Has anybody gone Soda Free?

Since being plagued with regular flair ups of Diverticulitus I have given up soda for the past 2 weeks. I have been drinking just water. On occassion I will drink skim milk but mostly water. No coffee, and no Tea (iced or hot).

During one of my flair ups I has horrible acid refux so that is why I stopped the coffee and tea.

I was wondering if anybody has gone soda free or just drink water as their beverage of choice.

Has drinking just water had a difference in your BS levels or any other body changes.

thanks!

I started a week ago…its been a horrible experience. I need caffine to function in the morning. Its baaaaaad. Also you may notice that BG levels around meals will be slightly lower (couple of points) due to the BG raising nature of caffine.

I am sorry to here this! I need and believe in caffiene to but the pain is so horrible that you will do anything to have it happen again.

I have often thought of asking my PCP about cutting out that portion that is causing me so much pain but he told me emphatically that you don’t want the surgery if you can help it. So I have been eating introvenous tree bark and other forms of fiberous rabbit foods…

And in your situation I would do the same thing! Trust me when I say that I feel for you in that situation. Like Ginger said, Im going through the withdrawls hard right now. For like 2 years I woke up with a coke and went to bed with a coke (diet of course) and so breaking this habbit its proving to be as hard as anything ive ever undertaken.

Yes… I have gone completely Soda free, for I’d say 7 months now… and I love it. It’s wonderful. I feel healthier, less moody, I have less headaches and migraines, I have less water retention issues, gastric issues, and I taste and enjoy my food better. The soda left me no room for water… made me full, and didn’t allow me to enjoy food as much. It made me feel… bogged down, somehow. (And I am talking Diet Sodas here…) I did diet sodas for a while… to cut back on sugars… and it helped, but not by much.

I am SO much happier without all this excess caffeine and artificial sweetener in my life. My shoes are now too big, since the bloating has gone away… I highly recommend it. :slight_smile:

I gave up sodas more than a year ago (perhaps it has been two years, time flies when you have no soda). I’ll still have a diet coke from time to time, but I never have them at home. Last year I embarked on giving up artificial sweeteners, turning to drinking water made with lemon juice and a bit of stevia. I was fine with this new approach, but I did not notice any long-term benefit over six months, no change in my health or diabetes and I tired of the constant custom mixture. Drinking sometimes a half dozen bottles of water a day, the constant effort to mix it just became a pain. So after six months, I returned to crystal light.

So I return to the dark side. In my defense, I only mix my water with fractional strength, using a packet designed for one bottle of water stretched over 3-4 bottles of water. It is just too strong. I’ve read all the studies. I’ve even read the doomsday book “Sweet Deception” by Mercola. I long ago drove most sweeteners out of my diet. In the end, I decided that modest use of crystal light was reasonable. Should a good product come on the market using stevia, I’d be happy to use it, but unfortunately the “sugar mafia” has so far made that option unavailable.

I was told, a while ago, that the dark colored sodas “diet sodas” are bad for your kidneys. My husband was on dialysis for 5 years before he got his kidney transplant, and even now, he can only drink lite colored sodas like Sprite, ginger ale, but that is it.
He is not diabetic, but drinks the regular sodas…but NOT dark.
My poison for many years was diet coke (with baccardi sometimes) and I stopped dark colored diet sodas almost 9 years ago. Yes, I do feel better, but I drink a lot of green tea and that is caffeinated. I allow myself one coffee per day. It is very hard to just drink water !!
Sheila

I used to mainline diet dr. pepper. But about 4 months ago I started getting my nutrition cleaned up in general, went on a diet and eventually I just found I didn’t want sodas anymore. It really wasn’t a conscious thing, I just stopped drinking them. Same sort of thing with coffee, though I will have one on very rare occasion.

Well… In the beginning it’s challenging, that’s for sure. But now it’s not very hard, anymore. It’s actually as easy as breathing, to me. And soda has benzoate (a preservative) that ends up turning into Benzene in the blood. (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/caution-some-soft-drinks-may-seriously-harm-your-health-450593.html) Do not kid yourself; soda of any kind, clear or not, is bad for the system… and can be carcinogenic.

