When I was in high school I had daily migraines. I was drinking lots of soda and taking lots of excedrin migraine everyday. I went to the doctor finally and he prescribed me some medicine and told me to STOP all forms of caffeine. So I began drinking lots of CF diet soda. I had caffeine withdrawl for about 4 days ... severe migraines.

Eventually I began drinking caffeinated sodas again (within a year or so) and was drinking A LOT of it before my surgery. I was going through drive thrus to get large diet sodas 1-2 times a day and I always had cans of diet soda at home. Then when I started supervised weight loss I tried to cut down to 1 soda a day. That worked for a while until about 2 months before surgery when I freaked about not having soda and began drinking it a lot more.

Finally I decided I needed to get over the addiction to soda, so over Thanksgiving vacation I decided to stop soda for a few days. I did, then only allowed myself a soda once every couple days. This prepared me a lot and my cravings slowly went away. I had my last soda the day before my liquid diet began and I haven't had one since ... about 3 weeks ago. If a craving ever gets to be too much for me, I'll probably take a drink of soda, swish it around my mouth, and then spit it out. At this point it's the taste that I love, not the caffeine anymore.

I always stock light lemonade in my fridge now, but drink only 1-2 cans a day. Much less than I was drinking with soda, but it is a replacement. And I like opening the can ... cause it reminds me of a carbonated drink.

I never thought I would able to give up soda, but I'm doing just fine 3 weeks later. It's entirely possible to give up soda and caffeine. You could even have a replacement drink like I do with light lemonade.

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Banded 12/20/08.

308 H/296 S/278 C/160 G