The Effects of Giving Up Diet Coke

It's now been about 6 - 8 weeks since I gave up Diet Coke.

After years of being virtually dependent on it, I recently, and quite suddenly, found the motivation to give it up, and to date I've only had it twice since then.  And to be quite honest, on both occasions it didn't taste as good as I remembered.

I went cold turkey from drinking about a litre a day on a standard work day (a 500ml bottle in the morning, and another in the afternoon) to zero.  I drank it at the pub, I drank it at restaurants. Whilst on my ski season, it wasn't unusual for me to demolish a whole 2l bottle in a day.  Not every day obviously, but too often.

Aside from feelings of virtuousness, I hadn't really noticed any other effect of my giving up, although I'm sure my insides are cleaner for it.  And of course, I no longer have late night jitters / insomnia if I've accidentally had it too late at night.  But quantitatively, I've not known one way or another whether it was actually good for me to give up.

Until today.  Possibly.

Today, I had my Health MOT session at my new gym.  Which also happens to be my old gym, and being posh and efficient, it turns out they kept my old Health MOT records on file from a couple of years ago.  I fully expected today's results to be much worse than my previous testing, given that I'm heavier.  When I first joined the gym, I was surfing around the top end of the 12st bracket, and when I had another MOT a bit later, I was little heavier (I wasn't having a very motivated period and was still learning how to make Weightwatchers and having-very-social-flatmates coexist), somewhere in the lower half of the 13st bracket.  And of course, I'm heavier still at the moment, so yeah, I wasn't expecting great things, but I thought at least it's a starting point to work from.

What I didn't expect was that my blood sugars, cholesterol and blood pressure would all be significantly lower, and the only positive lifestyle change I can think that I've made in the interim is that I don't drink Diet Coke anymore.

I haven't given up takeaways, or drinking alcohol, or anything else that should have a significant impact on those numbers.  I haven't even been eating particularly well in recent weeks due to the move.

So is this proof positive that Diet Coke really is that bad for you??  We don't know yet.  My analyst said he believed the blood sugars number at the very least could well be directly linked.  He also said he would be very interested to see if these numbers stayed lower at my next scheduled check in 3 months time, assuming I'm still Diet Coke free at that point.

I'm very interested too!