On Monday, my stomach decided to turn itself inside out. Seriously. I’ve never had so much stomach pain before in my entire life. It was migraine levels of pain. It was so bad that I told my sweetie we were going to the ER if it didn’t let up soon. (Still not sure what it was, possibly the wheat and gluten I’d consumed. But the timing seems off to blame that.)

Fortunately, the pain diminished. I was *not* hungry, though. Didn’t eat anything until noon.

Finally occurred to me mid-afternoon that the reason I might be having such a headache might be because I hadn’t had any caffeine that morning.

I have been considering going caffeine free for a while. There are SO MANY things that I must do, or take, or eat, on a daily basis, in order to stay well.

Why not remove the one voluntary addiction? Uncomplicate my life a little?

Tuesday morning I woke up bright and chipper. Felt great. Didn’t get a headache util the middle of the afternoon again.

Was it the lack of caffeine? Or the other change I’d made to my diet?

You see, I’m still looking to lose a little weight. One of the ways of going about that is to compress your eating window.

I had already compressed it in the evening. Most nights, I stop eating at 6 PM. Why? Dr. T has just come out with a new book, “Keto for Migraines.” As I credit him for half of my migraine recovery, I bought it and read it.

There wasn’t a lot of new information in there for me. The one piece I didn’t have though was that he recommends that you stop eating for the day four hours before you go to sleep.

Like most people who suffer from migraines, when I have migraines, I wake up with them. Because I don’t take anything for my migraines, and because one of the most effective “treatments” for my migraines is fasting, having an empty stomach in the morning gives my body a better chance to fight off any imminent migraine.

Before I started this, I would sometimes wake up with a headache, one that would disappear after a couple of hours. When I stopped eating four hours before I went to sleep, I stopped waking up with headaches.

On Monday, I didn’t eat anything until noon. I decided to continue this.

But wait! You faithful readers might say. You don’t eat anything for breakfast already!

That’s correct. However, I did have tea with both coconut oil and coconut milk in it, and I had started drinking bone broth every morning as well. So at least a couple hundred calories first thing in the morning.

So I cut that out. I’m drinking plain tea, no caffeine, no calories, until about 11 AM every morning.

One of the reasons why I was putting coconut oil into my tea in the mornings was because I wasn’t getting enough fat in my diet. I needed it. On both Monday and Tuesday, I didn’t get enough fat. Wednesday, I finally did, and didn’t end up with that mid-afternoon headache.

I will still consume caffeine now and again, but that will be medicinal, not habitual. And on meh days, I’m likely to eat something early in the morning as well.

So these are the current changes I’ve made to my life/diet. What changes have you made recently?