Ah. Er.
Posted by devra on January 20, 2007
So here’s what’s up with moi.
(1) I did give up coffee, as alluded to at the old blog.
Despite that, I continued to feel like utter crap (upset stomach, exhausted, nearly impossible to get up in the morning, etc.). Which led to
(2) I gave sugar (after a fashion).
I had exchanged coffee (to keep me awake) for sugar (mainly chocolate). I feel better now, but my body is still adjusting. I’ve been on a two week observational tour of my blood sugar. The first day without chocolate or sugar was like watching a crackhead without a score - wild mood swings, pacing back and forth, alternately exhausted and wired, friendly and ready to kill the next person to open his mouth. Ick. Pa.the.tic. After that, things got steadily better. It was interesting to me to experience my blood sugar dropping 45 minutes after eating lunch every single day - the first couple days I spent snacking every hour on the hour just to maintain some level of alertness. I think my body had forgotten how to regulate itself.
So I say I gave it up ‘after a fashion’, because I still eat fruit and drink fruit juice. But I’m staying away from candy, sugary snacks, baked goods, and the like. Any ’sugar’ is fruit sugar, in a natural a form as I can get it.
The other thing is
(3) I started eating breakfast.
That was the final step to regulate my blood sugar. It never occurred to me over these long years of coffee addiction that the reason I’m SO EXHAUSTED in the morning and I NEED COFFEE to wake me up was because I was experiencing extremely low blood sugar first thing in the AM. Um, duh? Yeah, it just wasn’t remotely an explanation for me - if I’m not hungry, how can I be experiencing low blood sugar? I’m TIRED, I need a JOLT. Well, no. The ‘jolt’ I was getting from my cuppa joe every morning was the jolt of sugar moreso than caffeine. Funny that. They work in tandem, but my cup of ‘coffee’ was more like a cup of sugary sweet cream plus coffee. So, you do the math.
Anyway, be proud of me. Getting away from sugar is the closest I’ve ever been to the experience of drug withdrawal and it SUCKED.
