I've found for me the secret to effective coffee drinking is don't drink it right away upon awaking, particularly on an empty stomach. Move about, have breakfast, wake up naturally. Then an hour or two after waking up have a small amount. Much less negative effect on rest of day while getting the energy benefits.
Quitting Caffeine
301–310 of 363 posts
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did that, and after a couple of days the withdrawal disappeared and I felt exactly as before. No better and no worse. Started drinking coffee again since it's good, cheap and healthy-ish (at least more so than what I would replace it with). YMMV
Same here. Except I don't notice any signs of withdrawal (and I drink multiple cups a day). There are people who drink a pot plus a day, maybe those are the ones who would really benefit.
I drink a pot plus a day, stopped for a couple weeks, felt no difference. Prior to that I used to drink a 12-pack plus of diet soda a day. Stopped. BIG difference.
I think the difference is that coffee is a morning thing for me. I'll get through the pot by noon and be done, so it doesn't affect my sleep.
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm..reading this makes me wonder ... I noticed that life is running extremely fast lately and I am having a hard time being "in the moment" ... and I drink a lot of coffee. I really enjoy everything about coffee from roasting to brewing though, so it would probably be quite hard giving it up. Anyway, thanks for sharing this, I will take a long look at that.
I noticed that life is running extremely fast lately and I am having a hard time being "in the moment" ... and I drink a lot of coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. I'm a very in the moment person, meditate regularly, enjoy and live in the moment, etc. This is an approach to life thing that is quite orthogonal to whether you drink coffee or not.
Regardless of your anecdotal evidence, caffeine as a drug does cause people to focus. This comes at the expense of noticing what happens in the background
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm..reading this makes me wonder ... I noticed that life is running extremely fast lately and I am having a hard time being "in the moment" ... and I drink a lot of coffee. I really enjoy everything about coffee from roasting to brewing though, so it would probably be quite hard giving it up. Anyway, thanks for sharing this, I will take a long look at that.
I noticed that life is running extremely fast lately and I am having a hard time being "in the moment" ... and I drink a lot of coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. I'm a very in the moment person, meditate regularly, enjoy and live in the moment, etc. This is an approach to life thing that is quite orthogonal to whether you drink coffee or not.
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Re: Quitting Caffeine
#305I've been off Caffeine for a good two years now and have no plans of going back. Life runs too fast for me on caffeine, yes I can blow through work faster, but when I was on caffeine it would feel like days, weeks, months would go by in the blink of an eye. I wasn't enjoying the moment.. and then I stopped drinking caffeine. Life became more present for me, not slower in the bad sense, but that I was able to relish e…
......how many cups a day were you drinking?
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#306I "quit" caffeine while dealing with a mysterious and persistent nausea which ended up being mild food allergies. Either way, before I knew what was going on, I got frustrated at my textbook healthiness yielding no answers, went off the low-carb deep and and cut out grains and sugars almost entirely from my diet. Because my insulin/glucose levels have now moved from the penthouse to a basement apartment, I no longer…
I'm the original author. I should have mentioned in my post that I've also been consuming very few daily carbs for a few years now. I experience the effects you describe now when I do indulge in a doughnut or the like. It's hard to tell now how much of my even mood is due to quitting caffeine and how much is due to steady insulin levels. I do feel that I benefit from being very cautious about consuming all of the above (caffeine, sugar, carbs).
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a more complete list of all the health benefits of coffee, and separately of caffeine: http://nutritionstrategy.com/coffee-good-or-bad/
Coffee is full of antioxidants That is one of my pet peeves. There is no proof that antioxidants are good for humans. Years ago I read an article by a researcher that traced the origin of the idea to... nowhere. There was never any research that indicated they are good for us. It's one of those things that was injected into a news cycle and was picked up and repeated over and over again.
I can't speak to antioxidants specifically, but this is a pet peeve of mine as well.
My girlfriend can attest to my going on tirades when a miscellaneous holistic "health expert" shows up on morning talk shows to inform daytime tv viewers that if they put an onion under their bed and only eat foods that don't contain the colour white that they'll reduce the "toxins" in their house and their body. (fictional example) Those mysterious boogeyman toxins... gotta reduce those toxins. Oh and you're selling a supplement that will take care of all of that for me so that I don't have to walk my pocketful of okra around the block three times before soaking it in a bath of cold milk I must change every day if I want to stay healthy.
I'll stop now, but I could go on...
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I noticed that life is running extremely fast lately and I am having a hard time being "in the moment" ... and I drink a lot of coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. I'm a very in the moment person, meditate regularly, enjoy and live in the moment, etc. This is an approach to life thing that is quite orthogonal to whether you drink coffee or not.
Regardless of your anecdotal evidence, caffeine as a drug does cause people to focus. This comes at the expense of noticing what happens in the background
Mindfulness is actually selective focus, so if caffeine helped it then it supports my "anecdote". Caffeine doesn't make life move quicker, it doesn't stop you from enjoying the moment, etc.
In conversations like these too often people promote a quick fix type of thing. "I stopped {X} and gained {Y}!", when really there was no causative relationship, and {X} was just a one of many lifestyle changes.
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#309I find it hard to take articles around this seriously when they don't take into consideration the huge variability humans show in metabolising coffee and it's related health effects.
A light introduction can be found here:
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/for-coffee-drinker...
A more in depth can be found:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242593/
It's all about CYP1A2
Re: Quitting Caffeine
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ginger beer (as in fancy ginger ale) + lime juice + bitters, well-iced, is quite tasty. It's a Moscow mule without the vodka. You can mess with adding tonic water if you miss the vodka taste. A splash of Luxardo syrup, cherry juice, blueberry purée, of any number of other little flourishes (lychee is notably great, tumeric is interesting) can make it extra special. I drink occasionally but I also enjoy these NA conco…
Bitters (e.g. Angostura) is typically alcoholic though isn't it?
I want the bitters so that I don't feel like I am cheating too much, now.