Soda

Today’s post has very little to do with indie filmmaking and errrrything to do with caffeine — the priceless gem that, you know, gives me the attention span needed to get my films finished. So, it’s totally still relevant.

Recently I decided to quit soda, as you probably deduced from the title of this blog post. (High five, for deduction skills!)

A couple of weeks ago, I made the decision to stop being so fat and actually take better care of myself. Remember how I was eating my way through some challenging times? Yeah, that’s gotta stop.

So my “one small step” for Camden (to get to that “one giant leap” to a smaller waistline) is to cut out soda. It seems like an achievable goal. I was drinking one can of Coke every day. So it didn’t seem like a huge deal.

Ohhhhmygoodness, was I wrong.

Let me tell you this: quitting soda has been a struggle.

And, yes, I totally recognize that this is a first world problem. (Are people still using that phrase?) But it’s been a big challenge in my world lately. It’s been a big part of my daily internal conversation. I have been thinking about it A LOT.

Week one was a real bitch. But I made myself stick to the commitment by telling other people about it. Basically anyone who’d listen found out that I was cutting out soda. Because if I wasn’t drinking one/day, then I was certainly going to talk to EVERYONE about how I wasn’t drinking it anymore, as if talking about it would help me stop thinking about it.

Week two was a little better. I had a few week moments. There was a day when I couldn’t stop yawning before a meeting, so I had a can of Coke to stay lively. And I got some bad news another day and had to have some really difficult conversations. So I eased the pain a little with a soda, which is much more accepted by society than a few other options one could conjure up. (And definitely more legal.)

Here we are at week three and I’m finally feeling like a whole human again. I don’t feel like I’m missing out. I don’t think about soda like 100x/day. I don’t want to tell the world that I’ve decided to give it up.

In fact, I’ve kinda forgotten about it all together.

I started this blog post a long time ago (before I actually quit), and saw it today while going through my unfinished drafts. It made me realize how far I’ve come in the past three weeks and that’s pretty exciting. So I thought I’d share.

Set small, achievable goals and you can actually reach them. Set slightly more challenging goals after that and then they, too, feel achievable. Before you know it, you’re kicking some serious butt. That’s my take on it, anyway.

Up next? Reducing the amount of cream and sugar in my daily coffee. Scheduling time for exercise. And working my way back up to running four miles on a regular basis. Man, oh, man. I miss running.

Here’s hoping I’ll be a much healthier version of myself sometime soon!