I knew what I wanted to write about today, but I had no idea of what I wanted to title it. I turned on the computer and put on Neil Young on Pandora and guess what the first song was…one of my favorites…LONG MAY YOU RUN.

I don’t know about you but in my mind the ability to run is an indication of relative health. And it is becoming an even bigger passion of mine…trying to stay healthy.And once again I have to remind myself that as much as I would like to make tons of changes all at once I really have to go with just a few at a time.

One of my favorite magazines is Men’s Health. There are pages that have single to several paragraph snippets of advice, any of which I could follow and improve my health. I also get their daily emails with all sorts of ideas of how to improve my diet and fitness tips. About a month ago I started doing one of the exercise routines they posted online. I start by doing 10 pushups and then 1 full body squat. I immediately do 9 pushups followed by 2 squats. You get the picture, by the time I am done I have done 55 pushups and 55 squats. I do this 3 times a week and I know it sounds crazy but I can already see the physical changes. At the ripe age of 53 this makes me feel like I did in high school when I did a lot of weight lifting.

I just finished watching Dr. Robert Lustig’s most currently posted lecture on the evils of sugar. It is called Sugar: The Bitter Truth and he just breaks it down so well as to why sugar is root of the obesity issue facing not only the United States, but the entire world. (Brazil, an emerging economy has had the highest percent increase of obesity and diabetes in the world the last few years). And as he sees it, whether it is sugar or high fructose corn syrup it is the same poison. Even worse, if you look at what criteria makes a substance become an addiction….Sugar fits the bill so it is safe to say our bodies are getting addicted to sugar at an alarming rate.

Where am I going with this…simple. If you drink a serving of a sugary beverage (and that is 8 ounces….not the new 20 ounce soft drink bottles) and you don’t need those calories you would drink 15.5 pounds of fat a year. The problem is that the average kid is drinking 4 servings a day. It is no wonder we face an obesity epidemic in health care that has caused our premiums to go up over 50% to treat.

My strong recommendation for one of the quickest ways to start improving your health is to eliminate sugary drinks from your diet (and this includes fruit juices which are mostly sugar). Water, coffee, tea and milk are great choices. And guess what? Your chances of getting cavities may be greatly reduced as well.

Don’t take my word for it…go look at the video on YouTube yourself. And then see if Dr. Lustig makes sense. And then you can start making choices so that

LONG MAY YOU RUN