Looks innocent, huh?

I discovered something the other day that I forgot about snack type things.  They contain sodium and make you retain water!  The last time I ate anything like pretzels or chips or packaged cookies was like 5 or more years ago, so it’s easy for me to forget about what they do to the body.  I’d picked up a one ounce bag of little pretzels and nibbled on them through the day.  There were 120 of them in the bag.  You know, those little half dollar size pretzels with big chunks of yummy salt.  I was working away and thought, what a great idea pretzels are since they are low fat and easy to eat while I work.  I don’t usually eat in the office.  So I worked through lunch and dinner and didn’t feel hungry, although about 3:00pm I had the urge to make iced tea.  Which I had not done for maybe a year.  And I wanted lemon and sugar in it, which I haven’t done for several years.  The snack made me thirsty and I guess the salt made me want sugar and the sweet made me want sour.  Typically I simply drink water, but I made a big pot of iced raspberry tea and by midnight had drank all of it.  A day later I got on the scale and weighed 4 pounds more.  WTF?  My weight has stayed within 2 pounds for the past 4 years. I forgot that is what that kind of food does!  Two days later I was back to normal but I reflected on the body changes.  The tummy satisfaction made me forget the purpose of eating is for body fuel and to maintain cell structure so, since I wasn’t hungry, I skipped 2 meals of nutritious food that day.

Never-ending wheel

I felt sluggish about halfway into the bag, and had no real energy for 2 days.  My tum defnitely felt gassy for 2 days.  After a day of eating salads and veggies and protein, I felt back to normal again.  Interesting I’d forgotten about that whole salt and sugar hamster wheel that happens when I eat the processed food.  I wonder how many other people who have no energy eat stuff like this and don’t see the connection?  How many are on the hamster wheel and don’t realize it?  Hmmm.