Drinking tea once a day, is fine… I was just soooo addicted to caffeine, I just don’t even go there much anymore. I will have tea every once in a while. I had “Tension Tamer” last night, from Celestial Seasonings… I think most of theirs are caffeine free, though. The problem is how much soda people have, and the amount of caffeine and sodium they get from them… It causes major water retention. It’s no longer a safe level, you know? An occasional soda never killed anyone, but people drink it replacing water, and at meal times… and that starts affecting our hydration and satiety levels.

I’d also recommend getting off the regular soda, pronto. It’s nothing but pure high fructose corn syrup, with no nutritional value, which is incredibly bad for the system… and has been linked to many bad things, including insulin resistance… One 20-ounce bottle of soda is the equivalent of pouring 17 teaspoons of straight sugar into your body!

Crystal Light now has a new product called “Pure Fitness” which is made with Truvia, instead.

Yes, but it does contain sugar cane juice and sugar as ingredients and has 6g of carbs in each packet.

I didn’t have soda for a very long time (well, a natural soda here and there before diagnosis) and than I discovered Zevia. It is Stevia Diet Soda and all natural (no artfiicial anything!). People don’t realize how bad these artificial colors, flavoring and preservatives can be. As diabetics, our bodies are already run down. Become a crazy label reader! The Zevia is made out of Kola Nut which is a herb that the original Coke USED to be made out of but now Coke is ALL chemicals. The Kola Nut is reallly tasty - I have it in powdered form and could make my own natural kola if I wanted to (except I get lazy).

The Zevia Cola has caffeine in it. But they have other flavors that don’t. And yes, I love my caffeine. Although I did give it up for quite some time. Once it gets colder, I am sure I will stop drinking the Zevia and just have hot coffee.

The key to giving up caffeine is LOTS of water and I don’t mean just sipping it through out the day I mean, 64 oz. You will stive off headaches that way. I have given it up several times in my life. If you really up the water, you won’t go through a 2 week detox on it.

That said, if I was quit drinking my Zevia in the afternoon and the Soy Cappcino I drink in the morniing, I wouldn’t have any withdrawal because I drink alot of water too and I have one serving of each only through out the day. Yeah, if you are constanting drinking caffeine all day - you are going to have withdraw when you stop. One of the rules is supposed to be “don’t drink any caffeine after 5 pm” esp. if you are having problems falling asleep.

I do notice that the carbonation in the Zevia sometimes makes me a bit bloated but nothing that is killer.

Interesting… their online info says 3 grams.

Good luck with breaking the Diet Coke habit. I was a Diet Coke and Dr. Pepper Fiend. I switched to lemonade and iced tea before this illness. Now just water…

Your energy levels improving after the caffeine is amazing.

But of course they adjusted (“scammed”) the packet serving size. Each packet is two servings. I actually think they are right in this case, a single packet in a bottle of water is way too strong. But what they really should do is make the packet an appropriate size.

I cut out all artificial and natural sweeteners at the beginning of the year and my sweet tooth all but disappeared practically overnight. I think that any sweetener that has a sweetness multiple of sugar only increases your cravings. The toughest change was to drop sweetener from my coffee, cream only now - but it works for me.

OK! I have to admit I had to drink some soda yesterday because my stomach was so upset by the medications that I was on. I didn’t want to leave work even thought I felt horrible and I was just waiting to see if I would finally up-chuck. My boss recommend some sprite and I sipped on it all day and it calmed my stomach down. Then the pain started…

I am still for the most part a “water girl” right now. I don’t see changing this since it took a long time for me to get here…

BEER AND WINE…thats my kind of girl…any type of alcohol will shoot your BS to the moon. Is pure glucose… everything in moderation unless you know how your body will react.

I couldn’t manage coffee without something sweet in it. Tea I could do with out the sweet stuff…

I have cut back on my splenda intake since my other “D” has started causing me problems. Sugar alcohols and splenda can cause intestine irritation. i really don’t need any more than I am dealing with now. :slight_smile: