Advice On How To Defeat Your Caffeine Addiction

Did you know that the stomach is the seat of your emotions? This is not just a crazy idea as even psychiatry these days recognizes this fact and often refers to the stomach as the little brain. The stomach is the first place we usually put on weight and often a difficult place to loose weight. Unwanted weight gain on the stomach is unprocessed stress and emotional baggage. The more we stop being able to really feel, the more we stop thinking, and we just put our lives on automatic.

When you are out of touch with your stomach and your emotions, its usual to want to eat something sweet, fatty, and unhealthy. Those treats pair with the caffeine beverages so now you have a comfort eating and drinking cycle established. After a while we simply stop feeling and dealing with our emotions. Instead we find ourselves eating and drinking just to feel good.

Starbucks, cool. . .

Have you ever wondered why Starbucks is so popular? Why do even the spendthrift amongst us pay over the top prices for a cup of coffee? With great packaging and good marketing Starbucks fills a niche in the national psyche. Identification is a major component. We simply identify with our purchases. Starbucks caters to the fast on-the-go customer and to the kickback and relax customer. The ambiance of the outlets is comfortable and feels like a great place to be, personal enough to take someone new, but safe enough when you aren't ready yet to take that new person home.

Starbucks, it would seem, oozes cool and we - the consumer - have bought into that big time. But it is not cool to stress our bodies with caffeine, and it is not cool to blanket our emotions with quick-fix products. The longer we hide our true feelings, the longer it will take for us to recognize our true selves. Isn't it really time in all our lives to stop swapping life experiences and happiness for comfort foods and drinks?

Cokes and Carbonated Drinks

Let's get informed. There is an abundance of information explaining the effects of carbonated beverages on eroding metal. Just think what these drinks are doing to your stomach! Cokes and carbonated drinks contain vast amounts of sugar (or worse, artificial sweeteners), both addictive and easy to overuse. They can cause an imbalance with the blood sugar level, leading possibly to diabetes, strokes, heart problems, depression, and insomnia. Doesn't it make sense for us to start today to kick the caffeine habit and reclaim our lives?

Be patient and use the following ten tips to rediscover and to reconnect with life and living.

1. Get more sleep, rest, and relaxation. Make time to fulfill emotional, physical and mental needs.

2. Enjoy wakeup time and change morning routines even in small ways. Breathe fresh air, walk, and drink room temperature water adding a twist of lemon. Tense and stretch each part of your body slowly.

3. Use positive affirmations to kick start your day, your mind and your life. "I am a free and powerful being, ""I love myself completely without condition," "My body clears, heals, and balances itself," "I always have enough time."

4. Switch to decaffeinated beverages. Say "no" to colas and other carbonated drinks.

5. Upon waking, ask yourself: "How am I right now?" Accept how you feel. Deal with what you can in those moments and put the rest firmly aside until later. Refuse to be overwhelmed. Remember depressed actually means suppressed.

6. When that voice inside you demands caffeine, simply break the habit of responding. Drink or do something entirely different instead. Say "no" to the myth that you need caffeine to get you going.

7. If you feel tired, stressed or need a lift, tense your body, breathe deeply and clap your hands above your head four times. Ask yourself what you need right now and fulfill your needs.

8. Make time to relax and enjoy simple natural highs. Get comfortable with feeling good and stress free.

9. To stop the craving for caffeine or unhealthy comfort foods, repeat firmly in your mind: "I am letting go easily of everything I no longer need." Place your open hand firmly on your chest and rub backwards and forwards then around and around in slow circles. Rock your body backwards and forwards. Keep breathing deeply with the mouth open. You will feel comforted, calmed, and soothed, and will have bypassed the craving.

10. Be a leader and not a follower. Make healthy choices while alone, with family, friends, and colleagues. Don't over-consume caffeine because everyone else does. Make conscious and healthy choices.