Tips for Handling Holiday Stress!

 

Although the holidays are a fun time of year they are also a very stressful time of year!   45 percent of Americans say they would prefer skipping the entire season because of financial pressure.     Most Americans feel that the stress really starts to build around December 13^th, grows worse through the 18^th and peaks on Christmas Day.

This holiday stress can be highly detrimental to your health, and it is sad but true that many take their lives during this season.    The physiological impact of this stress manifests as increased cortisol which boosts blood sugar levels, helps drive weight gain, and breaks down muscle.

Here are some tried and true ways to combat holiday stress:

Get your workouts in!  Now is NOT the time to skip workouts – even a short one can have an immediate and lasting effect in reducing your mental and physiological stress response.    A quick high intensity workout - just three 20 second sprints with one – four minutes of active recovery – is all it takes!   Remember something is always better than nothing when it comes to working out.

Get your Sleep!   Easier said than done, but focusing on when you eat and when you go to bed and wake up can keep your body in a good rhythm.    A simple way to do this is to get up and go to bed at the same time every single day regardless of the day of the week – do NOT change your schedule on weekends. 

Then try to keep your food and beverage intake (except for water) in a 12-hour window so that you are NOT eating or drinking anything (except for water) for 12 hours.   For example, if you wake up at 6am and drink a cup of coffee at 7am (the clock has started at 7am).   That means you want to take in your last food or beverage no later than 7pm.  

If you know you are going to go out to parties try to take in your first food and non-water beverage later in the morning.   If you start at 8am – 9am this gives you until 8 or 9pm to finish all food and beverage intake.   By keeping your sleep/wake cycle consistent along with your eating and not-eating schedule you allow your body to recover better.

If you are going to go out to parties – drink any alcohol early and stop drinking early or just start drinking water and nothing else once you hit the end of your 12-hour window.    Each drink takes about an hour to fully metabolize and you want this process complete BEFORE you go to sleep!

Set an alcohol budget – and switch to water after you hit it.     Doing this along with scheduling your wake/sleep cycle and food intake cycle can prevent a lot of issues while allowing you to have a great time!

Do not overbook yourself or your family – plan on downtime and keep it simple.  Less is often more in life, and the holidays are no exception!

 

 

Weight Loss Made Simple - Prioritize Protein and Fiber!

 

Weight loss requires you to consume less calories than you use, but there are many factors that influence both calorie intake and calorie burn!  This complexity is why many weight loss interventions fail.     Regardless of how people lose weight most people regain all of it because they revert to old habits.

Another reason is that our fat cells have an epigenetic memory meaning that cells respond to dietary and movement patterns which activate specific genes (either good or bad depending on the patterns!).      In the case of poor eating and movement habits cells tend to be resistant to changing their genetic expression.     In other words, once you become overweight or obese you become more susceptible to regaining weight.

In order to lose weight and keep it off we need to make sustainable dietary and movement pattern changes.     According to a new study this change may be as simple as eating more protein and fiber!

Participants who ate more protein and fiber lost significantly more weight over 12 months compared to those with lower intake and this did not involve counting calories – just a focus on eating more protein and fiber rich foods.

Satiety = Protein and Fiber

Satiety refers to feeling satisfied and not hungry.    Protein and fiber both promote satiety through distinct mechanisms.    Fiber promotes healthy gut bacteria, improves bowel regularity, helps maintain blood sugar in the optimal range, and reduces cholesterol.     Consuming fiber rich foods such as vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds and whole grains are also linked to lower all cause mortality.     Fiber also promotes satiety after meals.

Protein also increase satiety compared to sugar and starch or fat.  Protein causes the release of specific peptides that interact with receptors in our gut to control appetite.  Protein also provides two other important benefits related to weight loss and maintaining weight loss:

Protein increases post-meal thermogenesis (technically called post-prandial thermogenesis) meaning that it takes more energy to digest protein so that you actually have to burn some calories to digest protein.  This means you get fewer usable calories from protein.    When you consistently prioritize protein this adds up to a lot of calories burned!

