The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

Ohhh, my friends, I have a monkey on my back.

And it’s name is Diet Coke with Lime.

Oh, the shame! LOL

This has been my personal vice for such a long time.

Aspartame is soooo bad for you. Carbonation negatively affects how minerals are handled by your body. And I’ve listened and read report after report of how the Coke plants are poisoning the environments in the countries where they operate and killing people.

And yet that hasn’t stopped me from buying my 12-packs in bulk and hiding them in closets where my guy won’t know just how much I have stockpiled. He HATES that I drink “that crap” because “that stuff is POISON!”

(He still hasn’t quite figured out how I manage to miraculously always have a can available.)

At times, I convince myself I don’t have a problem because I only ever drink but one can a day (I don’t deal with caffeine very well if I have too much). One a day can’t be THAT bad for me, right? But I know it is; I’m just in denial.

So how come I haven’t been able to kick the habit? It’s been something I’ve wanted to stop for quite some time, but always put off doing. I’ve made very passive, uncommitted attempts to quit, usually consisting of nothing more than “thinking” about my desire to quit.

I don’t know what changed, but recently I made a more intentioned decision to “get off the stuff” as my guy likes to lovingly cajole me. What has made it so hard is that there just isn’t anything else in the world that hits the spot like my Diet Coke with Lime in a cold glass filled with glittering ice cubes.

But I think I found my alternative (which my daughter turned me onto)!

Okay, so I bought a beautiful glass pitcher and every morning I fill it up with lots o’ ice cubes and bottled water. I next take one lime and cut it in half. I squeeze the juice out of one half into the pitcher and cut the other half into thin slices and put them in the pitcher as well. Then, I add a quarter to a half of a cucumber–yes, I said cucumber–thinly sliced.

Oh, my gosh! I can’t believe how something so simple and natural can taste so good! The cucumbers in the water almost taste kind of vanilla-ish. It’s so weird. But really delicious and refreshing. I like to drink out of foo-foo glasses with my tropical colored bendy straws and this fits just perfect!

Here’s another thing I started doing, too (this is a tip from one of my restauranteur friends in town)… fill an ice cube tray half full of water. Let freeze. When it’s got at least a solidish top coat, drop in a small mint leaf and then fill the wells of the tray the rest of the way full. Makes ice cubes so much more fun! A few gently squeezed mint leaves in the water tastes great as well.

I’m so happy to be finally kicking my habit!!! Wish me well!