Month 1: How I Gave Up Diet Coke

Going back in time to April 2011, I started my first thirty day challenge. I decided to give up diet coke. This really was a challenge for me because I absolutely love diet coke. I guess you can say I was kind of addicted to it. I used to have 4 or 5 diet cokes with every meal at a restaurant sometimes. I craved the carbonation. I hated flat diet coke.

I used to joke that if I could I would have an IV of diet coke hooked up to me.

While I wanted to start making changes to my diet, I thought it would be easier to give up something rather than do something that required effort like actually exercising.

So if you are starting your first thirty day challenge. Start by taking away something that requires no effort.

I know that there are a lot of people out there like me who are hooked on diet coke. It's great with pizza and hamburgers and fries. It's easy to get at the drive through.

Plus, it tastes good. I never started drinking coffee because it always made me too warm.

One of the reasons I wanted to stop drinking diet coke is because I just think it probably is unhealthy. I can't cite any direct evidence but I wanted to eliminate the artificial sweeteners just because of the unknown health risks. There's also the caffeine. I never felt hooked on that but thought my body would also be better without it. I figured that if I could drink more water, it would be a healthier path.

My strategy for kicking my diet coke habit was to say I could have anything else I wanted as long as I drank water, juice or tea and an occasional vodka drink.

That meant I could have as much desert as I wanted. So while I didn't lose weight under this challenge. I did complete it and satisfy my sweet tooth at the same time.

The other thing I did was just stay away from it. I know that in the past I gave it up once and would take a hit off my wife's diet coke. I decided I couldn't do that anymore and eliminate it from my diet.

That's my story on how I gave up diet coke. If I can do it, then you can too.