Protein also builds and preserves lean mass including muscle!   Muscle and other lean mass are the big calorie burners in your body so building more muscle and minimizing muscle loss during weight loss is key to successful weight loss that you maintain!   Studies suggest that high-protein diets cause almost twice as much fat loss as moderate-protein diets.   

Participants in this study were taught how to choose foods with high levels of protein and fiber.   Participants aimed for 7 – 11 grams of protein per 100 calories of food and 1.8 – 3.2 grams of fiber per 100 calories of food for weight loss.   For weight maintenance participants aimed for 4 – 8 grams of protein per 100 calories and 1.4 – 2.8 grams of fiber for 100 calories.   Participants did NOT count calories!   This equated to 140 – 210 grams of fiber per day and 28 – 56 grams of fiber daily.

An Easy Nutrition Program

To make this even easier shoot for a minimum of 1 gram of protein per lbs. of lean mass every day.     To measure your lean mass, ask a trainer about getting a complimentary Styku Scan which will measure your lean and fat mass.    To make it even simpler – you can focus on consuming 1 gram of protein per lbs of your bodyweight.   

Here is a link to a free downloadable list of high protein foods:  https://reallifenutritionist.com/high-protein-foods/

When it comes to fiber focus on getting at least 25 grams of fiber per day.   Here is a list of High Fiber Foods:  https://reallifenutritionist.com/high-fiber-foods-chart/

An Effective Ski Conditioning Program

 

In order to design an effective ski conditioning program the first task is to understand the key physiological requirements of skiing ski specific:

Strength

Balance/Stability/Kinesthetic Awareness

Speed

Muscular Endurance

Cardiovascular Endurance

Flexibility

What is Ski Specific Strength?

Ski specific strength requires strength of the key muscles used in skiing and the right type of strength relative to the specific muscular contractions required in skiing.  The key muscles include the Quadriceps (front of thigh), hamstrings (back of thigh), Gluteals (hip musculature), inner thighs, outer thighs, calves, core musculature, low back, shoulder, back, and arms.    These muscles will use all three contraction types: Concentric (muscle shortening to project force externally), Isometric (static contraction to prevent movement), and Eccentric (muscle lengthening to absorb forces – like moguls!).     

The unique requirement for skiing is Isometric and Eccentric strength and endurance which requires a specific set of conditioning exercises that mimic the sports requirements from these muscles.  The core muscles will also mostly be used in an eccentric and isometric fashion and need to be conditioned specifically as well.

Strength Training for Skiing

It is important to use mostly compound, multi-joint exercises for the majority of strength training exercise for skiing.   For example, a leg press will provide better overall benefit for the quadriceps than a leg extension because it is a compound, multi-joint exercise.  Better yet, if you are able, choose an exercise that also requires balance such as a squat or a lunge that is also a compound, multi-joint movement yet requires much more stabilization and balance resulting in better transfer of benefits to skiing. 

These same ideas apply to upper body strength training. For example, a machine bench press will provide more benefit than a Pectoral Fly Machine (aka “Pec Deck”) because the bench press movement is a compound, multi-joint movement rather than an isolated single joint movement like the pec dec.  However a bench press will provide more benefit than a machine bench press because it requires more stabilization and balance, and dumbbell bench presses provide an even greater carryover of strength since there is an even higher stability and balance requirement!

Great Ski Training Strength Exercises

Squat with barbell or dumbbells

Wall seat for time

Lunge with dumbbells or barbells

Walking lunges

Side lunges

Lunges on a slide board (very strong eccentric component)

Standing Adductor Exercise on Slideboard

Push-ups

Dips

Pull-ups/Pulldowns

Seated Rows/Dumbbell Rows

Pulldown with rope handle linked with a tricep extension to mimic the mechanics of poling.

The reACT Trainer – Ski Specific Training Tool!

The reACT Trainer (see a video demonstration here: https://youtu.be/w83ALxHwujY?si=dJuq5OjUmgEwhYYI ) is by far the most effective tool for developing ski specific strength, endurance, power, balance and stability.    It emphasizes eccentric muscle contractions which are so important in skiing while also demanding balance and core strength.    5 – 10 minutes twice a week for 3 – 6 weeks before ski season will make an incredible difference in your skiing performance!

