In high school, some friends and I decided that our New Year's resolution would be to give up soda. The year passed by and then it became a contest to see who could go the longest without soda. I think I went about 18 months before I decided that I'd proven my point and started drinking the bubbly stuff again.
A few years later, I decided to try giving soda up for the year again and decided to make it an annual tradition. I would alternate between on soda years and off soday years, with me abstaining in odd numbered years.
When Megan and I got married in 2012, I switched from full calorie soda to diet since that's what Megan drank and it didn't make sense for us to buy 2 kinds of soda. Still, I was on and off until 2019, when I realized that part of the appeal of not drinking soda was cutting back on the "empty calories" and that I my on and off strategy was actually counter-productive. On my on soda years, I was drinking diet, which doesn't have any calories. During my off soda years, I was drinking a lot more lemonade and Arnold Palmers, which definitely did have calories.
So, in 2019, I decided to switch things up and do a lifestyle challenge. I would weigh myself every week. If I was over my target weight, no soda for that week. If I was under or at my target weight, I could drink soda. I figured that I was someone who usually hits his goals and can be dedicated to something once he puts his mind to it, so it shouldn't take too long to drop the necessary pounds.
Friends, it took 14 months and a pandemic for me to finally start drinking soda again in March... =0).
You are probably asking yourself two questions right now: 1) Why did it take so long and 2) How did being stuck in the house during the pandemic actually help things? The two are actually related. Friends, I have a confession to make...
My name is Adam Leong, and I love eating out...
During the "before times", I was actually eating out a fair amount. If I had a meeting with a ministry partner or a staff I was supervising, it made sense for us to center it around a meal, or at least a coffee and dessert of some sort. I could spend entire days doing work at the right coffee shot (like the dearly departed Omaha Bicycle Comany), which meant I would have a few drinks and maybe a snack or two during the day. I was by no means gorging myself or getting too overweight, but I also definitely wasn't working towards that soda goal too hard.
Right around October of 2019, I realized that I had some work to do if I was going to actually get to soda before the end of 2019. The problem is that the Fall and Winter are really bad times in the year to start watching what you eat. There's Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas. Added to that, Megan was pregnant with Jonah, then Jonah was born, then we were parenting 3 kids. What I was eating wasn't top of mind.
January of 2020 came and went, and so did February and I still wasn't at target. Then, cases of COVID-19 started showing up in the US and different states started going on lockdown. As an asthmatic, I knew that the smart thing to do would be to stay home as much as possible. Of course, that means eating out less. And when I'm eating out less, I'm consuming fewer calories, which means I'm losing more weight. Isn't it funny how that works?
The big question is how long I can make this last. I've given myself a littl bit of margin so that if I have a gaining week, I'm not off soda again. After that first bottle of bubbles hit my lips (it was a Sangria soda that my dad left here when he visited in January), I remembered how much I loved soda. I don't plan on going off it again, which means I need to keep off the weight. For now, that's easier because we still aren't going anywhere (I took the kids on a donut run yesterday for a field trip, which was my first donut in 2+months), so the real test will be once it's safe to go outside again. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, I'll just keep enjoying my soda and eating home cooked meals. There are worse things in life.
Have an excellent day!
~Adam
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