I keep it pretty healthy, but my one vice was a five cup a day coffee habit. Yikes! Well friends, I’m on day three without coffee, and doing fine!
Read here about how I went from five cups a day to zero.
http://truebodymindsoul.com/kicking-the-coffee-habit/
~ Amber
Day 5 of an 8 day Silent Meditation Retreat
After my meltdown yesterday, I managed to calm down this day. After staying inside for 4 days straight of cold rain, today the rain turned to snow, and I got outside for some much needed fresh air, exercise, and natural light.
I was running low on coffee (it’s an addiction : ) and decided to really go for a good walk, into town, to see what I could find. It was about an hour each way, in the snow. It felt so good to move!! And even better, I ran into my teacher on the way and he asked me if I’d like a private interview with him. I said yes!
While I was at the convenience store buying some instant coffee (yuck) I saw some bags of chocolate chips and decided the other retreatants would love a treat of some chocolate! It was pretty fun to sneak a big bowl with two bags worth of chocolate into the dining hall after dinner, and watch it quickly go down over the next couple of hours.
I continued to work with Gratitude. It felt pretty good : )
Darn it. I’m so addicted. As I mentioned before my skin has been really irritated lately. I can’t tell if it’s something internal, external, or both. I found a list of things that can irritate the skin and coffee/caffeine was top of the list. I went cold turkey and switched to green tea. I lasted four days : (
I was fine when I was work, I didn’t mind feeling a little lethargic working on the computer all day. Even made it to yoga class feeling mellow. But cleaning, that’s another story! It was the thought of having to clean my whole house over the weekend that did me in. I needed that jolt!! It also helped when I went running yesterday…
If I knew it was the coffee, I’d be more motivated. But it’s harder to motivate on a guess.
I. AM. A. COFFEE. ADDICT.
It’s sad. After several weeks without coffee (three, four weeks?) I am now back to drinking it every day. And since I haven’t had any at home, I’ve been at Starbucks every day, $ $ $. Lately I’ve been getting a venti soy latte which has THREE shots of espresso and costs almost $6.
Tonight I had dinner with a friend. He really wanted desert after and so I innocently accompanied him to get some ice cream. It didn’t even occur to me I’d get anything. Well, I was very surprised to see they had multiple vegan flavors!! And not nasty sorbets; real, creamy ice cream, one soy based, one coconut based, and one hemp. I (again, in complete innocence) asked to try the soy coffee ice cream. Just a taste. YUM. Two of my favorite treats combined into one delicious indulgence!! I got a small, which turned out to be pretty big, more like a medium or large size. And it was STRONG. Not a smart thing to have at 10pm. And I knew that!! But I did it anyway!!
So. Now it is almost 3am. And I am WIDE AWAKE!!! I should channel this energy into cleaning my room or something, but I took a benedryl and am going to try to get some sleep.
Starting tomorrow I will cut back. One cup in the morning. And then green tea in the afternoon. This is getting out of hand. Oh yeah, and no more ice cream either!
How many weeks was I off coffee? Three or four? I remember the day I went running a couple of weeks ago in the morning, and then drove five hours to Brooklyn, I felt that I deserved an iced soy latte! It is a slippery slope! Ironically, being at the retreat center I got back to a daily morning coffee habit, and even had some in the afternoon many days. This is funny because most people do the opposite and use retreat time to give up coffee. The retreat center doesn’t buy or provide coffee, but there are always generous souls who leave some behind as a gift for us addicts. There was a bag of Pete’s French Roast that was amazingly good with soy milk and a little agave nectar : )
We’ll see. I am still feeling motivated to cut back or eliminate coffee. I don’t have any coffee at home, and yesterday I went to Starbucks twice which means more than $10. Ridiculous!!!
After not drinking it all week I have discovered something disturbing and depressing about coffee: I’m allergic to it!
For several months now I had these small bumps around my chin, I didn’t know what the heck they were. I tried various creams thinking it could be acne, dry skin, or a bacterial, or a fungal infection, or psoriasis. Nothing helped. I saw my doctor who said she didn’t know what the heck they were, and told me to see a dermatologist. I used an over the counter cortisone cream which made the bumps go away, temporarily, but they kept coming back as soon as I stopped using it.
Well, yesterday I wanted a special treat and got a decaf soy cappuccino from Starbucks. I got home and looked in the mirror, and bam, red bumps on my chin, as bad as ever. That’s when I made the connection. HIVES. From an ALLERGY. To COFFEE!!!!
How could I have missed that?? This is why I gave up coffee in the first place way back when, and didn’t drink it for eight years!! I never got hives before, but I did feel like it was negatively affecting my health. And sometimes I would get swollen glands, or a sore throat, and could just tell it wasn’t good for me. I’ve been drinking it again for about a year now, I think. And was up to about 3 to 5 cups a day!! Sometimes I’d get a latte with a triple shot!
So, this is a huge bummer. Can’t even drink decaf. I’m sure it’s good for my health in the long run that I’m giving it up again. But not by choice : (
Well, I went cold turkey off of coffee, because I ran out. But this is not as impressive, or as stupid, as it may sound. I didn’t cut out caffeine, I just switched to tea. A lot of tea.
I’ve done this several times before. Sometimes when I was actually giving up coffee, and sometimes when I just wanted to do a detox or take a break. I’m actually not sure which this will be!! I guess it will depend on how dramatically different I feel when it clears from my system. I don’t like tea as much so it’s easier for me to slowly cut down on the caffeine once I make the switch.
S0 I may end up drinking coffee again, but at the very least I want to cut down because I have been drinking way too much. For now it feels good to be taking a break.
truebodymindsoul
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