This post is a followup of yesterday’s discussion of caffeine withdrawal symptoms. Today’s discussion is about my caffeine treatment plan, which reduced my morning coffee from 3 cups to 1 cup while minimizing my coffee withdrawal symptoms.

Create your caffeine withdrawal plan

Creating a caffeine withdrawal treatment plan is all about slowly getting rid of your reliance on caffeine without triggering severe caffeine withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, there is no way to completely get rid of the withdrawal symptoms until your body becomes accustom to waking up without coffee again. At 3 cups coffee a day (450 mg), if I quit drinking coffee cold turkey or even switching to decaf, I am going to suffer severe caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

Instead, I modeled my caffeine withdrawal treatment plan after the smoking cessation patch concept, where I give myself 3 steps to slowly wean myself off of coffee. In a smoking cessation patch program, it usually allows for nicotine chewing gum as needed when the cravings are overwhelming. In my caffeine reduction plan, black tea is my nicotine chewing gum. You need to drink 3 cups of black tea to get the same caffeine amount as one cup of brewed coffee.

Step 1: Replace 1st cup of brewed coffee with 1 cup of instant coffee.

Drink 1 cup of black tea as needed.

Coffee addicts know that instant coffee just do not taste as good as dripped coffee and it is not as strong either. However, since I still have 2 cups of brewed coffee, I do not feel as deprived of good coffee. 2 cups of brewed coffee and 1 cup of instant coffee gives me 360 mg of caffeine.

I reduced my caffeine intake by 90 mg a day. I kept this up for about 2 weeks. The caffeine withdrawal headaches were painful the first week and I didn’t feel completely awake during the first half of the week. I sometimes sip black tea to on those days when I need to be a little more alert for meetings.

Step 2: Replace 2nd cup of dripped coffee with 1 cup of instant coffee.

Once again, drink tea as needed.

1 cup of dripped coffee and 2 cups of instant coffee gives me 270 mg of caffeine. I kept this up for about 2 weeks. And yes, I did have an occasional cup of green tea. This step reduced my caffeine by another 90 mg.

At this point, my caffeine withdrawal symptoms are actually tolerable. I feel it, but it is make me return to my former coffee addiction.

Step 3: Eliminate the instant coffee, one cup at a time.

1 cup of dripped coffee and 1 cup of instant coffee gives me 210 mg of caffeine. It only took 1 week this time for me to get use this because Step 3 only requires a reduction of 60 mg of caffeine. I barely even have caffeine withdrawal headaches.

A week later, I drop the 2nd cup of instant coffee. So it took me 6 weeks to reduce my daily coffee from 3 cups to 1 cup with tolerable caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

At this point, I can at least wait until I get to work and have coffee at my desk. Prior to starting my caffeine reduction plan, I needed a cup of coffee in order to get my eyes open to apply my make-up in the morning. I don’t want to have that kind of dependency on any substance ever again.

I wish you better luck with your coffee reduction plan. I hope you are as success as me in trying to reduce your caffeine level.

Until next time and thanks for reading Small Steps to Health. If you like what you are reading please share this with your friends.

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Long time readers of my blog know that I have a love/hate relationship with coffee. Once every couple years I would cut out coffee for several months just to have it slowly creep back into my life again (this is what happens when you have another coffee drinker in the house).

My dependence on caffeine was at its worst recently, peaking at 3 cups of coffee per day, from lack of sleep and caring for a 14 month old. For the last 6 weeks, I’ve actively started my plan to reduce my dependence on coffee. My caffeine reduction plan is a slow process that minimizes my caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

This post is a discussion on caffeine withdrawal symptoms and the amount of caffeine in other drinks if you are looking for a coffee substitution. Tomorrow’s post would be a detail discussion of my caffeine reduction plan.

What are the caffeine withdrawal symptoms?

Non-coffee drinkers sometimes do not understand the physical pain that coffee drinkers experience when they stop drinking coffee. If you drink several cans of Coke a day, you might be just as addicted to caffeine (you just get your caffeine from another source).

The more caffeine you drink, the more you become accustomed to it. And the harder it becomes to give up caffeine.

Depending on your personal caffeine tolerance, you might start to get shaky and sleepless with one cup of coffee (this was my reaction when I was initially started drinking coffee in college) or it might take you three cups to have the same reaction (where I am currently at after 10 years of on and off coffee drinking).

But no matter where you are at in the caffeine tolerance scale, common caffeine withdrawal symptoms include: headaches; sleepiness; a mental fog, which could cling all day; and irritability. For me, dealing with the caffeine withdrawal headache is the worst.

