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I don't need a six pack. I just don't need a spare tire in the way when I bend over to tie my shoes!

I actually drink lots of water throughout the day, probably more than the average person. I'm just not a fan of drinking water with meals. And almost everything besides water has sugar. I'm not a fan of seltzer or unsweetened iced teas.

Sparkling Ice doesn't have sugar. I think it does have some kind of sweetener, though.

Ziggy587 wrote:Speaking of, I had protein powder in the past, but I haven't for the longest time now. Any one have any recommendations?

If you're drinking it with milk, unflavored whey protein isolate is great.
I had always thought that it must taste awful, because every flavored protein powder is unpleasantly sweet with artificial sweeteners, but it's actually really mild.
Unfortunately, whey isolate is a bit expensive at the moment, though it's come down a bit from where it was a year ago.

If you aren't in a hurry, check slickdeals for whey isolate. You'll occasionally see pretty good deals from myprotein.com. There was a deal I missed in November for 2 5.5-lb bags of whey isolate for $80. I would have jumped on that in an instant if I had been looking at the time.

BulkSupplements might also run some deals, but I haven't seen any good sales from them in a couple of years.

Artificial sweeteners are terrible. Tap water is great. Your beverages don't need to taste like rainbows.

Really, though, having real or artificial sweeteners in everything trains us to expect everything to be extremely sweet. We become desensitized to what things really taste like. Since I stopped drinking sugary drinks all the time, I am a lot more sensitive to sweetness. I still enjoy junk food, but I reach the point of satisfaction earlier, and continuing to eat or drink that stuff becomes unpleasant earlier.

I drink water, black coffee, and milk with whey isolate pretty much every day, and that's it. I'll have a beer every week or two and a coke about every couple of months, and sweet tea on occasion and when visiting family. I really like coke, but after one can I am done and really don't want any more.

Drinks are a great way to spend money unnecessarily and consume large quantities of empty calories.

Protein powder, my thoughts, it's just a waste of money. I'm not a supp guy though, only one kind of "supp" works and no thank you. hell i've wasted plenty of money over the years on tons. Just get your protein from your diet, unless you're a bodybuilder. My preworkout drink is coffee, my after is a glass of chocolate milk or can of tuna with mustard. Plus alot have creatine mixed in and I don't need kidney damage. I probably used optimum nutrition's protein shakes for 5 years straight in the past, quit, and noticed no difference and hit plenty of goals on my lifts. Then covid closed the gyms and screwed up alot of hard work where I almost had to start over. Being almost 50, it's a lot more work than I thought to get back where I was, still not where I was.

I view artificial sweeteners with the same mind I do most things: just fine in moderation (too bad practice is harder than theory). I have one diet beverage a day most days to go with my 16 oz of straight black tea. Enough caffeine to get me started but not as much as coffee, which destroys my gut and hurts my blood pressure.

Limewater wrote:Artificial sweeteners are terrible. Tap water is great. Your beverages don't need to taste like rainbows.

Really, though, having real or artificial sweeteners in everything trains us to expect everything to be extremely sweet. We become desensitized to what things really taste like. Since I stopped drinking sugary drinks all the time, I am a lot more sensitive to sweetness. I still enjoy junk food, but I reach the point of satisfaction earlier, and continuing to eat or drink that stuff becomes unpleasant earlier.

I drink water, black coffee, and milk with whey isolate pretty much every day, and that's it. I'll have a beer every week or two and a coke about every couple of months, and sweet tea on occasion and when visiting family. I really like coke, but after one can I am done and really don't want any more.

Drinks are a great way to spend money unnecessarily and consume large quantities of empty calories.

I cut out sugary and sweet drinks too. I just drink water and black coffee now.

I definitely think it helps in the ways you mention, as I seem to crave sweet things less.

I'm addicted to Pepsico's Bubly. No sweeteners, but carbonated and comes in some great flavors. I also drink a lot of club soda, which I've heard described as the flavor of TV Static, but I like it. The only diet soda with artificial sweeteners I like is Pepsi 0.
I watched an episode of My Strange Addiction (I think it was that show) where a girl was eating massive amounts of artificial sweetener - like bowls full at a time of dry powder like it was cereal. When a doctor was consulted, the conclusion was that it can bind to dietary iron and cause a deficiency at the levels she was consuming it, tho otherwise it as okay. When I googled it, apparently it passes out through your urine, and makes it sweet...

stickem wrote:Protein powder, my thoughts, it's just a waste of money. I'm not a supp guy though, only one kind of "supp" works and no thank you. hell i've wasted plenty of money over the years on tons. Just get your protein from your diet, unless you're a bodybuilder. My preworkout drink is coffee, my after is a glass of chocolate milk or can of tuna with mustard. Plus alot have creatine mixed in and I don't need kidney damage.

If you are careful where and how you buy it, whey protein isolate can be a very economical source of protein, at least in the US with dairy subsidies. That makes it artificially cheap. But in terms of price per gram of protein, dairy-based sources can be down there.

I use it as a convenience food. Last time I bough, I paid about $8/lb for whey isolate, which has about 407 grams of protein. That comes out to about 2 cents per gram of protein. There aren't common whole food sources much cheaper than that.

I would suggest generally staying away from powders that add a lot of other stuff, particularly creatine. I'm not against creatine if your body processes it okay, and I use it myself, though less than standard usage and I don't think pre-loading is a good idea, but it also allows manufacturers to skew the numbers on their labels.

Got my dumbbells on Friday. I don't have a workout plan nailed down yet. I'll have to clear out some room in my place for a lot of the exercises I've seen. For now, I'm mostly doing supinated bicep curls (as seen here) whenever I'm anxious and bored. Mostly I've done about 10-20 reps a day on average but today I tried to see how many I could do while listening to Crazy Lixx's cover of "Sword and Stone", but I stopped when the song got to the 3:50 mark. I realize that may have been a serious mistake.