Diet Coke – Progress
Posted: Fri 18 January, 2013 Filed under: 2012/13, Diet Coke, Domestic, Getting Organised, Health, Weigh Less, Weight Loss 1 Comment »A while back, I started cutting down on my intake of Diet Coke, and I have to say, so far it’s going pretty well. It’s been a bit turbulent, and while I halved it when I started back in November, by mid-December it was back to normal. I properly dropped it again once I was on leave over Christmas, and it’s been kept down for near on a month now.
I’d decided that I wasn’t going to cut it all the way out – or at least not immediately – and opted instead for a phased withdrawal. It’s a drink I like drinking, so I don’t know that I’ll cut it all the way out.
Anyway, so far I’ve done pretty well. I’m down to about one-third of what I was drinking, and I’ve replaced the majority of the intake with water, which is supposed to be a better alternative. (I’m not yet convinced – I don’t feel masses better for it, it’s – frankly – fucking boring, and it makes me piss like a horse)
I’m pleased with how I’m doing – I have good days with even less intake, and I have shit days where I have more, but most importantly, even on the shit days I’m drinking no more than half the Diet Coke I was doing.
It’s not been part of the weight loss plan – the calorific intake wasn’t that high, even when the intake was high – but it’s part of the general plan for this year, regardless.
There’s still a way to go – but I’m happy with where things stand for now.
Diet Coke
Posted: Tue 3 March, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Thoughts 2 Comments »At roughly this time last year, I went through the joys of completely cutting my daily intake of Diet Coke. It was semi-successful, in that I did stop drinking it completely for about six months, but since then it’s crept back in again.
Primarily the return of it has been down to the simple fact that it’s still the only drink I actually like drinking. I don’t drink tea or coffee at all (maybe one cup of each per year) and don’t drink enough water – mainly because, even with the use of squashes, cordials etc., it just gets fucking boring. I swapped over to drinking things like Diet Sprite and/or Diet 7Up – I don’t mind them in small doses, so *shrug* – but they give me acid indigestion on a regular basis, and that’s no fun whatsoever. Sure, I could drink milk, or something similar – but then the calorie count and fat count would belt up as well, even on semi-skimmed. There’s something like 250calories in a pint of milk, and 9.9g of fat.
As a result, the intake of Diet Coke has crept back up again. Not to the levels of old – but still more than I supposedly “should” be drinking. Even now, I know it could easily go back to what it was a year or two ago, but I don’t actually want that to happen. I don’t deny – and never have – that it’s my one addiction, and I suspect it’ll never be cut out completely.
So I’m cutting down on it again. I doubt I’ll drop to zero again – I might do, but I doubt it – but it’ll get cut down, and I’ll replace about half to three-quarters of my intake with water. See what happens.
Maybe I should try getting to like tea again. I could more easily get back to drinking coffee, but even then my intake levels of it end up bordering on the ridiculous. And then I still like it black with sugar, so I’d also be adding to my sugar intake. (The same is true with tea, but I drink that less sweet, on the rare occasions I have it at all)
Anyway, I’m working to formulate a sane level of intake on all these things, and we’ll just see how it goes.
Cutting Out Diet Coke
Posted: Wed 11 June, 2008 Filed under: Depression, Health 3 Comments »I promise, I’m not going to turn into some kind of anti-Diet-Coke evangelist now that I’ve cut it out myself. Honest.
However, I did notice today via Bitful a couple of interesting articles…
- A short piece from the Guardian of a committed dietcokeaholic (hmm, can’t identify with that at all) who cut out fizzy drinks for a month – he felt so good from that, he hasn’t gone back to them yet
- Coca-Cola is phasing out a controversial additive that has been linked to damage to DNA and hyperactivity in children. (It’s a link to the Daily Mail <spit> I’m afraid, but there we go – they’re who had the story
- A story in the Ecologist : “Far from being the healthy drink implied by its sports sponsorships, Diet Coke is a worrying cocktail of neurotoxic and potentially carcinogenic chemicals”
So there we go, more grist for the mill of stopping (and not going back to) drinking Diet Coke®.
Diet Coke
Posted: Sat 25 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel 2 Comments »Why is it that the following phrase has so many problems being understood?
