Day 1: The challenge begins

I'm Catholic, and I truly and really despise hormonal birth control pills. I think they are not only horrible for women's bodies, but they are terrible for the environment and the sheer number of women taking them means they are impacting everyone's bodies around them.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine, who pointed out that sodas are having similar effects - including harmful effects on the environment with chemicals that wind up in the water stream and poison other people's bodies, not just my own.  This led me to thinking about the matter, and I realized that it's hypocritical to be concerned about the effects of one while overlooking the effects of the other.

That led me to making a decision that I've thought about making off and on but have, until now, refused to commit to because I figured it would be too much of a challenge for me.  I am going to quit drinking soda for an entire year and chronicle the adventures in this blog.  When I'm tempted to go buy a soda, I'm going to take the money I would have spent on soda and set it aside for charitable causes instead. At the end of the year, when I donate the money, I'm going to figure out just how much money I've really been spending on soda that could have been better spent elsewhere.

I'm also going to chart my measurements at the beginning, as I go along, and at the ending to see how much of an impact soda drinking has on those things. I want to see if there are other behavior changes that happen, too. Does my decreasing the amount of soda lead me to drink more water? Does it impact my moods? I don't know. These are questions I'll have to answer as I go along. I have a sneaking suspicion that it has a direct relationship with my inability to lose much weight despite the fact that I usually walk 1-3 miles a day, sometimes more. Abstinence will make it easy to tell.

I'm making this public because I know it's going to be a tough challenge for me. I'll need to know I have a cheering section.  If you want to join the challenge with me, chime in on the comments section. If there are enough of us doing it, I'll create a Facebook group we can all join. I'll be doing my best to post something here everyday so that you can track my progress and see how well I do. If I succeed in completing the year,

I will be putting together a book from all these blog posts that I hope to share with others to help inspire them to take up this same challenge and shake the soda addiction.

Neck: 15"
Bust: 44"
Waist: 40"
Gut: 48"
Hips: 46 1/4"
Wrists: 7"
Left ankle: 10.5"
Right ankle: 11"