Soda

Alright well here is my dilemma:

I am trying to lose weight. I excercise at least 3 times a week, I am constantly cleaning (heave-duty), I have a niece and nephew (one is 1 yo and the other is 2) and I spend about 24 hours a week babysitting them running around and playing with them and picking them up.

I have tried watching my diet. I didn't go all crazy and try to quit junk food cold turkey, but I am trying to eat everything in moderation and what not. I just can't seem to shake my cravings for soda. Now, I think at this point, most people would just switch to diet sodas or something of that sort. However, I cannot stand the taste of the fake sugar those sodas are filled with. While I have cut back on them, I feel so horribly guilty drinking even one can of coke every few days.

I talked to my sister about it (we are working out and dieting together). She seems to have found a taste for Diet Pepsi Max, but I just can't enjoy it. She suggested that I switch from coke to sprite or any other clear soda. Would this really make any difference? Should I just give up altogether and quit soda for good? Any advice or encouragement would be greatly appreciated. :D

Oops. I accidentally posted this twice. Sorry about that!

Quit soda for good.  You can't even imagine how quickly he first few pounds will come off once you stop drinking all your calories.

Honestly, before I realized how horrible they were for you, Id be drinking 10 cans of the stuff a day.. omg. lol

I COULD NOT stand diet soda. My dad switched to diet mtn dew and swore by it, but I couldnt do it. Eventually I started drinking Crystal Light lemonade, which wasnt too bad, then some diet flavored sodas. I find those are a lot better:

-Coke zero is the best in my opinion, followed by diet drpepper, then diet sprite etc. I would go for the flavored ones ( I still dislike reg diet pepsi/coke sort of)

baby steps, one reg. soda wont kill you, but if you can save the 100 cals and have a mini bag of popcorn instead... why not?

Hope I helped! =)

clear soda has the same amount of calories as dark soda. there is absolutely no difference there.

everybody is going to tell you how horrible soda is etc, etc, but if you really truly love regular soda, a can every few days isn't really a big deal. you just need to count the calories. a can of soda has about a 150 calories, so if you really want it, make it fit into your plan. personally, i don't like drinking my calories, but you don't really need to give it up entirely if you don't want to.

Oh! and after 6 monthes of this, I couldnt tell the difference between diet soda/ reg. I stopped tasting the sweetners and would always freakout in restaurants ang go "Hey ray (the bf), is this diet?" and make him taste it an tell me. I do it 75% of the time and it drives him crazy. So its not a lost cause, youll get used to it

It's been a good decade since I've drank regular soda, but I used to all the time.  I could drink  a whole 2 liter bottle in a day.  I couldn't stand the taste of diet, it tasted like poison to me!  I think it's more the caffeine that your body is craving than necessarily the taste.  Maybe that's why your sister had good luck with diet pepsi max (max= more caffeine).  I started drinking crystal light and tea sweatened with splenda.  Eventually I got used to the diet taste and could drink diet pepsi and think it tasted good.  There was a time I drank diet soda constantly.  Now I very rarely drink any soda at all because all that caffeine and chemicals aren't good for you.  But I feel like diet soda is way better than regular soda and it's part of the process of eliminating it completely.  Keep in mind this whole "process" took me many years

thank you all so much for your feedback!

I've switched to drinking a ton of water and I tried crystal light lemonade (it really is my favorite of all the flavors)...but then i started to worry about the phenylalanine it it all and quit that. haha.

I guess if I switch from one every few days to one when I eat out at a restaurant (which is about once every two weeks or so)...even that would be a huge difference. Then maybe I could switch to not drinking it at all from there....baby steps, right? :)

I don't really worry about the phenylalanine, although if you have the will power to cut out artificial sweeteners, then more power to you!  Phenylalanine is an amino acid and there are worse additives in our food that I spend more effort on avoiding, like hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and propylene glycol to name a few.

I love soda, and that was a difficult part for me so far.  What I have done is really reduce the amount of soday that I drink.  Going from about 5 cans a day to maybe 2 cans.  Also my weakness was and is Vanilla Coke...YUM.  But when I started counting my calories, I say 150 calories...ugh.  So now I'm drinking Vanilla Coke Zero, and you know what, it's not half bad.  It doesn't strike me as bad as Diet soda, but not full strenght either.  But this way I can enjoy my soda calorie free and know that I still have to keep the amount that I drink down.

Personally, I am wholeheartedly opposed to all artificial sweeteners. I drank Diet Coke for years and years and then replaced it with Fresca, both of which contain aspartame. I suffered migraines and terrible, often debilitating stomach pains for a decade that no doctor could get to the bottom of, but I recall once talking to a friend who had found a link between artificial sweeteners and both of these conditions in many medical journals. At that time I also remembered my mother's continual paranoia about artificial sweeteners when I was a child. There have always been all kinds of health issues potentially linked to these sweeteners, and despite the fact that no verdict has been reached, I was wary.

And then.... I developed Graves' (Thyroid-Related) Eye Disease. This condition, too, is linked to aspartame. Is that why I came down with this autoimmune disease? Yes, no: Who knows? Many things could have activated it in my genes. But all the same, that was the final straw for me. I decided that I was going to give up aspartame 1) to see if my condition improved and 2) because I just could no longer see any value in filling my body with artificial sweeteners.