What is the best way to do Ski Specific Cardio Training?

Skiing, particularly at altitude, will place demands on the cardiovascular system.  Aggressive skiing, particularly in moguls, places high end demands on the cardiovascular System.  Specifically skiing involves high levels of muscular effort for 1 – 5 minutes followed by rest while on the ski lift.  So cardiovascular conditioning should include interval training to specifically condition for the stresses of skiing. 

Slideboard Training – the ideal tool for Ski Specific Cardio and Strength Training!

A slideboard specifically stresses the key muscles used in skiing emphasizing eccentric and isometric muscular contractions along with strong concentric contractions in a dynamic manner that demands balance and stability.   

The slideboard also uses lateral movement which is required heavily in skiing and not provided by any other apparatus!  The down up down and side to side pattern of weight transfer that is so essential to downhill skiing can duplicated perfectly on a slideboard.  Slideboards are one of the few devices that Olympic skiers actually use for conditioning because slideboards work!  Here is a great company to purchase a slideboard from:  https://ultraslide.com/ 

Other Cardiovascular Training Options

Rollerblading is OUTSTANDING if you find a place where you can maintain speed safely, learn to Rollerblade properly, and wear protective gear.

Bicycle – both indoor and even better outside because of increased balance requirements

Stair climbing real stairs or using a machine (Do NOT hold on at all while using a climber). Holding on while stepping decreases the benefits of a climber by eliminating the need to balance and stabilize and also reduces the caloric expenditure – there are no bars to hang on when you ski!

Treadmill using an interval based program with elevation.

Rower, elliptical or other machine – as above

Flexibility and Skiing

Flexibility Training aka “Stretching” refers to exercise done to restore the resting length of muscle groups to their ideal position.  Flexibility requirements are different based on your body type and skiing has its own particular flexibility requirements depending on how hard you ski.  Key muscles that require flexibility to allow proper mobility of the ankle, knee, hip and shoulder include:

Calf muscles such as Gastrocnemius (long calf muscle) and even more so Soleus (short calf muscle) must be capable of a large range of motion so that they allow the knee to flex forward to keep pressure on the front of the ski while the foot is fixed on the ski.

Adductors (inner thighs) need to be capable of moving through a relatively wide range of motion and be capable of producing force throughout the range.

Hamstrings are not typically put through an extreme range of motion skiing, but flexibility is required.

Hip flexors are used frequently and because the hip is constantly in a position of flexion the hip flexors are prone to becoming overly tight from skiing.

Shoulder and chest muscles are used extensively for poling and the upper arm is moving through a significant range of motion in poling.

Static Stretching

The most recognized and safest form of stretching is called static stretching which refers to the fact that a muscle is placed in a slightly stretched position (any pain is always bad) and held there without movement for 30 -60 seconds.  This type of stretching is most effective AFTER exercise and in fact stretching before exercise has NOT been shown to be of benefit and done incorrectly can clearly cause more harm than good.

Stretching cold muscles is not beneficial which is one of the reasons stretching after exercise is more effective.  To prepare for vigorous exercise warm-up by easing into the activity.  In the case of skiing start with easier slopes well within your ability and perform lots of turns to warm the muscles up and prepare for the challenge ahead.  By holding a stretch position after exercise your nervous system turns off the tendency to pull against the stretch and allows the muscle length to reset to a more appropriate position.

Ski Stretches

Bent leg and straight leg calf stretches

Hamstring stretch

Hip Flexor stretch

Adductor stretch

Chest stretch

Speed and Power Training for Skiing

AFTER building a base of strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility you can begin to focus on speed and power through plyometric training.  Plyometric training utilizes jumping and other explosive drills that use energy stored in the muscle during prestretch to produce maximal muscular contractions. You have no business doing this type of high intensity training without professional guidance and then AFTER you have established a base of strength, endurance and flexibility.  