You can find out more about the long term impact of caffeine here.

How long do the caffeine withdrawal symptoms last?

Over the years of my multiple on and off relationship with coffee, I realize that the duration of your caffeine withdrawal symptoms depends on how long you have been drinking coffee and how much you are currently drinking.

When I was only drinking one cup of coffee a day, I replaced my coffee with several cups of tea and suffered the caffeine withdrawal headache for about 2 weeks. The other caffeine withdrawal symptoms usually disappeared a couple weeks later. By the end of the month, I no longer needed any caffeine to jumpstart my morning.

Now that I am at 3 cups of coffee a day, I suspect that it would take a good 2 months to get rid of my coffee addiction. I am 6 weeks into my caffeine reduction plan and I still suffer from mild withdrawal symptoms.

I have friends who are regular tea drinkers who also suffer from caffeine headaches when they forgo their tea. And tea barely even register in the caffeinated drinks Richter scale. In my opinion, caffeine is an addictive substance, especially in an society such as ours that believe sleep is a luxury.

Amount of caffeine in coffee and tea

Before you can create your own caffeine withdrawal treatment plan, it is important to understand the amount of caffeine found in various drinks.

Here are the approximate amounts of caffeine in various 8 ounce drinks:

Dripped coffee – 150 mg of caffeine

Instant coffee – 60 mg of caffeine

Black Tea – 50 mg of caffeine

Green Tea – 25 mg of caffeine

White Tea – 15 mg of caffeine

Soda (coke, 3/4 of can) – 23 mg of caffeine

Energy drink (Rockstar, 1/2 a can) – 80 mg of caffeine

If you are interested in the caffeine content in other drinks, you can check out the database at Caffeine Fiend.

As clearly illustrated, one 8 ounce cup of brewed coffee has more than double or even triple the caffeine content of these other caffeinated drinks.

At 3 cups per day, I am drinking 450 mg of caffeine! No wonderful my caffeine withdrawal headaches are more severe when I reduced my coffee this time.

Tomorrow is a detail post of my caffeine reduction plan. Stick around to read about how I went from 3 cups of coffee to 1 cup of coffee with minimal caffeine withdrawal headaches.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health. If you like what you are reading, please share this with your friends.

Photo by:  Matt Scott.

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This post is a review of Gilad Express Workouts (or aka 15 Targeted Express Workouts) exercise dvd set.

I always thought Hazelnut would mold herself to my current habits and routines, but instead I am squeezing in bits and pieces of time to myself into her schedule. Like clockwork, my 1 year old would nap for 30 minutes twice a day. As soon as she is contentedly nestled into her nap mat, I have to be ready to exercise. At this stage in my life, I don’t have time for long drawn out workout DVDs.

I love 30 minute exercise videos and Gilad Express Workouts has always been one of my favorites.

Gilad Express Workouts Format

The concept behind Gilad Express Workouts is that you pick segments to create your own workout and duration. There are 2 dvds in the package. There are 8 segments in disc 1 and 7 segments in disc 2. Here is a breakdown of the 15 targeted workouts:

DVD 1:
8:15 Warm-up
8:40 Buns & Thighs
9:40 Hips & Thighs
9:15 Back
9:10 Chest
8:30 Shoulders
9:15 Arms
5:10 Cool-down

DVD 2:
9:00 Dynamic Moves: low impact, standing core workout
9:30 Strength & Balance: similar to yoga
9:00 Cardio 1-Basic: aerobics such as v-steps and grapevines
9:00 Cardio 2- Challenge: similar to kickboxing
7:35 Compound Strength: combines upper and lower body strength exercises at same time.
9:35 Core Foundations
9:40 Core Challenge

Within each segment, you typically do three sets of each exercise and there are approximately 3-4 exercises per segment.

Create 30 minute exercise routines with Gilad Express Workouts.

To create a 30 minute exercise routine, I typically pick the warm-up and two segments from the Gilad Express Workout exercise dvds. I do not exercise when my daughter is awake, but I would cool down when she wakes up from her nap because I am not swinging weights when she is moving around.

For example, I might pick Warm-up, Shoulders, Arms, and Cool-down (approximately 31 minutes total). At this rate, it typically take me an entire week to go through all the segments in this set of exercise DVDs.

