http://www.myfitnesspal.com

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will help with the calories, but not the money or emotion.

Coke Zero ftw.

Look out for your teeth too.
As children we used to clean coins in coke.

Dude, I feel your pain. Many hours in the car makes it quite difficult to eat healthily. All road stops are based around sandwiches, crisps, junk food etc. If you *really* want to do something about it, then invest in a cool box for the boot of your car and start preparing all your road food at home. Plenty bottled water and a few veg snacks chilled from your mobile larder will help a lot!

Kicking it sounds like a good plan, less sugar highs = less sugar lows, gotta be good right?

Maybe make sure you always have a bottle of water (tap, not expensive bought!) on hand, drink it so you're not thirsty and don't fancy a can?

And nearly 2.5kgs of sugar!

There are clearly some underlying issues to emotional <anything>, don't try and fix everything at once would be my advice 🙂

And come ride with us again 🙂

I allow myself a couple of cans a year. Its evil stuff even with sweeteners, if I had kids I'd rather they took smack 🙂

I think that in the longer term you need to lose the sweet tooth, so I would suggest that replacing Coke with Diet coke is not such a great strategy. And it tastes like poo.

Get used to feeling hungry; it's not a bad thing.

It's largely a matter of self control; you decide what you put in your mouth, and once you have got to grips with that, the self discipline begins to creep into other areas of your life.

It's not easy, but it is a good thing; go on my son..

Join a gym (a real one, not a fitness first job).
ONLY eat food prepared from scratch and you're onto a winner, I promise.

I think that in the longer term you need to lose the sweet tooth, so I would suggest that replacing Coke with Diet coke is not such a great strategy. And it tastes like poo.

Mmmm... I've drunk Diet Coke for years. Mrs is diabetic so it is obviously what she drinks and what we have in the house. I'd say you get used to the taste. In fact full fat coke tastes sickly sweet to me now and I only ever drink it for hangovers.

I was serious about MyFitnessPal (or similar food tracker) - logging everything you put in your mouth is a huge motivator, especially if you are in the mood to be brutally honest with yourself as the OP is.

Does no one make a packed lunch any more??
You know what you're eating, and how much you've eaten over the day...

DrP

All road stops are based around sandwiches, crisps, junk food etc. If you *really* want to do something about it, then invest in a cool box for the boot of your car and start preparing all your road food at home.

This is true. don't forget most service stations have a microwave for heating kiddies foods, on motorway journeys we now pop into M&S and buy a ready meal and then heat it in said microwave, beats the fast food junk 💡

I work at home.

problem is, if you have crap food in the house you tend to eat it 🙁

my diet is probably better though - I have a bowl of muesli rather than a chocolate bar out of a machine if I get peckish.

I would suggest that a packed lunch is your friend here.

If you've prepared a healthy lunch with water/fruit juice then it will reduce the temptation to stock up with junk at the roadside!

Within a couple of weeks you'll feel better on it,save a few quid, and wonder why you didn't think of it before.

Good luck!

If you're going to change "cokes", might as well get the diet caffiene free one.
You never know, you may have a bit of a caffeine dependence that's been keeping you drinking the stuff.

Had a similar problem to you years ago, except for the weight, but was eating waaaaaay too much sugar. Replaced full fat Coke with Coke Zero or Pepsi Max (you get used to them quickly and soon full fat Coke will taste horrid!) which cut out a lot of the sugar highs and lows (I drank way more than you!), and actively tried to cut down on the chocolate.

Spending a lot of time in the car does make it hard(er) to eat and drink healthily, but if you at least start by cutting out a lot of the sugar in your diet by substituting in sugar free drinks, it's a very good start. Once you're used to it, you will start to notice you're not so dependant on sugar, which will then make it easier to start cutting down elsewhere.

Can't help you on the weight front though, cos 2 cans of coke and 3 chocolate bars a day ain't the only reason you're still as heavy as you are. Suggest on that front you speak to a proper nutritionist and probably a gym as suggested above. Cycling lots is great for your fitness, but it's a crap full body workout, and there's lots of fit yet still quite fat cyclists out there.

Quick note of warning: You will, like I am currently, lapse from time to time and hit the choccy again! Depression is a funny thing, but if it happens, just make sure you get back on the wagon as quick as possible before your body becomes reliant on it again.

Coke is my nemesis as well - bloody cans of the stuff, if its in the fridge - its soon in me! Good luck though and do as they say above - pack your own lunch (Walkers crisps Grab bags in petrol stations are also a habit former...)

Sugar free drinks are evil. Sweeteners are really quite bad for you. And the sweetness messes with your hormones like sugar does.

Just MTFU and drink water.

Weird, I grew up with a mild allergy to citric acid, so most fizzy drinks would turn me a bit hulk. I enjoy the occasionaly drink of full fat coke, but would never consider drinking it daily. As for the diet stuff, I have no idea why anyone would drink that, it has no redeeming qualities.

