4M

This ain’t global warming but maybe in a way it should be. A little while ago I linked a pretty cool video of a physics teacher who had an excellent take on the topic. Here it is to refresh. Basically it boils down to this; if global warming turns out to be real and we do nothing, we’re screwed. If we heed the warnings and take action, well, good for us whether it’s real or not.

Which brings me to Diet Mtn Dew. Or more to the point, aspartame. Go ahead and google aspartame. You’re likely to find as many links to studies and articles claiming it will kill you slowly vs those which say it ain’t no big thang.

I happen to be an aspartame user. I’ve read the studies. One week I’ll read it’s fine. The next it’s not. Am I drinking poison or am I drinking a pleasant calorie-free beverage. Never mind that I lost a pile of fat in large part due to my refusal to drink calories anymore.

So, perhaps I should apply the global warming principle to my aspartame dilemma. Heed the warning, true or false, and presumably live out my years poison free or continue to drink laced beverages at the risk of pushing my expiration date forward a tad. What to do?

Seems easy enough. I just need to overcome my neurosis about drinking calories. Any thoughts? Maybe I could devise some sort of diminishing aspartame patch to wean me off. Or I could simply burn the extra 150-200 calories I’d need to break even by drinking naturally sweetened beverages again.

What sort of fun could I get into burning 200 extra calories a day? Let us count the ways. Just a smattering of thoughts here.

-25 minutes of competitive badminton
-1hr 40minutes of accordion playing
-1hr 28min of brushing my teeth
-3hr 15min of napping
-1hr 58min of watering the lawn
-30min of chopping wood (axe version)
-2hr 15min chopping wood (shuckin’ the corn version)

-2hr 57min of praying for forgiveness