asceticism

Mostly based on an Outside magazine article I read recently, I've decided it would be fun(?) to try giving up one thing a week. Just to see if I can do it. Or for something to do. Or whatever.

This week it's yelling at my kids. When I get the urge to yell, I'll whisper. I've heard this works. Um, we'll see?

Other things to give up:

Alcohol

Diet pop

Coffee

Judging

Red meat

Buying items that are not essential for health and hygiene

Buying ANYTHING (how many meals can I make with the stuff in the cupboard and freezer?)

Driving (after my foot is allll better... and the kids are in school)

Off the table:

Chocolate

I'm about to blow your mind.

Wow I've been blogging slacker, but that's a post for different day. Today I have something extremely important to tell you.

Aspartame is more addictive then caffeine.

You know how caffeine is this highly-addictive drug? Well, it's got nothin on the stuff they put in diet pop.

As you may remember, I started on this journey toward freedom from the drug more than a year and a half ago. It was not pretty. There were withdrawal headaches, which were not ameliorated by replacing the caffeine in pop with that in coffee and taking lots of Excedrin. Then I got bronchitis, which was very suspiciously-timed, and it may be a crackpot theory that the two are related, but withdrawal can do weird things to your body. (The bronchitis morphed into walking pneumonia, but I think that was because the doctor didn't give me strong enough antibiotics.) Even though I was getting as much or more caffeine then when I was just drinking diet pop, I was cranky on days when I didn't have any pop. My weight was up and down like a yo-yo.

At first I was on an every-other-day plan and gradually scaled back till I could go a week without pop. Today I have it 2-3 times a week, almost always when we're eating out. When I've gone two or three days without pop, I don't think about it, but if it's the day after I've had some, I crave it. As for caffeine, right now I just have one, maybe two cups of caffeinated tea a day, plus the occasional pop. And I never miss coffee.

OK, so this is not a scientific sample size. But it's pretty obvious that, at least in my case, the aspartame is way more addictive than caffeine.

The Pop Report

Almost a year ago I decided to try to get off the diet pop. Finally, it seems I'm close. The last few weeks I've only been drinking it about twice a week, and it seems that about half the time I drink it I immediately get a headache. So that's a good thing. And I figure pop won't be as pervasive in Australia as it is here, so that will help. I here they really know how to do coffee there, so I expect I'll be drinking a lot of that.

In other diet news, I'm trying out a dairy-free diet to see if it makes me feel any better, tummy-area-wise. Hopefully they have soy milk at the coffee joints in Sydney, or else I better get used to my coffee black.

The Pop.

I seem to have successfully gotten myself down to having one diet pop every other day since I returned from Illannoy (a trip like that is far too stressful to go without at least one a day). The question is, am I ready to go cold turkey? Or maybe a couple times a week? Last time I cut way back on the diet pop I got bronchitis, which totally sucked. Like, a lot. So you can see where I'd be a bit nervous...

:-p

I am so cranky today. It's a non-pop day. Coincidence?

On-and-off

For almost a week now I've successfully had pop only every other day! This is a big step, to go without diet pop for a whole day on a regular basis. I'm not sure what my next step should be; one day on, two days off...?

So bitter

This was not a good day. I woke up this morning and got on the scale and I was 3.5 heavier than I was a week ago. Gaining three pounds a week is not acceptable. Nathan thinks it's water weight because I'm not consuming so much of a diuretic. But this says caffeine really isn't a diuretic. So who knows. Then I got some kind of coffee drink at Starbucks. This was the first time I had ever ordered a drink at Starbucks (they do have good pastries). I told the chick at the register my story (need something with caffeine, but no calories, and that doesn't really taste that much like coffee). It took a while but she recommended the skinny-something-or-other. Of course, since it was a coffee drink, it taste like ass. But less like ass than plain coffee. Coffee simply is not tasty. You people can keep telling yourself that it is. But you don't drink it because it tastes good, you drink it because it has caffeine and no calories. Eventually you get so used to it that it seems to taste good. But maybe that's true of NutraSweet, too.

Anyway, I continued to have headaches this afternoon despite Excedrin in the morning and my ass drink with lunch. Nathan thinks it's because of NutraSweet withdrawal, since there's some evidence that's an addictive drug, too. I did have a can and a half of Fresca, though. Anyway, I'm starting to wonder if all this annoying crap is worth it.

3 days

It has been more than 72 hours since I had any cola. No Diet Pepsi, no Diet Coke. Just a few cans of diet rootbeer and some Excedrin to ease the transition. I've only needed 2 or 2.5 doses of the Excedrin each day. I hope to back off that starting tomorrow. It's not so much the caffeine that I'll miss, I think, it's just the sweet taste. I simply love love love the taste of Diet Pepsi. Flavorful and no calories. Oh yeah.