A Savage Girl’s Confession: 1 of My Guilty Addictions

I am addicted to Diet Coke.

This is an honest confession...seriously.  

I am a “Southern Girl” with all the southern goodness, southern charm, and southern accents you could ever want! So whenever I say “Diet Coke” I am meaning any beverage that is diet. “Coke” is the general name for any carbonated canned or bottled beverage yet “Coke-Cola” is a brand name. In the South, it is not soda, pop, soft drink, or soda pop…it is simply coke and in my case here diet coke. LOL.       

It has been 1 month and counting since I drank my last carbonated artificial sweetened calorie free drink of goodness. To be more specific and exact it has been that long since I drank any carbonated beverage unless it was in some punch secretly added without my knowledge! Tea, coffee, water, milk and lemonade have been my drinks of choice for the past month. Why you might ask? Well, this Savage Girl is trying to live healthier and make wiser lifestyle choices to improve her overall health and well-being.
 
So let me get all technical on you now. Research shows that sometimes one dietary change in one’s daily habits will decrease ones calorie intake 100 calories, which will in turn help you lose weight. There is also strong evidence that shows those individuals who drink more carbonated and sugar-sweetened beverages are heavier when compared to individuals who consume less. More research shows that non-nutritive sweeteners cause ones appetite to increase and in turn cause more calorie consumption, which would lead to weight gain. People think they can drink a diet coke and eat a piece of cake, but what we need to keep in mind that the diet coke isn’t causing us to gain weight it is everything else we are consuming with it! And yes the Savage Girl is guilty of this!  

Then there are studies where consumers lost weight drinking diet cokes. Therefore, the evidence to drink diet coke or not to drink diet coke is undecided. If you are like me and want to lose weight & have a healthier lifestyle then choose whatever drink you want but do not forget about your lifestyle, eating habits, and physical activity.

I had been hanging onto weight since Thanksgiving. Technically speaking I hit a plateau from November through February. A plateau is a stall in the weight loss journey but one should not get discouraged! Deep down I knew that in order to get back on track and lose the last 25 pounds to reach my goal I had to make a change, take charge again, and it was not going to be easy! It did not matter how much or how little food I consumer. It did not matter how much I moved or when I exercised. I was stuck so I made the big decision to cut out my “Diet Cokes” from my daily drink consumption. In addition to the research, I mentioned above, I also know that diet cokes contain sodium and artificial sweeteners, which cause fluid retention and blooding according to the FDA. I am happy to report an update on my recent health and lifestyle change…admitting to myself that I have a diet coke obsession and addiction helped me refocus and get back on the healthy lifestyle bus.
 
As of today, March 29, I have lost 50 pounds! In the last 8 weeks since I last updated the blogging world on my success I have lost an additional 7 pounds, 1 inch in my waist, 2 inches in my hips, and 1 inch in my bust while gaining a ½ inch of muscle in my arms and staying the same in my thighs. I am 3.7 points away from reaching the BMI that I desire to put me in a healthy range to avoid the chronic diseases associated with being overweight and obese. I know I cannot run from my inherited genetic pre-deposition in life but I know the choices I make can have a direct effect on my current health and future lifestyle. I know that I can not prevent the inevitable but maybe I can prolong it or lessen the affects.

Making the small change of cutting out my diet cokes I believe can be a testament to my success and moving off the plateau! It is a pleasure I miss, but I know I can do without it. We were warned in 2 Timothy 3:4 about being lovers of pleasure instead of God. In Ecclesiastes 2:1-2 we are told that pleasures, like my Diet Coke addiction, are meaningless because it does not accomplish anything. On a series note and with keeping with all those things I mentioned above...what guilty addiction or pleasure are you hiding in your closet? You might not want to blog about it like me, but maybe you need to admit and confess your addiction to yourself or maybe God…Just a thought.            

Resources:

The Power of One Dietary Change in Losing Weight

Rethink Your Drink

Are Drinks Making Us Fat

FDA

Low Calorie Sweeteners and Weight Gain...Do Diet Drinks Make You Fat?

Making Healthy Beverage Choices: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

 

 

A Woman's Voice

 

Today I had the pleasure of eating lunch with three strong, wise, driven, independent, and beauty women. Each one of these women are special in their own way and each one is talented and unique. Together we make quite a team and can accomplish much. From time to time we meet for lunch to discuss non-work things and to empower each other to keep going. I wish I could bottle the energy from the group and sell it, because I think we could get rich!

I’m a young woman and I enjoy being around mature women who have experienced life so to speak. Titus 2:3-5 tells us that it’s older women who can teach younger women the practical skills to get through life. These women got me to thinking about myself and my future today when we had lunch. If I ever get the opportunity to have children in the future I want my future daughter(s) to have a few character qualities and opportunties that I believe that mold strong women. 

• I want them to know and practice the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
• I want my future daughters to have a voice.
• I want them to grow up to be strong, free thinking and independent women that are not get taken advantage of.
• I want them to have opportunities outside of life within the “normal” realm of their community of where they might be raised.
• I want them to have rules, discipline and consequences within their life.  
• I want them to have an advanced education and value lifelong learning.
• I want them to use their God given talents to serve God and others to the best of their abilities.
• Leave a comment if you can think of others! I might need to add a few more to my wish list for those future daughters.  

Doesn’t every woman want that for her daughter(s)? This is how my family raised me to be. Sometimes I get “the look” or “the comment” that I cannot believe you do that or I would never. I was raised to have a “voice” or “vote” per say when it came to matters. I was raised to think outside the box. I was told that my voice matters because I was good, special and important. I was raised to have an inquisitive mind, to ask questions and “why” if something did not make sense. I learned the value of a work, earning money to have things, and then how to give back to others through service.

I believe my parents did things with intention when they were parenting me and my sister. But I’ve never asked…who knows they might have been parenting us by the skin of the teeth and whatever patience they had at the moment! I believe they both had great examples of strong women within their lives that they modeled their parenting practices after. Whatever they did I believe it worked because I believe that I was molded and shaped into the woman I am today because of their parenting foresight and the experiences they shared with my sister and me. So Mama & Daddy thank you for giving me a voice and molding me into the woman I am today!