5 Reasons to Quit Fizzy Drinks

I love a fizzy soft drink.  I grew up in a household where you were offered milk, water or tea as drinks to accompany a meal or when you were thirsty.

Unless it was a Wednesday.

You see on Wednesdays the Maine Man visited our street.  The Maine Man delivered our local soft drinks.  Every week I was allowed to choose two bottles of soft drink.  Cola, Lemonade, Cream Soda…rows and rows of brightly coloured, highly sweetened drinks.

I was supposed to make my two bottles last me until the following Wednesday ..but that never happened!!  I was lucky if there was a little dribble left by the weekend.

My grandmother was steadfast and she never allowed me to have more than two bottles…but I felt that needed more.  So as soon as my pocket money increased beyond 10p I started to buy more soft fizzy drinks.

I could so easily down a can of coke in about 2 or 3 big gulps.  I felt the rush of energy it gave me, it slated my thirst like nothing else.  Afterwards I felt wonderful, full of bounce.

I was hooked…literally.  By the time I went into high school I was a fizzy drink addict.

I was also very over weight.  An over weight teenager at a new school becomes very body conscious.  So I switched out my daily fizzy drink to diet drinks.  I felt I had made a good choice… my weight didn’t change, but it felt good to be consuming less sugar anyway.

Fast forward 15 years and I was working in hotels in central London and my boss had a serous Diet Coke habit, so much so that he had a fridge installed in his office and it was available to all his team.  Free diet coke was a god send, especially when you are working long shifts.  I found it could easily drink at least 6 cans of Diet Coke a day.

Since I left the corporate world and started to become more interested in my own health and wellness I knew that my fizzy drink habit had to go.

Those of you who have met our Nutritional Therapist Kate or attended her workshops will know that she takes a very dim view of soft drinks, even the diet versions… she talks of them as “anti-nutrients” robbing the body of nutrition to metabolise them.

Don’t think that drinking the diet version is a good choice…the sugar is replaced by artificial sweeteners like AcesuifameK (200 times sweeter than sugar) or Sucralose (600 times sweeter than sugar).  Nothing good for your health here.

When I have worked with Kate in 1-2-1 she would ask me if had stopped drinking fizzy drinks!!!

The truth was that I had reduced my intake but never made the leap to total abstinence.

5 Reasons to Quit Fizzy Drinks

Diabetes

Just one can of fizzy drink per day means 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and 36%  greater risk of developing metabolic syndrome which impacts insulin resistance.  Don’t think that by switching to diet drinks you have avoided this trap… the sweetened used to replace the sugar increase your tolerance for sweetness and may actually increase your desire to eat more.

Increased appetite

It appears that consuming fizzy drinks might actually stimulate the appetite and/or stop people from feeling full.  One study found that people given soft drinks consumed 17% more energy than in their typical diet, even after taking into account the extra energy from the soft drinks showed that drinking fizzy drinks led to an increase of the levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin

Bone Strength 

Just one can per day has been linked to lower bone mineral density (BMD) in women. A lower BMD places women at risk of osteoporosis. This is because of phosphoric acid in the soft drink , which can leach calcium out of the bone.

Weight Gain

Regular consumption of fizzy drinks means that your waist is likely to be 3 inches larger than women who drink no soda. A recent study suggests that just one can of soft drink per day increases your visceral fat by 1/2 pound each year.  It doesn’t sound like much but over time this stealth fat soon adds up.

Gut Health

Fizzy drinks are a mix of phosphoric acid, high sugar and artificial sweeteners and this concoction interferes with the bacteria in your gut. In particular artificial sweeteners may favour the growth of bacteria that make more calories available to us, meaning that we store extra fat.

I had tried many times to quit fizzy drinks…but I always found it difficult to get past day three.  How about you?  Have you quit fizzy drinks because you wanted to improve your health and wellbeing?

Next week I’ll be sharing our 5 Step Plan to Quit Fizzy Drinks.