Adios, Coca-Cola

This is my sixth day of not drinking sweetened carbonated beverages. I have said good-bye to Diet Coke, Diet Mountain Dew, and everything that has any kind of bubbly and is non-alcoholic. I say this because I did have lots of beer last Friday night.

However, not drinking diet sodas has been surprisingly easy. I did the cold turkey thing because I had been feeling quite awful lately. Let’s summarize these problems as “stomach problems” and leave them at that. I was feeling uncomfortable the majority of the time. After examining my diet, I realized that the only thing I ingested with any kind of consistency was diet soda. So it was the first to go in my desire to discover what the hell’s been ailing me for over a year.

Lo and behold, my stomach seems to have settled down thanks to this elimination. I’ve been drinking water and iced green tea (I still need the caffeine) in order to get me through the day. Our recycling was down dramatically this week ending today (and I wonder – I really contributed that much before!?!?). I honestly feel lighter and better, it seems easier to exercise, and the withdrawal headaches that I had at first have now quieted. As I have been known as a Coke fiend, this development was somewhat surprising and I would’ve predicted complete and utter failure by Day .003. However, here it is, Day 6.

The one time I nearly caved was after Sunday’s adventures. The iced tea I had ordered was overly, sickly sweet. IP was sitting across from me, sipping at cool Diet Coke. When we went to lunch later that afternoon, he was sipping at what looked like refreshing Diet Coke while I drank the awful, lukewarm tap water from the restaurant. I didn’t give in to temptation, though. Instead I went home, made some iced tea from the Wild Sweet Orange Tazo that was in my kitchen, and survived on that and water for the rest of the day. All was well.

I’m mildly proud of myself. It’s something I should’ve done a long, long time ago, but I had finally reached the point where I was considering visiting my doctor for some medication. It’s not cool that I waited so long to try something, but I’m glad I finally did. I know it won’t continue to be this easy, but I hope to keep any kind of soda consumption that I may reintroduce into my diet to a minimum. Even if I do, here’s hoping that I stick to tea and water more than anything else. Going back to feeling the way I did isn’t an option.