bruceb

The clear winner for me, though I continue to experiment, is instant coffee made in hot milk. Meanwhile, since deciding to make the shift, I've had 0, 1, or 2 cans of soda each day. I continue to feel ghastly, but it's detoxing stuff. You don't want to hear about my rashes and I wouldn't want to tell you details even if you did, but I can say that I'm certainly flushing out crud from sundry places that make me keep thinking it was the right choice.

No other particularly noticeable changes yet, but we'll see.

Another slow day, with the aches, pains, rashes, and all that go with my body flushing out crud. This is actually a sign of good stuff happening, and when this wave passes I'll be feeling better. In the meantime, MST3K on the TV, blankets on the lap.

I've felt really spacey today, and more so in the evening. I'm guessing that this is from the absence of the corn syrup and sundry artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

wtimmins, tried your suggestion of Nescafe instant (vanilla flavor in my case) in hot milk, and am liking it a lot.

Walter Hooper quotes C.S. Lewis as saying that no book and no mug of tea can be too big, while settling in with Bleak House and a mug that held a pint. I find myself thinking "Coffee sellers want me to respect 8 ounces as a cup? Pfui on that!"

In any event, I've had 4 of these so-called cups of the Essensia cinnamon hazelnut grind so far today, with a second pot brewing to drink this evening. I don't know that I would want to say "enjoy" as opposed to "drink", but it's not unmanageable. In the next couple weeks I'll try experiments with various things y'all have recommended.

By far the biggest bad thing in my diet is high-fructose corn syrup, and by far the biggest source of it is soda. It's the caffeine. I really do need a lot of stimulant to get functional - people who've seen me without any for a few days can vouch for this. Herbal stimulants apart from caffeine only go so far; I plateau and then escalating doses do nothing. Ephedra works but is both risky and now not legal. Anyway, this is something I've dealt with for decades, and have tried a lot of different combinations of regimen. Caffeine is a vital ingredient in an alert Bruce.

So, soda. Now, diet soda skips some of the corn syrup, but Nutrasweet messes me up bad in more than very small doses and diet sodas with caffeine but without Nutrasweet are not easy to come by. So I end up juggling ratios of diet and regular. It has never been a secret to me that this takes a toll on my body.

Well, as one of my Not New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to try doing something about it. I still have the drip coffee maker Mom and Dad used to use on visits to me, and I'm going to take another run at learning to tolerate coffee. I've always loved the smell of good coffee, and hated the taste. I don't expect that to change overnight - I'm expecting to go through a lot of Splenda and milk acclimating myself to the stuff. But I would really like to slash my corn syrup consumption in the new year. There's no other single change I could make to my diet that would do me as much good.

So we'll see how this goes.