Preparing to Quit Coke

When it came to finally kicking my Cola habit, there were only really a few steps to take. However, before I was ready to drink my last Coke, there were a few preparatory tasks I had to get done. (The very first one, before you move on to any below is to consult your Doctor. If you can, get a full medical while you’re at it.)

Cut-Down

This is, for me at least, a controversial point. In the next post in this series, I’ll suggest that cutting-down is a bad idea when you are quitting for good. However, in the short-term, it will prove helpful.

You can start really simply by deciding not to drink after 8pm, or before 10am. Even if you’re not quitting, this has got to be a good choice.

Pick a day a week to be Coke-free. (WARNING: Buy-in some paracetamol!) Put a limit on how much Coke you’ll drink a day or a week and stick to it. Then, next week, lower it.

Also, decide not to drink Coke in front of your kids. You know that you don’t want them picking up your habit. In fact, while you’re at it, do you really want Coke in your house?

Empty the Fridge!

Before making the decision to quit for good, I decided that I would cut-down by refusing to keep Coke in the house. So, I would either have to go to the shops every time I felt a temptation, or I would have to limit my Coke drinking to when I was out.

It became a real pain in the backside to pop-out whenever I wanted a Coke – and that’s the whole point of this step!

Find a Substitute

The next task was finding something that I could substitute for Coke temporarilly. In the next post, I’ll suggest that this is not a healthy long-term solution, but in these pre-quitting days it was a help.

The idea is to simply alternate between Coke and your substitute, so that you are soon having half as much Cola as you were before. My strong advice is to choose a non-Caffeine and/or non-Fizzy substitute.

Stop Impulsive Drinking

If anyone reading this is as addicted to drinking Coke as I was, then you’ll know exactly what I mean by impulsive drinking. It’s suprisingly easy to pour-and-drink-and-refill a glass of Coke without even thinking about it. I would drink it when I wasn’t thirsty, when I felt bloated, when I was having trouble sleeping, when it was flat – even when it was warm! I was drinking it just because I could.

One of the benefits of the steps above is that they slow down your consumption. They make you either have to go out and get a Coke, or pause and calculate if it’s time for a Coke or a Substitute.

There are two further useful tactics to employ to slow down impulsive drinking:

1. Keep a written record of each Coke you have. This is useful anyway (for the shock factor!), but it will slow you down and force your mind to register what you are doing, if you have to write down how much Coke you are about to drink, what time of day it is and why your want it.
2. Find a substitute activity. This is really simple, but surprisingly effective: When you feel the urge to have a Coke – do something else! Walk around the block, do some gardening, spend some time on the exercise Bike. The more active the better. If you still feel the urge after your activity, go ahead and have that Coke.

Have a Test-run

I quit Coke for Lent one year and look back now and marvel that I ever took it up again afterwards. However, it was a handy preparation for the day when I finally decided to give up Cola for life.

If the idea of going without Coke for 40 days makes you come out in a cold sweat, build up to that by not drinking it for a weekend. If you can do a weekend, why not try alternate weekends? And if you can do alternate weekends, go for a week. Then alternate weeks…

Social Drinking

You may want to combine emptying your fridge with taking a decision to stop drinking Coke, except for at special occasions. So, in the few months leading up to quitting, I would only drink Coke at Weddings, family parties, special nights-out at the Pub and so on.

In fact, between emptying the fridge and reaching the Social-Drinking-Only stage, I had already decided not to buy Coke any more. That meant that even on these special occasions, I would only drink it if someone else was buying.

Decide to Quit!

As mentioned above, I wouldn’t recommend “cutting-down”, as a long-term strategy, to anyone. It’s useful in these early stages, but it gives you a psychological get-out that you can always fall back on. One of the most helpful steps I took was simply deciding not to drink Coke any more, ever again.

I set the date of July 15th, 2004, (the day before my 30th birthday) as the day on which I would have my last glass of Coke ever. After that date, I would be a non-Coke drinker.

That last line is vital. I wasn’t trying to quit. I had quit. Drinking Coke was something I just didn’t do. Wear Cardigans, Eat Quiche, Drink Coke. Not me. (This is a point I will return to in a later post.)

So, whilst it can be helpful to cut-down as you work towards your deadline – as many of these steps have been helping you to do – it is detrimental in the long-term to think of yourself as someone who is cutting down. And it is actually much harder to go from a Cola-addict to someone who drinks it in moderation, than it is to go from an addict to a non-drinker.

If you really want to quit, do it. Don’t give yourself a get-out.

