Last Day of Diet Coke Drinking

I have to say, I’m a little sad that this is the last day of Diet Coke drinking. Okay, not that sad – but it had gotten pretty easy to live with by the last week or so. It wasn’t really difficult or unpleasant.

I worked out a routine where I would have two Diet Cokes in the morning when I got up and during breakfast. That left just eight to drink at the office, and if I just kept a can going while I talked on the phone and worked, I was usually done drinking soda by 4 pm or so.

The Diet Coke has come to seem like a little friend – a long line of cans across my desk, the day’s work, and the office strewn with empties like an out-of-control aluminum hoarder.

My weight is steady today, at one pound more than I started the experiment. We’ll see final results tomorrow, but this morning I recorded a very low fasting insulin level of 73 mg/dl, but it’s been holding the same as I started. This is the part that has been kind of boring, actually: In the first Coke experiment, my weight was constantly increasing, my vitals continually getting poorer. So, it’s not very exciting. Everyday the same weight.

The one thing I won’t miss is pricking my finger every morning to take a fasting blood glucose measurement. I know I’m being a baby, and there are a lot of people out there with diabetes who must do this all day – but I feel for you. At least if it’s Type II you do have the ability to improve or cure it by cutting out sugar and grains and fruit.

But I’m not a doctor. I’m just glad I don’t have to keep drawing blood every morning. It’s like “Welcome to your day! Here’s a sharp poke in the finger!”

I’ve got only 3 more Cokes to go today and then I’m done. I’ve had 297 Diet Cokes in the last 30 days.  Tomorrow, speaking of pokes in the finger, I go to get blood drawn for lab tests again. And then next week my doctor looks at the results… and tells me what?