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Caffeine and Cortisol, Update #1

[caption id="attachment_190" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Fight the dark side!"]I said, NO COFFEE![/caption]

As you know from my previous post about Caffeine and Cortisol, I started a 30-Day Coffee fast last Thursday.  And so far, so good. I've been coffee-free since then and I'm feeling pretty good.

I was experiencing some minor withdrawal headaches on Thursday and Friday (slightly worse on Friday), but that was nothing to worry about - I didn't even take aspirin for it on Friday, just gutted it out.

I had one slip-up when I had a small iced-tea on Sunday, I'm hoping that that was small enough that the effects were negligible.  I wasn't even thinking about it at that point, though, so the withdrawal problems that some were telling me about were limited to the small headaches. I'll take it.

At the beginning of this experiment, I was jut a hair under a 34 waist on my pants.  And my sleep, while okay, wasn't super-great.  So there could be some cortisol issues from lack of sleep.  This actually might go up a bit as I caught a little bit of a cold over the weekend.  Luckily, I've been less susceptible to such things since going Paleo - colds that have flattened people around me have been minor irritants to me - and this cold is no exception.  But it has affected my sleep simply via poor breathing at night.

Still, in looking at my waist, I am seeing what might be improvement.  In the mornings, when I wake up, my midsection looks great.  Not a six-pack, but slim and without too much excess "love-handle" flab on the sides.  But normally by the end of the day there's a little more there.  Now, it doesn't seem as pronounced.  I'm optimistic about the changes thus far.

And how about the mental aspects?  After all, this is PaleoMENTAL.  Well, it's hard to tell due to the aforementioned cold.  But for having a cold, it seems pretty good.  I've been a bit tired but not out of it by any means.  I think we'll wait till later to make that judgement, to get this cold out of my system and see what the week brings.

Thanks for all the well-wishes from everyone in last post's comments, and I'll keep you all posted.
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  1. Adam BashNovember 26, 2011 at 5:15 PM

    love the blog...will definitely be back to check out your newer stuff again...OR I can just subscribe...im such a dumb a.. sometimes lol

    ReplyDelete

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