The slideboard actually provides this type of approach in an easy to control manner.   After achieving a level of skill and initial conditioning you can incorporate a down up down movement pattern that results in rapid eccentric loading followed by a vigorous concentric contraction to provide plyometric training specific to skiing.   The reACT Trainer is the ideal, safe way to develop ski specific strength, speed, power and endurance!

How Much Exercise does it take to burn off Thanksgiving Meals?

 

To put this in perspective it is very easy to eat upwards of 4,500 calories if you really go crazy and pay no attention to portion size, how many portions you are eating, and what you are eating.      Given that the average person burns somewhere around 2,000 calories per day it means that you would have to fast for more than two days to get rid of this entire holiday binge! 

On the other hand, let’s take a look at a more restrained (yet enjoyable) Thanksgiving Meal by looking at everything you would eat, how many calories each item contains, and how long it would take to burn off with specific exercises.

3 pigs in a blanket – 150 calories – 15 minutes – walking at a moderate speed for 15 – 20 minutes

1oz brie cheese – 95 calories – Ice skating continuously for 12 minutes

4oz Sweet Potato – 187 calories – 45 minutes of weight lifting

½ cup Green Bean Casserole – 227 calories – 18 minutes of jumping rope

1 glass of wine – 125 calories – 10 minutes of burpees

¼ cup cranberry sauce – 102 calories – 20 minutes of cycling outside

3.5 oz white meat turkey with skin – 177 calories – 20 minutes of touch football

½ cup gravy – 25 calories – 3 minutes of jumping jacks

½ cup stuffing – 195 calories – 25 minutes of swimming

1 cup mashed potatoes – 237 calories – 1 hour of canoeing

3 by 3 inch square cornbread – 198 calories – 25 minutes of stair climbing

Green Bean Casserole – 227 calories – 30 minutes of walking at a moderate pace

Pecan Pie Slive (1/8 of pie) = 500 calories – 1 hour of ice skating

How to Enjoy Alcoholic Beverages without Getting Fat during the Holidays!

 

The holidays are a time of celebration, and assuming you do NOT have a problem with alcohol and can drink responsibly, it is okay to imbibe!    The key to not getting fat from alcohol is to understand the calorie and carb content of alcoholic beverages and plan your intake ahead of time in terms of exactly what you chose to drink and how much you have.  

All alcoholic beverage drive insulin production so they are big no, no for diabetics and other people taking certain medications.  Always check for drug and alcohol interactions for any medications you are taking before you drink any alcoholic beverage.  

It is also important to understand that in addition to the alcohol content itself alcoholic beverages are often full of sugar which further drives insulin and fat production.    The good news is that there ARE alcoholic beverages that are much lower in sugar/carb and calories.

Champagne

One of the best deals for a low carb holiday beverage is champagne!   Champagnes have the lowest carb and calorie content of any wine so are a great choice – particularly dryer champagnes.   A 4-ounce serving contains just 1.6 grams of carb and only 84 calories making Champagne the best choice for holiday cheer!

Common White Wines

After Champagnes the next best choice is white wines (NOT including ANY dessert wines!)

 Per 5 Ounce Serving Size:

Chardonnay -   120 calories and 3.43 grams of carb

Sauvignon Blanc – 120 calories and 3 grams of carb

Reisling – 120 calories and 5.54 grams of carb

Pinot Grigio – 122 calories and 3 grams of carb

Common Red Wines

Merlot – 118 calories and   grams of carb

Cabernet Sauvignon – 130 calories and 3.82 grams of carb

Burgundy – 122 calories and 5.46 grams of carb

Pinot Noir – 116 calories and 4 grams of carb

Shiraz – 116 calories and 3.79 grams of carb

Low Carb Beers

Bud Select 55 – 55 calories with only 1.9 grams of carb

Miller64 – 64 calories with 2.4 grams of carb

Michelob Ultra – 95 calories with 2.62 grams of carb

Becks Premier Light – 64 Calories with 3.2 grams of carb

Miller Light – 96 calories with 3.2 grams of carb

Amstel Light – 95 calories with 5 grams of carb

Coors Light – 102 calories with 5 grams of carb

Bud Light – 110 calories with 6.6 grams of carb

Mixed Drinks

Liquor such as gin, vodka, scotch and rum, but are full of calories and to some extent act as a “super” carb driving insulin and hunger.   That being said they do not contain any carb whatsoever so as long as you mix them with no sugar/calorie mixers you can keep your carb and calorie intake somewhat under control.

