It’s not for everybodyAs promised, my coffee rewind. Yay!

My coffee obsession – annihilated. Boo.

My journey on that hashtag caffeine-free life. Hashtag don’t.

So, you are not going to believe this; but I have ACTUALLY switched to decaf.

What?

I know. Pigs have officially flown.

It all started when I read somewhere that caffeine ages you, causes wrinkles and basically changes your body chemistry to some degree – causing health problems. Are you a doctor? No. But,  I’ve been an avid caffeine consumer for pretty much my entire adult life. As I imagine, I’m not alone in this. You might be. Cases of Red Bull. It gave me wings! Multiple cups of coffee in the morning. So much I should’ve bought stock in it. Afternoon. Oh, and night. Stock up sales on Monster energy drinks. Added them to my cocktails even. Google it. There are plenty of articles on the subject. Hypochondriac. Maybe!

The odd dynamic? I don’t even drink soda. I’ve never even liked soda; yet, I was drinking all these energy drinks which were just a chemically, hyped up version of… soda.

Flashback to my 2018 New Year’s Resolutions… I added “quit drinking energy drinks” to that list. Epic fail? It took almost a year to do it. No freaking way. Approximately… a year to the day. Totally flabberghasted. I began weening myself off at first, with only drinking one can per day, then serendipitously found an organic version made by the Rockstar brand. Saw you peddling that slurp on IG. Right. If you follow me on social media, you’ll remember my plugging those on my stories, literally on a daily basis, and no.. they were not one of my sponsors. I actually love those damn things.

Don’t cringe.

They didn’t have that bad an aftertaste.                           

Focus. The point is, they were replacing my daily bad habit with a “healthier” alternative? Um, not really. Well, this one still amped me up with green coffee beans and cane sugar. Still sounds like a bad habit. Right. Anyway, after the adjustment of the pounds of sugar added to the original ones dissipated and… my palate eventually adjusted.  Quite tasty! *rolls eyes. Sure. 

You don’t realize how much sugar and caffeine these food and beverage companies cleverly put in our products! They don’t HAVE to include every drop of what they put into their goods on those little nutrition labels. They only have to accommodate the minimal requirement and/or maximums of the FDA. (For those of you not up to speed on your government acronyms, thats our Food & Drug Administration.)

Don’t worry, hopping off the soap box now to pin the rant for another time.

*plop, tosses tirade into the bushes

Fast forward to current day. I crossed that “no energy drinks” off the list for good. Yay! So, since I conquered my fatal attraction to energy drinks, I swapped them with Kevita Kombucha drinks. I know.

Hasthtag: New Year, New Me.

Hashtag sick of hearing that too.

Anyway, It’s not for everybody and really, you can get those probiotics from a daily vitamin and that may be a better angle that’s worth investigating; but, for now, I’m loving those little – largely-overpriced – drinks. Sucker. Yup!

And let’s not forget that regardless, I’ve replaced a bad habit with a good one! And that’s really what its all about anyway, right?

Yeah. But there’s no caffeine.

Back to the coffee, no coffee situation. Being a “lifer” with the coffee intake, it was also time to relinquish my grip on that morning crutch as well. So, I switched to decaf. Oy vey, did I have a tough couple of days thereafter. But, as with the other kicked bad habit by way of heart-palpitating energy drinks, I acclimated, and have been fine.

PICTURE IT NOW: Face down in the driveway, whispering for anyone to put a cup o’ joe in that mug that I keep shakily raising as feet walk by.

The newest thing I read about was also that drinking coffee before 10am contributes to the mid-day slump! ( <~~ I’ve added a link to such an article – check it out.) And since we all know and loathe that midday slump. I decided to test that too. I moved my mug of amazing to after my workout, around 9-10 AM. And you know what? No, midday slump!

Playing devil’s advocate, I switched it back to the first thing I do after waking up…. narcoleptic by noon.

So the moral of the story is… pushing caffeine out of my life has been a lot easier than I thought it would be. It was slow, and steady. And guess what?

You’re still drinking coffee?

Yes. But only decaf. But the way I see it…

I won the race!

Woop! Woop!

– LET’S RECAP – Removing caffeine takes time. So relax and just do it on your own timeline. Here’s what worked for me! (FYI/it took me a year)

PHASE ONE:

1. First, remove multiple energy drinks per day down to only one energy drink daily.
2. When you’re ready, switch out your daily energy drink to an all natural version.
3. Finally, replace all natural energy drinks with probiotic drinks.

PHASE TWO:

1. If you are drinking multiple cups of coffee each day, the first thing we need to do is stop that. Drink only one cup per day. Be aware that you will get groggy without those extra cups; but be strong! It will subside.
2. When you are ready, usually after a couple weeks, or months, switch that one daily cup to decaf. This is the hardest part. IMO. You will feel sluggish for a couple days but it will pass.
3. Finally, Reach for a large glass of room temperature water. Add lemon, if you like. Do this before your cup of coffee. This new habit of reaching for the water will eventually replace that decaf cup of coffee.

So, for now, I’m enjoying that decaf-life with a dash of longing for no wrinkles, and natural energy. The dependency on caffeine is rampant. And at least there are chocolate covered coffee beans within reach. Just kidding. But ignore the immense amount of images in the coffee-porn folder on my desktop!