Gingre Ale has just as much sugar as Coke, so you're not really gaining anything there. I would also stay away from the fruit-juice, except for the occasional post-workout meal, as it's much higher on the glycemic index.
Spread your food over 6 or 7 smaller meals throughout the day, making sure to get a good source of protein in each one (chicken, turkey, cottage cheese, fish), some fruit and vegetable matter (the higher the fiber the better) and some healthy fats (natural peanut butter, nuts and seeds, olive oil, avacados)
I've found that the Zone diet works great as it's an easy way to reach a relatively high level of precision and accuracy in your diet, which helps a lot with consistency.
As for the workouts, I would shoot for sessions of higher intensity, interval style. The WOD on the main-page is this kind of workout, which boosts your metabolism all day and retains lean body mass better than traditional cardio. Also adding some dedicated strength training will boost muscle-mass, which also boosts metabolism.
One last thing is to save any low-intensity cardio for pre-breakfast. The information goes both ways, but Dr. Lonnie Lowery has some decent information about fasted AM cardio in this article:
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=927737Good luck.
