In an effort to change some of my unhealthy habits, I’ve introduced a new weekly health challenge into my life!

My first challenge last week was giving up soft drinks, pop, soda, Coke, or whatever you call it. I’ve been drinking 1-2 Diet Cokes a day recently and I decided it was time to force myself out of the habit of purchasing a Diet Coke at around 10am every morning and then again (if the first was already consumed) at 2:30pm. Thanks to illness this habit proved very easy to break since I was more likely to want water or tea last week than Diet Coke! I started the challenge Thursday so I’ll continue it through at least this Thursday.

I’m allowing myself one exception per week to each health challenge. So my soft drink challenge exception was the Wimbledon final. Sadly my drinking Diet Coke didn’t propel Andy Murray to victory, but it was worth the exception – I realized after a few sips it didn’t really taste that good with my meal, so I switched to water and never finished the Diet Coke! It’s still in my fridge so maybe I’ll finish it later this week, but I’d say that’s a good sign that I’ve broken my Diet Coke habit!

So what’s my challenge for this week? This challenge is overlapping a little bit with the Diet Coke challenge since I wanted to get in a pattern of starting my challenges on Sundays. In an effort to make sure the two challenges worked well together this week’s challenge is helping to fill the Diet Coke void – to drink at least 1L of water a day. I never drink enough water, so this is hopefully going to help me get in the good habit of drinking water! Yesterday the task seemed daunting at first when I filled up the empty 1L Diet Coke bottle with water – but I not only accomplished my goal, I drank more than 1L! Hopefully the rest of this challenge goes as easily as day 1!

If you have any ideas for future health challenges let me know! They aren’t all about food and drink – some of the ones I have in mind are exercise related, and some are “mental health” related (ex. novels), and one is even apartment cleaning related – so really anything goes! I’ll keep you updated on any interesting challenges!