One of the best choices is Vodka and Soda Water with Lime or Lemon coming in with zero carbs and about 100 calories!   Other examples are whiskey and diet coke, Seagram's 7 and Diet 7-up, Rum and diet cola, or Spiced Rum and Diet Ginger Ale.

What to avoid!

Watch those mixers when it comes to mixed drinks – most standard mixers such as all sodas, fruit juices, and tonic are full of sugar unless you use the diet versions.   All your Caribbean and Tropical drinks such as Pina Coladas, Daiquiris, Mai Tai’s, and Margaritas, etc. are chock full of sugar and calories.

Set a Budget for Your Intake!

Set a budget on your intake of alcoholic beverages and actually keep track as you drink them making a point of knowing how much you have had each hour.  Remember each beer, glass of wine, and mixed drink takes one hour to process for the average male (and longer for females) so anything above 1 per hour is getting you inebriated at some level.   

In addition to budgeting your intake drink a glass of non-alcoholic, no calorie beverage such as water or club soda for each drink/beer/glass of wine you have to slow yourself down and stay hydrated.

If you want to catch a buzz drink your limit and switch to all non-alcoholic beverages for 2 – 4 hours before driving.     

Even better – get a designated driver or use Uber or Lyft for travel to and from Holiday Parties!

How to Eat Healthy While Travelling Over the Holidays!

It is challenging if you are travelling during this season because you are out of your home and have less control over your exercise and eating habits. 

However, where there is a will there is a way.   Here are some key tips to prevent weight gain during travel: 

1.   Plan your meals and your exercise.    This is probably the most important tip because with a little planning you CAN eat healthy and get in your exercise.

2.   Start by looking at your travel schedule and planning your meals during travel.    We all know how lousy the food is on an airline so instead of being subjected to the lousy and unhealthy food bring your own.     In many airports today, there are plenty of healthy options that you can purchase and carry on the plane.  Great options include:

a.    Nuts – see below

b.    Ready to drink shakes like Muscle Milk (even starting to see this in an organic option in airports!).

c.    Nutrition bars – see below

d.    Hard boiled eggs

e.    Salads with chicken

3.   Buy non-perishable food before you leave home.  Excellent choices for meals and snacks that are easy to travel with include:

a.    Nuts – come in cans and pouches with smaller packages being ideal because while nuts are healthy they are high in fats and even healthy fats have lots of calories!    No honey glazed and if you need to be concerned about salt stick with unsalted, roasted nuts.    Best choices include pecans and walnuts and brazil nuts followed by almonds, then peanuts and cashews in terms of sugar content.

b.    Nutrition bars – there are a ton of healthier bar choices now, and they have actually figured out how to make a healthy bar that tastes pretty darned good without a ton of sugar that have high levels of fiber, healthy fats, and protein.  Several variety of Kind bars fit this bill including Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt; Caramel Almond and Sea Salt; and Dark Chocolate Cinnamon Pecan.  These bars taste great and will satisfy you and travel well.

c.    Ready to mix shakes – there are many great options for shakes that are low in sugar and high in protein that taste great and come in packets that are easy to mix in a plastic shake bottle after you add water.  Gone are the days where these options must be blended in a blender.  Experiment a bit and you can find shakes that come in single serve packets that mix quite well in a plastic shaker bottle.

d.    If you are driving, consider bringing some pre-made meals in a cooler that are either ready to eat cold or can easily be microwave or baked when you arrive.     When you bring some of your own food and healthy desserts you know you will have good options!

4.   Focus on a great breakfast because you can get eggs in every town in America both at restaurants and in people’s homes.  Eggs are fantastic nutrition that really satisfies, and they can be prepared in many different ways.  Starting the day off with 2 – 3 whole eggs along with some sautéed vegetables, some cheese and some berries will keep your hunger at bay and provide a healthy meal that is easy to come by!

