A recent purchase

Up until about 3 weeks ago my boyfriend and I were both pretty big soda drinkers. Well...not "big" really, we only had ~1/day...but nonetheless we very rarely skipped our "soda-a-day" habit. I mean it's not like we were drinking regular sodas, we only drank diet soda...so I always had the mentality of "yes, I know soda isn't good for you. but at least it's diet. that means it's not as bad". It's not that I was wrong...diet soda is a better choice than regular soda. But soda is still soda. It still has chemicals, food coloring, etc.

Before my boyfriend and I started dating he never drank soda...diet or regular. Actually, about 3-4 years ago when I lived in NYC I stopped drinking soda and using artificial sweeteners all together. If I did have soda, I'd consider it a treat and I'd only have regular. For the most part I drank tea, water, and coffee. And then I moved back home to Las Vegas, where my mom is a big diet soda drinker. Slowly but surely I started drinking diet soda again, and before I knew it I was drinking it daily again. And when me and my boyfriend started dating, diet soda slowly became a daily drink for him as well.

Well about 4 weeks ago my boyfriend decided to stop drinking soda. For no real reason, other than there's just a lot of "artificial" things about soda. I thought, "well, good for you. but I am just not interested in giving up my soda every day". That lasted for about a week and then I realized that he really does have a good point, so I decided to start cutting down my sodas. About another week went by and I just wasn't really drinking soda anymore...and it really wasn't hard or bad not having soda. This is about the time that we decided to get this:

We had been eyeing this tea pot at a local Japanese store for a while now...I think since we moved in together last November. But we kept just putting it off, figuring we really didn't drink that much tea so it wasn't really worth the $40 or so. But since we started on this new "no soda" kick, I figured it was about time to get it. Plus, I figured it would motivate us to continue along this path. And it has. Neither of us really drinks soda any more. I mean, rarely we do. Maybe if we are at a restaurant. Or if we need a good mixer ;) (like diet cream soda and whipped cream Smirnoff...o m g...so delicious).

Since we stopped drinking soda, I drink more water (~1.5-2 liters/day) and much more tea. Sometimes I'm able to squeeze a cup of tea in at work, but regardless of that I always come home and make a pot of tea with dinner. The way I see tea, is it's a very natural way to drink flavored water...because that's basically what it is. Plus, tea has a lot of possible health benefits. Most of the health claims that scientists and researchers make are very limited and not fully proven. However, the possibilities are there. and it seems that many health professionals/researchers are in agreement that regularly drinking tea, in conjunction with other healthy habits, can help improve your overall health. I really like this article from Health that explains the possible benefits of tea (and also discusses the lack of research).

So overall, do I really feel any difference in my health since I started drinking more tea and stopped drinking diet soda? Eh...not really to be honest. But, I really do like the idea of making my diet a little bit "cleaner". I haven't stopped with the zero-calorie sweeteners though. I still add stevia to my coffee every morning. I don't know how concerned I am about omitting zero-calorie sweeteners at the moment either. At least I've moved on to an all-natural sweetener!

Love,
Tuffy