Deb's Ridiculous Run: How I Gave Up Diet Coke by Accident

Water, Water Everywhere

I can’t believe that I’ve kind of of given up diet coke. It was not intentional. My favorite treat in the world was a large 32 oz. fountain soda of diet coke in a Styrofoam cup.

Even when I go to McDonald’s I ask them to “sub a foam cup”. I would only have really one diet coke a day. Mid day. If I was lucky it was the glorious Styrofoam cup if not it was a Tervis Tumbler with a can of diet.

Any who, I started reading this book, 52 Small Changes to a Happier, Healthier Life.

I found this through The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans on Facebook. As the New Year approached, I knew I really needed to get some of this unwanted weight off. So, I thought this book couldn’t hurt. The first week’s small change was drink more water. I read that a person should drink half of their body weight in ounces a day. What? That’s crazy talk. Sad to say, that’s would be (at the time) 74 oz of water a day. Now, I only need to drink 70 oz. (just sayin’).

So, my goal was not that much. It was going to be 3 bottles of waters a day. 16.9 x 3. That would be 50.7 oz. of water a day. Which would be a 50 more oz. than I had been drinking. I was trying to drink a bottle on the way to work. Gulp, gulp, gulp. then one before lunch and lastly one in the evening. It was going well. I was getting my water in and drinking a diet coke for lunch.

Then I discovered…Sparkling Water. My husband has drunk Perrier for years. I never liked it. Ick! My discovery occurred one evening. I sometimes like to have a beer in the evening but Weight Watchers doesn’t favor alcohol. Those are wasted points. So, I thought I try one of the pretty waters that I got my husband from Wegman’s. Not bad. Carbonated and it was taking the place of my carbonated beer.

And so it began, I started to like sparkling water. I started bringing it to school and trading it out for one of my regular waters. Then some super weird happened. Diet coke started tasting unbelievable sweet. My beloved diet coke that had seen me through think and thin since college was betraying me. We became friends to begin with to cut calories during the freshman fifteen. I finally bought the bullet and traded coke for diet coke all those years ago.

So now, two months into it, diet coke is just not appealing to me. You know, I’ve thought about giving up diet coke for lent and then thought better of it. And just like that diet coke is less apart of my life. Silly as it sounds, it makes me a bit sad. It was apart of me for so long. I’m sure both of us will be okay. Here's to making new friends. My current favorite is Sparkling Mandarin Orange by Nestle.