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