I would recommend selecting two segments at a time and in consecutive order as laid out in the exercise dvds if you are looking for 30 minute exercise routines. For example, the workout routines I create would look like this:

Workout 1: warm-up, buns & thighs, hips & thighs, and cool-down
Workout 2: warm-up, back, chest, and cool-down
Workout 3: warm-up, shoulders, arms, and cool-down
Workout 4: warm-up, dynamic moves, strength & balance, and cool-down
Workout 5: warm-up, cardio 1, cardio 2, and cool-down
Workout 6: warm-up, compound strength, core foundations (or core challenge), and cool-down

Why do I group the segments together this way? First, it is easy to remember. I have a 1 year old. I forget to comb my hair before I leave the house sometimes. I just work my way down the segments on the exercise dvd without having to consult a workout chart.

Gilad provided this workout chart here for the Express Workout exercise dvds. There is no way I can remember the exercise routines he set up without consulting the chart and checking off each workout session. And more likely did not, my daughter will probably tear up the chart as soon as she gets her grubby little hands on it (we are going through the destructive phase right now).

Second, it is a good idea to use the same weights on complementary muscle groups. For example, if I use 10 lb dumbbells on my back, it is a good idea to use 10 lb dumbbells on my chest. By putting these two segments into the same workout session, I decrease the chance that I might over train one of the complementary muscle groups.

If I work on my back on Monday and do not get to my chest until Friday, I might forget which weight I used previously and there is the possibility I might use a heavier or lighter weight on Friday depending on how I feel. The back and chest are complementary muscle groups.

You don’t want to cause muscle imbalance by over training just the front or the back of your upper body. I already have a lot of problems with muscle imbalance due to my torn hip labrum.

Is Gilad Express Workouts for beginners?

Yes. The exercises are scalable which means you can use no weights, lighter weights, or heavier weights for the exercises.

In addition, you select the duration of your workout so if you are a beginner and can only exercise for 15 minutes, then you can select two segments to get your 15 minutes of exercise.

I would recommend Gilad Express Workouts to my friends.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health. Please share this with your friends if you like what you’re reading.

Ready to by Gilad Express Workouts?

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Spoiler alert: I will be talking about the Hunger Games series and the Hunger Game movie. If you have not read the entire Hunger Game series or watch the movie, you might want to skip this post.

I eagerly waited in line Sunday morning for the Hunger Games movie. Rarely do I feel inspired by a movie to write about it on my health blog. One word: fantastic! Whatever theme in the Hunger Games series you want to find, it is there: government, love, sacrifice, tv reality, society and class differences, and yes, even health and fitness.

The theme in the Hunger Games series that I want to discuss in this post has to do with food and its relationship to the characters.

As an aside, the Hunger Games movie follows the book closely. The scenes and characters that are omitted are minor and these omissions do not interrupt the storyline in the move.

Food theme in District 12: Stop gathering, you stop eating

The setting for District 12 is a mining town, which in itself does not result in extreme poverty for its citizens. But as a satellite city that supplies the Capital with coal and where the workers are kept subservient by the lack of food, there is very little chance for anyone to achieve a healthy appearance.

Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne in the Hunger Game movie practically glowed with vibrant health (yes some of this is Hollywood because it is amazing how clean they look when coal dust covers everything else).

In the Hunger Games series, Katniss, Gale, and their families fare better than the rest of their neighbors because Katniss and Gale are desperate enough to brave the wrath of the Capital by hunting and gathering in the forest outside of the fence surrounding their District.

As a health blogger, the things I notice from the Hunger Games series are how much trampling about the forest they do to get food (exercise) and the diversity of their diet since they never know what they will find each time they enter the forest (which increases their chance of proper nutrition). These two components factor into making Katniss a strong competitor in the Hunger Games.

Now if we all have to revert back to a hunter and gather society, you and I will have a high chance of becoming a lean, mean, fat burning machine. Since this is probably not going to happen in my lifetime and for practical reasons (I think I will end up taking out my own foot in the first hunt), I will just have to settle for carrying some of my groceries home on foot.

There is a grocery store about a mile away from my house. I can do my mid-week grocery trip pushing the stroller to pick bread and fresh fruit. What can you do to turn a regular task into a chance to exercise?

Food theme in the Capital: Eat, purge, eat

The one scene that clearly highlights the different mentality of the District and the Capital is during one of the victory feast in Catching Fire. Peeta and Katniss were full from eating, but still haven’t been able to try all the various dishes laid out. The silly members of the prep team showed them a bowl of liquid that induce vomit at the corner of the feast. Apparently it was a common occurrence at the Capital to stuff themselves, then drink the vomit inducing liquid, and stuff themselves again several times a night during these feasts. My disgust was just as great as Katniss’ and Peeta’s over such gluttonous behavior.

