I never would’ve thought it could be possible, but lately I’ve hardly found myself drinking any soda at all.
That coming from a guy who used to get headaches if he didn’t have caffeine by a certain time each day, I think, is quite the accomplishment!
Sara has always said that I need to cut soda out of my diet if I want to lose any weight because apparently it can be just as bad as regular soda in some respects, but I’ve always just shrugged it off with the thought of, “Well, at least it doesn’t have any calories. I’m going to drink soda either way, so 0 calories is better than some calories, right?!” So for the longest time I just drank tons of Cherry Coke Zero, to a point where I’d go through about 2 cans during the day and then another glass or more when I got home (32+ ounces?). It was a lot, and like I mentioned, I basically got addicted to the stuff, not in that I craved it, but in that my body started acting up when I didn’t have it.
The worst it ever got was when we were on the cruise a year ago – I didn’t feel like paying $45 for access to the soda fountain for meals, so I figured I’d just go without for the week. Two or three days of evening headaches in, I randomly ordered a rum and coke at one of the shows and it went away almost instantly. From then on, I either had at least a drink a night or took a can from the mini-bar just because I figured I had to…
So anyways, oddly enough this week I’ve gone through maybe an entire can the entire week, and that includes several days of starting a can and then not finishing it and sometimes not even coming close. The big change for me – I’ve really been focusing on drinking water lately. Whereas I used to just keep a glass cold in the fridge, now I’m carrying around a bottle that’s getting filled three or four times a day … it started off as just one – mostly before and after doing WiiFit – but now it’s built up to me drinking nearly four bottles (just over 64 ounces) each day and even when I’m presented with soda, unless I’ve got the right kind of meal in front of me (i.e. one that I probably shouldn’t be eating anyways), soda just doesn’t seem to be as appealing as it used to be.
A couple of other things I’ve noticed that seem to help:
- Rather than keeping it in the fridge, I’m drinking more of it room temperature. I mean, our water cooler keeps it relatively cold, but not ice cold, and besides, I think keeping it in the fridge was also a hindrance because now I have easy access all of the time.
- I try to take big strides by drinking a quarter or half of the bottle at a given time (the bottles I’m using are the smaller Zephyrhills bottles – 16.9 ounces), starting with my pills first thing in the morning.
- While I haven’t necessarily felt like drinking water helps to reduce my appetite by filling me up before meals, I feel like it might help cut down on snacking while I’m bored, which is another problem of mine.
Of course, the one downside to drinking so much water is that now I’m peeing almost constantly – probably making two or three times as many trips to the bathroom as before, but there’s not really much I can do about that! At this point I’m not sure I’ve seen any physical benefits to this new development, but we’ll see in a few weeks if it starts to have more of a positive effect when I get a little better at exercising on a regular basis.