Good luck with the weight loss fella, it's hard work, I originally dropped from near enough 18 stone to 13.5, back at 15.5 at the moment but as a result of lack of activity and too much good eating rather than fizzy drinks.

I will be doing the London 10k at the weekend though, slowly 🙂

Have a look at a low GI diet, it's certainly helping me understand my up and down sugar cravings and has helped me control what I'm eating.

I hated diet Coke for years, but recently switched from four-star Coke and you do get used to it.

As discussed on a previous thread, I used to carry a big bottle of water on long journeys. I swapped this with a refillable Sigg bottle (which came free with an Osprey backpack) filled with water from a Britas water filter jug, far more cost-effective in the long run.

thought this was going to be an amazing thread about beak, o well

Is the eating also tied up with the need to buy something as well? At lunchtime I always felt compelled to buy something - anything and the purchase of food would provide this, and also provides a break in your routine / change of scene.

lifelong fizzy drink addict here:( can easily get through litres of the stuff a day unless i keep it in check. luckily i'm not into chocs that much and the thought of a mars etc turns my stomach

read somewhere a long time ago that diet drinks esp coke have about double the amount of caffeine than normal so it is easier to form a "habit" with diet (think methadone), seems to ring true with me through personal experience anyway.

I find if I have to travel a lot get quite dehydrated, which can get mistaken for hunger. Might be worth trying to drink more water ? Of course, you will need to timetable in more stops.. but that's quite good too for maintaining energy levels, not getting all cramped. I always buy a bag of carrots and munch on those if I have to drive a long distance, but then I like raw carrots, not to everyone's taste, but cheap and nutritious and worth a try ?

Look out for your teeth too.
As children we used to clean coins in coke.

Last time I checked though, it's not normal to soak your teeth in coke. Perhaps I'm not drinking it right? 🙂

It takes 5 minutes of soaking in coke for tooth enamel to begin to show signs of eroding, and if there's a 50/50 mix of saliva, then it takes up to 30 minutes.

I don't know about you, but I don't tend to keep coke in my mouth for more than a few seconds at a time.

Sweeteners are really quite bad for you

They're not fantastic for you, but aren't "really quite bad for you"

Aspartame, the sweetener in diet coke:

Critical review of all carcinogenicity studies conducted on aspartame found no credible evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic. The data from the extensive investigations into the possibility of neurotoxic effects of aspartame, in general, do not support the hypothesis that aspartame in the human diet will affect nervous system function, learning or behavior. Epidemiological studies on aspartame include several case-control studies and one well-conducted prospective epidemiological study with a large cohort, in which the consumption of aspartame was measured. The studies provide no evidence to support an association between aspartame and cancer in any tissue. The weight of existing evidence is that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a nonnutritive sweetener.

I had read that there were more effects than just carcinogenesis. However what I read was not known to be of good provenance.

Aspartame on [url= http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp ]snopes[/url].

It's probably fairly trivial to find some badly produced study or lazy journalism article suggesting that there 'may' be a health risk for just about anything you care to think of. I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could probably 'prove' that Cliff Richard may cause gout.

Pretty sure I read something a couple of weeks ago suggesting that cinnamon is carcinogenic. In the small print, it said something along the lines of there being a study twenty years ago that had shown lab rats falling ill after being fed a diet of pounds of the stuff for weeks. I think if I had to eat my own bodyweight in cinnamon and nothing else, I'd probably welcome cancer by that point.

Conclusion, trust no-one. (-:

Big respect for coming on here and posting that. I've nothing positive to add as I think it's all been said up there, but what in gods name did you spend 14k on??

Sugar free drinks are evil. Sweeteners are really quite bad for you. And the sweetness messes with your hormones like sugar does.

[CITATION NEEDED]

I don't need a citation, it's on the internet.

Diet Coke gives you diabetes quicker.

Life can be hilariously cruel.

My advice for the OP is to see a shrink or get some sort of mentor to help you through this. You need some positivity back in your life matey.

I don't need a citation, it's on the internet.

+1

Although I tried telling my lecturers that once.

The recent documentary The Men Who Made us Fat discovered that Coke replaced sugar with corn syrup which is 3 times sweeter and fattier than sugar, Coke made the ground breaking decision at the time to change the drinks recipe this was in the USA, not sure if this entered the UK market? Instead of using less corn syrup they used more, crazy.

You could try connecting with your inner miser - I'm sure it can't be just me that has this feature which precludes the purchase of soft drinks and chocolate most of the time...

Does no one make a packed lunch any more??

US coke is less sweet than UK coke.

not sure if this entered the UK market?

Nope, and until UK farmers are offered the same subsidies to grow corn that US farmers are, I do not see that changing.