It is one thing to have an eating disorder, but to encourage such mass gorging and purging just because there is an excess of food, well, I don’t understand it. But I guess that is the point Suzanne Collins is trying to make. If there is no side effects and not even a slight discomfort, would you want a magical potion that allow you to keep eating? To the citizens in the Capital, eating and purging is normal. What does it take to make an eating disorder normal?

Food theme in District 13: Eat for nutrition, not for joy

Since District 13 (which appears in Mockingjay) has to be self-sustaining, it monitors the food intake of all its citizens to the nith degree, allowing no room for emotional eating. When it is time to eat, you eat. You cannot save any food for later. The food is calibrate to sustain your body for the work assigned to you (ie. more calories if you are doing military training and less calories if you are a clerk). And the food itself seems to be bland and tasteless.

It seems like everyone in District 13 is on a diet! For their entire lives!

Throughout the ages, food has always had a place in any celebration and rituals. What is Thanksgiving without the turkey? Or birthday without the cake? Or wedding without the champagne? These events seem to be missing something without its celebratory food or a replacement (we been known to have a roast for Thanksgiving on occasion).

There is room in our lives for comfort eating, for celebratory eating, and just plain old taking pleasure in eating; as long as we eat in moderation. I cannot imagine counting calories like they do in District 13 for my entire life.

Sure I am willing to diet for a short duration to lose some weight, but not for my entire life. If I have find myself in a position to diet constantly, then it is a strong indication there is something wrong with my relationship to food. Either I have to learn to cook, select healthier food, or figure out why I cannot stop myself from emotionally eating.

Final thoughts on the food themes in the Hunger Games

Everyone can relate to the food themes in the Hunger Games series. It is amazing how something as simple as feeding our bodies can produce such strong emotions and different reactions. I look my little Hazelnut and I know food is important. Trying to feed and teaching a toddler to feed herself is tougher than exercising for an hour. Guess which one I rather do?

If you have not read the Hunger Games series or watch the Hunger Games movie, I highly recommend them. Trust me, once you finish the Hunger Games, you are going to want to finish the entire series. It is that good.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by Small Steps to Health. And may the odds ever be in your favor.

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This is a guest post by Raj, a personal injury lawyer who specializes in no win no fee whiplash claims.

Brain injuries are no joke, considering that they can permanently handicap someone or even result in death. While there are many causes of brain injuries or trauma, the most common are due to some sort of severe impact on the head.

While there are medical conditions that can injure the brain, they are not as common as accident related injuries. Brain injuries are difficult to treat and even positive treatment could result in long term damage. Because of this, brain injuries can reap large compensation claims.

How Do Brain Injuries Occur?

There are two major categories of brain injuries: traumatic injuries, and acquired brain injuries. One of the biggest causes of traumatic brain injuries is car crashes. Because of the many different injuries you can sustain in wrecks, brain damage can occur in varying degrees; it is also not uncommon to have brain injuries accompanied by whiplash in wrecks.

Brain injuries are an incredibly serious predicament to be caught in, because of how lethal they can be. When the brain is injured, it can begin to bleed or swell. Cranial bleeding can cause the brain cells to die rapidly, and cause pressure within the different segments of the brain. This can also lead to clotting, which ultimately leads to failure of the brain if not treated immediately.

Swelling of the brain is especially dangerous, and this is one of the most common after effects of head injuries. If the brain swells too much, the limited space within the skull will lead to crushing and constriction of the brain cells and tissues. If one suffers from this, they can either suffer from lifelong damage (such as memory loss, loss of motor functions, paralysis, and even mental retardation), or death at its worst.

Other than vehicular wrecks, brain injuries can be sustained from trips and falls too. Acquired brain injuries may be due to illness, cancer, diseases, and toxins, and are generally brought on without traumatic events.

What Should I Do If A Traumatic Brain Injury Is Involved?

If you or a family member’s brain injury was sustained by traumatic events brought on by another party, you should seek medical compensation for the injuries. Examples of these may be vehicular crashes where the opposing party was at fault, slipping and falling in a store or other establishment, or suffering from other accidents where someone other than you had been at fault for the injury.

If you have been a victim of these injuries, you may want to think about consulting a personal injury lawyer. These lawyers can help you to file claims, and receive compensation for your injuries. This will help you to pay medical bills, and can help to offset lost wages during your recovery phase. This type of claim could take a long time to win, so you should be prepared to start early with your case so that you may reach a verdict as soon as possible.

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