Any soda junkies out there?

65LoveAffair said
I have always been a soda drinker. At one point I was drinking more than a gallon of Coke or Pepsi a day. It never really affected my weight because I was always pretty active, and my height hides a little extra weight (I'm 6'4"). In the last few years I've quit smoking, but on the flip-side I substituted the hand-mouth motion with drinking more soda. As a result, I've ballooned out to nearly 300 pounds and I suffer from chronic heartburn because of all the acid in the soda. :wack: My wife and I both agree that I need to quit drinking soda because it is not doing me any good.
Here's what I'm doing: I've started drinking a bottle of water before I allow myself to have a soda. Eventually, I'll move to two bottles of water per bottle of soda, and so forth. Surprisingly, I'm starting to enjoy the cold water more than I figured I would. We bought a Brita filter that we can keep in the fridge so we have cold filtered water whenever we want it. I'm hoping that by eventually drinking more water than soda I can bring my weight back down to a more comfortable level, and I also hope I can get off these damn antacids I have to take.
Anybody else out there ever had issues with soda? If you overcame it, what did you do?

I think the heartburn is from the extra weight. When I was over 300 lbs, I had heartburn and had to take Previcid for it. Now that I lost 60 lbs, I'm off the Prevacid and do not have heatburn very often any more. (but have over a year's stock of Prevacid still that I don't need...) :banghead:

Get off the pop all together. It's bad for you and with all the sugar makes you more thirsty so you drink more. I get more satisfaction from water for my thirst. Once you ween yourself off of the pop, you won't miss it after a while.

You can always use kool-aid etc to help ween you off the sugar, by mixing it half strength and then trying to use less and less.

I prefer to drink plain water or fruit juice, but you have to watch out for some of the sugars in fruit drinks. Minute Maid lemonade in the bottles has more sugar than soda.... WTF??? Read the labels next time you are at the store and compare...

Or Lipton tea, some with 13 - 17 g of sugar compared to pop at 33 or more....

I have the one gallon brita by my kitchen sink and fill it regularly with my spray nozzle. Along with a stock of filters for it...