14 Sep Five tips to quit drinking soda

One of the biggest ways to improve your diet and your health is to quit drinking soda.

Once you replace soda with water, just about every organ in your body will start benefiting immediately.

For instance, A 2012 Harvard University study reported that sugary drinks increased a person’s risk of chronic heart disease (CHD). Even reducing one soda per day can decrease your blood pressure and improve your heart health.

Cutting back, or much better yet, cutting out soda can also improve your brain, bladder and kidney health and is obviously a lot better for your teeth and belly fat.

The reasons to stop drinking soda are countless, but how do you do it?

Here are my top five tips to quit drinking soda:

1. Scale back slowly – Regular consumption of Coke, Mountain Dew, etc., is an addiction. If you drink several sodas a day, it would likely be very tough to quit all at once. Cut back to one a day and then maybe drink soda every other day until you can drop the habit altogether.

2. Find healthy substitutes – I don’t know anyone who only drinks tap water. Find other substitutes, such as carbonated water, low sugar fruit juices, add a lemon to your water, or try unsweetened iced tea.

4. Keep soda out of your house – If you don’t have soda in your house, you won’t be able to drink it. Once you get over the initial addiction and scale back, quit bringing it into your house and don’t let anyone else do it.

5. Be accountable – Tell people close to you – like family, friends and co-workers – that you’ve quit drinking soda.
By making yourself accountable and letting them know, that is often a good added incentive to resist the temptation to drink soda.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.com