“You’re looking good” a colleague and friend told me at the pub last night. She was referring to my recent weight loss. I told her it was the combination of the holiday, the exercise, and the recent decision to give up “soft drink”. “It’s a killer”, she told me, and I’m tending to agree.

I have always had a sweet tooth, and, since childhood I have always really liked soft drink. Lemonade, Lemon Squash – they’re my favourites – as well as Passiona, Fanta, Diet Coke, Ginger Beer and…. Sarsaparilla. Now there’s a soft drink you don’t see much on the shelves anymore. Although my mum used to call it “fly tox” (a phrase which would mean nothing to anyone under the age of thirty), I always loved the taste of “Sars”. I still feel a sense of grief it’s no longer readily available in the corner milk bar. Sorry, I mean “Convenience Store”.

Unfortunately, soft drink is fattening when over-consumed. And for years, I’ve confused far too much. A lot of it has to do with the 600ml bottle, I think. It’s just too easy to consume a lot of soft drink, these days.

I think my recent decision to give up soft-drink has been a major factor in my weight-loss. I still can’t quite give up the “carbon sensation”, and so I still drink some carbonated mineral water in place of soft-drink (along with a couple of litres of still water from the tap each day at work), but I’ve found the removing soft-drink from my diet has been life-changing.

Yeah, I know there’s an argument about moderation, and I still have the occasional Diet Coke, but generally speaking I think there’s an “addiction issue” associated with soft drink that maybe doesn’t receive the attention it should.

For me, the compromise is also those bottles waters with just a taste of something sweet, or adding a taste of lemon or lime to some water. One of the great compromising “soft drinks” is the Swedish soft-drink Ramlösa. Essentially it’s carbonated mineral water with just a taste of something sweet or exotic – everything from mango to rhubarb.

I never quite reached my weight loss goal on recent trip to Sweden holiday, but I still managed to lose a couple of kilograms. Although I would like to get down to 75kg, I seem to have settled around 80kg. That still means I’m overweight – with a BMI of 26.1 – but it’s a LOT better than I was a few years ago when I topped at about 105kg. Yeah seriously. Although it’s hard to quantify what contributed the most to my weight loss, I’m beginning to think it’s soft drink that may have been causing me the most problems.