Tag: caffeine

I Miss It So Much

I’m having a weird stomach day. Not a bad day, just a weird day. That’s not what this post is about though. This post is about caffeine.

I used to consume caffeine by the truck load. I took it in caramel colored, carbonated form. Soda. Decades of Coca~Cola followed by a few years of Diet Pepsi. I just couldn’t get enough of that sweet, sweet, bubbly caffeine.

Then I signed up for elective weight loss surgery. I met with a dietitian at one of my first consultation appointments and was given a list of things that I had to say goodbye to forever. Both caffeine and carbonated beverages were on the list. I knew it was going to be tough but I also knew I was up for the challenge. I had my last ever soda that day.

Now here we are, about two and a half years later, and I would KILL for some caffeine right now. I have had a moderately decent night’s sleep each of the last three nights. I should be feeling fine in the exhausted department right now but I am not. Quite the opposite. I’m really tired. Back in the days prior to February 2022 I had so much caffeine each day that it barely affected me. Now? After over two years cold turkey? I bet even the tiniest sip of a caffeinated drink would leave me wired for hours on end. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Ah, for the good old days (he said sarcastically because the good old days included weighing over 400 pounds and he never ever wants to go back to that again).

Yeah, as nice as it would be to have a little caffeinated pick me up right now, I wouldn’t. No, I like the way I feel these days and I don’t want to do anything that will make me sick. Nope, while I miss it today I do not miss it enough to start thinking about how things used to be. No nostalgia here, my friends. I’ll trade a sleepy afternoon for being able to walk up a flight of stairs without feeling like I am going to die. That’s a trade that I win easily.

As for my stomach being weird today, I don’t think it’s diet or bypass surgery related though what else could it be? I woke up at 4:00am this morning (bladder: I’m old, it happens) and my stomach was pretty upset. I actually said out loud, “uh oh.” I whispered it. My wife was asleep and I didn’t want to wake her. I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately. When I woke up at 5:15 I felt better. Half an hour later I was doing my morning exercise and drinking some water and I felt off again. I paused on the water for a while and felt better again. I ate breakfast in the car on the way to work and it went fine. A little before lunch I felt a little queasy. I thought I was hungry and I think I was. I had some chicken for lunch and felt a little better at first, but then started feeling off again. I stopped eating for a while and eventually felt a little better. I had a snack and it went fine. That was about 90 minutes ago. Now I am drinking some water. In about five minutes I am going to have my last round of daily vitamins for the day. Here’s hoping things continue to feel okay through that. I expect I am going to have to have something to eat before I leave work today. There will be too long a gap between my after-lunch snack and dinner. My stomach is scheduled to be empty and angry starting around 5:30 tonight. I’ll have something small and then I should be okay for dinner.

Until then… dreams of that sweet, sweet caffeine. Sigh.

Natural Caffeine Alternatives

I was a teenager when my taste buds and I first fell head over heels in love with Coca~Cola. Thus began my lifelong dependency on caffeine. That ended at one of my first weight loss clinic appointments when the dietician told me that one of the costs of the surgery was never having caffeine again. Despite my addiction, I was okay with that. Maybe because of my addiction. I was more than ready to put an end to caffeine.

Here we are, a year and a half and one gastric bypass surgery later, and I am working in the office today. I am in a conference room with two other staff members. One of them is drinking a diet coke and for the first time I am finding myself gazing longingly at the can. What the hell, Robert? I thought we’d moved beyond this.

I’ve also been finding myself getting really sleepy in the afternoons. It’s just the sort of things that a little caffeinated beverage would go a long way toward helping. Nope. We’re not going down that road again. My caffeinated days are 100% over.

It did start me wondering about natural caffeine alternatives. Is there anything that is reasonably healthy and gastric bypass friendly that I could use as a replacement? The first article I hit on had a couple of things that might be worth looking into. What is Carob? It’s a chocolate substitute? Interesting. There is a link to a carob bark recipe that uses some weird berry I’ve never heard of. I wonder if I could replace the berries with peanuts?

One thing the article listed will not be going into my diet today or ever. Cordyceps. First of all… mushrooms? Eh, no. Second, I saw The Last of Us and cordyceps literally* brought on the end of the world so keep them the hell away from me!

I have also brought this up in a post to one of the bariatric surgery facebook groups. Sometimes I get a ton of responses when I ask questions there. Sometimes I get nothing. I expect to get nothing this time, but it was worth a try.

I will keep digging around and see if I can find anything interesting. I’ll let you know.

*Cordyceps literally brought about the end of the world in a fictional story. Would it be then more correct for me to have said Cordyceps fictionally brought about the end of the world? Ah, grammar.

Stressing

Surgery is in 16 days and I am stressing a little. Not about the surgery itself, but about some things that go along with it.

