Okay, it’s summer and everyone else is eating ice cream - so why can’t you? If you were actually eating an amount in keeping with your daily calorie counting, it would be less than the standard scoop at any respectable ice cream stand. Well, never fear. While your neighborhood ice cream slinger may not stock anything less than a zillion calories, your neighborhood grocery store does. So here’s the best… but first, some ground rules:

The first thing to keep in mind is to check the calorie content for whatever frozen delight you’re slurping. Some ice creams labeled “light” are only “light” in reference to their color, not their calorie content. For example, as much as we love Vermont hippies, the Light version of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food packs 210 calories per half cup, which isn’t exactly, er, light.

That said…
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There’s nothing quite like a cold beer on a hot summer day. Planning to serve a full-bodied Chardonnay with your Fourth of July barbecue? Of course not! That would be unpatriotic!

Of course, there’s beer, and then there’s beer. (And then there’s a hangover, but that’s another matter.) So when you’re stocking up for your summer imbuement - or even when you’re out on the town - what’s the best brew? And what’s best avoided?

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale seems nice and light (it’s called “pale” isn’t it?) but it actually has more than double the calories in your average light beer. One bottle clocks in at 210 calories. In fact, if you’re watching the calories and lucky enough to be in a bar with microbrews you don’t recognize, pretty much anything called “Stout” or “Pale Ale” or “IPA” or “Fat-Ass Beer” should best be avoided.
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Soda is bad. No, really bad. Do you know how many calories are in that can of Coke? About as many as in a Milky War bar. You wouldn’t eat a Milky War bar every day if you were remotely serious about your health, would you? Yet for some reason, people assume that they gave give their daily soda a pass. Well, they can’t - it’s worse.

Calories are one thing, but what’s in those calories is another. High fructose corn syrup, which is used exclusively as the sweetener in soda, has been linked to diabetes, hyperactivity, hypertension and other problems. And even one can of soda will give you way more than your USDA Recommended Daily Allotment (RDA) of ten teaspoons of sugar. Finally, soda contains no vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein or anything else remotely nutritious for your body. Nada, zip, zilch. In other words, there’s nothing good in soda. Only bad things.
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You’re skeptical. Believe me, I was skeptical too when my girlfriend raved to me about her new diet pill.

“Oh really?” I asked. “Is this the one that makes you feel bloated or the one that makes you feel nauseous?”

“No,” she said. “It’s the one that gives you more energy.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “The one that makes you tweak? Or the one that’s addictive?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s the one that’s all natural.”

Now, I probably would have had a smart-alec comment to that too - except for the fact that Laura looked great. She’d lost easily 20 pounds since I last saw her, and before this, Laura was one of those people who insisted nothing worked: not diets, not exercise, not support groups, not therapy, not acupuncture - you get the idea. But with the evidence in front of me, I had to try Phentremine-Æ for myself.
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