Cuttin' back, day 3

[johnridley]

I decided a few days ago that I could probably do with less soda. I've been drinking 2x 16oz bottles of Mt Dew, minimum, per day for years. So I just didn't open #2 on Tuesday.

There was a blood drive on Wednesday morning at work, and I held off on the sugar+caffeine mix until after that. My BP has been typically about 135/78 when I donate, but on Wednesday it was 112/64, which I think is about where it was in the days when I wasn't slurping caffeine all day.

My pulse was still up close to 100 but it had been less than an hour since I got to work, and my pulse does take quite a while to recover. If I've been just sitting around for a couple of hours, it settles to between 60 and 70. I think it takes so long to recover because when I'm exercising, my "comfortable" range where I feel like I'm actually exerting myself puts my pulse around 180 which is a bit above the "predicted max" for my age, and well above the target zone. I've never paid much attention to numbers, I just ramp it up until I feel like I'm actually working.

I'm going to do 1 bottle a day for 3 or 4 weeks, then see if I can taper back from that. I've tried going faster than that in the past, and though I can get past the withdrawal OK, even if I stick with zero for a month or more, I still don't feel right. It may take me several months to go off it totally.

Don't bother suggesting diet soda. A) I really can't stand the taste, I have tried switching to it for a week or so and it just tastes like crap to me. B) it's the sugar as much as the caffeine that is hard for me to get off of, and when I've tried diet, I've wound up TOTALLY messed up, crazy tired but totally unable to sleep, messed up digestion, etc. C) I feel like if I decide something is bad for me, I should have the willpower to just stop consuming it rather than substituting something else.

Comments

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Well sure, there are times Gatoraid is the right thing, but I read Roxanne as suggesting you replace the Dew with it and that's not the right answer.

I think we've way over demonized salt though.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Well, I pretty much drink all my dew at work, and the 8 hours that I'm there is pretty much a long, slow recovery from riding in, drink-wise. I generally hammer down about 300ml of water as soon as I get in the door, then try to finish off another 1200 during the day, in addition to whatever soft drinks I have. If I do that, I generally have to dump a couple of packets of salt into my lunch to rebalance those.

Gatorade would just replace the water, soft drink and salt with one thing.

Gatorade is one thing in my arsenal, but I don't use it much.