Day 5

Well, I made it through the work week with no soda! I will consider that a small victory, but I still have two more days to complete the whole week. The weekend is typically the worst time for me when it comes to being healthy, so I am hoping that I can stay committed to not drinking soda and make it the whole week!

Today, I am just going to go through some of the feelings, thoughts and roadblocks that I had and some that I might feel will come up moving forward. At work, it isn’t that difficult to resist soda when I bring my lunch. The main reason for that is because when I go to heat up my lunch, I don’t bring any money with me. This is good for me because it lessens the urge to buy a soda. I did really well this week of bringing in my lunch, which is not only financial beneficial, but also helps my waistline. My worry going forward are the days that I forget my lunch or just don’t bring it and how I would be able to resist the soda when I am forced to buy something. That is when I typically get in trouble. I haven’t had to deal with that yet, but I know that is something I need to be careful with.

My main complaint this week with no soda is that I never felt that my thirst was completely quenched. I know that is odd with the amount of water I consumed, but let’s be honest, I just want more sometimes. I know I gave a lot of options in a previous post about other things to drink, but sometimes there is nothing like a nice cold Diet Coke. I need to start preparing a little more and bringing more variety of beverages to work. I just get bored with water and it gets hard to drink when you are only doing it for the sake of drinking water. I do worry a little about this as well. Getting bored is the worst thing when it comes to me being healthy. It is when I tend to deviated from my plan and begin indulging in my bad habits. As I move through this process, I am going to have to be more inventive and constantly come up with new ideas of food and beverage options to continue my healthy habits.

The last thing that generally concerns me is the ability to sustain not drinking soda. Typically, I begin drinking soda again once I have lost some weight and gain confidence. I think that a soda here or there won’t really hurt anything. The truth is, based on my history; this needs to be a long term decision to avoid soda entirely. There are always other options available, even if it is just water. It’s almost like soda is my gateway drug. As soon as I start drinking it again, I start allowing myself to indulge in other unhealthy habits and soon enough, I am back where I started and upset that I let myself fall back into my old self.

I won’t be blogging over the weekend, but will give a full report on Monday about how it went. We are going to visit a friend and there are sure to be some soda challenges that come up!

For next week, I think I am going to focus on breakfast. Breakfast is something that I truly love, but often times do a terrible job with eat the right things. Sometimes I skip breakfast, which I know is not good for me, and most times when I do eat something, it isn’t very well balanced. My goal for the week, along with continuing no soda, will be to wake up with enough time to fix myself a solid, well balanced breakfast. As the week goes on, I hope to research why breakfast is so important and some new ideas on how to make sure I am getting what I need in the mornings.

Wish me luck over the weekend!!