I love Coke. I tried to switch directly to Diet Coke and kept failing because of the taste. So I went widdershins and started drinking any diet I could find that I didn’t mind. Diet Canada Dry Ginger Ale was my gateway diet.
After a while, I added diet root beer and diet orange. A while longer and I managed a Diet Pepsi at work. A while longer and Diet Vanilla Coke. Then Diet Coke with lime. And then Diet Coke.
Now I love Diet Coke.
I didn’t switch to lose weight; I switched because of the potentially nasty effects on my blood sugar that high fructose corn syrup is considered to cause. I’m not diabetic and would really rather not be.
As a rule, I never ingest calories by drinking them. I am a pretty fit guy, always choosing good things to eat, and keeping a daily calorie count.
I can be found eating really bad meals from time to time, while having a diet coke.
If I allow myslef 2500 calories per day, drinking diet drinks all day allows me a heck of alot of flexibility. I could easily consumer 750 calories by not drinking diet drinks.
And after tasting some non-diet stuff recently, it tasted like heavy syrup, and left a nasty film on my teeth.
Oh yeah. The tooth covering film. That’s why I initially started using any sugar substitutes. I drink a lot of tea and the combo of tea and sugar puts gack on your teeth.
Yeah, I’ve drank basically nothing but diet drinks for a while now [well, plus skim milk and water] and they just taste ‘normal’ to me after all this time. Many times I’ll be at an eatery and order a diet coke/pepsi, and when the drink arrives I’ll take a sip and think, “Hm, I think they gave me regular coke by mistake.” Then I’ll offer it to my regular-coke drinking friend and ask them if it tastes “diet” to them. And of course they taste it, splutter, and say “Yeah, it’s Diet. Bleeeecccccchhhh.”
In the past two years I’ve probably had a total of five or less sips of regular, non-diet soda. I swear it’s tasted like drinking chilled corn syrup every time.
If you enjoy soda, you can certainly save yourself a LOT of needless calories simply by ‘training’ your taste buds to accept diet. I thought it tasted absolutely rank at first, too.
I gave up regular sodas a couple of years ago (I was trying to get excess sugar out of my diet as it was a migraine trigger) on the advice of my neurologist.
When Vanilla Coke came out, I was intrigued enough to try just a sip of my daughter’s and it was so insanely sweet I nearly gagged.
A few months later I had to take an aspirin while on a trip (we were on the road) and all that was available was my son’s soda, some bright neon blue thing (I can’t remember the brand or name). Again, it was just so revoltingly sweet I could barely keep it down.
All I drink now is water.
Oddly enough, I’ll use Sweet & Low in my coffee, but I hate diet sodas.
I started drinking diet coke when I became diabetic. At first, I hated it. After 2 weeks, I grew to like it. Now I cannot stand the taste of a regular soda.
Noticed I was sucking down about a thousand useless calories a day earlier this year and switched to diet. Two weeks later and I can’t stomach regular pop. Tastes like sweetened varnish to me now. I don’t think I could back to regular even if I wanted to.
Personally, I don’t want to “train myself” to like Diet Coke, and subsequently train myself to hate regular Coke. Of course it’s extremely sweet - that’s the point. If I’m in the mood for something really sweet, I’ll have a Coke, and it tastes great. But most of the time, when I’m not, there’s a really good beverage that’s not too sweet. It’s called water. It’s also free.
Of course, water doesn’t satisfy ones caffeine addiction, but I drink coffee for that.
One of my vices (not the only one, for sure) is drinking a lot of soda. I’m a guzzler, and make heavy use of the free refills most places offer these days.
Until about a year ago, I couldn’t stand any diet drinks - they were all uniformly awful. I realized, though, that the number of calories I was consuming through Coke and Pepsi was a very non-trivial fraction of my total intake, and I was also well aware that I’d been steadily and slowly gaining weight for the past several years.
I decided to allow myself regular sodas only on the weekends, and restrict myself to diet varieties Monday through Friday - the old dieting trick of not completely giving up something you really like.
I did this for a while (few months, I think), and then to my utter amazement found that I was opting for diet drinks even on the weekends; I actually preferred it. :eek: I’ll occasionally drink a regular Coke when diet for some reason isn’t handy, but it is often cloyingly sweet.
I’ve made no other meaningful changes to my diet or exercise regime, and my weight has remained steady for the past year. Now, this is only a minor triumph, as I’d like to start losing some weight and fully realize that more is needed to achieve that.
Whether or not it’s just rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship depends on just how much of the stuff you drink. In my case, it was/is quite a bit.
It bears repeating. Hence the puzzled looks from a teenaged burger flipper when ordering a “diet” drink and two pounds of fat-laden crap. To make assumptions is human nature.
A guy walks into a store and buys a Hustler, some Jergens lotion and a box of tissues. We all know what he’s doing right? Turns out, the guy’s brother writes articles for the mag, his wife has dry skin, and his daughter has a cold. You should have known that, and should be ashamed for even thinking he was going to beat off as soon as he got home.
If someone actually says something to you, they’re an asshole. If people don’t know you’re medical history when you order your food, fucking deal with it.
If you care that much about what people think, your problems are probably not food related.
On a lighter note, some people might find this site interesting regarding the whole soda vs. pop thing.
I drink Diet Coke, coffee with sweetner and skim milk. I prefer all three and wouldn’t go to regular coke, sugar in my coffee or whole milk for anything. It is a taste thing and not trying to diet. However, I can’t imagine what type of weight problem I’d have (it is already a problem) if I changed over. I figure that at a minimum I’ve saved 700 calories a day for the last 45 years. That comes to 11,500,000 addotional calories I have avoided consuming in my life. I believe it takes something like 1800 calories to every pound gained, which would come to over 6300 pounds. If in fact it has only kept me from being 10 to 15 pounds heavier it has been worth it.
You know what’s really weird though? I like things like “Death by Chocolate” (the most disgustingly gooey dessert on earth) when I’m in the mood for sweet, but even so, regular cokes are too much of the “wrong” sort of sweet fo rme, and I’ll wager a lot of people who choose diet instead.
Yep - some people just like the taste of diet better. Go figure. Y’know what was really good, though? Back in the day, when they used sugar in Coke instead of that corn sweetener crap. There really is a difference.
