Thursday, August 6, 2009

Diet Coke is the Devil.

Most of you know that I lost a lot of weight doing Weight Watchers.  Recently I realized that most of what I was eating to stay within my Weight Watchers points included a lot of chemicals and fake sugar.  The primary example of this is the diet coke addiction I only recently parted ways with.  

On Weight Watchers, water and diet coke are pretty much the only beverages that have a 0 point value.  Juices and things are fairly high in points.  As you can imagine, plain water gets boring pretty quickly.  Even water with lemon, lime, mint or cucumber in it gets boring.  I, along with the throngs of people that go to Weight Watchers meetings, relied on diet coke to add something different (and caffeinated) to my drink routine.  One or two diet cokes a day (very, very) quickly became one a day and, sometimes, many more than one.  

The result?  An over-caffeinated and over-faux-sugared me would go nuts and crave sweets.  It was SO much harder to keep my diet after a soda.  If I saw a cookie, cake or muffin, I HAD TO HAVE IT.  My sugar addiction was in full swing.

So I quit.

Not cold turkey.  I still will have one maybe once or twice a month.  But I mostly quit.  And I've been eating so much better ever since.  I never really believed that diet coke could ruin your best nutrition intentions but now I know.  I'm living proof.  Put down the diet coke, pick up the water!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The World Health Organization recognizes that aspertame and fake sugars most likely cause cancers, M.S., thyroid disorders, and all sorts of other disease.

There is nothing MORE IMPORTANT you could do for yourself than get this POISON out of your body.

Only 1% of the population can taste the difference. I am one of those people and I am here to tell you -- it TASTES like poison.

If people tasted what I did, they would NEVER drink this crap.

Anonymous said...

great post and so true - i had cut down diet coke to 1-2 a month myself prior to the detox diet for exactly those reasons. now, of course, it's gone - i miss it, but i miss carbonation more (i can't have sparkling water either right now).

Chelsea said...

I gave up soda for Lent this year, and haven't had a drink since. Woo hoo! In general, I didn't really drink that much, but my fiance had given it up six months before, and so I thought it would be good to see if I could do it too. When I did drink, I only drank diet soda. I can't handle the taste of regular soda, too much sugar for me.

Once Lent was over, I wanted to see if I could continue without drinking any soda, and I haven't had a drop since. Now, I just I drink a lot of tea. I've also drink these great carbonated water drinks called Lacroix which have natural flavoring like lemon, lime and berry and they don't have any calories! You should look into them. I get my water and it tastes good, too.

Congratulations and if you need any ideas on subsitutes or support just let me know!

Lexington said...

Thank you so much for sharing your store about how addictive soda can be. think blog entries like this are really important because they let people know how dangerous things can be.

I just recently had to give up soda and I could not believe how addicted I was to it. Now that I have made it past the withdrawal stage I do not think I will ever drink soda again.

Melita said...

agreed!! soda in general is terrible for us. i don't drink soda often. about the only time i do drink it (or crave it) is around that time of the month. those hormones make us want crazy things. i have to agree with christine though, i can definitely taste the difference in regular soda and diet sodas.

The Depressed Yogi said...

WOOT GO YOU!!!! I gave up fake sugars awhile back, and it's been great. I slipped up again when I started working b/c we had free sodas EVERYwhere, but I've stopped again. The only time I drink soda is if it contains real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup or something else. And it's definitely an indulgence... like dessert!

YOU CAN DO IT!!!

FB @ FabulouslyBroke.com said...

It is a good thing that stuff gives me massive headaches