Giving Up Caffeine

Well, the time has come for me to give up caffeine once again. Why you might ask? Because I’m way too addicted to it, and I know how completely shitty it is for the body. Here are some reasons why caffeine sucks:

• It disrupts REM sleep, making you feel tired in the morning
• It increases cortisol, making you feel stressed out
• It distrupts the body’s glucose system, increasing insulin levels by as much as 50%
• It makes weight loss difficult since the body can’t burn fat with high levels of insulin in the blood

The problem with working in a high tech industry is that there’s free pop. So, instead of just grabbing a cup of water, I usually grab a diet coke. Which is just so wrong.

Some time this morning, Clay came up to my desk and noticed the two diet coke cans I had on my desk. He was like “yo man, you should really give that shit up — it’s not good for you.” And he’s right. I sat there thinking as he left — thinking about my dad in the hospital, thinking about the brown liquid shit I put into my body everyday and decided he was right – it was time to give it up. So, I had my last can of diet coke around noon today.

I gave up caffeine once before, so I know just how hellish the next few days are going to be. Tomorrow should be ok, but sometime on Thursday I can fully expect to be in full withdrawl, complete with a splitting headache and the need to vomit. I really feel like I need to do this though, and start making changes in my life for the better.

The unfortunate part to this is that in an effort to stay away from carby/sugary drinks, I usually have a rum and diet coke. But diet coke has caffeine in it, so that drink is toast. Wine might be ok for a while, but it’s not really a pub drink. Anyone have any suggestions for other drinks?