By Elaine Forger

I think the thing that always gets me about the NoFizzUSA challenge is the simplicity of it – all it asks you to do is give up a soda or two, and replace it with water. No money exchanges hands, no hard sell pitches, no goofy products, no get rich quick schemes, and no false promises.

Choose water. Drink water for 30 days, and see if you don’t feel better after the month is over. Simple, easy, and it can be done by anybody. I love it!

I took the NoFizzUSA challenge with the 60 at 60 Event back in September and October of 2010. At first, I was nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to give up my favorite sodas and drink a whole 60 ounces of water every single day.

But fortunately, after a few days, I realized how easy it really was to cut down my soda intake slowly and surely, and make sure I drank more water.

I bought a water bottle and took it with me pretty much everywhere I went. And it worked! After just a couple of days, I had built the habit in my mind that I needed to be drinking water, and after a few weeks’ time, it was pretty much ingrained into my daily life that water was the way to go.

Now, I have had a soda or two since then, but I now have one every few months (I used to have one or two every day!), and I am really, really happy with my positive change. I think it’s important to enjoy a soda here and there (like every six to eight weeks!), as opposed to the one-a-day habit I had built up back when I was more unhealthy.

After several months of drinking water and being more active, I’ve lost weight, I feel better, my mind is clear, my skin feels and looks so much better, and I am happy to attack each day knowing water is by my side and I’m making the right choice for my health!

My only regret is not finding out about NoFizzUSA a few decades ago!

By Shannon Warren

I Choose Water!

I grew up heavy. And I grew up in a house that was always filled with diet soda. And it has taken me this long to see that perhaps the two are connected.

My parents were chronic, veteran weight watchers and devotees at the altar of Tab, and later Diet Coke. And they still are. And I don’t blame them – there is something (more than caffeine) so addictive in that stuff.

So it took me three times of signing up for the NoFizz America Monthly Challenge to actually complete it. This saddened me, and frightened me, but it didn’t shock me. I was addicted to diet soda.

I would take money out of savings to buy it. When it would snow, I would calculate how much I might need for the duration of the bad weather, and then make sure I had twice as much as I guessed I’d need in my house. I stopped for soda in the morning, on the way home, had it for all three meals and at dinner. And bedtime. And beside my bed in case I got thirsty during the night.

I started keeping the two liter bottles near all my favorite places to sit, so I wouldn’t have to walk to the kitchen for a fix. I had an upstairs bottle and a downstairs bottle all the time.

Co-workers knew about my addiction, they even called me the Diet Coke Queen (only it was a different five letter word that started with a “w” because I’d do anything to get it). They knew if they traveled with me, the first thing we’d do when we arrived somewhere was find a store for a 12 pack of the brown fizzy stuff. I would choose hotels, restaurants, routes to work based on how easily I could get my fix.

Yeah, it was bad.

But what was worse was seeing the same behavior starting in my kids. My little kids. We tried 100 different ways to get them off soda, but none of them worked because I was still drinking it.

So one day I was reading a book called Designated Fat Girl. It’s a memoir by a North Carolina native, Jennifer Joyner, about her experience with gastric bypass. And the sentence – the one sentence – that stood out for me from that whole book, was when the bariatric doctor told her “No more soda. Ever. The carbonation stretches out your stomach and will allow you to overeat.”

Ummm, what? If carbonation could stretch out her stomach, could it have done the same to me? I’m not a gastric bypass patient but hey, maybe the same thing applies, right?

So once again I went over to the NoFizz America site and read about artificial sweeteners, and how badly it messes up your metabolism and your ability to be satisfied and your body’s ability to regulate calorie intake for sweet stuff and I just…quit. I threw away the soda I was drinking and I quit. That was January 14, 2011, and I haven’t had a soda since then.

Nor have I wanted one.

I also started a weight loss plan that day and so far I have lost 25 pounds. And I am a NoFizzer for life. I occasionally will have some lemonade, or coffee, but the vast majority of my liquid intake is water. I bought myself some cool water bottles and I carry water with me everywhere. I have a certain amount that I drink by certain times every day – like a bottle by the time I get to work, another bottle by 11, another by after lunch, etc. People who know me are shocked to see me drinking water all the time – but it is the very best thing I can do for my body, so why wouldn’t I do it?

I’m also glad to report that my kids aren’t drinking soda anymore either – once in awhile, as a treat, they might have some. But we don’t keep it in our house and we don’t even miss it, now that it’s done.

If you’re thinking about doing a 30 day challenge – do it. Just take the first step. But have a plan – know what you will do to defend yourself against caffeine withdrawal, what you will order instead when you eat out, what you will keep around the house to drink…make it special. Try water with lemon, lime, orange, melon. Get a water filter for your tap or a pitcher. Drink out of a really pretty glass. Notice how when you drink water your thirst is quenched – your skin looks better, your body works more efficiently, your mind is clearer, and you know you are doing something really great for yourself.

Take the first step. One small change that will change your life, if you let it.

By Lydia Morban

NoFizz America came at almost the perfect time in my life. As a now 26-year old fresh out of college (Go Bucs – East Tennessee State!), I had gained a few pounds and was looking to really get on track with my health once I had settled down with my fiance, and in my new career in the Charlotte area.

I wasn’t really drinking that much soda, but I was eating fast food, not drinking enough water, not living an active lifestyle — you know, all the habits that unfortunately consume us in our 20s that becomes to difficult to shake 10 years later! I didn’t want to be a fatigued, lazy 35 year old, so I knew that I wanted to nip this in the bud immediately once I got settled in Charlotte.

