That is one of the questions that Sue from GAG asked us this week. I answered this question first because this is probably the easiest one for me to answer.

SODA

This above anything else is what I struggle with the most. I always have from the time I was in high school. I probably had the most trouble with soda while I was in college. I was never a coffee drinker, so my caffeine intake of choice during college was soda, particularly Coke and Cherry Coke. At one point I was up to a 2 liter bottle a day. And since I can’t stand the taste of diet soda, and believe me I tried, I was unknowingly (at that time anyway) consuming thousands of calories a day, just in soda. All that soda had other side affects as well. I was getting horrendous headaches almost everyday. Of course at that time, I was not connecting the soda drinking with the headaches, and the weight gain. I probably hit my peak, my last semester of school when I was student teaching. Anybody who has student taught, knows that it is exhausting. So to stay awake in the afternoons so that I could get my work done, I was drinking large amounts of soda. Once I got out of college and was working I was able to slow down a little. I was teaching in a preschool class, which is not as demanding of your time in the evenings, so I didn’t feel the need to drink quite so much caffeine.  It was at that point that the headaches went away and I put two and two together. I didn’t start losing weight, but that is for completely different reasons.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed to cut back on my soda drinking. I was living at home again, so it was easier to control how much I drank, mostly because my parents only bought diet soda, and like I said before, I can’t stand diet soda. Since then I have drastically cut back on how much I drink. Even to the point of going for weeks at a time without drinking any. Once I knew that the soda was contributing to my weight gain, I was even more determined to cut it out of my diet. And every time the soda wins. It is almost like a drug at this point. I can go for a few weeks, even up to a month without it, and then I have a hard day and that is what I crave at the end of the day.

At one point I really did think it was the caffeine that I was craving. So I tried drinking tea instead. I have been told that tea has more caffeine than soda anyway. Guess what, it didn’t work, I still craved the soda. I think it is the combination of the sugar and the caffeine. It is something that I still struggle with every day. Some days and weeks are better than others, and I continue to work on it everyday. I am much better now at choosing water or something else that isn’t soda when we are out to eat. I don’t buy any soda, so it isn’t in the house, which often is half the battle.

I will continue to work on it, because I do believe that one day, this will be one habit that I no longer have to worry about breaking.