diet coke, the secret temptress

I have for some time now held the belief that I am allergic to diet coke. Nope, not pea nuts, not shell fish, not any of these other "regular" allergies, but diet bloody coke.
It's been my absolute favourite drink for as long as I can remember. Yes, I am one of these people that can not only taste the difference between diet & normal coke, but also between coke & pepsi (because pepsi tastes like it has a layer of grease on the top, yuck!), and I have it almost all the time. When I was at art college, I got to the stage where I was drinking 2 2ltr bottles a day. Now, I've improved a lot since then, only having a 2 ltr bottle every 3 days or so, but it is the main part of my favourite alcoholic beverage, bacardi & diet coke - with ice and LIME!! Don't people in this world know the simple fact that you CANNOT have lemon in a bacardi, it must always be lime! Anyway, enough about bar eticate.

Due to one fateful night of drinking this disaster was discovered. I was drinking with my friend Nikki till the very wee hours of the morning after I had held a movie/pizza night for my friends and we'd watched the re-make of house on haunted hill. I was having numerous bacardies & cokes, because, since Nikki fancied a few drinks, it would just be rude not to! The next morning, yes, I had the inevitable hangover, but it also felt like I had a very sever sore throat. Funny I thought, I hadn't felt one come on. Now, normally, when I have a cold / illness that effects my throat, I find a very fizzy diet coke helps to mavouver what ever rubbish is lingering. So, I tried this. WOW did it hurt! It wasn't until I didn't have diet coke for 3/4 days that it started to feel better. I couldn't believe it. My only drink in the world. I have never drunk tea or coffee, I don't really enjoy squashes or fruit juices, and other soft drinks? Please, don't make me laugh! I was more than mortified when I spoke to the Dr about this and he said "with the amount of rubbish that they put in that stuff, I'm surprised more people aren't allergic. If I were you, I'd avoid the stuff like the plague"

Guess what I'm looking at now? In front of me at the computer table is an empty 1.25 lts bottle, an empty 500 ml bottle and in the kitchen is an empty 2ltr bottle and in the fridge, a full one. What am I stupid?! No, just old habits die hard. It's such a pain in the proverbial, I do just enjoy it so much! I suppose I'm lucky I'm not like the clients at work who have had years of being addicted to drugs & alcohol, I couldn't ever imagine taking heroine, speed, cocaine, whatever, let alone then trying to be without it in my life. True, I look at the clients at work and think, 'but you've done this to yourself, I'm not going to feel sorry for you.' And neither do I want people to feel sorry for me because I feel like an elephant sits on my throat each time I over indulge in my favourite drink in the world. But it's strange isn't it? So many things in the world, so many things to become addicted to, why do us humans have such an addictive personality?! I know that we crave to fill any emotional void with anything like eating, drinking, using drugs or being another "holic" like a workaholic, so, does that mean that everyone who is unbalanced & has/does too much of something is just suffering from an emotional gap? An unseen bruise that needs to heal? If that's the case, and that's why I like to drink what's bad for me, and despite being over weight, eat what's bad for, especially when I'm on my own, and work much harder than what I get paid for, do I have an emotional gap that needs healing? Needs fixing? Needs attention?! I think that might be worth exploring because, I do have a confession to make about yesterday that was highly detrimental to my weightloss.

I went to Gloucester to see another specialist regarding my carpal tunnel syndrome, and he wants to think about surgery by the end of October if these splints I wear at night don't improve the situation (I slept wearing them last night, so things are looking up!). I started my day well, I had a small bowl of weetabix minis and took a ltr bottle of water with me. That was around 9 am I ate that. Fine. went to the hospital, waited an hour an a half to be seen and left by 1:30pm. By which stage I was very hungry. As I walked back into town ( half an hour mind you, not a short walk!) I was considering my options..... should I go home right away and eat then? Should I stop in town and find something there like a subway which isn't too bad? I found myself at the station, buying a ticket for Cheltenham and off I went. I ended up having a bacon double cheese burger (the ONLY fast food item that I don't have to say things like "I don't want mayo, or pickle, etc"), I then went and had one of those to die for vanilla pretzels, with a chocolate dip! As I shopped, I went past Millies cookies & got some cookies & a muffin which I planed at the time to indulge in when J was out fishing on Sunday. Think that's bad enough? I had a 40 min wait at the station to get back and I couldn't stop myself from buying a piece of chocolate cake. What the hell is wrong with me?! I try to be good, I try and stay on track, I think to myself, "I'm allowed a little indulgence as long as I don't go over the top" and you know what it is that makes me do it? It's because I was on my own. If a friend or J was with me, I wouldn't even have thought about buying half of that. By the time I'd had a BK, I would have felt guilty at the idea of suggesting a pretzel, even tho I think it's the only reason I enjoy going to Cheltenham (German roots, must be!) and I certainty wouldn't have bought anything from Milles or the station cafe. I'm now feeling only a little guilty for what I have done. I would love to hate myself for what I did, but I don't. If I hated myself for it, I would be less likely to do it again, trouble is, I know I will because when I'm doing it, I enjoy it so much! That conundrum will also need exploring.

I have decided, that from next week I am going to try and follow the weight watchers points diet. No I'm not going to a meeting, don't be daft, £5.50 to stand on the scales & have someone "tut" at you if you haven't lost anything... no thank you. But I will try to follow it at home, J will help me, he loves me for who I am, but absolutely hates it when I talk so negatively about myself, so he will help me get towards my goal in the hope I'm happier about myself. I will use the electronic scales at Boots once a week, after work. I thought that if I try to do this on either a Monday or Tuesday afternoon, that would be the best option, as I then can remind myself at the beginning of the week that I've either done well before & to keep the momentum going, or, I've done badly and I must try harder to improve. I read somewhere once that one of the secrets to keeping thin is to always know what your weight is, apparently, all skinny people know exactly what they weigh. So, I've got to keep going every week and get weighed. Booo.