Chocolate Contains Caffeine.
I eat too much sugar. This is something I know, and watch, especially given my tendency toward having reactions to foods that I eat too often. They cause me to blow up like a balloon.
Even worse, I have known for a few years that eating sugar after, say, 3:00 p.m. makes me wake up in the middle of the night. If this happens, I am usually up for an hour or more.
Still, after Easter, I couldn’t help but eat my Cadbury Creme Eggs (gluten-free!) and, of course, I stayed up for an hour in the middle of the night.
The next day, I finished off the Cadbury Eggs earlier in the day and it was slightly better.
But I also had a “carrot” made of orange Reese’s Pieces, the candy I loved so much in college. Once in a blue moon, I eat these and it takes me right back to my freshman year, when I would eat a pound of them in one sitting. (This is why I don’t eat them very often anymore.)
Unfortunately, I decided to eat my “carrot” of candy at 7:30 p.m. Then I went to bed, knowing I was in for a rough night.
But I slept straight through till morning.
I woke up, well rested, and thought nothing of it – until I got hungry for breakfast and thought, “What did I eat last night?”
I ate candy.
Okay, so I need some protein… I started to calculate. And then I stopped.
I ate CANDY?!?
The answer hit me as fast as the question: There’s no chocolate in Reese’s Pieces.
You would think I would be smarter than I am. After all these years of watching what I eat, paying close attention to my intake of any number of substances, and after giving up alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, and soda, you would think I already would have known.
I looked it up and instantly, it was verified. The darker the chocolate, the more caffeine – but all chocolate contains some caffeine. Consuming caffeine of any kind is just rough on my body.
So it’s not the sugar that’s been waking me up at night; it’s the chocolate.
I gave up caffeine almost ten years ago, after an incident on the softball field where my heart wouldn’t stop beating uncontrollably fast. I had about six ounces of green tea once after giving up caffeine, and I was up almost all night.
How could I have not considered this?
I allowed myself these Easter treats because I think it’s self-defeating to be completely deprived all the time. But I don’t see much point in eating sugar if it’s not either fruit or chocolate (and I’m not fond of fruit). So now, oddly, I learned from this experience.
You’d think I’d have known. Sometimes I think it’s selective ignorance.