Hello Infographics fans and welcome to another special Challenge episode of The Infographics
Show.
Today we're taking on the obesity issue.
While global stereotypes like to paint Americans as a bunch of fatties, in actuality obesity
figures from around the world show that weight gain is a problem in most modern nations.
The reasoning is pretty simple- a modern economy brings modern jobs, modern conveniences, and
modern not-so-healthy food.
Modern jobs means mostly blue collar work for most people, which includes a lot of sitting
around in the office not getting much exercise, and when coupled with the modern conveniences
of video games, on-demand video, and a billion cable channels, coupled with modern fast food
or delivery right to your doorstep, this all spells disaster for expanding waistlines around
the world.
But what about soda, what role does it have in this modern weight epidemic?
Let's find out today as we challenge your favorite guinea pig, and our least-important
staff writer, to drink only soda for a whole month!
For science!
Day 1: Drink only soda for an entire month- this one didn't go over well with the girlfriend.
At all.
Like most Los Angeles actresses she's a total health and fitness nut, and like most Los
Angeles actress boyfriends, I have to partake in at least fifty percent of that nuttiness.
I mean I'm generally active and in decent shape anyways, but I'm not a total health
freak and I don't even know what kale tastes like but I'm willing to bet its terrible.
Soda is, as far as I'm aware, not even allowed in our refrigerator, and even though I actually
like drinking Coke I tend to just order it at restaurants.
Luckily the girlfriend isn't a total Fourth Reich Health Nazi and she doesn't really mind,
but when I told her I could only drink soda for an entire month she got this very weird,
dead look in her eyes.
Then she very slowly narrowed them at me but didn't say a word.
It was... terrifying.
She just sort of left for work without saying anything and then text me from the car saying,
“Your job is stupid.”
So as usual I did my initial research and it turns out drinking soda is pretty god awful
for you, so it's hard to blame her response.
It destroys the enamel on your teeth which makes it easier for your teeth to rot, it
raises and then crashes your blood pressure, can lead to diabetes, and of course, is pretty
much guaranteed to make you gain weight.
Apparently every 3,500 calories extra you consume per week can lead to 1 pound of weight
gain, and calories definitely add up fast.
I did some math and looked up the calories on average I eat per week- thanks to California's
laws figuring out total calories of everything you eat is actually pretty easy.
Turns out I'm taking in on average about 2500 a day, mostly because of weekend meals.
During the weekdays I typically cook something pretty healthy for me and the girlfriend,
but on the weekends we cheat by eating out.
We both exercise though, and my weight is pretty stable, so I'm guessing that the amount
I exercise totals out with the average of 2500 calories a day.
But that is of course without drinking much soda at all- maybe two a week from eating
out.
Now I'm going to have to drink ONLY soda, not even any water, so that's for sure going
to skyrocket my calories.
They say you're supposed to drink about eight 12 ounce glasses of water a day to stay healthy,
but that figure doesn't account for all the water you actually get from your food, so
a more realistic estimate is more like five glasses of water a day.
Assuming I did the soda equivalent of that, it would be 140 calories x 5, or an extra
700 calories per day, or 4,900 per week.
Yikes, that's well over 3,500 needed for a pound of fat.
Ofcourse that's just calories though, which isn't the full picture because each soda-
I plan on drinking Cokes by the way- includes a whopping 39 grams of sugar or 78% of your
daily allotment.
That's going to majorly increase my weight gain potential, not to mention pave a pretty
strong foundation for diabetes.
I could just go with say Coke Zero which is supposedly healthier, but A) it tastes like
donkey sweat and B) it seems more fair to go for the real stuff.
So, as usual I'll update once a week and I'll try and keep a total tally of how many sodas
I drink per week, along with the total amount of calories I'm consuming and any weight gain
effects.
Day 1 weight is: 163 lbs, svelte, sexy, and with just a little bit of love handles- sue
me, I'm not the actor in the house I don't need to set unrealistic physical expectations
in front of a camera all the time.
Love handles is what peak performance looks like people, deal with it.
Anyways, here we go again.
See you in a week.
Day 7: The refrigerator is stacked with red cans of coke, all gleaming and shiny and frosty
cold.
I gotta admit, it's kind of beautiful in a way.
I cannot stress how much the girlfriend really, really hates this challenge.
Just for laughs I built a coke fortress around her vegetables, but apparently I was the only
person who thought that was funny.
Drinking only soda is weird.
I catch myself going for some water out of thirst and have to remind myself, nope, get
a coke instead.
I could cheat, but integrity's pretty important to me.
Now, I actually really like coke, so this challenge didn't seem all that bad, but I
gotta admit that I'm getting a bit tired of the flavor.
I bought lemon juice to squirt into each can in order to zing the taste up a bit and it
worked pretty well.
Think I'll try limes next, just to keep the flavor from getting boring.
Maybe I'll even switch to Pepsi, but if Coke Zero tastes like donkey sweat, Pepsi tastes
like a donkey drinking the sweat of another donkey and then sweating that sweat out itself.
This week I've drunk 3,640 calories worth of coke, which is just a bit more than three
cokes a day.
I find that I'm not drinking as much coke as I would water, I think I'm just naturally
avoiding drinking as much coke as possible.
My weight's ticked up from 163 pounds to 165- not bad and well within natural pound or two
fluctuation.
I'll see how this next week pans out.
