Linda's Thoughts from Duluth

Breaking the "Pop" Habit
So… do you think there is something to this? My daughter and grandson tried to convince me when they visited last weekend that a lot of my weight is from drinking diet pop. They said that if I stopped drinking everything but WATER, that I would immediately drop pounds. Not only stop drinking pop, but stop drinking all liquids except water. I told them “but I only drink DIET pop”, they said that that is even “worse than regular pop, and that it keeps weight on people”. Then they told me to look around and notice “do you see any skinny people drinking “diet” pop?” “no,” they said, “only overweight people”. They believe that diet pop is making people heavy.

Up until I had to start being more careful about my blood sugar, I never drank diet pop, because I worried about the things in it. But, then a few years ago, I quit drinking the regular stuff and started drinking the diet. Diet Cherry Coke has become my favorite, and while I don’t drink lots of cans a day, I usually drink at least one can a day. In the summer I drink more. I also like iced tea, which is either the sweetened stuff or the artificially sweetened stuff, neither which is good for me. (A side note here…you can tell now that I am a real transplanted Midwesterner, because I am now referring soda pop as “pop” instead of “soda”! When I was growing up in PA and at least the first 20 years I lived here, I always said “soda”. Now, I am saying “pop”.)

Starting Monday morning, I took a big cup of water with me to work, and tried to keep it filled throughout the day, having a hard time remembering to drink the water, but having an even harder time staying away from other liquids. I think I could stay away from pop, as I have done that before, but staying away from orange juice, other juices, tea, latte’s, mocha latte’s, milk shakes, that is what’s going to be hard! (I had to drink water with my toast this morning instead of tea.)

I’ve managed to do so through today, almost a week. I had a terrific headache on Monday, probably from caffeine withdrawal, but I took care of that, by eating chocolate…ha ha… I must get those chocolate bars away from me…wouldn’t you think I’d soon be sick of them by now? One of my team members called last night, and she wants me to drop off 2 cases (96 bars) to her today..yeah, they are selling well.

Starting Monday, my goal will be to only drink water and to not eat anymore Seroogy’s chocolates! First the pop and other liquids, then the chocolate.(Now, remember, I said Monday!)