Coke Fiend

Ground flaxseed, home-brewed iced green tea, Greek yogurt, diet sodas, fresh fruit....

I've been ramping up the diet soda since dedicating myself to count calories.  This has me thinking of times past, darker times. I grew up with diet coke, as my dad was a bit of a fiend. In high school, I switched from whole milk and apple juice to diet coke and lost a bunch of pounds without thinking. Yes, my frenemies, my dad primed the pump for me to grow up to be a COKE FIEND! Well, DIET COKE FIEND.

By the time I finished college and moved back to New York City and got my first apartment, I was fueled by diet coke. I'm not sure how it got to be so extreme, it just slowly grew over the years. This is how it would roll:

1. Wake up, drink a 12oz can with whatever.
2. Get to work with a 16oz bottle.
3. Maybe have a 2nd 16oz bottle before lunch.
4. Have a can with lunch.
5. Sip on a liter through the afternoon.
6. A can or two with dinner.

That was a typical day, upwards of a gallon of the stuff. Hey, it's diet, right? The fact that my throat was always feeling a little raw from the acid didn't really strike me as a problem. I wasn't an addict, I just loved the stuff. Or that's what I thought, until Trouble came to visit and stay awhile.

At the time, I was the manager of an indie music label, and occasionally I'd have musicians crash with me if they were in town and not raking in the big bucks. One guy in particular (I'll call him Mr. Trouble) was a solo act from Canadialand and had no qualms about helping himself to the contents of my fridge without regard to replacing anything. So after a few days of Mr. Trouble, my day went like this:

1. Wake up, drink a 12oz ca....what the what?!

I rolled out of bed half asleep, reached in the fridge for my can, and found only air. PANIC. Eyes shot open, heart started racing, and I looked around for my diet coke. Mr. Trouble was snoozing on the couch. My diet coke in his belly. I had always been relatively straight-edge of all potentially addicting substances outside of alcohol, and after a few minutes and regaining my bearings, I realized: diet coke addiction is real, and living in me.

I cold-turkeyed it from that moment on. The first day was a blur of tiredness, headaches, grouchiness and sleeplessness that night. The second day was like the first, only worse. The third day was bad, but it was over the hump and I crashed and slept great that third night. I didn't touch diet coke or anything caffeinated for years after that, slowly working it back into my life in much more reasonable doses.

Since going to culinary school, I gave up diet coke even casually and just drank regular sugary stuff, in smaller quantities. Upon review, even a "small" 12-oz can of the sugared stuff is 130 calories, which adds up quick. There is a theory that diet sodas actually prevent weight loss, but science has pretty much debunked it. Diet soda in itself may not cause weight gain, but behavior around it could (italics mine):

Researchers found that those who drank diet soda were more likely to have metabolic syndrome, a nasty cluster of diseases including diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. The study didn’t define a definite reason for this-and can’t say for sure that one causes the other-but tried to control for other factors, like preexisting health problems, says Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, study author and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. It’s possible that people may use diet soda as an excuse to eat poorly (the old “two Big Macs and a Diet Coke” approach) or that there may be some sort of biological pathway in diet soda that causes these problems.

That's EXACTLY what I was doing back then to stay fat, ye olde Duo Big Maccas et un Dieta Coka. Now that my duo of Big Macs are tiny lil' cheeseburgers, maybe something will change.

THE COUNT: 2,500
Weights in the morning, felt hungry by bedtime. In the evening, I just cut a huge piece and let the calories fall where they may. Only by coincidence did it hit my budget on the nose. Well, it was actually 238.74 cal, but I round up and down. Because I'm not crazy.

AM SNACK: 7am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:15am, steel cut oatmeal with brown sugar, butter & cinnamon, banana, water, 465 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, Big Mac, fries, diet coke, 920 cal
In honor of today's topic, I had a Big Mac and a diet coke. Believe it or not, this was the first time I've ever eaten a Big Mac. When I was a kid, I'd go to McDonald's with my brother and father - they would always get big Macs, but I wanted to be different. So I would always get a quarter pounder. And that's what I've done ever since, until today. It was only 30 cal more, and quite a disappointment. It was just a tiny double burger with the second layer and too much bread. And that special sauce is not a very special, tasting like ketchup and Thousand Island dressing.

DINNER: 6pm, broiled soil, boiled corn, brown rice, steamed string beans, 7oz diet sprite, 850 cal
Funny how quantity-wise, this was practically twice the amount of food over lunch, but less calories.

EVENING SNACK: 7:45pm, watermelon, 240 cal