Having been contemplating my own relationship with diet coke over the last few weeks, I was interested to see that among the blogs and journals I read regularly, it appears I�m not the only one.

Growing up I never drank coke, or diet coke, or cola of any kind. I was a fanta, lemonade type person. It wasn�t until some time during university that I started drinking diet coke � as I recall it was under the influence of an already addicted flat mate - and it rapidly became an addiction.

A pleasant lovely addiction.

For a solid decade it has been my drink. Since I started work I have bought a 600ml bottle on my way into the office almost every morning as my heart-starter. Back when I first started working and was making no money at all I used to buy the large economy bottles at the supermarket and each morning siphon from the large bottle to a 600ml bottle as an economical way of feeding my addiction.

The �breakfast� diet coke was usually followed by a lunch time diet coke, a mid-afternoon diet coke, a working late diet coke, and a get home from the office diet coke that could be refilled at leisure.

And yes, sometimes I did feel like my teeth would fall out. But no, they didn�t fall out, in fact I haven�t had a filling since I was eight (touch wood).

Then, at the end of last year, I went through that �I�m going to get healthy next year� thing most of us do, and decided to cut down on the diet coke. Not cut it out � no going cold turkey � just cutting back. I felt that the best way to achieve this was to avoid getting on the daily rollercoaster. No morning heart-starter.

So, upon returning to work after the Christmas break I began by substituting a giant juice from the place next door for my diet coke. And it worked. I pretty rapidly found myself having only one can or 375ml bottle of diet coke during the day at work, and that remarkably enough a 2 litre bottle could last a week in the fridge at home instead of 2 days.

I hadn�t got rid of the addiction entirely, but I really didn�t want to give up the bubbly black gold altogether. There�s too much goodness in there.

But over the last couple of weeks, since I recovered from the cold, I somehow fell back into the heart-starter-numerous drinks during the day habit. This also coincided with my eating more junk food than I had all year as well. So most likely it was just one of those lapses we all have to have.

I wasn�t all that concerned about falling back into old coke habits, except that something I had previously suspected rapidly became undeniably apparent. That�s right, diet coke, possibly the love of my adult life, gives me gas.

It�s depressing. One can a day doesn�t, but my old multiple litres a day does. Especially when combined with large quantities of beer � something else I also gave up coming into the new year. This past weekend all I drank was coke and beer and I am really not happy � or comfortable - with the results.

So as of today I�m back to one diet coke a day (and I haven�t even had today�s yet) and beer only for Friday night drinks and other special occasions (wine and spirits the rest of the time).

I�m sure it�ll be better for my waist-line, in more ways than one.