Mountaineers are Mostly Fat

That's the verdict from a recent study of the nation's obesity rates. Thankfully, my home state of West Virginia came in second and was not the state with the highest concentration of lard. That honor goes to Mississippi, which is completely unsurprising. Just about everyone I have ever seen identify themselves as Mississippians is fat. In fact, most of the people I have seen identified as being from the South, have been at least overweight. Amazingly, almost 70% of the populations in the top 10 are overweight or obese...that includes children as well.

I remember another study that attempted to quantify the monetary effect that this chronic obesity epidemic has on the U.S. economy per year and while I can't remember the exact amount, it was in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which is just depressing. Thus far in my short life I have been blessed with a high metabolism and the ability to eat junk food without too many consequences. I know that won't last forever, but that's part of why I run...to stoke the furnace that is my metabolism so I can eat whatever I want and go out the next morning and burn it off or turn it into muscle. I also don't want to be obese and face all the health problems and lifestyle problems that goes along with it.

Thus, I went out and did some hill sprints this morning, upping my number to 5 for the next two weeks. Tomorrow I'll get another 5 miles in as well. This way I will be able to burn off today's lunch. We're going out to eat because one of my colleagues is leaving the firm at the end of the month to go to the University of Chicago to get his MBA. Our choice is Andy Nelson's BBQ out in Cockeysville, MD. I plan on enjoying a beef brisket, corn bread, taters, beans and a side of Memphis dry rub ribs. Oh, and a sweet tea for good measure. So it was imperative that I go into today with a calorie deficit and that I hit the road hard tomorrow morning to burn off what has to be thousands of calories I will intake today.

And in recent root beer news, I tried the Whole Foods store brand (365? Is that the brand?) root beer last night and have to say I was pretty pleased all things considered. I mean, it was twice as expensive as Sam's Choice, coming in at $2.49 for a six pack, but then again, Sam's Choice is always the low price. But Whole Foods makes theirs with cane sugar, which is something you usually don't see in mass-produced canned root beers. It had a nice birch flavor and the cane sugar was not too much as to make it overly sweet. A solid option if you don't feel like shelling out $5 for four Boylan's or Virgil's, which are the other two brands our Whole Foods stocks.

I also tried Boylan's Birch Beer the other night when Annie and I went out for pizza. It also uses cane sugar and was very good, although it didn't really stand out from IBC or Whole Foods. Given a choice between, say, Boylan's and Whole Foods, I would go with Whole Foods because it tastes just as good and is cheaper. But, Berghoff's remains my all time favorite.

And with that, I'm off to gorge on brisket and pork!