Go Easy on the Soda

by Joe Thorn on August 15, 2010


Back in the day I drank about 6-8 cans of Coke a day. I know, I know. It’s called gluttony.  3 years ago when I started eating healthier and running I switched to Diet Coke. This year I gave up my favorite beverage primarily because it was giving me headaches. Now I drink a lot of water, and some coffee (black, no cream or sugar). Now, I’m not the zealot who’s out to tell everyone to get off their favorite carbonated beverages, but I do want to encourage you – especially you pastors – to be temperate in your enjoyment of things like soda. Too much will make you fat and feel terrible. I speak from experience. I found the above graphic to be a good reminder.

(Image by Term Life Insurance)

About Joe Thorn

I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Saint Charles, IL, and author of Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Jen is my wife, and Katherine, Elias, Madeline and Kilian are my kids.

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  • angela

    I know after i stopped drinking dr.pepper/coke. alot i stopped having headaches too. I get them once in a blue moon, but i need to stop drinking them all together.. I like diet dr.pepper, diet coke, coke zero, but i perfer not to have any at all. Just need to stop eating candy, 3x a week. and drinking the sodas once in a blue moon…
    Thanks for sharing this. It has given me a new view of cokes all together..:)

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  • Ryan

    I’ve slowed on the pops although I’ve been into the diet cola since college. I’ve become more and more a coffee-holic and I’m sure there will be some kind of picture showing all the negatives on too much coffee. Oh well. Off to get me a cup of decaf.

  • http://www.dscomic.com Rob

    An excellent reminder for everyone. You could take it a step further and do a post on the destructive effects of artificial sweetners/aspartame in soda to ones nervous system.

  • Emily

    I agree with Rob. Some people try to avoid the bad side effects of too much sugar by drinking diet sodas. The truth needs to be told that these are worse for you than drinking regular soda with all that sugar!! There’s no sbustitute for eating healthy. You can’t get the taste of high sugary things without bad side effects one way or the other. If you like too many sweets the only way to get around that is to learn how to eat healthier, and to make smart sugar substitutes like honey, or applesauce in cooking. I’ve found that as I’ve gotten used to less sugar in things and eating a healthier diet I have grown to have a distaste for high sugared drinks and foods. I like my dessert, don’t get me wrong, in fact I eat dessert every day. It’s a matter of making smart choices, and soda is NOT a smart choice.

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    I agree with the words of caution on diet sodas. Unfortunately, it’s not a cut and dry issue. The research is often conflicting, but enough to move me off of it entirely. There is at least enough anecdotal information to encourage people to drink it in great moderation, or not at all.

  • http://www.pillarontherock.com Chris Krycho

    I stopped drinking soda almost by accident, a little over four years ago. I was living on campus, and had been having quite a bit throughout the year. I got sick of the taste of it near the end of my spring semester, and stopped drinking it for those weeks, switching over to mostly water. I picked up a job that summer working landscaping and mostly drank water and some diluted Gatorade. About 4 or 5 weeks into the summer (probably 7 or 8 weeks after I had stopped drinking soda), someone offered us Coca Cola as we were working on her yard. I could hardly finish it because it tasted bad to me. I tried again a few months later at a Chick-Fil-A (I had previously loved Coca Cola most of all with a classic chicken sandwich from there)—same thing. I haven’t had one since. I drink the occasional root beer or cream soda (once every month or two), and that’s it. I don’t miss it at all. The first few weeks are hard, no doubt, but you get used to it, and if you can make it for a few months, you’ll probably never want to go back.

  • http://rayvanneste.com Ray Van Neste

    My football coach in 8th grade told us to stop drinking carbonated beverages and I haven’t since. He said this would help us, but my real motivation was that I looked up to him and hung on his every word (he was also the Bible teacher). :) I can’t drink them now if I try- they burn too much.
    I am grateful- though along the way church members have inevitably assumed this choice had some deep theological basis :)

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