Day 14: This week I drank 4,060 calories worth of coke, definitely a bit more than last week.
The aluminum recycling is really stacking up- by the way, did you know aluminum is one
of the few things worth recycling?
Look it up.
Anyways, my weight's shot up to 168, which is definitely not an accident.
It's pretty obvious soda is having a serious effect on my weight gain.
Surprisingly, I'm not getting all that sick of the taste though- I mean I do have to use
lemon or lime occasionally but it's still ok to me.
Then again I did use to eat pretty terrible MREs for months at a time in the military,
so I think my palette's become pretty easy to please.
On the home front, I cannot stress just how unhappy the girlfriend is with this challenge.
She pinched a love handle yesterday when I got out of the shower and she just flatly
said, “They're getting bigger.
Gross.”
She's also been sending me emails from work about the terrible health effects of soda,
and planning a crash diet for as soon as this month is up.
I think every time she gets a break from filming she's firing off a new email to warn me that
I'm basically going to die because of this.
Too bad for her she's not my insurance beneficiary.
Too bad for everyone that I don't have one.
Crap, I should get that sorted.
Day 21: So one of the effects of soda is sugar high, followed by sugar crash.
This is because sodas flood your circulatory system with a bunch of sugar that your body
isn't ready for.
In the wild coming across a huge amount of sugar is basically not an issue our biology
ever had to deal with, so now when you flood your body with concentrated sugar, your body
freaks out.
It immediately overproduces hormones to lower your blood sugar because it thinks that you're
literally about to die, which makes your blood sugar levels drop to below normal levels-
hence the crash.
Turns out if you drink nothing but soda all the time, your body thinks its under sugar
attack all the time, and those crashes get really, really bad.
I think I'm taking more naps each day now than I've ever taken before, and typically
I'm off to a nap every four to five hours.
Luckily I have the house to myself during the day, so it's not a big deal, but it's
cutting into my productivity big time.
I also kind of feel like my heart might explode.
Or my arteries, one or the other.
I guess this is my blood pressure spiking, and I'm realizing now I should've bought one
of those blood pressure monitors, if I even had any idea of how to use it.
My breath is also worse, I guess that's the sugar feeding all the hungry little bacteria
in your mouth, and I'm having to brush my teeth a few times each day- although to be
honest I already was because I don't even want to think of the plaque holocaust all
this soda is putting my teeth through.
Turns out one of the side effects of drinking nothing but soda for a month is a very grumpy
girlfriend.
I know she hates it because she's concerned for my health, which is actually kind of sweet.
She's already meal planned a crash diet to 'detox' me from all this soda.
I reminded her that 'detoxing' is not a real thing and only a trendy term that West Hollywood
hipsters use to sell you overpriced health nonsense, and she took my soda out of my hand,
put her finger over the hole, shook it up and- I'm not kidding about this- sprayed me
with it.
Then cool as a fresh all organic cucumber, she just turned around and walked away.
I think this soda experiment has literally broken my health-nut girlfriend.
Anyways, this week I drank 4,200 calories, and my weight has jumped to 170, which is
alarming.
I realized it's not just the soda though- because it makes me so tired, I haven't been
exercising nearly as much and have been skipping entire days.
So all the calories from everything else I eat is adding up.
Thankfully there's only one week left.
Day 30: I am not sad at all that this challenge is over.
Drinking soda for a month straight sounds pretty alright at first, then it gets kind
of 'meh', and then it very quickly becomes a bit of a nightmare.
I don't think we appreciate just how much non-soda we drink, even heavy soda drinkers.
Sure, you might down a few sodas a day, but imagine drinking nothing- and I mean nothing-
but soda for a month straight.
Wake up in the middle of the night, thirsty?
Soda.
Eat something dry and need to wash it down?
Soda- and by the way, washing food down with soda is pretty terrible.
Thirsty after working out?
Soda.
Or at least trying to work out, because i've definitely noticed that I can't go as long
or as hard as I could a month ago.
I don't know if it's the psychological weight of knowing that I'm basically destroying my
body with all this sugar, or if it's actually making me sluggish, but I can't exercise as
hard as I used to.
Strength is basically fine, but anything that requires endurance- forget about it.
I'm getting winded just thinking about hitting the track tomorrow on my first day back to
normal.
My weight is at 173 pounds, which means that in one month I've gained ten pounds.
And that's while still mostly exercising.
I can't imagine what my weight would be if I had drank nothing but soda and not exercised,
but I honestly think I could've gained easily twice as many pounds.
The constant soda makes me feel pretty terrible, I literally feel sometimes like my heart is
going to beat out of my chest, and I swear my blood has become the consistency of syrup.
During the course of this challenge I've drank approximately 16,800 calories worth of soda-
or one entire week's worth of normal calorie intake.
And I know I've been pacing myself, typically drinking three to four sodas a day.
The girlfriend couldn't be happier that this whole thing is over, and she's promised me
a crash diet of uber-healthy premade meals that she's created herself until my weight
gets back to normal.
She's officially in full health nazi mode, and you
know what, I'm ok with that.
It means she really cares, which is kind of sweet.
Challenge over.
Summary: drinking nothing but soda for a month is pretty terrible for your body, kills your
energy, makes you gain a bunch of weight, and really, really irritates your girlfriend.
Want to see my other challenges?
Check out what happened when I only got a 3 hours of sleep a night for a week!
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time!