I Used To Drink 20 Cans Of Fizzy Drinks A Day And Now I Have Heart Disease

[NellieGirl]

I used to drink 20 cans of fizzy drinks a day, mostly coke and irn bru.

A month ago, I was diagnosed with heart disease and I got told I needed to stop drinking fizzy drinks completely or I would be at risk of a heart attack.

I am allowed to drink all other drinks that are not fizzy. I don't like milk, and water is boring and so is fruit juice. It's not only boring, I'm also sad that I'm not allowed to drink fizzy drinks anymore, not even occasionally. I feel sad pretty much all the time.

It is making me never want to go to parties or go out for dinner. Me, my dh, and my two dc used to watch films on Friday night and Saturday night, and even watching films is boring when I can't drink fizzy drinks.

Is anyone in a similar situation? Or does anyone know anything I can do to get over it?

Thanks - well spotted!

Pre-diabetic not paediatric 😂

But can you squeeze in 20 a day, if not then you are failing at your fizzy drink addiction.

as if. No-one thinks water is ‘yummy’ as it tastes of….not much. It might quench thirst and any manner of other things but your children were not exclaiming ‘oh water, yummy’ were they? Be honest here

Yes, I think OP is having us on

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Well done to her as it’s not easy to completely change your lifestyle.

True..I didn’t even think about the cost.

If - and OP might well be working - but if they are not working perhaps she has a partner who pays. also you can get large multipacks from Amazon for about £8, that’s about £56 a week.

Or if not a partner - benefits? I mean PIP can be several hundred a month on top of UC.

Oh I really feel for you. I knew full fat coke, I have three a day, was having six, is bad for me. But I didn’t know about heart disease. Can I ask what they said? My dentist couldn’t believe I’ve over ever had one filling when I told her

She did say that. She was 3, she was thirsty. The water quenched her thirst and that what she exclaimed. She felt joyous!
That is how we are meant to drink water - our bodies are mostly made of water and we need it to stay healthy and alive.
If you don’t drink sugar, then you appreciate water.

Yeah I was very impressed, she also got rid of a useless cheating husband around the same time so I think that helped. That was back in 2020, she’s kept the weight off so far.

I do work. I work in an office. I drank 4 cans a shift.

When you stop drinking fizzy drinks the craving will go. I stopped drinking them for about 4 months due to severe bout of gastritis. I was surprised that I no longer craved it. There was times where I felt a niggling bit of crave but if I ignored it I was fine. It won't happen overnight. The ingredients in these things make it addictive that you can't stop. I went back to drinking fizzy drinks and now I'm in the habit of drinking it daily again!

I think we can assume that if the OP was happy with premature death, she wouldn’t be posting.

you know you are at risk from heart disease, have bad teeth, have spent a fortune on drinks, not to mention all the other health issues...but won't do anything to stop your kids from going down the same route? wow, great parenting.

20 cans a day is more than six and a half litres! If they were full sugar (it's confusing because you mention aspartame) that's like eating 7 doughnuts every single day!

🥱

You said it's the 700g (1kg before the introduction of Stevia!!!) of sugar you were consuming daily that caused the heart disease but then you said it was aspartame.

Juice has as much sugar as coke (aka fizzy drinks) smarty pants

So between time before work and after work you were drinking 16 cans, there must have been one constantly in your hands and it never occurred to you that might be bad for your health?

What an unusual situation.

Op; you’ve clearly had an addiction of some kind and it will take a few months to get over it. Others have suggested alternatives and coping suggestions. What I don’t see here, kindly, is that you actually do recognise that drinking loads of this stuff is really really bad for you. I’m sorry your parents brought you up with it, setting you up for poor health. I’m sure you love your children very much- do you think you could also totally cut back on their drinks at home? There are never ever fizzy drinks served at our house, not with meals, nor in the evening. They have fizzy water made from our soda stream with snacks, not with meals. I really recommend you support your kids to have healthy lives too and cut back on the fizzy drinks at home. Full sugar, diet, they are all bad for you.

Don't try juice instead if fizzy drinks; it's too sugary, and if it was the sugar that is causing you problems, you need to go for drinks without sugar, or without artificial sweeteners. It might be more boring, but such is life.