A Diet Coke, please, with no ice or lemon
Over the last two months, I’ve been eating in restaurants four nights out of seven. Some places have become regular haunts, some have been one-offs, some are just irregular “when I feel like it”s. But the commonality with all of them is that it’s incredibly rare to get what I ask for.
- Drink with ice, but no lemon. Common
- Drink with no ice, but lemon. Equally common
- Drink with both. Worryingly common
- Drink with neither – i.e. what I ordered. Depressingly rare
I just don’t get what the issue is with that order…
The Thermal Properties of Coke
Posted: Fri 6 July, 2018 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »In the UK, we’re in the middle of a heatwave. Other countries would absolutely laugh at how crap we are at dealing with heat (and in their eyes, it’s “only” 30° C, after all) but for the UK it’s more than enough. As with snow, we’re a nation of mid-range and changeable weather, so we’ve never had any need to invest in infrastructure to deal with more ‘extreme’ (and again, that’s in the context of our weather, not other places in the world!) temperatures. We generally don’t have air-conditioning in houses and offices by default, nor the stuff for dealing with snow, winds, rain or anything.
Anyway, for us, it’s hot. And every time it’s hot like this, I’m reminded that Cola (whether diet or full-fat) is a strange, strange beast.
Obviously Cola is best drunk cold – as cold as possible. But it’s crap at staying cold. Leave it for ten to fifteen minutes and it’ll be warm.
On the other end of the scale, leave it in a car to get hot, and it’ll stay hot for hours. The full-fat sugary one is the worst for it, but even the diet ones do this, so I don’t think it’s a facet of the sugar content.
There’s no real point to this – I just find it interesting that it’s a liquid/substance whose thermal properties are different according to whether it’s hot or cold.
Yes, I need to get out more.
Flavourings – Coke and Lime
Posted: Fri 25 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »As most people are already aware, Coke have been messing about with “Coke + flavouring” over the last couple of years. First came Vanilla, which is putrid (except with Vodka in it, but that’s perhaps missing the point slightly), then came Lemon, which most people associated with drinking Windolene.
With a lot less fanfare though comes Diet Coke with Lime. Sounds vile? (And yes, I know Pepsi are doing a Twisted Pepsi Max with Lemon and Lime.) Well, I wanted to try it, because on occasion I used to be known to put a dollop of lime cordial into normal coke, and it tasted pretty good. I’ve no idea where I got the idea from, but well, it tasted OK.
So, Diet Coke with Lime. Could be interesting. And I have to say, it’s really not bad. It might be on a limited-area trial at the moment, as the Coca-cola UK site doesn’t even mention it yet, but I’d say it’s definitely worth looking out for.
Repeatedly Breaking – an Update
Posted: Mon 16 October, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Food, Health, Single Life, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Following on from Friday’s post about the pain I was getting in my ankle and leg, it all sorted itself out over the weekend.
From the speed of the recovery – going from walking with serious pain and limping at 9am to being able to walk fine, with just residual soreness by 2pm – I suspect that it was some kind of reaction to something I’d eaten, rather than a ‘proper’ muscle or tendon strain.
I’ve had gout attacks before – although I haven’t written about them here (or at least, not using the word ‘gout’!) – affecting the big toe on my left foot. They’re usually related to a food reaction, that I’ve either eaten or drunk something to levels that aggravate things. Some of those things are ‘standard’ – too much beef and ham, for example – and some are downright weird – such as swapping my usual Diet Coke for something like Sprite Zero. That’s what triggered my first attack, back while I was still in Norfolk.
Last week’s one, though, was different. Similar levels of pain – but on a slightly greater scale, as it was my ankle joint rather than a toe, and thus there was a lot more that hurt. I don’t honestly know whether it was gout but in an ankle, or whether it was something gout-esque. Regardless, it bloody hurt. It felt more like it was muscle/ligament-based than joint-based, but I simply don’t know enough.
I’m pretty sure of what triggered it this time, so I might research it a bit more, and try things out a bit. But doing so would, by definition, result in more pain, so that’s currently not striking me as a great idea. Frankly, I’ve had enough of hurting for the moment, so I’m firstly hoping for just a few weeks where I don’t get any more shit to deal with.
It won’t happen, but hey, a boy can dream.