A Quote to Start Things Off

""I'd love to go to Santa Fe at some point, Emmett said, but for the time being, I need to go to New York. The panhandler stopped laughing and adopted a more serious expression. Well. that's life in a nutshell, aint it. Lovin' to go to one place and havin' to go to another. Amor Towles in the Lincoln Highway.

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Snow kidding! These "kids" now range from 17 to 23

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Only drank water in August. Hello September!

Had a Diet Mountain Dew for lunch this afternoon. That is not unusual as Mountain Dew is one of my favorite drinks. In August I decided to drink only water for the entire month. Liking to title my endeavors, I called it Agua only August.

Agua only August was more difficult and less rewarding for me than No junk food June had been. The truth is, in my wife's vocabulary, I am a drinkaholic. I am constantly drinking something. More often than not it's a soda. Because of the HFCS in most sodas, I have switched to diet. But those also have a boatload of chemicals in them. So I decided to give them up entirely for a month and drink only water.

The problem was that I often forgot to drink water and I was eating a load of fiber, so I was often bloated. I finally got into the swim of drinking only water, but it was still difficult. The hardest time was the weekend we went camping. When I was a kid, we were never allowed to drink pop. Except, I should say, on special occasions. Camping was one of those special occasions and for 4-5 weekends and 2 full weeks every summer we drank pop, and plenty of it. As a result, it seemed unnatural for me not to drink pop on the trip.

Before I get the nasty comments that I received for turning the TV off for the summer or having the whole family forgo sugar and junk food in June, let me say that the water restrictions were for me only. Amy and the kids were free to drink what they usually drink.

A little less than 1/2 way through August, Amy handed me some concoction she had made in the blender and asked me to try it. I am often sampling her wares so the request was not unusual. A few minutes later I realized that I had just drank something other than water and was very upset I had not met my goal.

Amy assured me that what she had given me was not technically a drink. It was a smoothie composed of bananas, blueberries and strawberries with no other liquid added. She said it was the equivalent of eating those fruits and should not count against me as a beverage.

Well if she was wrong, I certainly will not be the first man to be misled by his wife as far as fruit is concerned. What she said made sense to me and I "drank" several of her smoothies over the remainder of the month with out being paralyzed by guilt nor shame.

In these first few days of September, I have had 1 or 2 sodas and a few glasses of milk. The August experience has taught me that if I can knock off pop entirely for a month, that I should be able also to drink it in moderation. While it is nice to have more choices available, I am finding that I am reaching for water more now than I would have before.

Next Time: Six Word Saturday

4 comments:

sweetnika said...

literally laughing OUT loud...
or stiffling a laugh
as I am up way to late for my own good
and don't want to wake children
or get scolded by THE dad
aka MY husband.
who acts more like "a dad" at this time of night than like "a husband"....
very funny post!
I so relate...
to more aspects of it than I care to admit!
Costco sells Coke from Mexico..
Regular Coke, with out HFCS Just FYI :)
it is MY moderate beverage of choice

AmyR said...

Oh man, that one hurts. I didn't know I was being compared to Eve!! I'll have you know that those smoothies also had walnuts and flax in them, so they were the pinacle of health, and blah blah blah, whatever!!!

Unknown said...

Hmmm...If I had to choose one drink for the entire month I believe it would be coffee.

Jennifer M said...

Skip the HFCS and the chemicals: Zevia Too $$ to drink it all the time, but a nice "treat" that doesn't carry the health risks of other sodas. http://www.zevia.com/

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