Okay, so I am just curious if anyone else has no problem saying 'no' to overeating, but a huge issue saying 'no' to soda (pop, coke, whatever you call it).

I've never had much of a problem overeating. Sure, I indulged now and then, who doesn't? My issue stems from something called Mountain Dew. I love it. I love it so much that before Christmas and during I was drinking 3-4 20oz. a day. I couldn't get enough of it. Ask anyone that knew me, and they would say I generally ate like a bird most of the time. Ask the people I work with and they would go into great detail about how I would run their well-stocked fridge full of Dew empty. It was liquid candy, and I couldn't get enough.

I am on day 3 of the diet (no soda, too) and I haven't had any urges for the Dew yet. My office keeps all sorts of soda stocked free of charge in the fridge, so tomorrow when I go back it will be a battle of wills not to go straight to the fridge and crack in that morning Dew. That's right - I don't drink coffee, I hate it. I drink Mountain Dew instead at 8 a.m. It may be crazy, but that's my issue. It stemmed from when I was in high school and drank the stuff to my heart's content. It didn't matter, I stayed slim until college when I increased my dosage from 2 a day to four. I tacked an extra 5 pounds on the freshman 15 and wound up 20 pounds heavier simply from soda. If given the choice between food and soda, I'd drink the soda for lunch.

So, my question to everyone is... am I the only one? It may seem a strange affliction, but I drank myself to flub minus the bar.

Who else out there can't get enough of pop, coke, soda?

Mizu,

Before I got really dedicated to my healthy lifestyle, I used to drink a lot of pop. Cutting it out definately helped not only my health, but also my weight loss and later, maintenance.

I'd recommend two things...but you have to be ready to really commit to it. First, focus on getting a minimum of 6 glasses of water a day. To help you with the switch, maybe focus on a few a day for awhile, and slowly increase it. You can even devote just the morning to this, and try not to drink any pop until the afternoon. If you need to, flavor it with zero calorie picker uppers, such as lemon or lime juice, or sugar free juice crystals (i.e., Crystal Light).

Second, switch to diet Mountain Dew. The taste may be strange to you at first, but one thing that I've learned is that if you are serious about this, you have to change your taste buds. You have to accept certain changes, because in all reality, you're not going to be able to keep everything exactly the same. If it were me, I would try to stick to a limit of maximum one diet Mountain Dew a day.

Best wishes!

i'm a huge fan of coke.... i break down and have one about once a month... coke zero is really good though... and diet mountian dew is good too

I've tried Diet Dew in the past and it tastes like acid bath to me each time. I'd rather just go without it all. I think if I just make it cold turkey a week or two I can ride out the addiction. It's Day 4, early morning and I don't need it yet... so far so good. Thanks for the helpful tips!

Oh I am soooo guilty of this and at 289 pounds I Have no room to be. I am literally drinking probably 1200 calories a day in pop. No lie. I would love to ditch this habit. One thing I was told and have found to be true is that when you are switching from regular to diet, don't go from 'regular dew' to 'diet dew'... you WILL recognize the taste difference. Go to something like diet root beer, which is what I am doing, and it won't seem that big of a deal.

But yeah, Pop is my major, major downfall. My grandmother used to put Pepsi in my baby bottle!!!

OMG. That's crazy, because my mom used to give me Sprite in a Sippy Cup when I was a toddler. I think that's how we probably both got started...

Hey Mizu,

If going cold turkey works for you, then to you I'm sending you lots of ! Let us know how you do, and please post if you're feeling the cravings coming on. We even have our own Cyber Bingers thread, in case you haven't noticed

ya know it's gotta be something with the carbonation too... cuz how come we don't like FLAT pop? HA HA! We got addicted to that fizzy bubbly sensation as babies and now, here we are! LOL!

I have to tell you what made me quit the soda/diet soda addiction. I use to drink nothing but diet coke, once in a while maybe an iced tea with sugar, but I started hearing about aspartame and how toxic it is to your body, not to mention the amount of calories you pour into your body without a second thought. I realized that I had to make a small change somewhere to get started losing some weight I was 195 then, so I cut out the sodas and started drinking some hot tea every morning without sugar to get my caffeine fix. Its the best thing I could ever have done. Just in case you didn't know aspartame is a sweetener that is in most diet or low cal drinks that was found while some scientists were searching for a new fertilizer and happened upon this sweet tasting by product, and the best part is that it turns into formaldehyde in your body, sounds great doesn't it? Oh and I had a nutritionist tell me that the worst part about the sodas is not even necessarily the calories or art. sweets but the carbonation, I guess it leeches calcium from your bones. I don't know if any of that helps to strenghten your resolve or not but I thought I would share

Penelope -

I'm going to have to go with the cold turkey or diet will make me want the real stuff. Even Diet Rootbeer and Diet Dr. Pepper (the best diet substitute for the real stuff if there ever was one) don't do it. It's all or nothing!

Queenie - Oh man, it's so bad. I wish they didn't feed me pop as a kid. Bet you wish the same. Minnesotans are psycho about pop. Remember high school, with a soda machine everywhere and everyone drinking it after school? The good 'ol days.

I'm sorry, this is going to sound judgmental, but people putting pop in baby bottles and sippy cups? My mouth is literally hanging open! With overweight/obesity rates soaring, particularly in young people, it blows my mind that people would feed children this way, and give them the taste for crap food when they aren't even big enough to drink out of a regular cup yet!

Janie,

I have to agree with you. I haven't said anything because it sounds as though it happened as part of the generational thinking that went along the lines of, "It's okay to smoke and drink when pregnant." I'm not condoning it, I'm just saying that it sounds as though it was one of those ignorant 'because of the times' things.

Hopefully, this generation wouldn't dream of doing something like that to babies! (No offense to your mothers or grandmothers intended)

None taken. I was a toddler during the late eighties, so every time I got sick my mom would give me a sippy cup with Sprite and said it would make me feel better. Well, it did initially... it 'perked' me up. Then it would put me to sleep after the caffeine wore out. Maybe that's what she was going for, I don't know.

I actually believed Sprite was like chicken soup until 4rth grade, no joke.

Queenie and I are from MN, though, and the pop drinkers there are just rampant. My parents were, so they gave it to us, and so on. I wouldn't do it if I had a kid, just because I have an addiction to a citrus drink that is out of hand. Maybe that's why my addiction is so strong today - it was hard wired into my brain as I developed from a toddler. After all, Sprite is a citrus drink and so is Mountain Dew, and I won't drink Pepsi or Coke...

Penelope, of course you're right. I was just completely surprised. It's like Oprah says I guess - When you know better, you do better. Hopefully everyone these days knows better, right?