Cut the soda, and save your money and your health

I'm not a pop drinker. We never had it in the house when I was growing up, and after hearing what it did to your teeth, it was never something I was remotely interested in reaching for when I was older and doing my own grocery shopping. 

But I realize that pop is in a lot of households so if you didn't see this article, give it a quick read. Then cross pop off your grocery list for the coming week. And the week after that and the week after that until you form a new habit of not buying the stuff at all. 

3 Surprising Reasons to Give Up Soda

Healthy bodies and health lifestyles are the culmination of a bunch of little habits; good eating habits, good exercise habits. Letting go of your soda habit is a good move in the right direction, one little change that carries a big benefit.

Lose weight today

Repeat after me:

"It didn't go on overnight, it's not coming off overnight."

I love this expression. Use it to keep perspective. Say it to yourself a number of times today. Don't get overwhelmed about the magnitude of your journey and how far away your goal weight may be, we are going to focus on the little things. The every day things. The small things that add up to make a big difference - 'big' in a good way, as in big amount of weight loss if that's what you want to do. 

Whatever your intentions, to lose a little weight or lose a lot, I'd like to be part of your journey. I'm average weight. I always have been. I'm not interested in technical talk about weight loss. I've always found it hard to translate something with X number of calories into physical activity for X amount of time to burn it off. It's never made sense to me, even though in previous years I did intensive training for running races and triathalons. Technical talk as it relates to nutrition has never interested me and if you're the same way, then great. You're speakin' my speak!

Here's my goal for this blog. I'm going to share with you the things I do to give you insight into how I eat and (sometimes) exercise. I'm a healthy weight and I've got muscle mass - 'thin' is not a compliment, by the way. In my books, 'thin' means a person with a frame, some skin and no muscle. Not exactly a goal to aim for, people!!

Let's look at today. Right now it's 10am and I've had one cup of coffee that was half coffee and half 2% milk. I used to buy homo milk (3.25% fat) but it was expensive and I was still making my coffee the same way; 1/2 coffee and 1/2 milk. I switched to using 2% milk in my coffee to save money. It didn't take me long to get used to the small difference it made to the taste of my morning brew.

Oh, did I mention that losing weight and health eating also means you'll save money? Holy crap, the benefits just keep on coming.

So. What did you put in your coffee this morning? 10% cream? Some sugar? Try this; for the rest of the day and from now on, have your coffee with smaller amounts of sugar (until you can have it with no sugar) and switch to using 2% milk. 

How many calories will that save you? I have no idea!!!!