Soda

Hello!

How is everyone today?!? It's been a bright sunny day here! As promised I'm focusing this blog on quitting soda! I am more then happy to say that in a recent poll of Americans 63% are actively avoiding soda! However the poll was for 18 and up. So it did not include all the teens and children. 

 " According to CBC News, researchers made beverages with sugar concentrations on par with those in commonly consumed sodas available to rats on a daily basis. Then, after 30 days, they tested the rats on their cognitive functions by — what else? — running them through mazes. Although the adult rats found their way through the mazes just fine, the adolescent rats had some trouble: They had difficulty navigating their environment, indicating issues with spatial learning; additionally, a closer look at their brains also revealed inflammation in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls a lot of our learning and memory functions. Said lead author Dr. Scott Kanoski, “It’s no secret that refined carbohydrates, particularly when consumed in soft drinks and other beverages, can lead to metabolic disturbances.” He continued, “However, our findings reveal that consuming sugar-sweetened drinks is also interfering with our brain’s ability to function normally and remember critical information about our environment, at least when consumed in excess before adulthood.” http://www.bustle.com/articles/33952-is-soda-bad-for-your-brain-you-should-see-what-it-does-to-those-of-adolescent

Not good to hear considering I drank soda my whole childhood. Thankfully being the health freak I am my children will most likely not be having soda! Just another good reason to Quit soda. If not for yourself then for your kids!

Step 2

Another great substitute to soda is infusing your water with fruit! There's lots of fancy water bottles out there for it but I just put the fruit straight in the water! Lemons, kiwi, strawberries whatever you like! Just cut it up drop it in and give it a shake! My coworker told me banana is good as well but I've never tried it! I usually pack a water bottle with just water and another smaller bottle with lemon water. "Having warm lemon water in the morning flush out toxins." http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/cheers-to-drinking-warm-lemon-water

Also according to some of my health Facebook pages it helps with weight loss by reeving up your  metabolism. How ever that part hasn't been proven. But I did lose weight when I started doing it so I feel like it's true :D

Step 3

Tea Is loved by many. Most who love it drink Sweet tea. Sadly Sweet tea can have as much sugar as soda! Eek! I'm kinda crazy about the tea I buy because of an articles I read a while back. It talked about how in Europe they did a study on different popular tea brands. What they found was the some teas were half fake. Meaning that they weren't tea leafs. And some of them still had pesticides on the leaves. Some of the different bagged teas had a plastic in the bag that leaked into your tea while it was steeping. So I got super crazy and now this is the only brand of tea I buy. http://traditionalmedicinals.com/

They have a million flavors that I like as well that I can enjoy without adding any sugar!

However since your just starting out feel free to buy any tea you like and migrate your way to what you feel is best.  

So how should you go about this? Should you quite cold turkey? Or ween yourself off it a little at a time? Sounds like an addiction huh? I've read a couple different articles including wiki how. http://www.wikihow.com/Quit-Soda-Pop 

They suggest slowly weening your self off because of the caffeine. Suddenly quitting caffeine can give you terrible headaches! However there's teas that have caffeine in them. Dark chocolate also has caffeine in it! So if you wanted to quite cold turkey it could be possible! The only reason I would suggest the idea of quitting cold turkey is because as long as your having even one a day your craving for it will stay. Usually leading you to relapse.   

Alright that's all for today! Tomorrow I'm going to talk about something more cheery! Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment as well!

-Sara Star