First Week of 10 Cokes a Day Completed

Okay, I drank 70 Diet Cokes this last week. And I feel good. I do go to the bathroom a lot, but the exercise is probably good for me. Okay, it’s a bit irritating, like a job to do, drinking 10 Diets, but it’s easier than digging ditches.

My weight is steady, at 168 lbs. I’m assuming my body fat hasn’t moved much either, staying around 10%. My fasting blood sugar, measured in the morning, also seems steady around 80 mg/dL.

Compared to drinking the regular sugared Cokes, drinking Diet Coke is easy. I’m not experiencing the feeling of fullness that I had when I drank the sugared Coke. I also feel that my energy levels are much steadier, and I don’t have the tiredness and carb cravings in the day as when I drank 10 regular Cokes.

On the other hand, the caffeine is really bothering me. Turns out Diet Coke has 10 mg more of caffeine than regular Coke.  42 mg vs 32 mg. But, still it’s only 420 mg of caffeine a day, and depending on the size of the coffees you drink, that could easily be only three or four cups of coffee. I normally drink 4 espressos a day, which actually have less caffeine than regular coffee, but I am still surprised that I’m getting so jittery and dehydrated drinking the Diet Cokes. The first few days last week I was still drinking Diets late in the afternoon, and I had trouble sleeping later.

Dehydrated, too. I worked outdoors at a trade show last week, and between the constant trips to the bathroom, the jitters, and dehydration, I didn’t love the experience. Back in the office now, however, I’m not feeling the dehydration as much, just enough to keep the Diet drinking going, and the bathroom is closer.

I’m maintaining my normal diet, which is generally low-carb, although I did have a couple pretty carby dinners in Nashville last week. Still, that behavior is basically in line with what I consider to be healthy eating; I ate just protein, eggs and sausage, at the hotel for breakfast, and had bunless hot dogs or sausage for lunch.

So, outwardly, not much is changing. I think by this time in the first Cokes experiment I had gained 6 pounds or so. That’s not happening now. But inwardly? Don’t know. I feel good. I gave seven vials of blood for the blood analysis that The Doctors TV Show gave me before I started. We’ll do the same tests after 30 days and see what’s happened inside.

A good friend on Facebook suggested that the Diet Cokes is actually worse for you than the regular Cokes, and I have to confess that, going into this experiment, I don’t agree. I believe that the health problems caused by high insulin levels due to sugar and carb intake are much, much more dangerous than even a chemical-filled menace like Diet Coke. Is water better than Diet Coke? Yes, probably, sure. But if the choice is between Diet and sugar – a billion dollars a minute in U.S. health care costs says that high insulin is very destructive, and Diet Coke doesn’t cause as much, if any, elevated insulin as regular Coke.

Of course there may be other issues, but I would say an unknown possibility far down the road wins over a known, and sure, damage to health right now.

So, here I go, into Week II.  Two more Diet Cokes today, and it’s four o’clock. I have to get to work.