How to get off Cola's

[rusty]

I have read that cola's are bad for you and I would like to quit drinking them. I have read that they are very acidic and will erode your teeth. What is a good way to get off of them?

I have read that tea has many health benifits and is also good for your teeth.

Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions?


Thanks

[Cron]

Get a small memo pad from your drugstore and begin tracking how much you drink. Once you have an idea of how much drink decide to drink no more than that for at least a week.

Write down a plan on the inside cover of the memo pad for reducing your intake.

Make it gradual so it is completely comfortable.

Write down how much you drink each day. Reward yourself for each decrease and for keeping records.

[Lucas]

Try it with the concept that you arent giving it up forever, but are just seeing what its like without it for 30 days. If you like how you feel without it, then its much easier to keep going, if you liked drinking it, then feel free to go back. Make it more of a comparison of feeling, rather than "kicking the habit".

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by rusty

I have read that cola's are bad for you and I would like to quit drinking them. I have read that they are very acidic and will erode your teeth. What is a good way to get off of them?

The problem is not acid in soft drinks but the sugar in them. The sugar is awful for not just your teeth but for your overall health in general. As far as teeth go, sugar gets metabolized by bacteria in your mouth and they produce acid which damages your teeth. Check out this site for more info. Just seeing the photos of terribly decayed teeth may be enough to shock you out of drinking any more coke.

[Dobbler]

Try not to think of it as "giving up" anything. That way you are thinking you are losing out on something. Rather, try telling yourself that you are giving yourself a better chance at being healthy. That worked for me with smoking, been off them for over 3 years now.

The so called "diet" or "light" drinks are as bad if not worse as they contain aspartame. Google it and you'll see why. Liver killer. Of course, I drink them myself but I like to try to keep tabs on it and maintain a "healthy" balance.

Tea does purport to have health benefits but it is full of caffeine and is also a diuretic which will dehydrate you if you don't drink enough water as well. Water is the best thing to drink. Personally, I find it difficult but have been trying to drink more as I dehydrate quite easily.

Lately, I've been drinking Ice Tea, it seems to be the best of them but a lot will depend on the brand I would imagine.

Hope that helps.

Love.

Rob.

[Lucas]

[quote=Dobbler;26356]

Tea does purport to have health benefits but it is full of caffeine and is also a diuretic which will dehydrate you if you don't drink enough water as well. Water is the best thing to drink. Personally, I find it difficult but have been trying to drink more as I dehydrate quite easily.
QUOTE]


Uh, not all tea has caffiene...herbal tea is caffiene free and is a great alternative to cola. However, I agree, Water is the best. I love water.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Baltar

The problem is not acid in soft drinks but the sugar in them.

This is true with regard to tooth decay. However, soft drink is acidic, so it's something to be aware of if you're trying to maintain a good alkaline/acid balance.

Originally Posted by Lucas

Uh, not all tea has caffiene...herbal tea is caffiene free and is a great alternative to cola. However, I agree, Water is the best. I love water.

"Herbal Tea" is a misnomer. Rightly, no beverage without tea in it should be called <something> tea. People just tend to be sloppy with language - especially since "peppermint tea" is a much more convenient term than "peppermint herbal beverage".

[Reindeer]

I personally found that switching over to sparkling water was easiest for me. Still get the fizz w/o the bad stuff You can even make your own by dropping a couple of pellets of dry ice in with your tap water.

Seriously though, I went through a minor withdrawal for a week following the point where I kicked the cola habit, and it wasn't psychological either.

[Cron]

Originally Posted by Reindeer

I personally found that switching over to sparkling water was easiest for me. Still get the fizz w/o the bad stuff You can even make your own by dropping a couple of pellets of dry ice in with your tap water..

Club soda and mineral water are also easy alternatives. You can also get vitamin C drink powder that will be fizzy and slightly sweetened.

[rusty]

I have tried before to stop drinking colas,but so far have been unsuccessful. I am going to try again. I have been drinking colas since I was a kid. I will try, try, try again.

[ahimel]

Also, check out this thread. Maybe you can form a support group.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/h...rink-soda.html

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by Reindeer

I personally found that switching over to sparkling water was easiest for me. Still get the fizz w/o the bad stuff You can even make your own by dropping a couple of pellets of dry ice in with your tap water.

Seriously though, I went through a minor withdrawal for a week following the point where I kicked the cola habit, and it wasn't psychological either.

Ok, for the anal retentive sematic-ologists. Herbal infusions are a great, releaxing alternative.

[rusty]

I have good news to report. I have finally quit drinking coke cola. I kept thinking of how it is in syrup form before it is mixed up like in restaurants and I thought to myself I don't want drink syrup and somehow this made me quit drinking them.

