Sugar Turned On Me

So December kicked my butt and if you’ve been following this blog, I apologize for the unannounced hiatus. I’m back now and so is it and I figure what better way to return to the schedule than with a talk about the difference between too much and enough.

Catching up on my email last night, I read a story about the dangers of diet soda. The article has three main points:

1. Diet soda may help develop or continue a taste for sweet things, thus tempting you to ingest other sweet things and thus expand your waistline.
2. If you’re drinking diet soda, you’re not drinking water.
3. Aspartame may be dangerous, having been linked to headaches, diarrhea, dizziness, memory loss and mood instability.

On the points above, I don’t disagree. That said, there’s something to which the article gives a cursory nod but should, I think, be the main focus. Specifically, I’m talking about moderation.

Moderation in American culture is associated with the terms “boring” and “timid”.  We are the culture of XTREEMism, the culture of excess where enough is never enough and too much is usually prefered. If anything, this is what is killing us. With the rise in Type 2 diabetes, that danger to life and limb is literal.

Learning moderation is a hard trick. It’s usually much easier to avoid than to ration. But unless we discipline ourselves such that we can do so, I think we’ll find that we just bounce from one crisis caused by excess to another.

The article states in one place that if you’re drinking 1 can of diet soda a day, you’re probably okay but if you’re downing a 6 pack a day, probably not. I wish that had been the headline. It’s right. If I’d removed the word “diet” from in front of “soda” and followed that advice before my diagnosis, there might never have been a diagnosis to deal with at all.

So with that in mind, I give the following three tips to help learning to moderate not only your consumption of diet soda, but everything you need to keep a watch on in your life.

1. Limit Access: If you’re trying to watch your intake of anything, don’t keep it constantly in reach. Experiments have shown that we tend to consume things that are easily at hand and think about things we have to work for. If you drink diet soda at work, only take 1 or 2 with you for the day. It will make it hard to over consume if you don’t have any to consume.
2. Keep Yourself Posted: Wonder how many carbs/Diet Dr. Peppers/grapes/reality shows you take in on any given day? Write it down. At the end of the week look back and see how honest you’re being with yourself.
3. Experiment with Less: The next time you go to a fast food place, order the medium instead of the extra large. Try it out and see how it works for you. You might just find that it does as well for you as the X-Tra large swimming cup and you might also find that you waste less when you toss it.

Sugar Turned on Me will be back full time now. Got comments about this, the article or just want to say what you did on your Winter Break? Feel free to comment below. See you tomorrow.

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