Ditch the diet soda if you’re trying to lose weight

In a study to be published today, American researchers found that rats fed yogurt sweetened with zero-calorie saccharin later consumed more calories and gained more weight and body fat than rats fed yogurt sweetened with sugar.

Yep, I know, this story has nothing to do with radio. I’m back working on my diet again. During Ratatouille, I managed to get busy enough that exercise and diet began to take a back seat to other concerns, and I gained about 25 of the 70 pounds I had lost back. Sigh. I’m back at Weight Watchers now, and am down about five pounds in the last three weeks. Slow and steady.

But this report doesn’t really surprise me very much: it’s not at all surprising that when you refuse to feed your body with calories when it wants it, your metabolism shows and you are more likely to eat inappropriately later. We should all watch our consumption of refined sugars and starches, but substituting sugar free and fat free snacks is probably not good either.

On Saturday afternoon, I was tuning around with my FT-817, and heard VP6DX calling CQ on 20m SSB. He was working split, transmitting on 14.190 and listening on 14.245 (from memory, have the split frequency wrong). It turns out that he’s part of a DXpedition: a trip by a radio amateur to go to a remote location and operate from their. It turns out that VP6DX is operating from Ducie Island, a small member of the Pitcairn islands in the south Pacific, with a total area of less than four square kilometers and no permanent inhabitants. Whacky! I wasn’t really setup for transmitting, so I didn’t bother trying to call him. Indeed, since the FT-817 only puts out five watts and my antenna is hardly optimal, I’m pretty sure it would be pointless, but I thought it was kind of neat to hear him.

VP6DX Ducie Island 2008 :: About Ducie Island