I have to give it up….

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now… I’ve been eating way healthier, read/write about healthy eating and I’m doing the worst thing – too much diet pop!

When I think about how much money I’ve spent on the stuff over the years, I could probably have taken a nice vacation somewhere at an all-inclusive resort! I may only have 1 -2 per day, but to me, that’s way too much. I have one every day with my lunch. If I don’t bring it from home, that costs .75 cents per day at the vending machine in my office. And I’ll usually have one while I am making dinner. If I am out shopping, I’ll pick one up, if I fill the car with gas, I’ll sometimes pick one up, and of course I buy some at the store doing my weekly grocery shop.

I recently watched Andrea Beaman in an interview she did on TV. She was on Top Chef, and she completely turned her life around by changing what she ate and she said one of the worst things you can do is drink all the chemicals that are not only in diet pop, but regular pop too.

I read an article on msnbc about diet soda and this is what the article said.

They found adults who drink one or more sodas a day — diet or regular — had about a 50 percent higher risk of metabolic syndrome — a cluster of risk factors such as excessive fat around the waist, low levels of “good” cholesterol, high blood pressure and other symptoms.

“When you have metabolic syndrome, your risk of developing heart disease or stroke doubles. You also have a risk of developing diabetes,” said Dr. Ramachandran Vasan of Boston University School of Medicine, whose work appears in the journal Circulation.

Prior studies have linked consumption of sugar-laden sodas with multiple risk factors for heart disease, but Vasan and colleagues also found the link extends to diet sodas.

The results surprised the researchers who expected to see a difference between regular and diet soda drinkers. It could be, they suggest, that even no-calorie sweet drinks increase the craving for more sweets, and that people who indulge in sodas probably have less healthy diets overall.

So, I’m going to do it!! If I can quit smoking, run 2 marathons, I can certainly do this…..right?

Any advice any tips, have you successfully cut pop/diet pop out of your life? I’d like to hear what you say!
Also, do you think that drinking diet pop is bad for your health??