Quit the Fizz



Quit the FizzJoshua J. BuckSalt Lake Community College Quit the FizzI have decided that I want to quit drinking soda pop; Coca-Cola, more specifically. There are a few positives and motivating factors that will help me. First, the cost of drinking soda, if you add it up, is quite a bit more than you would think. Second, the health benefits of not drinking soda pop are shocking when you look into them. The chance of me developing diabetes, and having tooth decay go up. There are more health benefits, but we will get into that later. I have decided to use negative punishment to help me change my behavior. The punishment I have chosen is running. I really do not like it. I know for some it is a favorite thing to do with their free time, not the case for me. So, if a break down and drink soda of any kind then I will have to run two miles. In reality, it is a positive punishment for my health because running is good for my body over all. I also used positive reinforcement for this experiment. Every day that I did not drink soda pop, I would get five dollars to use towards buying new tools. New tools was the positive reinforcement that I chose, but there are also many “natural” positive reinforcements for not drinking soda pop. According to Bushak (2015), a 2012 Harvard study showed that soda drinkers were twenty percent more likely to have a heart attack and raises a person’s blood pressure. I was surprised that simply drinking soda had such a large correlation to an increased risk for heart attacks. Soda pop also affects our brains in many ways. Animals placed on high-sugar diets had reduced amounts of a chemical that impacted their abilities to learn and remember things (Bushak, 2015). Soda pop consumption has also been linked to Alzheimer’s disease (Bushak, 2015). Learning about all the negative health effects that can result from drinking soda, has changed my perspective about soda consumption in a life-changing way. These are far bigger positives for me than my outside positive reinforcement of new tools. I have tried many times to quit this drinking of soda pop. This time around seemed to be a lot less difficult than it has been in the past. When I have tried before, I experienced headaches, but by some kind of divine intervention I had none. Now, that is not to say I did not have difficult times, this was just one of the biggest factors that helped make it easier for me to not drink soda pop. My body had become addicted to caffeine. On the first day of May sixth, it was weird not having my bubbly, fizzy, nose tickling refreshment in the late morning, and that threw my day off. The most noticeable thing, was that I had zero on the energy front. I felt very lethargic, and felt like I could not rub my eyes enough. The rest of that week was very challenging. I would go to put gas in the car and that would tempt me. I would go to the grocery store, and there it was just sitting there calling to me. A few of the things that where the most difficult were going out to eat and being around family, especially my dad. I would walk in the door and no matter how many times I would tell him that I was quitting soda pop, he would offer me a Coke or some kind of other bubbly drink. I did find myself drinking quite a bit of lemonade to replace my sugar loss. Which, thinking about it now, I should have been more specific about no drinks with sugar or caffeine. Replacing soda with another sugary drink, like lemonade, negates a lot of the health benefits that could be gained by not drinking soda, like decreasing the risk of diabetes. In terms of the negative consequence and positive reinforcement that I chose to help me reach my goal, it is interested to look back and think about which was more motivating for me. Was I more motivated to obtain the positive reinforcements, or was I more motivated by wanting to avoid the negative punishment of running? In my opinion, I believe that avoiding the negative punishment was more of a motivation for me to not drink soda. I did not care that much about obtaining money to buy tools. If I did not get new tools, I would not have been upset, on the other hand the thought of running two miles stuck enough fear in my heart to make not drinking soda pop a lot easier. I just hate running that much. As I think about the negative consequence motivating me more to not drink soda, I think that a lot in life is the same. When you are a kid, you are more scared of being grounded or punished for making a bad choice than receiving positive reinforcements. There are many times I made a certain choice as a kid to avoid the negative punishment that I knew I would receive if I chose otherwise. Even adults at work are more motivated by avoiding negative consequences. Why do we show up to work on time? Not wanted to receive a punishment or be fired is the motivation in that instance. The majority of people would not be in the office at eight a.m. sharp, if there were no negative consequence for being late. With all the new information that I have learning about health benefits, and after many days spent turning down offers of soda pop and temptation at restaurants and grocery stores, I still relapsed on the very last day. I wanted a soda pop so badly, that I gave in quickly drove to the nearest gas station. What surprised me is that the soda pop tasted horrible. It was definitely not worth the two-mile run I embarked on later that evening. Did it taste horribly because of the consequence I knew was attached to it? Was it because my taste buds had changed over the previous nine days? Or maybe because I knew about the detrimental health effects that I was choosing for my body. I do not know. All I know is that looking back, I would have not chosen to drink that night. In conclusion, I do believe that the operant conditioning that was part of this experiment did help me to be more successful than I have ever been before trying to quit drinking soda pop. Now, with all that information, I am currently still struggling not to drink soda and in fact am sipping an ice old Coke as I write this paper.Works CitedBushak, L. (2015, May 18). Bye-bye sugary drinks: This is what happens when you stop drinking soda. Retrieved June 10, 2016, from ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download