I contemplated the idea of deleting the previous posts about my quitting pop by weaning myself off.  I felt bad, I didn’t want to accept failure, in full view of everyone, but I decided that it was best to let it stay, so others can know that you can fail and still eventually succeed.  You see I failed that time, to quit pop, I failed miserably.  But here I am again this time, and hopefully this time for good.  I had made a quit date of March 1st, but when I realized I was scheduled to work from the 1st to the 3rd I decided it was best to start when I had a few days off.  I know that this won’t be easy, in fact pretty damn hard because I’m doing this COLD TURKEY (who made that line up anyway?).

I made a nice motivation board for myself, mostly from good motivations pictures and quotes that I found off of Pinterest.   I can see it from where I am at my computer, on my way to the bathroom, right when I get up because I put it in my hallway.  My motivation board is titled “Remember why you are doing this”, and I think it’s very appropriate.  When I want to drink pop, I will remember that even though it initially makes me feel good, I hate the after affects to death.

I imagine quitting pop, will feel much like when I drink too much: nauseous, sluggish and generally unwell.  For a long time I have craved being fit, and I mean REALLY fit.  Not just I’m skinny kind of thing, but strong enough to kick some ass.  To have some definition, to have curves in all the right places and be able to do 100 push ups.  Most of all I want to be healthy and to have energy, I want to be a runner.  So a lot of the pictures on my motivation board are of hot women, women with great asses, great abs and wonderfully sculpted shoulders and back.

There is a notion, a quote if you will, that I added to my motivation board that really stood out to me. It was something that I came to realize when I was thinking about my past during times I’ve been without pop and how it affected me.

I remembered that when I didn’t have control over what I ate and drank it became easy, however because I have control over whether I drink pop or not is what makes it hard, take away the choice and it becomes simple.

Realizing this made all the difference in the world to me, suddenly all the mental anguish and stress I was having about quitting pop just melted away.  I didn’t say that it would stop it from being physically hard, but mentally reminding myself that the only reason I am having such difficulty with my addiction is because I have the ability to say yes or no to myself.  Because I am the one choosing to put myself through this temporary hardship, for longer term health gains.

I am putting bottled water in the fridge even though I despise it – but it makes it convenient and then at least I’ll be drinking the water.  Last week, on Friday night I ended up drinking 5 cans of pop because I was at a friends house.  I didn’t want to chance that they have water I didn’t like.  But that was the only day I went over my quota.  But I have to say, I didn’t feel too bad about it because I knew that I would get right back and drink the 3 cans the next day.  I was looking into installing a RO (reverse osmosis) system in my kitchen only to be told you can’t do it in an apartment.  Which is really frustrating because I hate all the other impurities that come in water that a Brita filter does not filter out.  I am glad that the water in Kitchener is flouride free because I am totally against flouride in our water.

After I get to week 10 I will probably allow myself to drink things like the Bolthouse Mango Lemonade because at this point staying off pop is the hardest part, then hopefully I’ll learn to love the taste of water as I go along.  I have tried putting lemon juice in my water and I found it gross.  I have absolutely no apprehension to ice water, but my fridge doesn’t seem to get it that cold unless I put it in a glass container.   I feel full of excuses right now why I can’t do this, but I am doing it.

See you next update!

I have to drink water now, not to feel wonky headed as well.  Just to stop myself from being dizzy from drinking too much pop.  I often drink pop on an empty stomach, I’m not that tempted to eat first thing in the morning.  But there was nothing like a good Pepsi in the morning.  The caffeinated variety was always my go to, without the caffeine I’d crash.  Much as I am now.  I do notice though if you drink a glass of water first thing, it is very good at waking you up.  It’s been hard struggling at work to get through when I’m really tired without caffeine.  But with my medication the caffeine would make my hyper-anxious and that wasn’t good.  Pretty much to the point of hyperventilation, so getting off the caffeine was a no-brainer.

