Figured it would be Mirinda. Got a bottle on my way to the river bank. Drank it while staring at the river overflowing and flooding the island right between the two banks.
Can't remember the last time I enjoyed soda so much.
This was the last one I will ever have. Decided I don't want to flood my blood with sugar anymore. Agreement was: I stay away from carbonated sweet drinks, but I figured I include other sweet waters there as well. I'll still drink sweet tea, milk with jam and other such stuff - just not the industrial-grade produce.
I'm still using soda to avoid the caffeine headache, and should just give it up along with smoking. None of my usual excuses hold up because I'm currently unemployed and have nothing but free time. In my head I'm thinking "Fuck it! We'll do it live" and drop them both right now. Doubt sinks in, I get hostile to those around me, and in a few days I'm chugging coffee and chain-vaping. That's how it usually goes, time and time again. I always wondered where the withdrawal anger was coming from, and just within the last few weeks I think I found the answer to that through comedian Bill Burr on his podcast. When your the type of person that primary relies on your brain to survive in the world, when that mechanism isn't functioning at 100% you feel extremely vulnerable, and that sounds like a reasonable answer to me. Maybe, having gained that knowledge, why not make another go of it? I managed to win over cocaine, opioids, and alcohol in my turbulent PTSD driven 20's. A combination of pot and psilocybin saved my life, and really mellowed me out once I hit my 30's. The opioid epidemic claimed my mother, and I now have more dead friends than living ones. Even if it's down to caffein and nicotine, I'm striving to be free of all addictions down to pot and video games, and stick to long walks and meditation. I'm hoping that sharing all that in a somewhat public place will give me that extra nudge to give it a try. I think my signing up here, was to see if I could let my guard down and be vulnerable around others. If that holds up, maybe I can quit smoking without being an absolute dick to those around me. I feel a sense of shame posting this, but logically if this in some way leads to dropping another addiction - it would be stupid not to follow through. Congrats to everyone here who managed to quit anything at all. It's a human skill some take for granted, and I marvel at anyone who can pull it off.
Thanks for the encouragement. It looks like I'm dropping the nicotine tomorrow due to lack of funds, and caffeine will follow shortly after if I don't find some honest work on the quick. I'm not bummed out about it, but I know the next few days won't be fun. We'll see what happens.
Dala's right. Sounds like you've been through a lot, and you walked out of it alive and well, seeing how you post to an online forum seeking to motivate yourself to give up other bad habits. It means you have the mentality to go for a better life, and you have the strength to seek support, even if the support is just your own. Best of luck on your journey. Keep us posted.
Thanks for the well wishes. I'm holding off on dropping caffeine for at least a week, but this morning marked my last cigarette. My girlfriend knows what's going on, and we are working out schedules to mostly avoid eachother until the withdrawals are over. I just wanted to drop a sincere thank you before my vocabulary deminishes and my brain don't think good.
Way back when, I used to wait tables. I would drink a lot of soda throughout each night. It was free. I would then take my tips and go out to the bars with cash in my pocket and buy whiskey and cokes. Point is, I drank a ton of soda. Then, I weighed 200 pounds. I quit drinking king soda and started running and within less than 2 months I lost over 20 points pounds. Soda is evil, bad stuff. So bad for you.
It's why free refills at McD are so damn attractive: they're free! Doesn't matter that they're ripping you off to begin with. I read a couple of years ago that a refill at a fast food joint costs them about 2 US cents (I believe it might be for necessary amount of syrup alone, but still). I try not to delve into extremes and call things like this evil, but I agree with your sentiment. Our instincts are easy to exploit and difficult to keep in check. Good on you for doing the running and getting healthier in general.It was free.
I switched to unflavored carbon water and never looked back. I love the texture of fuzzy water but the sugar is undesirable. I have a kegorator with beer in one tap and soda water in the other, when I run out I just fill the keg with water and wait 5 days. You don't need to quit cold turkey soda water is just as good without the guilt. If I want something a bit more complex sometimes I cheat and squeeze in a lemon or lime. So good!
For what it's worth, the general rule is that Jam has to have at least 60% sugar content to be legally called "Jam". And most have upwards of 80%, which is more than that soda. Apart from one chocolate bar on my birthday and a donut at my coworkers retirement party, I haven't eaten anything high sugar for about two months now. With the UK's traffic light food labelling system, anything over 15g per 100g is classed as high sugar. That rules out of a lot of things, including numerous breakfast cereals and 95% of supermarket drinks. Once you start paying attention, it's crazy how much sugar everything has in it. It was hard at first because I loved the stuff. In particular, I ate a lot of cakes and chocolate. I also have quite a high metabolism so I lost about 8lbs in the 2/3 weeks after stopping. That's probably sounds nice to some of you, but I've always had trouble keep up my weight so it's not so great for me. On the plus side, I have less mood swings now and find getting to sleep easier. To be honest, I wouldn't have willingly chosen to do it but I needed to for the sake of my dental health. Either way, good on you for cutting out the soda.
Good on you for picking up a good habit of your own, as well. I didn't want to talk about it in the main post, given that it's just a plan at this point, but I was thinking of giving up most sweets eventually. I don't like the addictive nature of my relationship with them, and they cost a lot per how much they give (and how soon they disappear). Being reliant on sugar for energy and mood is quite a pickle of a situation, I imagine.
