Banning the (Soda) Can

I love saying “Ban the Can.” I actually did that one year for Thanksgiving. It was, by far, one of my favorite Thanksgivings of all time. Perhaps I’ll go into that later, but this week I banned a new can: the Soda Can.

I like to think of myself as being somewhat health conscious. I’m a Not-So-Fit Girl, not a fitness guru, so I give myself a little slack. Okay. A lot of slack. But there’s a Coke cooler at the hardware store where I work, and it’s so, so easy to just grab one and throw a dollar in the til. “But I’m drinking Diet Dr. Pepper,” I justify to myself. However, I took a little inventory recently and recognized that I actually drink soda a lot. This is a fairly new phenomenon. For several years I really only drank soda when we went out to eat. Which was at least once a week, mind you (pre-divorce days). But lately I’m drinking soda at least once a day, and not always diet.

Let’s be clear– I’m not ever, ever here to judge. I’m too busy passing judgement on myself to bother with worrying about what you are or are not doing. That’s your business. But I want to teach my tweedles healthy habits, and if we just went gang-busters on the health train all of a sudden, they would no doubt stage a mutiny. We already have some pretty strict rules about breakfast cereal: no high fructose corn syrup, nothing with more than 9 grams of sugar per serving, and no artificial colors. They’ve learned to read labels, and they know what cereals are a go, and which are a no-go. So, nixing soda seemed like a logical next step.

Totally stole this from The Kitchn. Sorry.

So, I told Talker, my 10 year old. He cried. Real tears. I assured him that these are just the new rules, they applied to me as well, and that my rules don’t apply when he’s at Daddy’s house. The only part that he concerned himself with was the fact that the Can Ban was for me, as well. “You’d better not drink any soda, or the deal is off!” he barked. (Deal? What deal?)

Cuddle Bug also cried. And he’s uber concerned about the fact that he can earn “Soda Passes” at school, where he’s allowed to drink a soda at school, so long as it’s brought from home. I had purchased some mini cans of Sprite for the very purpose, and he wanted to know what was going to happen to those cans. “Should we just drink them so you don’t have to throw them away?” Mmmm… no. We’ll hang on to them in case someone gets a tummy ache and needs something carbonated. As for the Soda Pass he earned this week, he brought a juice box to school in place of a soda, and didn’t seem any worse for the exchange.

Now, Demolition Man is a rare breed. He’s my fitness dude. He loves to exercise, and I’m no longer surprised to walk into a room and find him doing push-ups. He adores my dad, who has extreme amounts of self-control when it comes to food. When I told him the new No Soda rule, he shrugged and nodded. “That sounds like a good idea,” he said, and went back to building the fort du jour.

I’ll admit that I was tempted today at work to grab a Diet Dr. Pepper out of the cooler. But I stuck to water (which I actually love).

What food rules have you considered making, but held back because you weren’t sure how your family would react? Share your story!