5.  Get your exercise in!  Plan before you leave – worst case you can use resistance bands and get a great workout in a very small physical space such as a hotel room.  You can also do highly effective body weight workouts while on the go.  Here is a nice bodyweight workout: https://workoutanytime.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-three-best-bodyweight-exercise.html

6.    Go for a walk and check out the neighborhood or go see some nearby sites.  Sitting on your butt all day while food is being prepared all around you is asking for trouble!  Get up and get out and active for part of the day or offer to do some shopping for the group or pitch in with some of the physical chores if you are staying at someone’s home. 

    While it is easy to gain weight during travel over the holidays – with a little planningyou can come through with little to no weight gain or even lose a pounds or two over the holidays!

Proven Ways to Avoid Putting on Weight During the Holidays!

As we head into the holidays many Americans will gain 10lbs between Halloween and New Years Day.    However the good news is that there are ways to prevent this weight gain!

Here are some tips:

Eat before you drink and before holiday parties.     Going into a holiday party on empty and hungry is a sure-fire way to overeat.    Alcohol intake boosts appetite to begin with and if you start out without anything in the tank it just gets worse!    This does not mean overeating – eat a sensible meal about 2 hours before you go to the party.

Try to choose higher protein foods first because protein helps with satiety (feeling satisfied and not hungry).

Fill up on Fiber Rich Foods – which also help with satiety and help create a feeling of fullness when consumed with water.  Focus on the raw veggies and yes you can dip them in some dip that has some fat because together fiber and fat can really assist in managing hunger along with protein.

Eat some fat – that’s right eat some fat!   Fats also are key for satiety.   That being said a little goes a long way!

Bring your own food to a party.   Rather than having only high calorie, high sugar and high fat foods bring something you enjoy that is also healthy along with you!

Eat slowly and chew your food thoroughly – seems simple and it is.    It is also very effective for limiting food intake!

Use smaller plates, bowls and glasses – all of which help to slow down food and beverage intake and make you more conscious of how much you are consuming!

Try to Minimize Sugar and Starch Intake – both sugar and starch wind up as glucose (blood sugar) and high intakes drive insulin which results in rebound hunger.    High sugar and starch intake drives hunger – particularly when drinking alcohol because alcohol acts like a super sugar and also drives insulin response.

Pause before getting seconds – as with slower eating and deliberately chewing food this can give your body time to realize it is no longer really hungry.

If you are hosting an event have extra Tupperware so you can give away excess foods to guests!

Try not to eat in front of the T.V. which distracts you from how you feel and results in mindless eating!

Consider planning a cheat meal but have a plan for how much you are going to eat!   One meal can knock you off course but most of the holiday weight gain comes from completely giving up on healthy eating for many meals.   Planning one cheat meal every week and planning on eating a set amount of the foods you may be craving can work for many people rather than mindlessly eating.   If you plan your meal including your portions of alcohol, sweets, fat and sugar you can limit the damage and still have a great time!

Drink Water.   Often quoted and still true - water is the best beverage and avoiding sugar laden drinks in favor of still or sparkling water can make a big difference in minimizing holiday weight gain.

Workout!   Working out improves mental outlook and burns some calories while reducing stress levels!    When we are stressed we overeat!   Just 10 minutes a day can make a big difference!

Get Your Sleep.   Lack of sleep is terrible for your health and particularly bad for driving appetite and overeating.   Lack of sleep causes hunger and excessive eating because the normal feedback mechanisms that tell you that you are full do not work properly when you are tired.   Basically, a tired brain tells you to eat to feel better and it is VERY hard to resist these urges when tired!

How Much Exercise Does it Take to Burn Off Halloween Candy?

 

In the big picture of weight loss it is not what do on the occasional holiday that determines our weight - it is the week in week out eating and drinking habits that determine our weight and level of bodyfat.   That being said if you are not careful you can eat/drink a ton of calories in one day which turns into weeks of too many calories during the holidays starting with Halloween.