Awesome for you. I've also gone cold turkey on soda. Just over five years ago. My "Come to Jesus" experience with sugarless beverages came in the form of a glioma (brain tumor) I had at the time. Recognizing that leaving unneeded sugars out of my body would increase the likelihood of my survival, or lessen a cancer recurrence, at least, I drink mostly green tea. I use a huge pot on the stove to boil up 12 decaf green tea bags and then pour it into a one gallon jar, and toss it into the fridge. A side benefit, is about 10-12 lbs weight loss, (I've also been running and working out more too.). I've found that as my body habituated to the reduction in sugar, I have zero interest in drinking beverages with sugar. I actually feel like crap if I have a can of Coke. Too much of a sugar spike.
Tumor is gone. I get checked via MRI once a year now. The chance of recurrence is high, but hopefully years away. I did have a very successful surgery, follow up radiation, and chemo. With all of that, possibly it'll never return. Or, if it does, the current therapies will be enough to keep me going. In the meantime, I now have adequate motivation to keep healthy. The way I figure it, I could end up living a longer healthier life than I would have if never having had the cancer in the first place. Good luck. Hopefully you'll find all of the motivation you need in less painful way.
Good on ya. I can't do soda anymore due to a medication that I take. I do still like sweetened teas and coffees but I have cut back on those too. I've lost a couple of pounds since the medication started, probably due to the loss of soda in my diet. Keep us posted on how it goes!
Weight was part of the consideration. I'm not very physically active at the moment, so passive cutting of calories and sugars off is the least I can do to control it. As an Internet stranger said, "You can't outrun the fork".I've lost a couple of pounds since the medication started, probably due to the loss of soda in my diet.
Your internet stranger friend is very wise. I'm curious now about this milk with jam. I have never heard of it. I don't think there is much of a Russian community where I live, so while I have been exposed to interesting culinary fun from a variety of cultures, yours is one that is a complete mystery.
I'm surprised that the idea of milk with jam is so foreign to you. To me, it seems completely natural: you mix a drinkable liquid with a sweet substance for tasty results. Much like tea with sugar, just... milk with jam. Berry jam, to be precise. Fruit preserves are rare around here.
Gin mixed with lemon/lime and a dollop of jam is an amazing mixed drink...
Another in the "no soda" crowd here. I do tea (both iced and hot, depending on the season), but have slowly cut back on the amount of sugar I put in them. Especially here на юге, iced tea tends to have gobs of sugar in it, easily as much as what's in soda. Just going from full-sweet to a mixture of half-and-half, I legit lost 10 pounds. No other changes. (Granted I'm 6'5" and about 240, so it wasn't much percentage-wise, but still). What's great is that once you re-train your palate, super-sweet stuff just tastes gross. So маладец! Little changes like this can have huge payoffs.
I hear things about rewiring one's taste buds. Haven't tried it long enough to see the effect yet. (Good on you for using your Russian! Thing to note is that "молодец" is one of those words where the vowels only change in reading, not in writing)
Oh yeah, that always used to cause me a headache. Sneaky Russians! (In case the reference isn't clear).
Is Good, According to a study published in “Policy Brief” in 2009, adults who drink soda occasionally are 15 percent more likely to be overweight or obese, while adults who drink one or more sodas every day are 27 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than adults who don’t drink soda. In addition to causing weight gain, soda is associated with an increase in the risk of developing type-2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The sugar in soda also serves as a feeding ground for the bacteria naturally found in your mouth. Finally, keep your health
I don't remember the last time I bought a soda. The last time I had any was a couple weeks ago when I got a cup of ginger ale on a flight. Before that, I might have bought one in March at a hotel? I vaguely remember getting a soda. I read somewhere, probably Reddit, that discipline is stronger than motivation. Motivations can change, but having the discipline to do or not do something is more firm. I'm going running after work today. Why? Because it's Monday and Monday is a run day. It's overcast and a little cold and there's some scattered rain. I'm not motivated to run today, but my discipline doesn't ask if I want to run. Barring an injury or dangerous weather, I'll run. That's my suggestion for you to consider. It may be easier to be a person that doesn't drink soda than it is to be a person who doesn't want to drink soda.
Still, here's a little motivation your way: This year, I started running when it was minus 20 degrees centigrade. Overcast, cold, raining? That's just my kind of a vibe. :) Elaborate?It may be easier to be a person that doesn't drink soda than it is to be a person who doesn't want to drink soda.
For me, discipline is deciding once to be the type of person who runs three or four times a week. Motivation, for me, is deciding if today is a day I'm going to run. It's too easy for me to say no, not today, I'll run tomorrow instead. At times I don't want to run, but how I feel that day doesn't matter. I've decided I'm a runner, and my lack of motivation that day doesn't matter. I'm still going to run. Maybe that's a really narrow difference and doesn't work for you. We're all different, and what works for me may not change anything for you.
I gradually stopped drinking soda at 18. I'm 28 now. There was no reason for stopping, I just stopped one day and never really went back. Soda never tasted that great to me.
Good on you! They're ridiculously heavy on sugar. I'm partial to the odd can of Coke (it tastes better canned) or rockshandy (a mix of lemon and orange fizzy drinks that originated in Dublin) but not that often. Milk with jam?!