I find it interesting that a lot of folks in the US [url= http://www.epinions.com/review/Coca_Cola_Classic_20oz/content_464780299908?sb=1 ]covet[/url] 'proper' sugar based Coke. Something they can only get when Coke issues the yellow capped [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Kosher_Coca-Cola ]'Kosher-Cola'[/url], which are intended for Jews during Passover as they cannot eat corn based products at the time.

never seen the appeal of fizzy drinks so I dont ever drink them tbh. it used to be cream cakes , I used to work in a training centre and all the dieting folk left the cakes and we got to eat them .. I once had 6 for my dinner - my weight ballooned to almost 67 kg but I am back to a fighting weight of 65 kg now.

These days flapjacks and frys chocolate bars but i probably only eat one of each a week and usually ride related.
Being a vegan it is pretty hard to eat crap and I always take a packed lunch - usually couscous salad with fresh veg and beans. You cannot really buy anything vegan out tbh so no real choice.
I was only a veggie when i ate the cream cakes and I sure do miss them.

I once had 6 for my dinner - my weight ballooned to almost 67 kg but I am back to a fighting weight of 65 kg now.

LOL OMG ROFLMAO (and every other internet acronym expressing stupid amounts of disgust at something so horrific!)

How did you cope being so fat? 😕

And here's me, sat thinking I can be a bit self righteous at times about still being quite slim despite the fact I eat 4 times what normal people do, and I'm 74kg having come down from about 78kg! 😉

It's probably fairly trivial to find some badly produced study or lazy journalism article suggesting that there 'may' be a health risk for just about anything you care to think of. I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could probably 'prove' that Cliff Richard may cause gout.

We "know" for sure that some things are not good for us, and we also know there's lots of people out there trying to prove almost everything is not good for us. Where do you stop? Personally, I'm prepared to accept that drinking maybe 1 litre of Diet Soft Drinks every day is a whole lot better for me than drinking 1 litre a day of full fat soft drink. Even if it's just because that's about 20 full teaspoonfulls of sugar less per day, and nothing else. Much as I have a sweet tooth, I know that refined sugar is one of if not the worst thing in my diet at all, so if I can replace something I like that has sugar in with something that tastes pretty much as good with something that doesn't contain sugar, then that is in my book, a small victory!

I'd love to tell you I had a very healthy diet that anyone and everyone could be proud of, but to be honest I was kinda brought up on convenience food a lot of the time, and I pretty much had to fend for myself from 14 onwards (Mum died, Dad spent a lot of time down the pub), and though I can cook a good meal when I want to I've got into the habit of eating more convenient foods too often. But I've improved it a lot, and will continue to do so if I can. The "holier than thou" people that only eat food fresh, straight from the ground, and pure filtered water or the finest red wines, well fair play to you, but you probably spend about 25% of your waking life preparing that food which for some people isn't always easy!

tesco's value diet cola = real cola.

Seriously, last time I had two bottles back to back, I couldn't tell, well, I actually slightly preferred the Tesco stuff as it had a cleaner after taste, and I am an UTTER stickler for taste.

Although I hardly drink the stuff, instead I moved into coffee, then more advanced coffee. Now I have half a freezer of the stuff and a nice hand grinder*

*the minutes of faffing with the grinder burns the calories off. Or so I kid myself.

But seriously, you'll be surprised by how a few VERY minor choice changes make a real difference.

Pepsi Max is great, way nicer than normal Pepsi/Coke, Coke Zero is worth trying to. ON a short-term basis maybe try chocolatey protein bars, Promax ones aren't too bad on the calorie front and fill you up a lot more than a Mars bar (they don't taste half as nice though but decent substitute until you can wean yourself onto something more healthy like carrot sticks :p ).

My wife was [s]snorting[/s] [i]drinking[/i] too much Coke, so on the 1st of January this year she stopped having it - and credit where it's due, she's not touched a drop of it.

I bet her she could only last a month.....

Sweetners are nasty stuff IMO. Banned in kids food, banned by the yank military. MSG on the other hand is awesome!

*stands up meekly*
My name is Kayak23, and I'm addicted to Coke.
Getting on for 5-6 cans of Diet Coke a day when I'm at work...
Really should be drinking water more, and I'm very good with willpower elsewhere in my life, but Coke is my vise...
😕

This thread has been a bit of an eye opener for me.

I really didnt know that people are addicted to the fizz. 😯 ... Sure I know it bad for you but I never really drunk that much pop as a kid and hardly touch the stuff now, I guess any news items on it went under my radar.

So fair play to the OP and others for thier honestly... I hope you can get yourself off the sweat stuff, if thats what you'd like to do.

I know in light of your experiences I will be even more vigilant on keeping my kids away from it.

Oh. I thought you meant

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