Mornin’ blog buds!
The countdown is on! A week from today I’ll be on a plane heading back home to see my family. Woot woot!! :) I can’t wait!
The FitFeature for today is about ol’ soda pop! During my earlier dieting days, I would use a daily diet soda (or two or three) as a way to thwart cravings for sweets (or so I thought) while I was trying to keep my calories down. As I began down the path toward more holistic and healing nutrition along with acid/alkaline balance in the body, I started to pay closer attention to the ill effects of pop (both diet and regular). I’d read the bad things before, but sometimes we make changes when we’re ready to make them and not a second sooner.
I had drastically reduced my soda intake after the initial meeting with my acupuncturist. But I later read “The Ultimate pH Solution” by Michelle Schoffro Cook and one statement in her book stopped my soda habit in its tracks:
“…you need to drink 32 cups of water (and expend tremendous amounts of energy that would be better used elsewhere in your body) just to neutralize the acidity of one glass of soda.”
32 cups of water? Yikes!
So that did it for me. I may drink the very rare occasional mixed cocktail that will contain some soda in it. But I certainly don’t want all this care and effort I’m putting into alkalinizing my body to be ruined by ONE CAN of pop!
You’d think that hearing how the phosphoric acid can lead to weakened bones would have convinced me first. Or how the aspartame allegedly converts to formaldehyde in the body. There is enough weight on the cons of soda to really consider switching it out for something better for us.
Will you accept the challenge today to replace at least one soda with water or herbal tea.? Give it a try. Then maybe tomorrow, you might want to do it again! 
One day maybe I’ll also give up my single daily cup of coffee as well, but I’m desperately holding on to the hope that there are still a few good reasons to drink it (like the antioxidants, reduced effect of lactic acid buildup during exercise.) 
Now on to yesterday’s feats & eats!
Weight Training (Legs / Shoulders)
- TM warmup for 5 minutes followed by 3 sets of 20 rep ball squats for a muscle specific warmup.
- Straight-Leg Deadlifts 4 sets of 15, 15, 12, 12
- Deep DB Squats 4 sets of 15 reps
- Explosive Lunges 4 sets of 20
- Overhead Shoulder Press 4 sets of 15, 11, 11, 8
- DB Rear Delt Flyes 3 sets of 15, 11, 12
- Ball Crunches with KB 3 sets of 15 reps
Today my hamstrings and traps are telling me they apparently had a good workout!
My morning started with my antioxidant-rich cuppa JOE hahaha
Post-workout BLENDED GREEN GOODNESS (banana, 2 clementines, spinach, sprouts, 2 celery stalks, 1/2 cucumber, scoop of rice protein powder, 8 oz water):
I had a friend over for lunch so we had soup and salad under the umbrella on the back patio. It was gorgeous out! We had a very relaxing time catching up. The salad had spinach, arugula, romaine, zucchini ribbons, sundried tomatoes, red pepper and cucumber. I topped mine off with Greek vinaigrette.
My afternoon snack had a lemon theme going on! Larabar “Lemon Bar” flavor (OMG a new fave Larabar, it was AWESOME!!!! I thought I was eating lemon loaf!) and a Ginger Lemongrass herbal tea to go:
I had a handful of raisins around 5:00 to hold me over till dinner because we took the dogs for their quick 2 mile WOG in the evening. We had some errands to run for our living room project so we picked up some falafel on our way to Home Depot. Mmm, hummus! Tabbouleh! Falafel! Something pickled (not sure what it is but it tastes really good!)
I don’t think they gave me enough falafel! (6!) I ate 2.5 of them. MSP took one, and the rest came home. Not sure how they’ll reheat, guess I’ll find out today!
OK friends, off to get this Thursday started! Have a fantastic day and I’ll see you next time!
–Shari B. =)
