Day 44: The Talk with Mom

My folks live in the healthiest place in the USA: Boulder, Colorado. This means my mom is surrounded by athletes, both extreme and average, including lots of octogenarians that attend her workout class. It has been inspiring to hear about her adjustment to Colorado, the people she's met and befriended at exercise class, her running routine and race preparation and all the rest of the healthy-happy-middle-aged-plus stuff that she's up to. I'm glad to think of her, a not-old woman in her sixties, living a healthy fulfilled life.

So that's why the Diet Coke bothers me.

My mom is so smart and fitness-focused, but drinks these carbonated, aspartame-filled beverages! Water is okay! Drink seltzer! Add lemon or some raspberries! Ween yourself off the aspartame!

It just makes me think of my lovely former co-worker-- a very nice, middle-aged lady-- who had a 3 diet snapple per day habit. She was overweight, always struggling to diet and never making progress.

And then when you start to watch more about artificial sweeteners, food subsidies, and big agriculture/government liaisons it all starts to get a bit depressing.

That said, it does reinvigorate my desire to be PCP-ing and reaquainting myself with the right way to eat.

My mom said she wanted to do something for my remaining 46 PCP days, to be my ally in the ongoing nutritional challenge, to 'give something up' too. I don't really think of PCP as giving things up, as much as eating lots more of the right things. So here was my advice and my challenge (if she chooses to accept it):

1. Eat more vegetables, try for some at every meal (yes, even breakfast, Mom!)
2. Give up the artificial sweeteners (i.e. diet sodas and those not really healthy diet yogurts)

We'll see how she does.

Mom, mid-hike, on a path near home