Kicking addictions to the curb

Image by Visions By Vicky via Flickr

I’ve been pretty fortunate in my life as far as addictions are concerned.  I’ve never been addicted to alcohol or drugs (legal or illegal).  I’ve never smoked cigarettes (unless you count the one puff I took when I was a little kid…just about made me sick).  I have, however, been addicted to caffeine, particularly in the form of diet Pepsi.  See, I don’t really consider a moderate intake of caffeine to necessarily be a bad thing.  What is problematic is ingesting large amounts of diet Pepsi, which has no nutritive value at all and contains chemicals that can actually be detrimental to your health.  I have given up diet Pepsi twice in probably the past two years and eventually went back to it just like so many of us women keep returning to the bad boys…we know they’re not good for us, but the attraction is there and hard to resist.

The last time I was at the grocery store, I made a conscious decision not to buy diet Pepsi.  Today I drank the last one in the house.  I figure this is as good a time as any to give it up for good.  I made tea to take to work tomorrow in place of the diet Pepsi.  Yes, tea has caffeine, but it also has antioxidants so is somewhat better for you than a beverage that is nothing but chemicals mixed with water.

I think I realized many years ago that I had an addiction to diet Pepsi.  I drank a lot of it every day, couldn’t wait to get home from work and feel myself relax as soon as I pulled that tab and heard that beautiful fizzy sound.  Kind of sounds like an alcoholic, doesn’t it?  I knew there was an addiction, but I didn’t make the choice to do something about it until much later.  Reading about the chemicals in diet soft drinks (and in soft drinks in general) opened my eyes to what I was putting into my body every day.  It doesn’t do a lot of good to try to eat clean if I continue to drink diet soft drinks. 

So, this is the next step in my quest for a healthy lifestyle.  It may not seem like a big step to a lot of people, but it’s huge to me.  Like they say, third time’s a charm…I’m going to succeed!

Do you have (or have you had) any addictions?  How do you deal with them?

Related articles

• The dangers of diet soda…MUST READ!! (thedayiturneduncool.wordpress.com)
• The Always-holic Dilemma (lunkiandsika.wordpress.com)

No Soda Challenge, Day 12…tired

Well, I did make it through day 12 without a soda, but, this afternoon, I sure could have used that little boost I get from the caffeine.  Went in to work at 6 am, worked on setting the ad for 5 hours, then had to start working on getting things ready for our corporate visitor (he’ll be here Tuesday).  There’s so much to do and we’re so terribly busy that I can’t seem to get anything done.  So tomorrow starts at 5 am and will last until it’s all done (heck, I could be spending the night…)

I did hop on the exercise bike and did upper body strength training before I went to work…and managed to get in quite a bit of walking.  Took my yummy pizza to work for lunch, along with my crustless pumpkin pie…it tasted just as good as it did yesterday.  I had a bowl of trail mix (well, Cheerios and dried fruit), but ended up not taking an afternoon break…so now I have it for tomorrow!  Think I’ll head to bed in just a bit…I need to get up pretty early and I am really making an effort to get enough sleep.  I think lack of sleep is a big issue for me as far as weight gain goes.  So now to tackle day 13…