Being a health and lifestyle coach, I seem to gravitate my eyeballs to randomly selected shopping carts when I am in the market. I don't know why that is...surely I am not being judgmental. Maybe it's curiosity. After all, the US spends over 230 trillion dollars a year in health care, 65% of adults are obese, and 1 in 3 get cancer. Could there possibly be a connection with the food in the cart (plus some other factors) that can be causing this influx of ills and bills?
So I was in the store the other day doing my major shopping, and I was behaving myself and not looking in every cart. I had a mission to accomplish, and I refused to get sidetracked. Well....it happened. There I was in the checkout line and in front of me the cart was piled to the ceiling. That's probably what got my attention in the first place. I never realized a cart could hold so much! I noticed the wheels were buckling under the pressure.
I nonchalantly perused the cart, trying not to look obvious. Of course there were the usual cleaning products, paper products, feminine products, kid stuff, candy, meat, dairy....then my eyeballs focused on three things....three cases of diet soda. Big cases, not six packs. Those were under the cart (isn't that where we put things to hide them so nobody like me can see em?). And my mind started thinking.
Most folks that are trying to lose weight and drink soda at the same time, use diet food products, such as diet soda, not realizing what the ingredients are, let alone the devastating effects on their health. Thankfully much more is being revealed now about the effects of soda drinking. For example, regular soda contains 10-15+ (depending on the size) teaspoons of sugar per bottle - enough to render your immune system useless (which is why you get sick anyhow). Then there is caffeine which also causes a whole other heap of health issues. One of the biggest problems is the fact that those sodas contain phosphoric acid, which leaches calcium from the bones. Don't we have huge issues with osteoporosis in our country? (high protein diets add to this as well). Diet sodas are no better. Just because they don't contain sugar, they do contain artificial sweeteners, which can cause brain tumors and seizures, joint issues, and a myriad of other health problems (but Ill save that for another day). Diet sodas dehydrate you and also make you gain weight...the very reason why you want to drink them anyhow - so you don't gain weight.
So my brain went into overdrive thinking of all these things. When I was a kid I did drink some soda, but those silly bubbles always made me burp and gave me indigestion. Add to the fact that developing kidney stones forced me to change my choice of beverage to water. Took some getting used to, but I did it. Back in the day there really wasn't as much information out there as there is today. I found that after starting to drink water, my kidney stones started to disappear, I had more energy, my brain worked better, and I got sick a whole lot less. Who'da thunk it!
In a way I'm glad I did get those kidney stones. It was an eye opening experience, similar to labor pains, that got me on the right track to drinking the right beverage. I hope that won't happen to you...and that you or those you love may start to consider that water is the most healthy, best tasting beverage money can buy.
No, this little incident didn't make me stop looking in carts. As long as I am a coach, I'll probably peruse them from time to time as I think about it...just for fun!
Wishing you health in abundance!
Robin
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