Does anyone out there have an addiction to diet soda?

I’m right there with you on the cravings, but have no solution. What makes me even angrier with myself is that I was off of soda completely for a couple of years. One Diet Coke and I was hooked again.

I know I am. It is mostly the caffeine I’m sure, but one day I would like to rid my body of all those artificial sweeteners.
I went a day with limited diet soda’s once and I became violently ill. To make matters worse, I was at my mother in law’s house where her toy poodle does not know how to ask to go out.
A caffeine headache, plus dog piss makes for praying to the porcelain god all night!! It was horrible!!!
I’m thinking of switching to one of those vitiman waters, but I still need to formulate a strategy to not get sick.

The grumpiness is probably from a lack of caffeine. And there are a couple of studies (sorry, no links at the moment) and that say exactly what you did. Your body is looking for the calories because you set it up for something sweet.

I was a Pepsi fiend. What I did was stop buying Pepsi. I would take one to work (instead of two) and because I have a certain sense of frugality I refused to pay for one at work. At dinner, I would drink one, but not another one later on. Also, I took water with me to work to drink instead of the Pepsi. And would drink water at night, too. Once I ran out of Pepsi, I didn’t buy any more and didn’t miss it. I was always a coffee drinker, so I still had my caffeine. Now, I drink coffee and water. If I’m at a restaurant and the water is gross, I might get a lemonade or Pepsi. But the Pepsi just tastes too sweet.

Have you ever tried going “cold turkey” for a week or so, and live with being grumpy? It might be worth it.

I am sort of addicted to it, but it’s fairly easy to get off it for me, if I switch to Lipton diet green tea with citrus, and then wean off of that onto water.

Yes. I’m a recovering diet coke/coke zero addict. They are both poison. I feel guilt now when drinking them.

Also, LA Times recently had an interesting story about how the sugar vs. fake sugar thing in soda affects your brain’s expectation of calorie intake.

I just dumped a 10+ can a day habit this summer. The only way was cold turkey. I dont keep any of it at home, I still will order it when I out I hope to cut that out soon but the water sucks in some spots around here. Oddly enough I still have cravings for it.
Man, diet coke is some funky stuff, some days it would be the first thing I wanted to drink when I woke up (almost the first thing I wanted to do sometimes.) I also agree that the artificial sweetners fool our bodies into trying to make-up the calories that they are pretending to have with the sweetness.

Couple of tips:

Dont buy it anymore, if your access is limited it will make it harder to drink.
Make sure that you are still keeping some cafeine intake while you are quitting the soda, drink coffee, take cafeine pills or whatever, you dont want to end up in cafeine withdrawl.

I recently broke my diet soda habit and I’m here to tell you it was tough! What finally helped me over the hump was SoBe LifeWater. They make a couple of zero calorie flavors and they did the trick when I grabbed one of them instead of a soda.

I was addicted to real Coke, then I read the FoodTree and decided it was time to get off sugar. I went without anything for about 2 or 3 weeks and the cravings did indeed disappear. But I really like to burp, sorry, so I tried soda water and that is just too boring. So now I allow myself one can of Sprite Zero per day and it seems to be okay. I am still losing weight and don’t crave sweets nearly the way I used to. And I know that each night after dinner I can have my reward can.

I know it is not good for me and I should give it up as well, but hey, you gotta have one or two vices in this life!

Cravings are not the same as addiction. If you still can say no, there’s no issue. And for Mountain Dew it’s certainly possible. Without getting cold turkey.

@mattbrowne: And for Mountain Dew it’s certainly possible. Without getting cold turkey. I see you have never flirted with that vile temptress in the neon green dress >.<