One of the main ingredients in Coke and probably other carbonated drinks (not checking just now) is the acid; this is also a problem with fruit juice, and acid and dugar together will be a large readon why you've had so many tooth problems.

If you've been drinking 20 cans a day, it's likely you're also addicted to caffeine, so you will need to train yourself to come off that as much as the sugar.

You will prefer shit while you go through this, but it will be worth it. Do it as a family. There will be lots of complaining, I expect. If you can incentives it, or make it a competition in some way, that could help, but you will know your family's personalities and what will work with them.

It will be hard, but you can do it.

.

There is a huge difference between natural sugars that are in unadulterated fruit juices and the sugar in fizzy drinks.

A glass of coke contains all kinds of crap, a glass of orange juice has less sugar (although not much less), but it is natural sugar. OJ also contains Vitamin C and no artificial colourings, flavouring or preservatives (if its fresh juice).

Thats why my kids, when they were young, never drank fizzy pop except at parties etc.

That said, I am not a fan of the smug "ooh water, yummy" style of that post.

The OP has an addiction.

I would say to all those slagging her off that she needs support. And acknowledgment that she has recognised that she needs to stop but is struggling. As an ex smoker I get it! I drink alcohol but could stop anytime if I needed to. Smoking is an ongoing battle!

I vape and am almost off it (think going from 20 cigs a day to 2, I am currently on 2) but the first time I quit I went cold turkey and it was hell. I was PG so had the best incentive but my exDH quit the day we got the blue line. Took me another month, was off them for 3 years.. Ended up back on them several times over the next 20 years though. Just this weekend I was outside in the sun with a glass of wine and someone lit a cigarette and oh I could have just stolen it and smoked it! But I didnt. I think I will spend my life as a "recovering" smoker. I will always want to, but thank goodness they are so expensive that I cant afford to.

I wonder how many who are being so unsupportive are overweight through overeating? Or drink too much? Or are addicted to exercise? I dont know anyone who doesnt has some crutch or other that they would struggle to give up.

Ideas of beverages to become addicted to ..
Try:
Ice always on hand to add interest and refreshment to a drink.

Water with lemon slices and mint leaves chopped and added.
Elderberry cordial, not too strong.
Apple juice, watered down.
Flat Indian Tonic Water.
Ginger cordial, not too strong.
Iced teas with peach nectar, honey or lemon juice added.
Iced coffee made with a coffee shot and low fat milk over ice.
Cups of black tea, hot.
Coffee, black.

Gradually decrease any added sugar and make up cordials with less concentrate.
You will become used to drinking less bubbly, more watered down and less sweet beverages.

Also try taking up chewing sugar free gum and sticking caffeine patches on yourself. To combat boredom and need for caffeine.

20 cans of full sugar fizzy drinks?? Wow...that is a hell of a lot: probably better to think about how grotty that is for you by multiplying the amounts of crap in those drinks.
A can of coke, for example, has about 10 teaspoons of sugar in it. And you were drinking 20 of them a day! If you'd been drinking 4 more, you'd've been shovelling a whole KILOGRAM of pure sugar PER DAY into your mouth. Imagine you sitting there with a supermarket KG bag of granulated sugar and just spooking that into your mouth. Every day.

A can of coke has about 140 calories in it - which x 20 is 2800 calories PER DAY just in fizzy drinks. The average woman is only, at most, supposed to consume 2000 calories per day of food/drink combined. Meaning you were consuming far in excess of your daily calories in fizzy drings before you even ate anything. Presumably you were eating as well, which means your actual calorie intake per day was far far far too high.

If you were drinking coca cola or similar drinks with caffeine in them the impact to your heart and body is even worse: no one would drink 20 cups of coffee a day, so drinking 20 caffeinated beverages would place your heart and other bodily structures under immense pressure.

And if the health aspects don't concern you then think about all the money you've been spending on this habit: 20 cans of coca cola is about £10. And you were drinking that every day = £3,600 down the toilet (literally) on useless fizzy crap per year.

If you want to be healthy then be proactive about it and be serious about it. Do you have kids? `Get healthy for them. Is water "boring"? Maybe, but guess what's even more boring: open heart surgery. Drink your water, start going for walks if you're bored of not having your fizzy drinks, and pretty soon your body will stop craving it. New routines typically take about 3 weeks to a month for a body to get used to - just do it til then and it'll be easier.