And now? My disease has dramatically improved AND my headaches and stomach pains are gone. Go figure. (I type this without great emotion now, but if you knew how awful my stomach condition was you would understand that being free of this problem was truly life changing. At least two or three days a month I could not even get up off the floor I was in so much pain.) If I had only been drinking Diet Coke I might have said it was the caffeine. But Fresca has no caffeine and I switched to that and drank it for three or four years before I gave up sweeteners.

I drink lots of water now. But I consume regular yogurt, desserts, etc., and will occasionally have fruit juice—all items with a lot of sugar. I watch my refined-sugar intake carefully, but when I want something sweet, I'll always go for sugar over artificial sweeteners. I do not use artificial sweeteners of any kind and never will again.

As it turned out, quitting soda was easy for me: I didn't even miss it, despite the fact that it had been my daily companion for years. But if it isn't something you can easily cut out, then in my opinion an occasional regular soda is a far better choice than going the diet-soda route.

 

 

 

Try sweetened seltzer. A lot are made with citric acid, which is low in calories, and provides sweetness.

You can get the sweetened or the unsweetened versions. It's a pretty good replacement, and doesn't taste artificial like diet soda does.

im sorry i couldnt help with advice on this topic but i do wanna say thanx 4 posting this because im in the same situation. omg i love sodas..and its like if i dont have a drink i will go crazy. all the feedback sounds great and i will try some of the things they suggested but as 4 u maybe we can get 2 getha on hea and try changin our habit 2getha...message me if thats sounds good!

I just cut down my Mountain Dew 1 week ago addiction from 6 to 10 cans per day to about 1 to 3 per week.  In the past I used to drink nothing but Mountain Dew and the occassional night out (beer).  For 20 years I never drank anything else (except when there was no Mountain Dew) available.  The withdraw headaches were tough for the first 3 days but Advil helped me through it.

I was lucky for a long time and had a very high matabolism.  At age 35 I was 6' 2" and 190 lbs.  However, I must have reached that age when your matabolism really slows down.  Currently I am 38 still 6' 2" but now 218 lbs.  I had never gained more than 5 lbs in a year but the last 2 years I made up for this.

Anyway, what I did was I traded water (has no taste and is very boring) for my beloved Mountain Dew.  I still drink Mountain Dew when I go out but I stopped drinking it at home.  It is very difficult to do but I have found in just this week and a half that Mountain Dew is starting to taste way to sweet.

Good luck on you road away from Soda, its a rough one.  I know.

My best friend HATES diet soda's with (as she would say) 'the burning passion of 1000 suns' ...she's found she can tolerate Coke Zero...

Black Cherry Fresca is 0-2 calories & is delicious & doesn't have the 'diety' taste.  I switched to diet 7 years ago & it took a couple of weeks but I found that by not having regulars, I learned to like the taste of diet...I'm strictly a diet coke girl (I don't really like Diet - Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Root Beer)...

Sprite zero's pretty good too.

I realize its better to just cut out soda's all together, but I'm taking dieting & changing my lifestyle more realalistically...I mean seriously - what's the likelihood I'm going to drink nothing but water forever?

It might help you to wean yourself off the soda if you get off the caffienated kind and drink something that is caffiene-free instead (sprite or seven-up or the orange stuff... just NOT Mountain Dew - that has even more caffiene than coke!) But really, as long as you count the calories and don't let it push out the real food that your body needs, there is no harm whatsoever in having two cans of soda a week sweety! Of course it has sugar in it and it's not exactly nutritious... but it's not the instrument of the devil. :P

If you want to cut back even further, how about buying those cute little mini-bottles they sell for mixers instead of cans? It'll cut your consumption in half again, and you can have your weekly treat without feeling guilty about it.

I have to say Pepsi is my first love, but i knew in order to lose the weight i needed to lose i had to divorce it! It was rough but here is how i did it....I just bought the Caffeine Free Pepsi and i drank one can a day for a bout a week then i switched to sierra mist for another week and then i switched to water and i have been soda free ever since. Since i cut out the Pepsi and other soda's i lost 7 pounds the first week i did CC! So it goes to show you how much effect it can really have on your body!

Now i drink water and propel most days but on my free day (every friday) i indulge in an 8 oz glass of pepsi and that is it! But i feel better now that i cut out the soda's! I hope this helps!

I say just cut back slowly but surely. Soda also causes a lot of bloating, its' amazing how thin I feel when I haven't pumped myself full of pop.

Sparkling water and lime juice is my favorite substitute.  

It is up to you to kick the habit, though.  It is just mind over matter my friend.  There is no "answer" to magically fix your craving.  It will however become less over time.  So just be strong!  Maybe allow one cheat of soda a week (a can)  then tapper that back to everyother week, etc...

I've been drinking diet soda since I started drinking soda so am totally used to it but my boyfriend is the opposite - he's like you.   The one "diet" that we can agree on is sprite zero which not only has no calories but no caffeine. It's a win win.  I would start with that! 

I have a rule of thumb... don't drink my calories (not even juice) but since I drink Diet Pepsi, that is easy for me to follow.  I know it's bad for me especially since I drink so much of it. So my advice to you is this.  If it's something that you really like then plan it into your calorie allowance.  But since it has so much sugar in it, make sure that you count it as your sweets.  I have cut back as well.  I drink Crystal Light Raspberry Lemonaid or Red Ruby Grapefruit and water when I go out to restaruants.