I initially hired NoFizzUSA Founder/Executive Director Bobby DeMuro as a personal trainer in 2010, and so for me, it was extremely fun to watch the development of NoFizzUSA from the “front lines,” so to speak. I was a proud member of the first challenge back in April 2010, and I’ve been on the NoFizz lifestyle ever since – that’s about 14 months!

I am very proud to say that I haven’t had a soda ever since that first day, and although it wasn’t a major addiction for me to begin with (growing up, I only had 1 or 2 per month, maybe), I am still very happy that it’s something I’ve cut out of my life for good. I don’t have any cravings for any sort of soda or sugary drink, and I can honestly say it’s something I won’t be going back to at any point in my life!

I lead a very active lifestyle full of running, hiking, biking, and swimming, so I always make sure that I have a water bottle with me at all times. Because of this, taking the 60 ounces of water each day has been fairly easy, and on most days when it’s hot outside, I get way more than 60 ounces of water!

And the best part? Between the exercise regimen, cutting out the sugary drinks, and really focusing on drinking water (I even cut out coffee for a while!), I lost more than 25 pounds in almost 7 months, and I’ve been able to keep it off for good now, going on almost a year’s time! That alone motivates me to continue drinking water and maintaining my healthy lifestyle, though I know I am building other habits and benefits from this that I will see down the road as I get older.

To any of you who may be thinking about taking the challenge, do it! You might slip up one day, and that’s fine – just get back up, restart again, and try to go one more day without soda than you did the first time. It’s something so simple, and so easy to do, that really truly anyone can do it, and I think that’s why it’s taken off around here so much. Between weight loss, more energy, feeling lighter and stronger, better digestion, and faster metabolism, there’s really no bad side effect to making a point in your life to drink more water!

I’m happy that this has come into my life, and I look forward to drinking my water for years to come!

About the Author: Lydia – originally from Knoxville, TN – lives and works in Iredell County, North Carolina.

By Jim Mitchem

If there’s one thing that most everyone can agree on, it’s that what we consume has a direct influence on who we are. From the air we breathe to the things we read, and what we hear to what we swallow, ultimately, our consumption defines us. We are what we consume.

As a boy growing up in Florida, I chewed sugar cane, kept my pockets full of Bazooka Joe and drank soda. A lot of soda. I’ve been blessed with a really high metabolism, and have never carried a lot of extra weight, but my teeth have suffered greatly from all of the sugar I consumed. Until about 2000, I was a regular soda drinker. At lunch, a Coke. At dinner, a Coke. At night in front of the TV, a Coke.

And this wasn’t all that freakish. If anything, I didn’t drink as much as most other people I knew. But the fact that I was constantly at the dentist baffled me. I couldn’t put two and two together. That is, until one day a dentist told me that soda was like ‘liquid candy.’ Candy. Root canals. Ok, now I get it.

And so when my wife and I became parents I was hyper sensitive to the harmful effects of soda in terms of dental health. Dentists are expensive. Dentists hurt. So for the past decade, we’ve consumed a lot less soda. Which isn’t to say that we’ve given it up entirely. We don’t keep commercial soda in our house, but we do enjoy natural soda that contains far less sugar than the stuff they use to stock the shelves at Walmart. I’m pretty proud of the fact that my kids don’t drink it the way I did growing up.

But we can do better. At best, soda is just sweet and cold, and does nothing for hydration. It’s one of those things that we can easily give up by replacing it with water, and hopefully see a big difference in our overall health.

As it turns out, we drink a lot of soda in America. And this has far-reaching effects on all of us. The US ranks first among countries in soft drink consumption at about 15 billion gallons per year. We’re also the most obese industrialized nation on the planet. There are no coincidences. And since soda is mostly sugar, 39 grams in one 12-ounce can of Coke for example, we’re consuming sugar at a rate which exceeds our body’s ability to process it.

To say nothing about what it does to our tooth enamel. The result is a nation that pays too much for health insurance due in large part to the kinds of things we consume on a regular basis that make us sick. In this case, soda.

But what can we do? The messages for us to consume soda are so prevalent that the messages themselves have become culturally iconic. Sure, that Pepsi commercial during the Super Bowl was really funny, but the fact that soda is directly and negatively contributing to our nations’s poor health is nothing to laugh at. But hey, soda isn’t alcohol. So it’s ok. Perhaps we should all just accept the fact that soda is part of our national diet, and that there’s nothing we can do about it.

Or is there?

A movement has started here in Charlotte to educate, enlighten and challenge people to give up soda for 30 days and consume water instead. And it’s brilliant. I noticed it last year when my friend Bobby DeMuro started tweeting about something he called a ‘No Fizz Challenge.’

DeMuro, a transplanted Coloradoan, clearly understood the benefits of water over soda and began challenging people to give up the pop for water for a month. People responded. The results were positive. And the movement is growing.

Today, DeMuro operates No Fizz America, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that targets everyone from school aged children and social media influencers, to athletes and government officials. His appeal is simple – take the challenge, experience the benefits and share the results with others. It’s a concept so simple that it’s actually making a difference. No Fizz has started operating challenges across the country, and could use the support.

I encourage you to visit their website to learn more about the movement and maybe even see how you can help make a difference in your family and community by consuming pure water instead of syrupy chemicals. After all, this kind of revolution is long overdue in a nation where the obesity rate is over 30%. As for me and my family? We took the challenge in March. And our kids were really excited about it.

You are what you consume. This may be the perfect time for the people of this country to give this proverb a long look in the mirror.

About the Author: Jim Mitchem is the Owner and Creative Director of Smash Communications, one of the first virtual advertising agencies in the nation. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Tina, and daughters Agatha and Cozette (who are very good soccer players!).