I heart coffee...and Diet Pepsi

Good Morning, Happy weekend!  I'm going to start off this morning with the confession that with all my talk on portion sizes yesterday I went out to Mexican for lunch and had too many chips.  I didn't stuff myself, but I know I had about a handful too many.  It was my biggest meal of the day yesterday though.  I had coffee again for breakfast, and an apple with some cream cheese for dinner. So all in all not a bad day.  I have super big aspirations for this weekend...I'm going to refinish a dresser.  I've never really done it before, so it should be fun and challenging.  I'm hoping all the sanding will give me a bit of exercising too.  I gotta jump start my day with some coffee and my blog.  I just recently started drinking coffee again, because I have a serious caffeine addiction.  I usually drink Diet Pepsi, but I ran out and haven't been to the store yet, so coffee it is.  Does anyone know anything about caffeine and healthy eating?  Me either, but I've been learning.  A little bit of it isn't bad for you.  It can boost your metabolism and give you more energy for a little bit.  It can also jump start your weight loss.  It also has some downsides too.  If you drink too much caffeine you can get high blood pressure and have problems sleeping.  Without lots of water you can become dehydrated.  And if you are addicted to it like me  as your body becomes accustomed to caffeine, it begins to compensate. Used over the long term, caffeine actually reduces your metabolism. . . you come to need increasing amounts of caffeine just to stay alert.  Boo.  So I've been trying to limit myself.  The problem with that is that I get headaches if I don't have any....crazy right.  So I've cut my intake down to one in the morning.  It's very hard to not drink a Diet Pepsi, but I've been strong.  My hope is to eliminate my need for caffeine altogether.  I've done it successfully before and I can do it again!  Some caffeine research has taught me that caffeine actually stimulates hunger.  So if you don't have control of your eating habits, it can actually cause you to eat more!! Yuck, I don't want to eat more, I've just started eating LESS!!  It causes your blood sugar to rise and crash, which really explains a lot.  After a soda or a coffee it always seemed like I was hungrier.  For a diabetic the blood sugar swings are also bad f or keeping my A1C in check.  An A1C is the blood record of my blood sugar numbers for the last three months.   Good is under 5.  Before I started this lifestyle change it was probably 12.  So I was slowly killing myself.  But I'll save that discussion for another day!  My post is going to be short today! I have a lot of stuff I want to do, so wish me luck on my dresser project! I will post some pics if it turns out well! And keep fighting your Food Wars, we can do it...together!