Tag: soda

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.

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?

Cheap Soda

My company has soda machines all over the place. The cans of soda are nearly free for staff. We have to pay the $0.05 state deposit and that’s it. Picture it; me, a lifelong dedicated fanatical soda drinker working in a building where cans of soda cost a nickel. Basically heaven.

Except that I can’t drink soda anymore. Shit.

I am in a new building now. Did I mention that? Probably. We were in Waltham, which was closer to home for me than any other company building, but they sold the Waltham building during the pandemic. We were moved to Westwood, which is further away than Waltham but was the next closest building to home. When we had our brief return to office experiment over the summer we had to setup our new desks and get used to the new place. Now it’s just where we go. No big whoop, right?

There was a point in time during our Waltham stay where I was trying to eliminate caffeine in the afternoon. I started bringing a water bottle and filling it up from the water cooler in the kitchenette. It tasted really bad. If I added a ton of ice it would get cold enough that the bad taste was sort of masked, but even if I put my go-to grape flavoring stuff in it, the taste was still crappy.

Now I am under doctor’s orders to no longer drink soda (Robert wipes away a single tear) so I’m back to the water bottle. There’s a little cooler in the kitchenette here too. I just filled up… nervous that this water would be bad too…

It isn’t. It sure ain’t the Poland Springs wonder that is our cooler at home, but it’s okay. I can live with it.

That sound you heard all over the surface of the Earth was my emphatic sigh of relief.

One Hour Down

One Nana Sitting hour down, 23 or so to go.

Two items of note:

First, I friggin did it again. I forgot to bring a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi with me today. What a moron. Looks like it’s grape flavored tap water for me for the next 23 or so hours.

Second, and this has nothing at all to do with the current situation but is instead a comment on modern cinema… I guess…

The E Network is showing all of the Harry Potter movies today because wouldn’t you? Sorcerer’s Stone was just kicking off when I got here. I had a thought about it that never occurred to me before. Sort of a Marvel What If? kinda thought.

Harry and Draco Malfoy meet outside of the great hall for the first time on their first day of school. They are waiting to be escorted in by McGonagall so they can be sorted into houses. Malfoy is his normal, slimy, racist, entitled prick self right off the bat. He offers to show newbie Harry the ropes and extends his hand in friendship. Harry, not being a schmuck, brushes him off.

The thought I had at that point was this: What would have happened between the two of them if Harry had been sorted into Slytherin? We know the sorting hat considered putting him in that house but Harry asked it not to. If Harry had been a Slytherin, would their rivalry have continued throughout their school years the way it did? Would they eventually have become buds? Maybe not actual friends, but would they have tolerated each other? Would Malfoy have acted on his jealousy the way that Ron Weasley never really did?

Someone has to think of these things, you know? Should I write fan fiction? Maybe a short story about how Harry hooks up with Pansy Parkinson and Malfoy loses his shit over it? Hmmmm… how about no? Yeah, no.

InstaCrack Strikes Again

It happened again. We ordered Diet Pepsi and they brought regular Pepsi. I’ve lost 17 pounds in the past month and suddenly instacart is trying to tempt me back to the soda dark side.

I must fight it. I must be diet strong.

I’m So Tired

I got a decent night’s sleep last night, but I am still really tired.  Not as tired as I was yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that.  I’m not doing a very good job sticking to the no caffeine policy.  In four of the last five days in the office I’ve been getting a Coke Zero after lunch because I can feel myself running out of gas.  It’s annoying to me.  I don’t want caffeine anymore.  I don’t want soda anymore.  I want to keep losing weight, and even with diet sodas I don’t feel that I am helping myself by having soda.

Oh the struggle.

In the past when I’ve lost weight I’ve felt pretty good.  What’s the deal this time?  I have lost more weight in the last two months than at any time I can remember.  Why then do I not have more energy than I did before getting on the wagon?  Why am I tired all the time.  I should have 32 pounds worth of additional feel good pep coursing through my veins.  I feel gypped.  Really.

Not that I am going to fall off the wagon any time soon.  I’m in this for the long haul.  32 pounds down, something like 160 still to go!  (not really.  I don’t have a goal in mind.  I just like the sound of what the weight value would be if I lost 190 pounds during this weight watchers stint.  A fat boy can dream, right?)