Confessions....

I confess that I am so looking forward to this weekend. The problem is this weekend involves TONs of beer and food and no exercise. With only 37 days until my wedding...:embarassed:

I confess that I went to Applebee's tonight.

This forum makes me feel human... I read (on this site) about diet soda cupcakes so I made some this weekend. Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix, with Diet Cherry Dr Pepper soda, and the sugar free cool whip mixed with sugar free pudding for the frosting... well I think I gave away about 8 cupcakes and I ate the rest in two days. There should have been approximately 20-22 cupcakes made but my daughter and I ate a lot of the batter... it was so good... it tasted like chocolate covered cherries. So, just because the calories were only about 110 cal each does not mean I can have 5-7 in one day!!! It didn't seem like that much until I did the math! I seem to have NO CONTROL when it comes to chocolate anything. :sad:

Awesome idea... thank you!!!

Is anyone ever going to confess as to why grapes are bad?

I'd like to hear about that too?! I eat a lot of grapes.

I found this on a website:

Grape greatness

How can grapes be both a favorite of mine and be on my "ten most wanted" list of food criminals?

Well, I already explained why I don't like grapes: They're bad for you - both from a health standpoint and from a fiscal point of view. However, one of the world's healthiest and most purely beneficial substances would not exist without them…

Of course, I'm talking about wine.

Ironically, it is the very thing that makes grapes such a poor choice for a food (the fact that they're mostly sugar) that makes wine even possible. You see, the sugars in grape juice are what vintner-added yeasts feed upon during the wine-making process. The by-product of this low-level metabolism of sugars is alcohol. And as you've heard me say about a million times before, moderate consumption of alcohol is a great boon to your health on many levels.

It isn't just me saying that, either. Study after study have shown this to be true, but especially so for wine. Even the medical mainstream has grudgingly accepted what's known as the "French Paradox" - the fact that the red-wine-gulping French live far longer and enjoy lower incidences of major health problems than people in many other advanced nations. This, despite their rich, carb-heavy diets and propensity to chain-smoke full-nicotine European cigarettes.

Why is this? Back to the good ol' grape.

The skins of red varieties of grapes contain powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. These have been shown in much research to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke - and may even have a cancer-preventive benefit, as well. When red wine is made from these grapes, those potent antioxidants remain, along with a nice shot of healthy alcohol in place of the harmful sugar that was once the grape's downfall as a food.

Therein lies the real "paradox." In order to make grapes into a healthy food, you CAN'T EAT THEM.

You can only drink them. And you should. Every day.

Tipping a glass to your good health,

William Campbell Douglass II, MD

PS: I have to mention this for all you animal lovers out there. Dogs love grapes and raisins but they are deadly to them. They cause renal failure. So make sure to keep them out of paws way!