Again, there is no evidence that this is true. It's far more likely due to simply the wider reach that HFCS has in the food market than it used to. It's not about soda having HFCS instead of sugar. It's about 99% of ALL foods having HFCS when they had no sweeteners previously. There is no evidence that there's any appreciable difference between sucrose and HFCS. There is ample evidence that people are flat out consuming more of both.

I'm fat because I choose not to diet. I'm at a maintenance weight because I choose to improve the quality of what I eat. (And because my stomach issue forces me to moderate the amount of grease and soda I consume to a non-diet but reasonable level)

I'm fat because I put sugar on my Big Macs.







I'm kidding. :D

I'm fat because I don't exercize. I think about exercizing but I don't do it.

Sohrshah, I think we've already pretty much hijacked the thread on the topic of health/weight/resolution.

I'm swimming tomorrow. For the first time since Italy. I've been putting off renewing my membership because I haven't felt like I had time to use it. I've felt like I was drowning in my job. But - all apologies, Boss - **** work, I need to exercise. I renewed it this morning.

It's not an either/or, it's a both/and. My mom does weight watchers off and on and I think their philosophy is that it's something like 80% what you eat and 20% exercise. Obviously if you exercise more, you can eat more calories and maintain your weight.

I remember doing the South Beach thing a while back and losing weight without ANY exercising. But the problem with that for me was that it was too difficult and time consuming to plan.

But nothing's going to work over the long term if the motivation doesn't come from within. Or the ability to get back down to business if you screw up, instead of saying "screw it" to everything (though usually that happens to me when I get TOO gung-ho about my diet and exercise, and have unrealistic goals, like not eating ANY sugary snacks, or going to the gym 6 days a week, etc., and burn out).

**EDIT** heheh the conversation has moved on... teach me to write a post at work over a long period of time when I'm distracted heheh

However, like alcoholics, the eating (or drinking) to feel good is the same. I could replace the work "alcohol" with the word "food" in the italicized segment above and it would fit just fine.

Sure, I can quit drinking cold turkey, but that isn't going to deal with the problems of my feelings. I found that I don't necessarily need to ACT on my feelings. Sure, I feel like crap and want to eat or drink, but I don't have to do it. I don't even really need to know WHY I am feeling the way I am. Feelings and can be simply acknowledged but, when it comes down to living with them, I usually just ignore them as something my sick brain has cooked up to throw me a curve and I don't give them a lot of importance. If I did, I'd spend a great deal of time on a roller coaster of emotions, eating and drinking, being fat and drunk and STILL not being happy.

Most of the time, I don't give the feelings that lead to destructive behavior too much attention. If I do, i find it just give me a great excuse to do the things I really don't want to do "because I feel so awful......" Boo hoo, poor me, pity party of one, please.

Ralphie was raised to never leave an empty plate at meal time. To this day, he has a problem doing that and will finish no matter how full he gets sometimes. So I think it has to do with the brainwashing our parents put us through as kids.
For me, when I'm done eating, I'm done. I stop. Even if the plate's still full. That behavior came from be being a general pain in the a$s as a kid.
:D

Right, but you don't have to turn around and have just half a drink 3 times a day.

Good point, GC, I was a part of the CPC (Clean Plate Club), when I was a kid. I still have a difficult time not cleaning a plate up - though I try to not eat it all if I'm even close to full. Because if I'm feeling "close" I probably already am full.

I was *lucky* to be raised in to try everything on my plate and eat until I was done. However, things happened when I was older (that I am not going to get into here) that to this day cause my brain to trigger a "eat everything you can" feeling when I think about dieting, or do any kind of plan that restricts food (weight watchers does not work for me for this reason).

Food is comfort is a mentality many of us were raised with. Good grades? Let's get ice cream. Birthdays? Anniversaries? Let's eat! Feeling down? Let's get Chinese food. It's cold out? Let's eat pasta, it's hot out? let's get some ice cream.

My dad told me a [Jewish] joke about the holidays. "They tried to kill us, we won. Let's eat!". Applies to I think every Jewish Holiday (Including Yom Kippur - we always went out for a huge meal after it was over).