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I have skipped my morning tea and coffee, instead opting for water and healthy fruit juice. I now have to go to work, but would rather go to bed. I usually walk, but today I'd rather grab a taxi - I will push through though. I'm concerned because my commute takes me past a handful of coffee shops, and they're all going to seduce me with their smells.
My job is a job of two halves: sitting in an office managing the team, and doing a bit of teaching in the evenings to make sure I'm not to distant from the actual classroom. The office stuff was fine, but I usually reach for the coffee to give myself an energy boost for teaching kids in the evenings. Today I didn't and I certainly felt it - just generally tired, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm home now and the rest of the night will be a breeze.
Tomorrow's a big one: Saturday's the longest day of the week and my only early morning start.
I'm doing this simply because I've been having shitty sleep for a few months now and just want to see if this helps or not.
The biggest problem so far seems to be what to replace my regular drinking with. I'm not a fan of soda apart from coke, juice becomes too sickly after a couple of glasses and water is just plain boring.
I'm a huge fan of various fruit teas, a couple of ice teas, those caffeine-free coffee replacements, and carbonated water with a hint of apple juice and/or lemon mixed in.
Right now I'm back to hundreds of cups of coffee a day though. So the best of luck to you.
I pretty much drink Soylent every hour or two, drink water all day throughout the day, and then in the evening I eat a decent sized dinner with unsweetened iced tea. It's drastically improved my quality of life, and I have energy naturally through having proper nutrition rather through forced means.
Today was much worse. It's the only day of the week I have to get up at 7:30 (until I reach my aim of getting up early every day regardless of work time), so I knew it would be bad. I caught about 5 hours sleep. The morning was fine, but the sleepiness hit me around lunchtime and I ended up munching loads of sugar just to keep going.
I almost caved in, reasoning that Saturday is my busiest day so I should be allowed to have some, but I resisted. I'm probably right, but we'll leave that for another week.
I had a major headache by three. Got home about 7 and ended up chugging a couple of beers which somehow helped me wake up a bit and muster the energy to look after my son, which was weird and made me feel like a drunk, but oh well. Gonna take a shower then crash for the night.
Pull through, it works once the initial withdrawal wears off!
@darc: I remember that Soylent Green thing. I gotta say it was pretty brilliant marketing. The one problem I see with this is tooth decay, which affects people who eat nothing but fruit as well. Your teeth need to something tough and fibrous to chew.
Christuserloeser wrote:@darc: I remember that Soylent Green thing. I gotta say it was pretty brilliant marketing. The one problem I see with this is tooth decay, which affects people who eat nothing but fruit as well. Your teeth need to something tough and fibrous to chew.
Oh yeah, trust me I've heard every single angle about the pros and cons of Soylent, including the teeth thing. I couldn't ever give up real solid food completely though, so no worries there. The thing is my eating habits prior to this were pretty much just being lazy and eating one large meal a day. I'd wake up and go all the way until around 5-7pm before I ate a meal, so I never had much energy, then I'd eat huge portions and feel lethargic the rest of the day. Now I just eat smaller portions and drink Soylent throughout the day, so I feel much better and I can still eat what I want (just not too much of it) and I don't really have to worry about whether or not I'm getting proper nutrition.
Also there's the whole social thing about food, too. Especially living in New Orleans where food is everything.
I can't remember going to sleep. I lay in bed messing around with my iPad like I usually do but just couldn't keep my eyes open. It was lights out as soon as I hit the pillow - something I've not experienced in a long, long time which was great, especially because it was all natural.
The morning was tough, but I took a long lunch and walked home then back which is a good 3-4 mile round trip and felt much better through the afternoon and evening.
I also discovered Lost on the Dream by The War on Drugs during my walk. Absolutely brilliant album.
Well, maybe that sleeping easier thing was one a one-off because I slept like balls last night. Ended up popping a sleeping pill at about 3:30AM, then had to wake up at 9 for work. Probably got 5 hours sleeps tops. That's bad for two reasons.
First, the whole reason I started this challenge was to improve my sleep and thought I was making some progress, but last night was kind of a step backward and now I'm pretty pessimistic about the rest of the week (which will undoubtedly effect how well I actually sleep).
Second, today was absolute torture. I've felt this sleepy loads of times before, but always reached for the coffee. This time I went without and joined the undead around 7 or 8PM. A real test of willpower.
I'm not sure what to make of all this so far. Today has killed off a lot of my motivation. If I end up sleeping as poorly as before and just depriving myself of a way of dealing with it then I'm not really accomplishing anything.
As with quitting any habit that is a chemical dependency, expect a withdrawal period. Caffeine withdrawal typically seriously starts after 48-72 hours and usually lasts about 9 days. While one would expect that quitting caffeine would improve sleep, caffeine withdrawal can negatively affect your sleep too, so you have to get past that part to see the true benefits.
I used to drink coffee daily to the point where I'd shake and that'd be fine. Now if I drink too much caffeine I get anxious which didn't used to happen thus I tend to avoid more than a cup or two max.
The thing about dropping any habit that affects your sleep (I've been known to become habituated to drinking cough syrup or using Benadryl to get to sleep for weeks on end) is that it will be fucked up for the first few days and level off after a while. Hell I almost always spent the first night with 3-4 hours of sleep if I was lucky and slowly gain more. It might be as little as 3-4 days or as much as a month. I just spent the last 3 months on a medication that knocks you the fuck out because it acts as a strong anti-histamine and for the last three weeks I've basically gotten maybe 4 hours of sleep every night for every night of those three weeks.
Too tired to do anything remotely useful with my time (no reading, no video games, barely pay attention to the TV) but too awake to sleep or even lie down comfortably for more than a few minutes at a time. Even now almost four weeks after discontinuing the medication 50mg of Benadryl barely affects me at night without a booster substance to it (right now it's gabapentin but I'd imagine booze would do it albeit give a really shitty sleep). Now I wish I hadn't been so eager to take advice from a NP who clearly likes to prescribe shit.
Ultimately one starts and keeps using coffee because it gives us a boost that requires more and more coffee to obtain causing other problems in the process negating the benefits that a single cup would provide and you move into the territory of problems that a caffeine dependency offers. Same goes for opiates.
Keep going Corky, we want to hear it all. Its going to take more than a week to recover those standard sleeping habits. And even if it doesn't fix your sleeping issue it will surely make it better.
Good replacement beverages are hot or cold herbal/fruit/berry teas (sans caffiene) and also ginger ale, sprite, and all the wacky canned drinks they have in asia (according to my constant jaunts through asian food stores) - passionfruit, lychee, watermelon, etc..
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I grew up consciously avoiding any form of chemical dependency so life is great in that regard though I do enjoy Green Tea after dinner, if I can get it. Yes, it is caffeinated but you can google a lot of data that suggests it facilitates sleep.
I also enjoy the occasional RedBull especially if I have to endure a boring class.
Good luck, Cork! I quit caffeine a few years ago, but I enjoyed drinking coffee and tea far too much to stick with it. I generally have two cups of delicious coffee per day, but I've never felt like I need it to function. That being said, if you take it away from me, I might realize that I do in fact need it to function.
I am pleased to report I do not drink soda anymore at all ever. It's pretty awesome!
I gave up drinking soft drinks way back in 2004.
I also gave up coffee around that time.
I believe I am strong enough to consume caffeinated products recreationally. I have professionally studied chemical dependency and caffeine is not nearly as addictive as controlled substances, statistically the most harmful drug is alcohol.
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