It seems I was a bit premature. I didn't beat my sugar addiction. I just took a break from it for a week or 2. I don't remember how long it lasted.
Since I usually drink a 2L bottle of Pepsi a day, my diet has at least 231g of sugar and 845 calories from it a day. And that assumes I only drink 2L. I'm **94** over ½ lbs of sugar a day. This needs to end. I decide to attack the problem scientifically.
If I'm addicted to sugar it follows that I should be able to just stir some sugar in water and drink that. I tried it and it only made me sick.
Then I though maybe it's actually high fructose corn syrup and not sugar. I tried stirring some corn syrup into water and drank that. It made me sicker then when I drank the sugar water.
So it's not sugar or related things. I looked at the ingredients on a 24oz bottle of Pepsi and the only other thing I could think of is caffeine. If it's caffeine, I should be able to replace Pepsi with coffee. It seemed logical so I brewed up a pot. It didn't do anything so I made a second pot that was strong enough to make my heart implode. It still did nothing.
At this point I was stumped. It's not sugar and not caffeine. I though it might be the taste but I can drink other soft drinks other than Pepsi and be ok. That gave me the clue to unlock the mystery...
I spent a hour on Google and discovered that it's a real thing. I couldn't believe it. I devised an experiment to test it.
I took a cold 2L bottle of Pepsi, opened it, and took a sip. It's just what I expected. I then put it back in the refrigerator but left the cap off. Five hours later I drank the rest of it with dinner and afterwards watching tv. I'm getting the same amounts of sugar and caffeine but I had to make myself drink it. My hunch is confirmed.
“What is this gay ass shit...” I immediately think to myself. (*)
I'm addicted to carbonation.
To make sure I bought a 2L bottle of carbonated water and poured some sugar-free grape Kool-Aid mix into it. I happily drank that instead of Pepsi and didn't have any sugar cravings or headaches or anything.
I'm 6'3”, 350 lbs @ 31% body fat. As a friend put it, I'm in “off season” shape. If flex my abs I can still see some faint definition. I estimate that 40% of my daily caloric intake is from sugar, at least. I made a spreadsheet to predict weight loss. If I cut out soft drinks I'll probably lose 100 lbs in about 5 months. If I swim for exercise, weight loss will be faster and/or greater due to heat transfer to the water.
Starting on Jan 1 I'm cutting out soft drinks except for Saturdays where I'll drink whatever I want. I”m shooting for 235 lbs. We'll see what happens. I'll post updates occasionally.
(*) I'm using gay in the strict South Park sense not the homophobic one