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.

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*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.