Soda Addiction - Part II

It is now Day 3 without Dr. Pepper. Here are some of the side effects experienced and how I have dealt with them.

Headache:

The headaches are caused by the caffeine withdrawals. When the headaches get really bad, I take a single diet pill. I took Zantrex-3, because that’s what I have around the house. Each capsule has about 160mg of caffeine. I take them like aspirin; if the headache gets bad, then I take the pill. The first day I took about 3 capsules; yesterday I took 2. I’ve seen on other posts were people have taken Excedrin, which has a caffeine in it too. The goal is to take fewer and fewer tablets until the headaches are gone. Just don’t get addicted to diet pills or Excedrin.

Moodiness:

This hasn’t been too bad, but it does seem like it’s easier to push my buttons. My wife tells me that I seem distant. I think I’m staying away from interactions that might cause me to get uptight. I am hiding out a little.

Sleep:

I couldn’t get to sleep the first night. I finally got to bed at 5:00 AM. The 2^nd night I slept fine, but it was REALLY hard to get out of bed. I ended up being 45 minutes late to work. This sleep behavior wouldn’t be too unusual for me anyways, but I think it’s compounded by the caffeine withdrawal.

Hunger:

I’m Hungry all the time. I never gained any weight drinking Dr. Pepper, so that means that my body was burning those 800 calories a day as fuel. I have to replace those calories with something. I bought a box of energy bars to eat when I get hungry. I find that I’m eating a bar midmorning and a few hours after lunch. This seems to help out quite a bit. I’m also eating larger meals when I do eat. My body seems to know that it needs more caloric intake.

Loss of Energy:

I do at least 45 minutes of cardio workout every day. I usually do this in the evening before I go to bed. The workouts are going well, and my distance/rate/times are the same as before. However, my body feels weighted down. Again, I think this is due to the fact that I have much less sugar in my bloodstream. I ate a small meal about 30 minutes before yesterday’s workout. That seemed to help out a lot.

Fuzzy Thinking:

On top of the headaches, it seems like my thinking is a little slower. That may not make much sense, but it seem like I’m just not as quick on my feet as usual. In High School, I used to drink a Mt. Dew right before a test. I was told that this would help my test scores, and in fact it did. Caffeine must do something to put your brain in high gear. I’m not sure that there is anything I can do about this. I know that there are natural supplements that claim to do the same thing. I’ll look around and give something a try.