Friday, July 15, 2011

MY SWITCH TO SELTZER

"...if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them..." (from Mark 16:18)

Back in 1989 when we had a church and even had a youth group at the church in Framingham, we had a young Licensed Minister come into our church and come on board as youth pastor. (He worked a secular job, but we gave him love offerings.) Mike was a great youth pastor, but I was always kidding this 23-year-old guy because his diet was that of a 7-year-old! Well, I suppose I could be teased, myself, because although I am 56, I still tend to eat like a 27-year-old...lots of high fat food and junk food. I don't generally worry about cholesterol and that sort of stuff. I have tended to reason that since I don't smoke and don't drink alcohol, it can't be THAT bad for me. And, I guess I don't want to admit I'm only a few years away from being a "Senior Citizen".

My biggest area of indulging like a 27-year-old is drinking soda! (For those of you in Missouri, Texas, and other places, I'm talking about "pop"!) I drink lots of soda, especially cola. I guess I could excuse it by claiming the above Scripture verse, but since it's out of context, I don't think the Lord would honor that! Listen, soda is TERRIBLE for you. There's nothing good about it. And, diet soda is WORSE. You'll get fatter on diet soda than you will on regular soda, because the artificial sweeteners actually have a chemical effect on your cells that make you GET FAT QUICK. No matter what kind of soda you drink, if you consume a lot of it, and I have, you'll automatically gain at least three pounds every year.

As much as I love soda, I have found that no matter HOW much of it you drink it just DOESN'T quench your thirst! For some reason, a few weeks ago, I decided to buy a couple of bottles of plain, unflavored seltzer at Market Basket. One might think it would taste awful. In one movie, Eddie Murphy said, for example, that if anyone accidentally served him Club Soda, he would throw up! Actually, the seltzer tasted GREAT to me, was very refreshing, and QUENCHED MY THIRST! I have since been buying it each week.

Now, I DID buy club soda rather than seltzer one week, and I discovered that did NOT quench my thirst! The reason is that club soda contains sodium (salt) and seltzer has no additives. Seltzer has NO calories and NOTHING in it that will cause you ANY harm. It's FINE! It's actually GOOD for you! I realize that the more I drink seltzer and the less I drink soda, the more I'll feel better and healthier. I won't be putting all kinds of junk into my body, and I will lose a little weight!

Although I had been buying bottles of seltzer to drink at home, I had still been packing cans of soda for my lunch. TODAY I went grocery shopping. I had dropped a container of cans of cola into my cart, when I noticed some lemon-flavored seltzer available! I put the soda back and bought the seltzer!

Now, don't get me wrong! I will still buy soda on occasion, and I'll still have soda when I go out to eat, BUT I AM DRASTICALLY REDUCING MY SODA CONSUMPTION. This is my first step in eating and/or drinking like a 56-year-old.

Incidentally, when I was visiting in Missouri I noticed that seltzer was DIFFICULT to find in supermarkets...unlike Massachusetts. HOWEVER, in that part of the country, if you look closely, you CAN find it at Wal-Mart.

3 comments:

Bill McCulley said...

I gave up soda completely a couple of years ago. I get a sip every now and then when my family goes out to eat. Nowadays, I drink green/herbal tea, 100% juices, and tons of water. Lots of water with every meal. I do get a small cup of coffee once in a awhile.

A few months into it, sodas started tasting horrible to me - as if they were some concocted chemical from a crazy scientist.

You probably never knew this, but when I was active duty, I learned Coca-Cola was an emergency 'cleaner' for our 155mm howizters if all the carbon cleaner/chemical had run out. (After firing hours and hours, it leaves a lot of carbon in the cannon tubes.) The Coke with a little scrubbing was able to clean out most the burnt carbon on the inside of the canon after hours of firing. Of course, the sugar itself had to be rinsed out, but it worked really well. Does that scare you? It does me!

Unknown said...

I also drink Herbal tea since last one and half year and also drink plenty of water for my better health. I think, you should must have to try this herbal tea because it's very effective for good health.
herbal tea

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