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.