This series will recount some of the steps that I took to quitting Coca-Cola, once and for all. We’ll begin by looking at some of the preliminary steps that need to be in place before attempting to give up Coke…

So, you wanna quit Coke?

You sure?

We all know people who say they want to quit Smoking. (I heard 3 people say it in the last week!) Yet, no sooner have they said it than they are lighting-up another cigarette. Their ‘desire’ to quit appears to be little more than an ideal fancy, similar to someone who says that they “really” want to live in France, but has done no research on the topic and has no intention to actually even exploring the possibility.

Quitting Coca-Cola is exactly the same as quitting cigarettes or moving to France. You have to really want it and you have to actually do it. You cannot be drinking a glass of Coke, marvelling at its unmatachable taste and refreshing qualities, whilst thinking, “I should probably cut-back”. That won’t cut-it. The reason that won’t cut it is that you are mentally preparing a list of pros and cons and dismissing the cons.

And you end up with a long list of undeniable benefits and one seemingly impossible-to-remedy negative. So, if you really want to know how to quit coca-cola, the first step is wanting to quit. That means re-writing this chart until you want to quit more than you want a Coke. Now, that may sound like an unreachable goal to someone like Lisa Shuster, but it’s actually the first step. Personally speaking, it wasn’t until I’d learnt to hate Coke and the hold that it had on my life, that I could begin to think about giving-up.

Reasons to quit drinking Coke…

1. Cola rots your teeth

The final turning-point for me came when I saw the effect that Coke was having on my teeth. Or, rather, the amount of money I was paying out to the Dentist! Coke contains high levels of phosphoric acid and sugar, attaching tooth enamel and inviting the bacteria that cause plaque. If you must drink it, for goodness sake brush your teeth and rinse thoroughly afterwards!

2. Bad for your insides

Where shall we start? Excessive consumpton of Cola can cause digestive problems and lead to Diabetes. According to researchers at Tufts University, the intake of Coke leads to loss of bone density, when the levels of phosphoric acid is disproportinate to the amount of Calcium you are getting, leading to Osteoporosis. All carbonated drinks increase the risk of Cancers, but the levels of Caffeine, acid and sugar in Coke invite further problems.

3. Coke Crimes

See for yourself: KillerCoke and CorpWatch. Suffice it to say that I am baffled by friends of mine who boycott Nestle and decline Starbucks, but enjoy a nice cool Coke!

4. You are addicted!

Do you really want to hand so much control over to a soda pop? Aren’t you fed-up with interrupting Car journeys to get a Coke, or panicing when you realise that you might not have enough in for the evening movie? I can still remember the feeling I had when I had my first major headache from missing that morning’s Coke: shame.

Don’t let a soda do that to you.

5. The Financial cost

To this day, I have not sat down and calculated how much money I spent on a brown fizzy drink. I couldn’t bear it. What I do know, what I had to come to see, is that I don’t want to give any more money to a product that was doing me so much damage and a company that was causing so much harm.

Let’s face it, I need my money more than they do!

6. Coke can cause depression

Over-consumpton of any stimulant can lead to your body correcting the imbalance and inadvertently driving you down into a depression. The high-levels of Caffeine in Coke certainly qualify for over-consumpton of a stimulant! In fact, the increasing recognition of the role of diet in some cases of depresison has lead a number of doctors to suggest cutting out completely all tea, coffee, alcohol, chocolate, and cola.

So, do you wanna quit Coke? That is by far the most important step.

Have you ever wondered if you drink too much Cola? Ever get crushing headaches if you go too long without partaking of the liquid psychoactive?

You may be a Coke addict!

However, you’re in good company. In the US alone, the average yearly intake of Coca Cola is 3 million gallons! Until just a few years ago, I was doing my part to match that figure in the UK. At the age of 18, I was drinking around a gallon a day. There’s no doubt, I was addicted.

Now, more than a decade later, I haven’t touched a drop in over 3 years. For those of you who only dabble, that will sound insignificant, melodramatic even. Yet, for those of you who suffer the headaches, stomach pains, depression, tooth decay, weight gain and energy loss that accompany a Cola addiction, I know that you know how pleased I am to be free.

On my 30th birthday, I made the decision never to drink Coke again. I turned 33 a few days ago and the realisation that I’ve been coke-free for three years, plus this post from The Good Human, have inspired me to write more about overcoming an addiction to Cola. In a couple of upcoming posts, I’ll share some tips with you that helped me drop the stuff, once and for all.