Cutting Out Diet Coke

I'm a serious diet coke addict. Growing up my house was always stocked with bottles and it was normal to drink DC with every meal. It wasn't until I got to college that I realized this was pretty abnormal. Most of my friends were drinking water with their meals/when they were thirsty. Go figure. Since leaving home 5 years ago I've certainly cut down on my diet coke drinking and upped my water drinking, but not nearly enough. Last night I scared myself silly reading about the dangers of aspartame and how the chemical has been linked to pancreatic and brain cancer, strokes, premature births.

Here's an interesting (ahem, frightening) fact: the National Cancer Institute has identified a significant increase in brain cancer beginning in 1984, one year after millions of people starting consuming aspartame. The first lesson in statistics is correlation does not equal causation, but that is still pretty startling to me. And enough to push me into a little Diet Coke challenge with myself!

Starting today and for the next month, I'm going to commit to drinking no more than two glasses/cans of diet coke a week. I'm not attempting to quit cold turkey because I'm sure that will lead to a DC binge where I chug a whole bottle without coming up for a breath.

So how am I going to do this?

- Create daily water challenges: This gives me a distraction at work and also makes me get up and move around more (more water drinking = more trips to the bathroom and the kitchen to fill up).
- Buy more cucumbers: Ever since being served cucumber water at a restaurant a few weeks ago I've become obsessed with it! And it's sooo easy. Just slice up a few cucumbers and throw 'em into a glass of water and the whole thing is transformed. My problem is that I love to eat cucumbers, so I'm going to make an effort to buy an extra one solely for flavoring water.
- Shop at Whole Foods: Whole Foods doesn't sell diet coke so that's easy. It's tough to get to WF since it's far away but I should always make the effort to go there and avoid stores like Stop n' Shop that have diet coke EVERYWHERE and always on sale.
- Try other drinks when a craving strikes: Like almond milk, coconut water, pure fruit juice (mixed with water -- sometimes fruit juice is too strong for me), and tea.
- Think before you drink: Hah. Couldn't resist this one. We all mindlessly consume (whether it's food, drinks, clothes, etc.). I need to remember WHY I'm doing this challenge whenever I go to drink DC and truly think, is this worth it?

Well good luck to me! This is gonna be a tough one. But it's just soda, I can doooo this!

Cue: Eye of the Tiger