Alright, here goes. I’m on my third attempt this year at cutting out coffee (and all caffeine but coffee’s the real kicker), and it’s going noticeably worse than my prior attempts, which are listed below:
- January 2020 – April 2020: Successfully cut out caffeine (except for two iced coffees on a particularly weak Saturday afternoon) for about three months, following a bout with the flu that helped me easily overcome the withdrawal headaches
- July 2020: Came back from July 4th (after getting engaged!) and decided to make some habit changes. Vacations, particularly busy ones, are actually when I drink the most coffee, so I usually toy with the idea of switching things up immediately afterwards. Lasted for about three to four weeks
This go around I’m back to my initial intent, which was to improve the quality of my sleep. Back in January I read Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker, and found out that caffeine sticks around in the body far longer than I had thought (half of the caffeine will still be in your body after five hours). I cut out caffeine and found myself feeling much more awake in the morning than I did before, which led me to run faster and feel more productive.
So that’s my goal this time around. I’m back to herbal teas, which lack the texture and flavor of black coffee, but at the very least require a bit of preparation. I find one of the things I miss most about cutting out coffee is eliminating the small routine each morning and afternoon when I go to make a cup.
Seven days in, it has been far harder than any previous attempt, and I’ve had dull headaches throughout most of the day. This has actually given me more resolve, because the idea of being that beholden to a particular drink isn’t particularly appealing. So this time I’m in it for the long haul.
The biggest problem with these kind of lifestyle changes is that you have to believe in the reason for the change. I was doing great without caffeine until I decided that cutting it out had no real purpose, and then I went back to my original habit. Same goes for cutting out fast food this year, which I kept up for almost six months and then threw completely out the window.
I’m definitely not good at moderation, which is another type of discipline that is probably far harder than simply cutting something out altogether. Moderation requires that you keep something around in your life and rely on your own willpower to control how you interact with that thing. And if coffee (and fast food, and sugar, and lots of other things) is any indication, I’m not very good at that at all.