Personal Objective: Drink less soda

Since I'm a desk jockey working in a corporate building with it's own cafeteria and numerous vending machines, I find myself rarely leaving the building for food or snacks. I'm also not very diligent about preparing food at home and bringing it with me.

These excuses usually mean that I grab one of the lunch specials and a soda in the cafeteria and when thirsty I grab bottles or cans of soda from the vending machine about 20 feet away from my desk in one of our floor's two break rooms, both decked out with soda vending machines.

Another issue I have is that I really don't enjoy drinking plain water. Sometimes I feel like I'm even more thirsty the more water I drink. It's probably in my head, but there's something about a cold Mountain Dew that's more refreshing to me than tap or bottled water.

I also have a tendency to grab a Red Bull or Amp energy drink for a caffeine kick in the morning, especially during the summer when I don't feel like drinking hot coffee.

That said, though, I know I should drink more water and that it's good for me, I just have trouble drinking it.

So, one of my first objectives is to drink less sweetened soft drinks.

I've actually done this before as part of a work sponsored weight loss challenge a few years ago, where I ended up placing 15th out of almost 400 people who entered the challenge. I had lost about 15 pounds by exercising more, eating a little better and cutting out soda, "cold turkey".

It didn't last after the challenge, though, as I ended up slipping back into grabbing sodas and energy drinks and making less time to get to the gym.

For the past couple months I have traded down to 12 ounce cans on occasion instead of 20 ounce bottles 1-2 times a day but now my plan is to limit my soda intake to 12 ounce or less serving sizes, 3 or fewer times per week.

I have a 32 oz BPA free Nalgene bottle that I've been filling in the morning with water and two Twinnings cold brewed iced tea bags. I've found myself more willing to drink water if I put a little bit of flavor in it and I've always liked tea and iced tea, so it's been working out pretty well.

I've also been trying to drink more black coffee instead of energy drinks in the morning. I'll have to post back about how well that's going, but I've already had two small 8.4 ounce cans of Red Bull this week. The other three days I've had black coffee, which, I also prefer to sweetened and lightened coffee.

Note: This post was moved over on 01/02/2015 from another of my blogs that I shut down. Fixed broken Twinings tea link on 10/16/2019.