I did that for a decade or so, though it was the regular stuff, not diet (not that it really matters). I was in my 20s and in reasonably good shape, at the high end of the “healthy” BMI range, but not athletic by any means. Then I quit cold turkey, or nearly so (overnight I went from 12+ cans of Coke per day to 1-2 cans of green tea soda per day). That was the only change I made at that time and it was amazing how much weight I lost over the two weeks that followed. I had to buy new pants!
I also stopped needing to pop Tums like candy at bedtime to keep from having reflux when I lay down. It wasn’t diagnosed until a fair bit later, but apparently all that Coke-drinking left me with some esophageal damage (now fully healed).
I was in that range during high school, as were a few of my friends. Oddly enough my insomnia issues and a few other problems greatly diminished once I gave up that habit.
Generally, they won’t mess with you if you don’t mess with them (that being said, if a female gator mistakes your golf ball for an egg during nesting season, let her keep it). They’re more interested in eating your pets, so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your dog when walking by a body of water.
My brothers used to throw oranges at the local gators (much smaller ones than you see in the news) until they learned how fast the little guys could move.
I hope we all realize that having a button for diet coke and drinking a dozen a day is among the least disturbing things Trump did.
I kind of like the idea of something quirky like a button just for a single type of drink. Be better if it were for tacos or flipping the lights on and off at the Washington Monument. I’ll focus my ire on other stuff he did (still hoping for a criminal conviction).
As for the wisdom of drinking that much diet coke, the phosphoric acid has me worried the most. Eats teeth and prevents calcium absorption. It’s no wonder he’s not a fan of stairs or anything that could break a hip.
The caffeine, that’s not all that unusual compared to coffee drinkers. Some Starbucks coffees are the equivalent of about 9 cans of diet coke.
Back in the day, I spent a few years de facto managing a convenience store in the part of downtown Wilmington, NC that has been in the news a few times since Jan. 6th. The job was, quite surprisingly, more enjoyable most of the time than most people would imagine.
I learned a lot of surprising things in that time. One of them was that crackheads, a demographic not known for spending their scarce funds on much else, would scrounge change for Coca Cola. I don’t mean the still-functional people that I knew or believed used sometimes; I mean the very extreme ones that quite clearly had nothing else going on in their lives but rock.
To see someone who exists full-time at rock bottom scrounging change for anything other than loosies was striking. The fact that the only thing they were interested in was Coca Cola, was just as striking. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, and we noticed for years with almost no outliers.
In hindsight, I wish I’d recorded data, and experimented by offering them Pepsi for 25¢ instead of Coke for $1. I firmly believe there would have been very few takers, as my hypothesis is that the decocainized coca leaves must help alleviate withdrawal symptoms to an extent.
Is that in any way relevant to this story? A lot of people, some of the best people in fact, say that it absolutely must be.
