No soda

I've decided that as the first stage to losing weight, I am going to not drink soda this year. At least this year. The carbonated water, the high fructose corn syrup, all of it just isn't good for me. So I'm cutting it out. The only soda I really like is Dr. Pepper, Root Beer, and Sprite (and similar products like Mr. Pibb and 7-Up, to a lesser extent). I've never been a cola fan.


I did make an exception that I will drink a couple of root beers when the new A&W restaurant opens up in town. I just have to enjoy a couple of those root beers. The good thing is that root beer is made with regular sugar and not the high fructose corn syrup, which is evidently very bad for you. It's just a limit of two, though, and then it's done. And speaking of root beer, I did already accidentally break this ban when offered a root beer float at FHE one night. It was only afterwards that I realized what I had done.

Now along with that kind of comes a ban on fast food eateries. Not really a complete ban (obviously, I'm going to places like A&W when it opens), and when travelling, it's hard sometimes not to go somewhere. But I'm avoiding it as much as possible, and when I do go, I'm not getting french fries. which are dang good but so bad for you.

My biggest test so far was when I went down to Disneyland a week and a half ago. I forgot how much I savored a big bottle of Dr. Pepper on a long drive. I had to compensate with something else, as water alone wasn't doing it. So I settled for chocolate milk. I know that's not a good alternative, but it helped me get past not having the soda. It also helped that Disneyland doesn't offer Dr. Pepper.

So there I am. I still need to work on other portions of this. I need to stop with the chocolate milk as well, and I need to work on portions. Some coworkers are starting a contest - you put in $50 and whoever loses the most weight by percentage of body weight wins and gets all the money. I don't care so much about getting the money, but losing the money might be the motivation I need to actually do something.