Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

Don't be so hard on yourself if you fail with your dieting efforts.  You were setup to fail before you even started. Saying this is NOT a free ticket to raid the closest pizza joint.  But no matter where you come from or what walk of life you have chosen the fact is we live in a nation that drives us toward perceived success in all things but health.  Our society is built to fail when it comes to living healthy.

That is why more times than not, diets fail. This is the overview of a multi-part blog post to help you see the big picture as to why it is all too easy to give up on living healthy. The goal is to bring about awareness of the influences on your daily lives where desensitization prevents us from succeeding at living a healthy lifestyle.

Back in April of 2012, I was in my first Wellness Challenge at the YMCA in Torrington. I had already started to lose weight... I was 299 pounds at the start of the challenge, which was actually down from 345 pounds in November of 2011. After losing 45 pounds, my weight loss had slowed down. I decided to try the Wellness Challenge and figured it might kick start the weight loss again, as I still had a long way to go in order to get to a healthy weight.

The kickoff meeting at the first challenge changed my lifestyle completely. After that, I followed the guidelines that I learned and still follow many of the guidelines. As they say, it's about a lifestyle change more than it is about a temporary reduction in weight.

It has been so hot in Connecticut, I'm sure I don't need to remind you that you need to drink more to cool off. The heat causes us to sweat more and we lose a lot of water in this heat.

But how much of what you're drinking is actually water? Soda and beer do not count. It's best not to get your calories from your drinks. There is so much empty calories in soda, it can really pack on the pounds. Diet soda isn't much better… some research shows that diet soda drinkers might actually hurt their metabolism and increase risk of obesity and diabetes.

What's that again?

A study (yeah I know... yet another study) commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  entitled "Sodium Intake In Populations: Assessment of Evidence" confirms that there is no evidence substantial enough to limit sodium consumption to less than 2,300 milligram daily for Americans. Researchers concluded that one-and-a-half to three tablespoons of salt per day is not detrimental to a person's health, contrary to past belief.

The report also discusses emerging debates about the proper level of dietary sodium intake. "Despite efforts over the past several decades to reduce sodium intake in the United States, adults still consume an average of 3,400 mg of sodium every day," the researchers wrote.