[Dobbler]

Hi,

I have successfully (thus far) quit the diet cola's.. As soon as I found out that our friend Donald Rumsfeld was intrumental in getting Aspertame legalised (the DAY AFTER Reagan was inaugurated) after the FDA had not approved it for human consumption. Do a Google on it or I think there are some vids on YouTube. I saw his face every time I drank from a can. That did it for me! I do occasionally have a "regular" Cola if I'm out but I've quit having a full fridge of the stuff at home.

That might help some of you to quit!

Cheers,

Rob.

[Natasha]

Stroy Time:

I drank soda as a child, but then in drum corps, we were not allowed to drink soda. The reason they gave was something about not as much oxygen getting into your blood and muscles. I am not sure if that is true or not, but I DO know that there were a couple times where we would sneak some soda, if we had a couple hours off to do laundry or something, and for the next day or so following, I would not be able to do the same moves that I could normally do. That was enough that I pretty much quit soda. Even when I wasn't in corps anymore.

Nowadays, I almost never drink soda. Just a sip occasionally. Although I don't TRULY abstain in the same way as I do from alcohol. (I do not even touch that stuff)

I also do not drink a lot of juice, because there is a lot of sugar, even in 100%. I think eating fruit is a better alternative. Anyways, after not drinking juice for a while, the only one I do not find to be disgustingly sweet is White Grapefruit Juice. (All this coming from a person who is COMPLETELY addicted to dark chocolate, btw. Any help with that? lol)

I do drink a lot of "herbal (or spice) infusions." (aka "tea")

[maclinda]

I am a weight loss physician, and I find that about 98% of my new patients come in drinking diet soda. (so much for the non-fattening aspect)

You didn't say if you had any weight issues, but read on.

The phosphoric acid in sodas leaches calcium out of your bones.

Regular sodas are just loaded with sugars.

Diet sodas are loaded with poison (sweetener).

Here's how I tell them to switch to water: if you're getting a fair amount of caffeine from the soda, you may need to do something to taper that off to avoid the caffeine withdrawal headache. If you drink another source of caffeine, nevermind the taper.

Simply stop drinking the soda. Substitute water. In 2-3 days, the soda would taste weird to you. Try it for yourself. Our taste for something does change that fast.

Here's my story. I quit drinking sodas 30 years ago so instead I'll tell you about my sweetened coffee. I always added sugar and cream to my coffee, until one day in the hospital I was hunting around for a packet of sugar and got pretty irritated with that. To heck with it, I thought I'll just drink it without.

Wasn't too bad. A little "different".

3 days later was at a friend's house and we were making a pot of coffee. She went ahead and fixed my cup...with sugar. Blech, it tasted like syrup.

I've never been tempted to sweeten it again.

Oh, one other aspect I should touch on about the soda: I've found that when advising my patients to quit drinking it, there's usually another feature of the soda drinking. Some people love carrying around the bottle. Others love it "fountain drink style" ie. big cup full of ice, with a lid and a straw.

Often the "form" you have food and drink is as important to you as the contents! So I tell them to just get the empty container and put water in it.

Hope this helps!

[Alex]

I would just substitute it with water, and drink nothing but water. Since tea will give you yellow teeth (better than eroded teeth - right?), it's still not the BEST choice. Nothing beats water as your main source of hydration.

[JeffS]

You hear it said around here often that you can't "break" a habit, you can only replace a habit with a new one.

I stopped drinking soda a little less than a year ago. I dropped it because I wanted to be off the caffeine, but less sugar/acid is probably just as beneficial.

For a while, I would drink two 20 oz. bottles of coke a day. (Disgusting to think of it now, wow!) What I realized was that I wasn't craving the ~drink~ so much, I had just grown attached to the external habits: stopping at the deli on the way home, having the bottle in my hand at certain times, etc.

So, even though I'm not crazy about bottled water (especially paying for something I can get out of my tap at home!), I switched to bottled water. Whenever I was tempted to go the deli, I went, but I bought bottled water instead. If I wanted to have that familiar bottle shape in my hand, I went to the fridge and got water instead.

A few months later, I switched over to tap water, and I've drank almost nothing else since. But I don't think I could've done it all at once. I needed to replace the coke habit (that sounds bad, eh?) with the bottled-water habit before replacing the bottled-water habit with the tap-water habit.

[ChefSalad]

I have to disagree with you guys about tapering or otherwise quitting slowly. I tried that, many times, but was never able to fully quit. I would always end up going back. It was then that I realized that overwhelming force is what's required and that means going cold turkey. But I also realized (from experience) that it's too difficult to quit many habits at once and pop-drinking is seldom a single habit (Someone else spoke of this phenomenon already in this thread.).

In the end this is what I did (and three months later it's still working):

First, I quit drinking pop. Entirely. Including energy drinks and sweetened tea. I didn't give myself the option of unquitting.

