Coked Up

I admit it…I’m fat. Not in the ‘whiny high school MySpace post’-type fat. When I say fat, I mean the government says I’m fat. When the most gluttonous entity on Earth tells you you’re overweight, you have no choice but to submit to the fact. I teeter on the line between fat and obese.

It took the mockery of my grandparents for me to do something about it. I exercise three or so times a week. (Too bad exercise doesn’t actually cause weight loss.) More importantly, in typical programmer fashion, I debugged my diet by bar graphing my nutrition. I clearly was not overeating; 2,000 calories was the norm. I noticed ‘Carbohydrates’ was at absurd levels, 150% at minimum. Guh? I couldn’t remember eating sack of refined sugar for breakfast. Wait…

Curse you, Coca-Cola.

It’s pretty obvious when you have bar graphs to point it out visually. My typical lunch hour consists of three 20 oz. cups of soda. Maybe four if I take a bathroom break between hits. It’s become such a habit over the years that I don’t even notice the flavour. I sit, eat food, open my book, and readandchug—that’s the only word to describe what I do, because they’re seamlessly intertwined—until it’s time to head back to work. If one 12 oz. can contains roughly 40g of sugar, then three 20 oz. cups contains…sweet Jesus, I’m a monster.

In addition to further calorie restrictions this week, I’ve cut soda out of my life entirely. All my life I made fun of Diet Coke drinkers for guzzling their way to cancer. Now their choice seems reasonable, and I can’t use the cancer joke anymore. This afternoon I compromised with myself by picking up a Diet Dr. Pepper instead of the normal crap. All I needed was the caffeine. (I intentionally avoided Diet Coke because Coke is my soda of choice and I would mourn over the lousy flavour had I chosen it.)

I typically weighed 180–185 lb. Today is Day 4 of the diet, and I’m at 177 lb. With daily intake/output, there’s a large margin of error, but I haven’t crossed 180 lb. since Monday.

Even though I don’t intend to turn this into a dieting blog, I’ll hopefully succeed enough to record results here periodically.

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