion or shark doesn’t change its diet to some fresh veggies because it thinks it is too fat. Assuming that food is always available in the form of prey, then they eat the same thing everyday. It never gets too fat in the first place because Darwinism will kill it off. Only the strong survive.

That is not to say that which type of definition of the word you are using has any effect on what happens. The problem is going to extremes “to diet.” People change their eating habits from fast-food and late night snacking to fish and veggies overnight. That’s harder than it sounds. When you change your “diet,” the foods you eat everyday, by forming good eating habits then you can achieve particular results. The benefit you gain from changing the way you eat permanently is that it doesn’t feel like you’re “dieting.” You’re just “eating,” and that is something we do everyday. When someone asks you, “We’re going to Burger King for dinner. Do you want anything?” you shouldn’t say “No, I’m dieting,” but rather “That’s not something I regularly consume.”

Oh Cherry Coke, sweet nectar of the gods. How you have ruined my life for a period of years. During high school I, like any other kid, enjoyed soda, or pop, or whatever you want to call it. When I reached college I ballooned in weight and I place the blame primarily on soda. Sure, the dining hall food could have been a factor, since it did only come in two flavors: fried or with cheese, but the main reason was because of the copious amounts of carbonated beverages I consumed.

Let me break down the numbers. I went through an average of a 12-pack of soda that I bought every week, in addition to 12-24oz per meal that I had every day. Lets just say I drank an average of 3 12oz cans a day. That’s 252 fluid ounces per week, which equals almost 2 gallons. For the year, that’s
a little over 100 gallons of soda per year. I make myself sick just thinking about it. The aftermath was this: At the end of the year I ended up with 7 cavities in my teeth and became heavier than I ever was in my life. After the pain of getting my cavities filled, I realized that soda was killing me in more ways that one.

Americans and Soda: The Growing Facts

That was my experience with soda. Now let’s delve into the problem on a national level. American consumption of soda has doubled since 1971. In 2004, Americans bought $66 billion worth of soda. Here’s another staggering number: soft drinks are the single most consumed food in the American diet, accounting for about 7% of all calories consumed.

What are the reasons Americans are drinking so much more soda? For one, the size of average container sized rose from a 6.5 oz bottle in the 1950’s, to the 24oz bottle of today. That’s not counting the 64oz cup, also known as a half-gallon, available at 7-11’s and fast food places that super-size their portions.

Read Part II Here