Diet Coke Rehab

The 8 readers of this blog probably know that I drink a lot of Diet Coke. It’s been my main beverage for a few years now. I always said that I’m allowed one vice, and drinking Diet Coke isn’t so bad as such. But I knew that some day I would have to give it up.

So two weeks ago I quit drinking Diet Coke and switched to water. I did it after reading about some recent research regarding artificial sweeteners and specifically Aspartame. The research is still inconclusive, but it seems that people who drink artificially sweetened drinks tend to gain weight, and it has also been observed that most of the gained weight is in the form of abdominal fat, something I noticed was happening to me. My liver is probably also overworked from having to deal with the huge amounts of Aspartame I was letting it handle.

The first few days of recovery weren’t easy. My head hurt very badly on the first day, probably waiting for the usual dose of Aspartame or Caffeine. The week following that was also not great, but not nearly as bad. As far as I can tell, I don’t have any recovery symptoms at the moment.

Apart from water I also drink some milk with cereal and very rarely I would drink a freshly squeezed juice. But water is what I mostly drink, and I drink a lot of it. Right now it’s still hot, so drinking water is easy. I will consider myself recovered if a year passes and I haven’t had any sweetened drink (artificially or with sugar.)