Midnight soda to water queues

2026-10-06 22:33

about a year apart: 286 last march, 228 this morning. i'm the late-hours gamer type, so my old routine was a soda and whatever chips were within arm's reach during queue times. i didn't do some dramatic overhaul.

i just kept a cold bottle of sparkling water at the desk and stopped buying the 12-packs that used to live next to my chair. the weird part is the urge between matches got quieter.

i still notice it, but it doesn't run the whole night. energy for late sessions is better, and i'm not waking up feeling like i swallowed a bag of salt.

anyone else have a desk habit that shifted before the scale did?

2026-10-13 12:52

the 12-pack is basically a subscription with a zip code. I did the same but added a rule: drinks live at the desk, snacks live in the kitchen. If I want chips during queue, I have to stand up and walk there—half the time the match starts and I sit back down.

I also started logging “desk calories” separately in my notes app. Not full tracking, just a tally. It made the invisible arm’s-reach stuff visible.

Curious—did you replace the soda ritual with anything else, or just the bottle? The ritual seems like the load-bearing part.

2026-10-14 10:37

Nice work. The bit that jumps out is the 12-packs next to the chair—that's a cue/access thing more than willpower.

I did something similar with seltzer and a log of "desk calories" for 3 weeks; the soda was maybe 300-400/day, but the chips within arm's reach were often double that. In the trials, carbonation doesn't magically burn anything; it's mostly displacement plus maybe some gastric stretch/satiety, and the studies are mixed.

Curious: did you track whether the queue-time hunger changed, or did sparkling water mainly just keep your hands/mouth busy? That'd tell you if it's replacing the soda, the chips, or both.