I need to book a Covid-19 test three days before the surgery. They gave me a few clinics I can go to. I spent a lot of time on the phone with two of them today, trying to schedule a test, and never spoke to a human. Jen reminded me that today is a state holiday in Massachusetts, so that might be why. Still… if you’re not home today, add that to your voice message.

I haven’t had caffeine since February 3rd (I think). I haven’t missed it. Even last Wednesday when I did my 38 hour sleep-free stretch, I was never wishing I could have some caffeine. I am today though. I am jonzing go-juice in a big way. I’m exhausted and I could really use a little help staying focused. I can’t though. I can never have caffeine again.

I do have one little piece of good news, surgically speaking. I checked the documentation they gave me to see what restrictions there are on lifting things immediately post-op. It says not to lift anything over 25 pounds for six weeks after the surgery. Why is that important to me? The average weight of a Gibson Les Paul is around 10 pounds. That’s a ton in the guitar world, but it’s far below my limit. Sigh of musical relief.

Vitamins

The age of Taking Vitamins has begun.

There are four vitamins I need to take post-weight loss surgery and the dietician suggested I start now. I will now be taking three pills with breakfast and two each with lunch and dinner. I think I need a pill caddie, babie.

I took the three with breakfast today even though I don’t eat breakfast. That’s about to change too, but for now I just took the three pills. I had a moment of brain fry with lunch. I have to stop drinking anything 15 minutes before I eat and 60 minutes after. I made myself some lunch and started eating. Then I remembered the pills. Okay, so today’s lunch pills will be approximately 60 minutes after lunch. I’ll figure this out.

The food log is still going, sort of. I haven’t started measuring yet but I am keeping track. I also haven’t started working off the meal plan the dietician gave me. I think that starts next week. I’m also supposed to replace breakfast with a protein shake. I have the shake mix but I won’t have fat free milk to mix it into until over the weekend, so the shakes start next week too.

I still haven’t had any caffeine or soda since February 3rd. That’s going well. The no drinking with food thing is a serious bitch. I keep forgetting about that. It’s resulting in me drinking less water and it might be resulting in me eating less food, but it’s also a pain in the ass to keep on top of. I’ll get there though.

My next appointment is next week with the Psych folks. Oh, am I looking forward to that.*

Okay, back to work. I am just over three hours away from a full week vacation and I really, really need it right now. Freedom is close, but there is a lot of work still in the way.

*Sarcasm. Or , if you prefer.

Bio-Break Blues

One thing I’ve read* about drinking soda is that it dehydrates you. I’m pretty sure it’s the Carbon Dioxide in the carbonation that does it, but caffeine might play a role too. I could Google that but I’m lazy. The effect of drinking lots of soda all day long is that you are drying your insides out. Sort of.

So what happens when you stop drinking soda? I suppose that all depends on what you replace it with. In my case, I have replaced it with water. So what happens when you stop drinking soda all day and start drinking water all day?

Well… you don’t get dehydrated, right? Okay, so what does that mean? It means a lot of things, none of which I know anything about what with me knowing dick about biology. One thing I do have a lot of knowledge about is… well… it’s embarrassing and well into TMI territory but…

…I am peeing all the time. I am living in Urination Nation right now. I’m really lucky that there is a bathroom attached to the room I spend all day working in because I only have to take about 8 steps and I’m ready to go. I am most definitely not taking the piss when I say that every five minutes I am taking a piss. It feels like every time I manage to drain the main vein it is full again within 20-30 minutes.

The math seems to work out: Drink water all day = Taking a leak all day. Even Geordi La Forge would understand that**.

*Maybe if I had proof read this post I would have noticed that there was a typo on the fourth effin’ word. I fixed it, but come on, Robert.

**Remember that scene from Star Trek First Contact when Zephram Cochran has to explain to Geordi what taking a leak means and Geordi thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s heard in years?

Banned Things

Over the last 5-6 months or so I have banned some things from my life. Well, banned or boycott. Whichever is more appropriate. How am I doing on these things?

The most recent ban started six days ago when I started working to remove carbonated beverages and caffeine from my diet. If I am going to go through with the weight loss surgery process, then these two items will be permanently removed from my diet forever and ever. Apparently they are both stomach irritants and when you surgically mangle the stomach the way I plan to, then irritants are really bad.