The key is to plan and know what you are eating!   Candy can be confusing because of all the different snack sizes that are so prevalent during Halloween.  It is very easy to assume because you are eating snack size candy that it is not that bad, and this is true if you are not eating many pieces!    Before you eat candy see how many calories you are eating – it takes less than a minute to google calorie, sugar, and fat content for just about any common Halloween Candy.

Here are some examples:

Nestle’s Crunch Bar (60 calories) - 6 minutes of brisk aerobic exercise to burn off!

Kit Kat Bar (70 calories) - 8 minutes of brisk aerobic exercise to burn off!

Four Snickers Mini Bars (170 calories) - 18 minutes of high intensity exercise to burn off!

 Full Size Twix Bar (80 calories) - 6 minutes of continuous kettlebell swings to burn off!

 4.2 Oz Candy Corn (450 calories) - 4 – 5 miles of walking to burn off!

 2 Peanut Butter Cups (210 Calories) - 2 miles of running to burn off!

So eating a little candy is no big deal, BUT if you are not watching how many pieces/containers you eat you can quickly rack up a ton of calories that would take more than an hour of vigorous exercise to burn off!

Plan your candy intake and know what you are going to eat and enjoy it!   The other key is have candy after a meal so you are not really hungry – candy and hunger make for a really bad combination!

Is Diet Soda Really Worse For You Than Regular Soda?

 

A study looked at this question and was all over the media.  What did the study conclude?  It concluded that drinking 2 or more sodas per day (of any type of soda) was associated with a 17% increase in mortality.  Further the study concluded that regular (non-diet) soda drinkers were 8% more likely to die at follow-up than those that consumed less than one glass per day.

Those people that drank two or more artificially sweetened sodas were 26% more likely to die at follow up than those who drank less than one diet soda per day.   Seems pretty simple right – clearly diet soda is WAY worse than regular soda and all soda is bad, but is that really the story?

When we look at the study itself in more detail the picture is not so clear!   First of all, the study involved giving people ONE questionnaire on their average daily soda intake at the beginning of a 16-year study.   This is a big problem because self-reported intake is notoriously inaccurate and assuming that people kept their soda intake fixed for 16 years is a whopper of an assumption as well.

Another problem is that the study cannot account for what are known as “confounding variables” meaning things like smoking and alcohol use or other unhealthy behaviors.  The study attempted to “guess” at the levels of these unhealthy behaviors by using statistics, but the fact is that no one knows who did what in the observational study.     

This is a big problem because it may in fact be the case that most people drinking soda were engaged in unhealthy behaviors like smoking, high alcohol consumption, and/or lack of activity.   So, it could be that people who drink sodas tend to have more unhealthy behaviors and the increased death rates may have nothing to do with soda!

Last but not least lets take a look at “absolute risk” rather than relative risk which is ALWAYS important.  Here is how that works.  In the study out of 225,543 people who reported less than a glass per month of artificially sweetened beverages at baseline, there were 21,032 deaths at follow-up.  In other words, 9.3% died.  For the 6,292 people that reportedly drank two or more glasses of Artificially Sweetened Beverages per day at baseline, there were 737 deaths at follow-up.  So in this group 11.7% died.

This works out to a RELATIVE risk increase of 26% calculated as follows: subtracting the lower death rate of 9.3% from the higher death rate of 11.7% (11.7% - 9.3% =  2.4%).   Then dividing the 2.4% absolute difference by 9.3% (2.4% divided by 9.3%= 26% difference in RELATIVE risk).

Sounds like a big deal right?   Not so fast – lets take a look at the ABSOLUTE risk or raw numbers.  The absolute risk is the difference between 11.7% of the heavy soft drinkers died vs 9.3% of those who drank less than one per day.   As above 11.7% - 9.3% is 2.4%.   So the ABSOLUTE risk is only 2.4%.   Pretty insignificant isn’t it?

So long story short soda should probably be treated like other lifestyle issues – in moderation!  By the way calories DO count and sugar has real calories, but diet soda does not.  Is this a license to drink lots of diet soda – NO!