Oh Diet Mt. Dew....I DO Love You (An oldy but a goody)

Celery Girl here! So today I am crunched for time. I was going to talk about one of my many vices.....diet soda. Well, diet Mt Dew to be exact. I could literally write pages about this particular vice, but I really don't have that kind of time. Then it dawned on me, I think I have been down this road before. I went through the archives and sure enough, there was more than one ode to my favorite vice. Imagine that!

So I decided to grab an oldy but a goody and share. From February 9, 2011, I give you....Oh Diet Mt. Dew...I DO Love You! I hope you enjoy reading about my struggle! (wink)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Oh Diet Mt. Dew.....I DO Love You!

Well it has been 3 days since my mammogram and still no word. I will admit that I am in a crappy mood. There are many reasons for this mood but mainly I hate coming face to face with the facts about my health and my own mortality. Yeah I know, none of us gets out alive, but some of us push our health to the limits.

In my younger, wilder days I will admit that I liked to drink a bit, and for about 30 minutes I smoked, but I never did drugs and once I realized that smelling like an ashtray was anything but sexy....I never touched another cigarette. Basically since the mid 90's, my drug of choice has been food but only since about 2003 has it been a vice. Probably though, my worst addiction is diet soda. Yes, we will call it an addiction because truthfully....it is. I literally crave it. Yes, I have heard the studies that it can cause cancer, and then the ones that say you would have to drink a case a day for it to do so. I have heard that it actually stimulates appetite rather than curb it, but today was the kicker. My mother in law called to tell me that my most favorite beverage has now been linked to heart attack and stroke. WHY?????????? Why did she have to call and tell me? Why couldn't she have kept that little tid bit to herself?????

Fine! I know that anything with as much artificial junk in it as diet pop cannot really be good for me, but come on.....I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or basically have fun of any kind, so can't you give me diet soda? Apparently the answer is.....only if I want to die of either cancer, a heart attack or a stroke. Where is the justice????

Logically, which I am not fond of logic, diet soda has many draw backs. It is as I stated above, loaded with artificial additives that apparently kill small lab rodents when they ingest 60 times their body weight. It is also expensive and I do tend to believe that it doesn't do much to deter the appetite when you see people order a double whopper, large fries and oh....lets not forget the diet soda. Even I am not so delusional as to think the zero calories in the diet pop are going to magically cancel out the 2000+ calories in the rest of the meal. Nor do I think after drinking the diet soda that I am no longer going to be hungry for the rest of the high calorie meal. But I LOVE diet soda. Most especially.....Diet Mt. Dew. It has been an ongoing love affair for many years and the few times that I have walked away from the Dew, it has always graciously taken me back when I realized the error of my ways. Now I am thinking that maybe this delicious Dew is just evil in disguise. Maybe it is time once again, to say goodbye to the Dew.

So here's the deal. I am not foolish enough to say I am going cold turkey because we all know that would be a lie. Starting tomorrow (my weigh in day) I am going to start tapering back. I will limit myself to only one a day and then every other day and so on until I run out at home. Then I will buy no more. I want to go for one full month without a diet pop of any kind and I want to see if I feel any different. They say the artificial sweetener can cause headaches, body pains, etc (but then again,...so does being over 40) so we shall see.

Regardless of the results, will I ever be diet soda free? Who knows but I do like tea and I drink a lot of water, so the tapering off while not fun, should not have me sitting on top of tall buildings aiming my sling shot at unsuspecting passerby's below. After all., the whole point of this year is to have a positive life style change and honestly diet soda is probably not one of the more healthy things I put in my body, so why not at least give the change a try?


Okay....so I have drank almost a whole 20 oz. diet Mt. Dew as I wrote this and I am really trying to feel guilty but it is just not there. I will however make tomorrow a starting point. I still feel crappy, I still don't know my mammogram results and I am still not happy about my mother in laws latest news flash, but I guess all this too shall pass.


So here's to more water, less soda and a healthier tomorrow. This is all a good thing....right?!

The Diet Liar

Okay....so I am trying this "new" thing called honesty. Don't get me wrong, I am not a liar.....normally. You can ask me almost anything at anytime and I will give you a full on, meet you eye to eye, as honest as I can possibly be answer. However, there are a couple of things that I find nearly impossible to be completely honest about, let alone look someone in the eye while trying. I am referring to my height, my weight and depending upon what I ate last night..... what I ate last night. That's right, my name is Lisa and I am a Diet Liar!

More about that in a minute, but in case you are just tuning in....yes the Celery Girl is back. You will now be hearing from me every Thursday as I am doing daily blog themes for the summer. Thursday is my health/wellness/diet/all about me day. I will put a link to this blog from my other blog so no matter which blog you read....you will be able to find this on Thursday's.

So back to me being a Diet Liar. It isn't pretty but I am. Even when I was at my smallest (which was pretty darn small), I was never a fan of telling others just how vertically challenged I was and as far as the number on the scales? Fugitaboutit! Then as time passed and I got old, tired and really lazy as far as the kitchen goes....what I ate after 8 p.m. became a secret I would take to the grave. Why all these secrets you ask? Because quite frankly.....except for the height thing which I really don't have any control over.....the other things don't exactly have me coming out looking like a pillar of strength and self control. I know....like the world can't see my ever widening behind and don't suspect that some sort of high calorie antics are going on before, during and after 8 p.m. Denial is a powerful emotion.

Among the colloquialisms that Dr. Phil McGraw likes to use, my favorite has to be: "We can't change what we don't acknowledge." Thanks to my long time love affair with denial on this matter, I really haven't acknowledge much until recently. Now in other aspects of my life, I have been doing some soul searching. Many chapters in my family life have been opening and closing over the last few months as well as some life changing events have occured. Real change was starting to happen in my children's lives as well as my own and I was starting to view life differently for the first time in a long time. One of these changes though was that due to months of fast food and junk food, even my "fat" jeans were too tight on me. This told me that if I were to step on the scales stripped down to my tattoos and even sucking in everything from my neck to my knees, I would likely weigh more than I had ever weighed in my life. The very thought had me avoiding scales like they were land mines.

Finally, one day recently as my fat jeans were cutting off my circulation, I decided that since I was already on a role with the whole change thing, perhaps it was time to get serious about my weight, my health and my back fat. It was time to stop making excuses about why I couldn't go to the gym and just go! I also decided that I needed to know just where I was at weight wise in order to know where I needed to be. Apparently I have a sadistic streak a mile wide, so not only did I go to the gym, but I also made myself accountable. Look at me being all grown up and honest! I marched in and had the whole analysis thing done including weight, measurements and percentage of body fat. Let's just say that no fast food or junk food is worth the way I felt as each number was worse than the last.

Now there was a time when those numbers and the whole experience would have put me into a tailspin that might have ended up with a bag of gummies, a carton of Cherry Garcia and a Lifetime movie. Instead though....I sucked it in, sucked it up and hit the elliptical. Yes, the whole experience truly sucked but it was a bit liberating too. There is nothing like having your highest weight ever, announced to you by the fit male personal trainer at the gym. It made me realize though that I never wanted to feel like this again. In fact, the next time I hit that scale, I want to own that sucker! Or at the very least....have lost a few pounds.

So here I am being honest. It was time and I am ready to make even more changes as the summer wears on. As for the scale....don't expect me to be divulging those numbers anytime soon however, I am pretty sure that the after 8 p.m. refrigerator raids are a thing of the past. I know the path will be slow and difficult at times but my goals are doable. Goal #1....breathing in my "fat" jeans! And who knows, maybe with all this new found honesty......the Diet Liar will be gone for good!