Vitamin water is another marketing ploy.

If they’re water-soluble vitamins (which they pretty much have to be in order to be in that water and not floating in a lump at the top of the bottle), then you’re pissing away whatever you don’t need. I take a B-complex supplement because I’m on a medication that interferes with B12 absorption — and I pee bright yellow an hour afterward. That’s the excess B12 going down the toilet.

Wal-Mart sells flavored sparkling water that has zero calories. Delicious.

I hope you find a healthy approach to eating. Just avoid the “cleanses” and other woo-woo approaches, m-kay?

Coffee with milk? Skip the milk (I love black coffee, but I’m weird). A Starbucks Caramel Frappuccino Blended Coffee with Whipped topping has 500 calories. That’s more than a Big Mac (490).

Sweet tea? OMG, there’s a reason they call it the Stroke Belt.

GatorAde after your workout? Sure, if you want to completely overwhelm any gains you might have made. (GatorAde and other sports drinks are fine for athletes who are engaging in high-intensity, long-duration activities. Not for people who work out for 30 minutes on an elliptical trainer set on the lowest possible setting. If you haven’t soaked through a T-shirt with your workout of at least two hours’ duration, forget the sports drinks — and even then, cut it in half with water.) Oh, and all of the “pre-workout” chews and drinks GatorAde is now touting? Look at the labels. They’re almost all nothing but pure sugar. They’re as empty as empty calories can get.

Morning orange juice: According to the experts, among the worst offenders. Do the math. I glass of OJ = 110 cal x 365 / 3500 = 11.4 pounds of excess calories per year. Juice does nothing for you that whole fruit can’t do, and does not promote any feelings of satiety. Don’t worry, you get enough vitamin C.

Just skip the juice and even if you do precisely and exactly nothing else, you’ll be lighter at the end of the year. If you eliminate all calorie-containing drinks, you’ll be MUCH lighter.

My favorite is a 50/50 blend of unsweetened ice tea and Crystal Lite lemonade (that’s an ‘Arnold Palmer’ to the cognoscenti).

It a pretty crazy project, but it has rational support and literature support for everything, and I’m in contact with people in the appropriate sciences as a Dunning-Kruger filter.

Yes, I am trying to imagine what kind of an argument starts out by saying “I’m troubled by the people manipulating sick people like Michael J. Fox” and ends with “we really need to do as Michael J. Fox says and fund stem cell research, in defiance of theocrats who want to determine public policy on religious premises”.

One could support some sort of libertarian argument against any sort of government funding (which is where all the controversy was) while holding very favorable views on the value and desirability stem cell research. However, this would seem to contradict her statements of stem cell research being a goal in her agenda with the SCA since such a goal can only refer to public funding controversy (because private funding has yet to be a policy issue).

Like I wrote, I would love to see the rest of that interview.

I’m definitely up for small group tutoring! But I won’t have money until fall….