It’s official now: I have migraines. The cause? Tea and soda.
I discovered instant powder tea on my weight loss journey years ago; as much as I love water I needed to have some flavor if I was going to constantly drink enough to curb my appetite. I drank so much when I went to a teeth cleaning the dental assistant thought I had “suspicious lesions.” When they did the cleaning it all washed off—it was tea powder residue. I was told for the amount I drank I would need to brush a lot more often than twice a day to stop it from settling between my teeth. But by that time, I had lost most of the weight through cutting calories and exercise, so I cut back on the instant powder tea.
When I met my husband he had a kettle and introduced me to brewing my own tea. It was like an aha moment happened, and I immediately ran with it. I began building my own tea collection, complete with spices to make my own combinations and flavors. I drank about 2-3 quarts a day, having two kettles going on my off days, and making instant loose-leaf tea at work with the tea filter straw I was designing at the time.
Then I started getting sick—headaches, not feeling well. Turns out I was overdosing on tea. It got so bad that when my husband and I were putting down the new closet flooring, I was sitting on the floor looking and feeling hungover and not being much help at all. I was slurping on tea when this all went down, and he suggested I cut back for a while.
So I sent tea-less for about a month, including any caffeinated drinks like sodas. I don’t think it was really about the caffeine though, as the majority of my tea and the sodas I drank were decaffeinated. Now-a-days I drink one soda a week and maybe one or two containers of tea a day. If I start getting a headache I immediately stop for a while.
Then this week happened. Work started back up and I slipped back into my old habits of having tea and soda to sip on for meetings. A little before mid-week the migraine started, and this time it was accompanied by nausea and pain. I’d had friends and relatives before speak of migraines, but I didn’t really have a frame of reference since I barely got headaches. Now I understand.
So goodbye tea. Goodbye soda. I may have a sip once in a blue moon, but for the foreseeable future this once good thing is gone.
Have you ever had to give up something you really liked?