I first learned of this development on Thursday 2/3 and my first day without either of them was Friday 2/4. I’ve made it six days. So far so good, I guess, but it’s definitely not a second nature sort of thing yet. Not even close. My quarantine routine over the last 23-24 months has involved filling up a bottle of water before I go to bed (with grape flavoring, always). If I don’t finish the bottle then I finish it the next day, but not until sometime in the afternoon. I’d have soda, diet pepsi, in the morning and early afternoon. Caffeine and soda. Now I am just drinking water all the time so the night time water bottle carries into the morning. That probably sounds more complicated than it is, but the point here is that every morning I continue to leave the water bottle next to my bed as if I was going to have a morning soda. No. You’re not. Six days on and I still forget that I am not drinking soda anymore pretty much every morning. That needs to end.

So the dietary bans are still going well, though not quite a routine yet. What was the other ban? Facebook. August 27, 2021 was the day I sort of spur of the moment banned Facebook from my life. That was a little more then five months ago. It looks like five months is pretty much long enough to get to the point where I don’t even notice it anymore. It hasn’t been 100%, but I think I can count the number of times I’ve visited on one hand. FoMO brought me back to clear off some notifications once, and once I went on to just mention I wasn’t going on anymore. That was probably pointless. The last time was a couple of weeks ago when I found out one of my Aunts wasn’t well and I checked my cousins accounts to see if I could learn anything. I was only on for a few minutes but I’ll fess up and admit I was there.

Other than those few times I’ve been able to stay away. I don’t think about it anymore. In fact, I got a notifications email the other day for the Lizardfish group and I had to look at it twice to remember what it was talking about. Sometimes it needles me, like when a YouTube show or a podcast that I am a regular viewer/listener of makes a mention of their respective Facebook groups, of which I am a member, and I don’t know what’s going on. I feel out of the loop. FoMO starts creeping in, but I forget about it quickly enough.

So my personal cancel culture targets are still going strong. Facebook is a big nothing to me now. Caffeine and carbonated drinks are going to be tougher to deal with. I can do it though. Absolutely.

Sleep Check

One full day without caffeine followed by one night’s sleep.

Q: Did it have any effect?
A: I don’t know.

I got eight hours of sleep last night, which is both good and rare, but it has more to do with today being Saturday than anything else. We went to bed around 11:00 last night and I was out like a light almost immediately. That is likely a side effect. The sleep numbers that my watch tracked were average, I guess. Not too different than the last couple of weeks. My restful sleep percentage might have been a touch higher but not much.

That’s one night. I wonder how things will look/feel after a few weeks/months?

Let’s find out.

Fun with Caffeine

It’s been more than 24 hours since I’ve consumed any caffeine. Probably closer to 28 hours, maybe.

28 loooong, caffeine free hours.

As expected, I am really tired right now. Not so much that it’s a distraction, but I am feeling it. What I was not expecting, but probably should have, is the headache. It’s not bad, it’s just there. Is it too soon to start having caffeine withdrawals? Is it psychosomatic (probably)? Am I going to sleep better tonight? I hope so.

Caffeine Free

I am going to start this today. Oh shit.

During my weight loss surgery appointment yesterday I was told that my future includes a permanent ban on both caffeine and carbonated drinks. People who know me know that caffeine and carbonation are literally two of my personal four food groups. The whole process is going to suck and be really difficult, but as of this moment I am thinking that caffeine and carbonation are going to be the biggest, most difficult change. I mean, we literally have four 12-packs of diet pepsi in the house at this moment.

I also had a pretty crappy night’s sleep last night and I am guessing ’round about 2:00pm I am going to be seriously wishing I could have some caffeine.

Nope.

This is what my future looks like.

Sick Time

Just thinking ahead on this whole redesigning my internal organs discussion. I asked what the recovery time would look like. They said they recommend you stay out of work for 3-4 weeks while you re-teach your newly remodeled stomach how to handle different types of food. As of right now I have enough sick time banked to be out for half day shy of five weeks. I’ll have to use some of that for the slew of appointments I need to make before the surgery, but I think I am in good shape. I have a ton of vacation time that needs to be used too. Maybe some of those appointments will use vacation time instead of sick time. Maybe.

We’re supposed to have a storm tonight. I keep trying to get a forecast that gives a snow estimate but they all just say a mix of snow and freezing rain. No accumulation estimates. I think that’s a good thing. Freezing rain blows chunks but it’s better than snow, at least as far as shoveling the driveway and plowing the streets are concerned. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Have I mentioned Weather Kitty yet? It’s a weather app for iOS (I don’t know about other platforms, mostly because I don’t use them so I don’t care). It combines weather forecasts with adorable kitties. If that’s your thing, you should check it out.

So… no more caffeine and no more carbonated drinks. I had a diet pepsi before the appointment. I’ve had one since. I’m not going to say that those are the last two sodas I’ll have in my life. I am not even going to say they are the last two sodas I’ll have before the surgery… but they could be. It’s possible. Don’t hold your breath or anything, but it is possible.

This is going to be difficult. It’s also going to be worth it, but it is going to be difficult.