Another in the "no soda" crowd here. I do tea (both iced and hot, depending on the season), but have slowly cut back on the amount of sugar I put in them. Especially here на юге, iced tea tends to have gobs of sugar in it, easily as much as what's in soda. Just going from full-sweet to a mixture of half-and-half, I legit lost 10 pounds. No other changes. (Granted I'm 6'5" and about 240, so it wasn't much percentage-wise, but still). What's great is that once you re-train your palate, super-sweet stuff just tastes gross. So маладец! Little changes like this can have huge payoffs.
I hear things about rewiring one's taste buds. Haven't tried it long enough to see the effect yet. (Good on you for using your Russian! Thing to note is that "молодец" is one of those words where the vowels only change in reading, not in writing)
Oh yeah, that always used to cause me a headache. Sneaky Russians! (In case the reference isn't clear).