Sit up a Tree

Want to give up Coca Cola? You’re not alone, may people have found themselves drinking too much Coca Cola and want to cut back or eliminate it completely from their body. I used to find myself drinking as many as six or even eight cans worth of Coke a day. Way too much. To tell you the truth I felt dependent on it and needed it to be able to function properly. In fact, whenever I tried to cut back, I suffered severe headaches (caffeine headaches). This made me drink more cola. Ugh. When you’re drinking so much Coke that cutting back give you headaches, you’re drinking too much.

But why is Coca Cola (and other colas, Pepsi and the others are no better) difficult to give up? Simple - they contain a LOT of caffeine and sugar, both of which are chemicals which alter your body’s chemistry. Whether Coke is addictive or not is not an argument that I’m interested in getting caught up in, suffice to say that people do find it very difficult to give up.

So, how should you give up drinking cola? Well, the first thing that you need to do is decide 100% that you want to cut down or give up. Be honest otherwise you’ll be sucked back into drinking the stuff. Set yourself a goal. Write it down and make it a commitment. To be honest with you, in the long run it’s easier to give up completely than it is to cut down, however, cutting down might be a good route to giving up. It might help to remind yourself how bad cola is - the sugar, the calories, the caffeine, the acid rotting your teeth … pick what works for you. Decide that enough is enough! If you can’t come up with a good reason to dump cola, you’re not yet ready to do it. Have a good long think about why you want to quit cola and come up with at least two strong reasons.

Remember to be kind to yourself too - if cola is one of the biggest hurdles facing you, you’re not doing too badly at all!

Secondly, replace the cola with something else. Lemonade, green tea, water or water with a dash of lemon are good alternatives. You’ll need to keep your liquid intake up. Drinking between 1.5 to 2 liters of water a day will help flush toxins out of your body and take your mind off cola.

Now to the part that people find difficult - the giving up part. There are two ways that you can approach giving up:

- Go cold turkey, decide to quit and then quit
- Ramp down over a period of time

When I quit I went cold turkey because while it’s harder during the initial stages, the process is faster overall. I also quit coffee at the same time - a double whammy.

So what can you expect during your first few days of quitting? Here’s some of the symptoms you might experience:

- Headaches
- Lethargy
- Excessive thirst
- Inability to concentrate
- Disturbed sleet patterns

If you experience one of more of these symptoms, don’t panic - they will pass after a few days (week at most for most people). If you’re aware of the fact that things are going to be a little difficult before you start, you’re less likely to become disheartened and give up.

Keep your fluid intake up - that will lessen the symptoms. Also, remind yourself regularly that you don’t drink Coke any more.

“I don’t drink Coca Cola!”
“I don’t drink Coca Cola!”
“I don’t drink Coca Cola!”

The urge to give up and reach for a cold Coke might become quite strong, but resist this at all costs because one can can and probably will undo all the progress you’ve make and all the suffering that you will have been through will have been for nothing.

Also, make it harder for yourself to fall off the wagon. Firstly, don’t buy Coke - if it’s not in your fridge, it’s harder to drink. Also, try to avoid places where you’d normally buy cola (or alter your habits while you’re there - that starts by being alert to falling into the old habits). Resist giving in. You can do it!

After 7 days you should be free of most of the withdrawal symptoms and after 21 days, you’ll have installed a new Cola-free habit. Congratulations!

We all have habits that we’d like to be able to install.  At the same time, we have habits that we’d like to get rid of.

The trick with habits is giving them enough time to install, or allowing enough time to pass that the old habit has been uninstalled. As a general rule of thumb, you need 21 days to both install a new habit and get rid of an old one.  For example, let’s say that you want to install the habit of exercising every day.  Most people think that after a couple of days of exercising daily that the habit is installed and they can take their eye off the ball. 

Not true! 

No matter what habit you are trying to install, you are looking at an uphill slog for at least the first 14 days and taking your eye off the ball for this period is a mistake.  It is at this early stage that you want to be have schemes to remind you of what you want to be doing (employ the use of Post-It Notes or other people!).  During this initial period be careful about letting anything get in your way.  If one day you don’t feel like exercising this could be enough to allow you to break the habit’s install routine.  Force yourself to stick to the routine!  If you just go tot he gym for 10 minutes, you’ve done it and that will help reinforce the routine.

Same goes if you want to uninstall a habit.  You’ve gotta give it time.  Say you want to stop biting your nails, you’ve got to be really vigilant during the first three weeks that you don’t bring those nails up to your mouth in that time - you really have to catch yourself doing it because the habit (this one being a bad one) is installed so deep that it’s automatic.  Those fingers will make their way to your mouth by themselves if you don’t watch out for it!

Make the power of habits work for you!  But remember, give them time.  Don’t expect to install a habit in a few hours.  Plan on having to work at it daily for a few weeks and you’ll then notice after a while that it’s become a habit.  That’s when you can start taking your eye off the ball and relaxing a little.

According to experts, January 24th has been identified as the worst day of the year:

January has been long regarded as the darkest of months, but a formula from a part-time tutor at Cardiff University shows it gets even worse this Monday.

Foul weather, debt, fading Christmas memories, failed resolutions and a lack of motivation conspire to depress, Cliff Arnalls found.

The expert behind this study also came up with a formula to back up the study:

The formula for the day of misery reads 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.

Where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January’s pay day - and T is the time since Christmas.

Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.

While the 24th may or may not be the most depressing day of the year, there’s little doubt that many people feel down at the beginning of a new year.  Over the Holiday/Christmas period many people will have had time off work, spent a lot of time with friends and family, consumed a lot of alcohol, given and received gifts, and a lot of plans for the new year.  When the new year becomes a reality, many are left with few memories of the festive period, debts, the feeling of loneliness and broken resolutions.

So what can you do to beat the new year blues?  There’s a lot that you can do!

• First off, recognize that you and you alone and in charge of how you feel.  External factors might try to change you mood, but they only succeed if you allow them to do so.  Be excited about the brand new, untouched year ahead!
• If you’ve made new year resolutions which you’ve already broken, instead of feeling down and depressed about them, think about why they are broken.  What made you break them?  Did you set too big a goal for yourself or did you just forget?  Instead of being harsh on yourself, think about what went wrong and what you can do to rectify that. 
• Exercise!  One of the main reasons that people are depressed in winter is that they move less and have less exercise.  Move your body, sweat a little and get fit and you’ll find the veil of depression lifting.
• Change your diet.  The festive period encourages us to eat and drink the wrong thinks in the wrong quantities.  This has a major detrimental effect on our metabolism and body chemistry.  In January we move back to regular food and drink - this gives your system yet another shock.  No wonder come January you feel like you’re not firing on all rockets.  Give yourself and your body a break and eat a healthy, balanced diet.  Drink plenty of water and cut out the alcohol.

The answers to the new year blues is pretty straight-forward - it all relies on you taking responsibility for how you feel and making the changes.  And the great thing is that change happens really quickly.  Within weeks (or maybe within a few days) the blues will have lifted and you’ll feel better and happier.

Happy New Year!