Coffee vs CFS

I LOVE coffee.  I have always LOVED coffee.  The Paleo diet and the autoimmune diet and PWCFS all recommend ditching coffee.  By experimenting with it over the last half year, I have found it to be a double edge sword.

I managed to switch to tea last year.  Then my kid moved back in and he is a coffee addict.  I started with small single cups.  Now I am drinking 3+ cups a day.  I have noticed a couple of things.

My blood sugar tends to crash a few hours after drinking the stuff.  However, it clears the CFS cobwebs out of my head and lets me function more normally for a few hours and occasionally the entire day.

I think I have figured out the blood sugar crash thing: caffeine is an appetite suppressant   If I drink coffee before I eat anything, then I'm not hungry for a long time or I only eat small amounts of food.  For me this is bad, since a few hours later my blood sugar will nosedive from lack of food. This leads to all sorts of nasty side effects including but not limited to nausea and a nasty case of the grumpies.

Ideally, if I had any willpower I would switch back to tea.  But, that isn't going to happen.  I LOVE coffee.  So here is my compromise.  I will continue to drink coffee however I must be mindful to eat as well.  I must have a large protein heavy breakfast preferably prior to the cup of coffee.  I think I have to treat coffee as the dessert course to my meal instead of the traditional starter course.