I though I did 2 weeks of 4 cans already then I checked back and realized I had one more week of 4 cans a day.  I was ready to go down to three because of how bad I was making myself feel, so I have one more week of this crap and then I can go down to three.  For several years I drank Diet Pepsi, and somehow, I got tempted back into regular.  I tried to get back on to diet and I just couldn’t I found it made me feel worse, and I just couldn’t stand the taste anymore.  The aftertaste of aspartame is raunchy.  I am glad that I’m taking this step though, beyond just going down to diet as aspartame is bad for you too.  There is so much information out there about it being bad, that I don’t think it’s wrong.  Much of the information makes sense and I tend to go with what makes sense to me.  My mother would rather I drank regular pop then diet.  I am still up in the air as to which is worse overall.

See you next update.

It has weighed heavily on my mind now for the past two weeks and honestly I think it’s been a lot longer then that.  The sad truth is I have a fair amount of weight to lose, I am hovering around 200lbs.  That’s a size 14-16 for those who want to know.

Nope, I’m not the kind of girl that will hide my weight.  Can’t say I’m proud of how much I weigh, most people think I weigh around 160.  So I guess I’m doing something right.  I do think I may have more muscles then most women, and probably tend to be more on the athletic side at least in terms of stature, so I’d never be super skinny and that’s fine with me.  I don’t think super skinny would be my style, I love my curves and flaunt them when it’s appropriate.

But back to making the decision.  I kept thinking extreme like, going Vegan.  But truth is, that’s way too much too soon.  Even if I went vegan, I don’t think I’d lose any weight the way things are currently.  That’s because I drink 4 plus cans of pop a day, of the Pepsi variety.  That’s 600 calories at least, when I drink 4 cans a day.  This is empty calories.  Totally useless to my body, and I’m sure the addiction I have to this is similar to those with a nicotine addiction (smoking), because the thought of not having my pop as a crutch when I’m stressed – makes me stressed.  I recently broke my addiction to caffeine and replaced it with a multivitamin, so that I don’t fall asleep midday.

I am currently drinking Caffeine-Free Pepsi so I have been caffeine free for 3 days now.  I’ve had my caffeine headache already and took an Aleve for it, thank God a medicine exists that will actually stop these headaches.  No other medication has ever done it.  So if your planning on going off caffeine, taper then quit.  Then take an Aleve.  I am not an advocate of pain medication in any way, but sometimes you need to tango with the devil.  I do find as well that if you drink a good cold glass of water it will help with the withdrawal headache.

I realized that drinking pop, was my worst addiction.  I was practically raised on pop, and I can remember back when I was a child on road trips with other families that I’d be the only one allowed to have a pop, and sometimes other parents wouldn’t let me and I’d throw a huge tantrum.  I was addicted and am still.  As far as I can remember that went back to when I was at least about 5 years of age.  I don’t blame my mother as that was how she’s raised and still drinking Coke to this day.  It’s something I know she really wants to quit as well.

My tapering schedule is as follows:

Week 1: 4 cans a day
Week 2: 4 cans a day
Week 3: 3 cans a day
Week 4: 3 cans a day (I’m on this week)
Week 5: 2 cans a day
Week 6: 2 cans a day
Week 7: 2 cans a day
Week 8: 1 can a day
Week 9: 1 can a day
Week 10: Completion (0 cans a day)

It doesn’t seem as scary to me to do it this way.  So at least I can see where I’m supposed to be in 10 weeks.  That’s 10 weeks to getting off my pop addiction.  I’m excited, I think I can do it this time for good.  No, I’m not going to replace it with another caloric beverage.  I’m going to spend time learning to like ice cold water.

If you still are addicted to caffeine, you can simply use the above timetable to limit yourself to caffeinated drinks, and then the rest un-caffeinated.  It is essentially how I weaned myself off caffeine.  Then continue the next 10 weeks to wean yourself off pop completely.