Second, I began drinking water. And lots of it. If I got a pop craving, I would drink an entire half-liter of water and pour myself another, thus replacing the drinking portion of my pop habit.

Third, I replaced the sugar portion of my pop habit with fruit, and lots of it. We're talking five to ten fruits a day (with no exaggeration). I was still spending less on fruit than I did on pop. I have since lowered my fruit consumption, but it was important at first.

Fourth, I replaced the caffeine portion of my pop habit with coffee and tea sans sugar, milk and cream. I never liked sugar, milk or cream in my coffee or tea anyway, and quitting caffeine at the same time as quitting sugar would have been unbearable.

Fifth, I stayed on the lookout for other pop related habits and replaced them with more appropriate habits. Instead of buying an energy drink at a gas station, I bought an iced coffee (made with the ice from the pop fountain and coffee from the pot, rather than one of those sugary bottled coffee drinks). Instead of drinking a pop by my computer I drank a big glass of water.

Sixth, and most important. I told people I was quitting pop and, more importantly, I wrote down my goal of being quit.

Seventh, my goal wasn't to quit pop permanently (Although, I think that'll end up being the case.), but instead it was to "...drink only unsweetened beverages for all of 2007." I think that's quite important as well. It makes the goal scary, exciting and challenging without making it seem impossible.

[techgal]

I quit drinking soft drinks whenever I started running cross-country in highschool. I think cold turkey is the best way.

After 30 days of not drinking them, I had no desire for them. After a couple of months they were a complete turn off. You'll find that you will lose your taste for them.

They're actually quite distasteful after you give them up for a while.

[Heather Flanagan]

Your coke quandry is interesting to me as I accidentally cut back to less than a glass a day of beer/wine or what have you after being a 3-beer-a-day Irish gal for 20 years.

The accident that happened was that I just started putting it off every time the idea came into my head, "I could sure use a beer." Then I'd tell myself, "Maybe later." Pretty soon it would be bed time and no beer. I literally got out of the habit.

It helped that I was replacing the habit with tea. I also really enjoy soda water with lemon but soda also is bad for one's teeth even without the sugary goodness.

Another thing that happened was that I drank smaller sips and took longer to finish my beer and I would pour half in a cup instead of going for the whole bottle. I like task completion so I tend to treat a beverage like a job to be finished.

Hope this is helpful.

Heather Flanagan
Catalytic Converter
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[morbidprogeny]

Although it may sound silly, it will really work wonders!

Like you, I was also told that Cola erode your teeth. Then later, I even came to know that there was a certain amount of pesticides present in these 'black poisons'.

Well, what happened was that once I took my baby sister's tooth (i didint break them of course kids lose it) and tried to see what happens when I put it in a glass of Cola. If I remember right, It took about 8 days for it to completely dissolve a tooth! I guess you just need to have an empirical experience of what I just said! Trust me you would'nt want to touch Cola again.

Hope my wierd suggestion helps you NOT TO TAKE 'Black Poison' again!!

Peace

[Zombie]

I've found rooibos teas to be an excellent way to wean myself off of cola. I never had the goal to quit pop completely (like any addict, I just love it too much) but to cut it back to a more reasonable level. I used to drink almost 3 liters of Coke a day and I wanted to cut back to 1 or 2 cans maximum.

There's a store at my local market that sells loose rooibis teas in all sorts of amazing flavours (best without any sugar or milk). I've found that the ritual of making tea helped reprogram my brain in a way that made it almost effortless to wean myself off of pop, just replacing one program with another.

I felt a little goofy at the office with my fancy tea-diffuser mug and bags of loose tea, but it only took 2 weeks to cut my cola consumption down to the level I wanted and I never experienced the caffeine headaches that I used to always get when I would quit cold-turkey (this despite the tea being decaffeinated).

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by rusty

I have read that cola's are bad for you and I would like to quit drinking them. I have read that they are very acidic and will erode your teeth. What is a good way to get off of them?

I have read that tea has many health benifits and is also good for your teeth.

Cola has lots of sugar and nothing else, which is why it's bad for you...

Tea from tea leaves(ex. green, black, white) has fluoride which is good for your teeth but not good to consume(from what I've read)... Also, it won't have as much of an impact as toothpaste. Herb tea(ex. red) doesn't have fluoride.

Since there's generally water in tea, it won't dehydrate you...
And you can get used to caffine which will help you absorb more of the water..
I don't know of any herb teas that have caffine and all tea from tea leaves has it.

White tea is less processed than green tea, which is less processed than black.

My favorite tea is red and second favorite is white, and I have lots of sugar with it and one cup a day...

When I quit drinking soda a while ago, I did it cold-turkey but it didn't take much effort to do it...