Positively Influential

The other day I was looking for a can of Pepsi in my house and to my surprise, I couldn't find any. No Pepsi, no Coke, no Sunkist or any other sodas that used to fill the the door of my refrigerator, and no 18 packs of colas stacked up on the floor either. I was looking for the soda to read the ingredient list and check the amount of sugar & calories in a can for a blog entry that I was thinking about writing. But all that was stacked on the floor was 3 cases of water and 3 cases of seltzer.
Could it be that I have had a positive influence on the rest of the clan? I certainly hope so. I finally had to do the research online.
A can of Cola is 150 calories, now if you only drink only one can a day (as many people claim), that's 54,750 calories a year. And as we know a pound of fat is 3500 calories, so if you replaced that cola a day with a bottle of water, that's 15.6 lbs. you would lose in that year. If you're drinking the 16 oz bottles that's 200 calories, 73,000 a year, cut that out and you could lose 20 lbs. a year, as long as you don't replace the lost calories with different ones.
That's just one step you can take, there's many more, little things add up after a year... if you cut out a can of cola and walk 30 minutes every day that's over 100,000 calories after a year, or about 30lbs.

And for those of you feeling good about yourselves because your drinking Diet Soda, think again... A newly released study that followed over 2500 New Yorkers for 9 years or more discovered that drinking Diet Sodas increases your risk of Heart Attacks or Strokes by 61%, yes, you read that right 61%... add that to doubling your risk of obesity that we already knew about.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41479869/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

Be a positive influence on the people that matter to you the most. You don't have to preach, just teach by example. When I was drinking, smoking and gaining all my weight nobody was interested in how I did it, but now they see a slimmer, more energetic person, people are curious... and the people that are closest can't help but change, if just a little at a time.