Diet Coke

Cloister

Pronunciation: 'kloi-st&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English cloistre, from Old French, from Medieval Latin claustrum, from Latin, bar, bolt, from claudere to close -- more at CLOSE
1 a : a monastic establishment b : an area within a monastery or convent to which the religious are normally restricted c : monastic life d : a place or state of seclusion
2 : a covered passage on the side of a court usually having one side walled and the other an open arcade or colonnade
[cloister illustration]

Don't get me wrong cloister was obviously a very familar word to me, and I had some idea that it was referring to some kind of feature of old buildings but this is about me pinning words down. There are a huge number of words that I may understand when I'm reading or hearing them in context but if I was asked to define them I wouldn't be able to give a very accurate description. Thus I need to admit that I didn't know exactly what a cloister was, and now I do so I'm very happy. It's only 8.30 and I've already learnt something.

About diet coke. Now some of you may know that after hearing a documentary on the sweetener aspartame I decided to give up diet coke. I know there is a lot of hype about artificial sweeteners and not all of it may be true but my logic was this: even if aspartame isn't all that bad giving up diet coke is not going to hurt me. Even if I don't benefit from reducing my aspartame intake I probably will benefit from reducing my diet coke intake anyway. So yeah I gave up diet coke completely. And I used to drink quite a lot of it. Sometimes I'd have a can of it at work - maybe three times a week - and normally a couple of glasses of it after work.

So I gave it up and that was all fine, I didn't go through any withdrawal which I was quite surprised about as coke is my only source of caffine and I thought totally cutting caffine out of my diet might affect me, but I guess coke doesn't really have that much in it, and well, it didn't affect me so yay!

Now what happened though was after a while I got into the habit of occasionally having a can of real coke while at work. Because I've got no quarrel with sugar... but this became more and more frequent and so I decided I needed to stop having coke at work. Yesterday though I really wanted a cold drink, and while tap water is lovely, it's not all that cold. So I decided I have a diet coke. As most of the negative effects of aspartame only really apply for people who consume it in excess, so I thought one can once a week would be ok. But the thing was I didn't even enjoy it. And now I have no desire for a diet coke again! Isn't that great.

I encourage everyone to follow my example!

:)
Mindy