Hey guys! I know I promised this post a long time ago but I always like to take my time with these kinds of lifestyle posts and quite honestly, giving health advice can be difficult! Not everyone’s experience will be the same and my methods might not work for everyone so keep that in mind. Over a month ago, I decided to kick my healthy eating up a notch and decided to get rid of my coffee addiction cause it was making me super jittery, giving me tons of mental fogginess (I’m not quite sure how I managed to survive college like this! I think it was the extra energy), and making me go broke since buying a cup of iced coffee everyday can add up. I decided to quit and I’m so happy to not be addicted to it anymore and to let myself once in a while have a cup without feeling like I’m dependent on it and can just finally enjoy the taste! In case you’re wondering, I only have a cup once every couple of weeks! Crazy compared to buying a cup every morning for the past couple of years and telling myself that it’s “okay and that I should feel lucky that I’m not addicted to anything else” ha! Here’s how I did it:
Don’t Go Cold Turkey
If you’re someone who has been dependent on coffee for years (yup, that’s me!) then randomly quitting one day won’t help at all and will make you crave coffee even more. Instead I choose to slowly wean myself off of it by going from drinking coffee 7 days a week to drinking it 5 days a week and not drinking it on the weekends. This really helped since I need coffee the most on the weekdays when I’m going to class. Then after I got used to that, I dropped it to four days a week, then three days, and then finally when I felt ready, once a week. It came to a point where I realized that life without coffee was so much better cause I could think clearly again, felt more awake (even when I was tired, it wasn’t the same kind of tired that I felt with coffee! so strange!), and felt so much healthier.
Substitute With “Lower” Caffeine
Once in a while, if my coffee cravings really got out of hand I would drink green tea, peppermint tea, or even lemon water to make me feel better and give me an extra energy boost but in a more natural way. Personally, I hate the taste of tea so I didn’t rely on this method a lot plus I was afraid I would still be addicted to caffeine so I only did this in the beginning. You would be surprised at how much this helps though! I think it’s the placebo effect and just tricking your mind.
Take Naps
Since your body has been dependent on coffee for a while, your body will feel weird for a bit and you might find yourself with side effects in the beginning such as feeling tired and getting headaches. Around this time, I was taking a lot of power naps in order to get myself through it and if you have the time, then I highly recommend it!
Exercise + Drink More Water
I always work out and drink tons of water throughout the day but when I was trying to quit my addiction, I relied on working out even more to give me more energy and water to constantly make me feel hydrated and more awake. Plus working out takes your mind off of the fact that you’re no longer drinking coffee and will make you feel so much better when you have crazy mood swings and other strange side effects!
I hope this post helps! I know it’s tough getting rid of this addiction and can feel like it’s going to take forever but I promise it’s worth it at the end and you’ll feel so much better! Just hang in there! And let me know if you have other tips or what your experience was like!
Thanks for reading,
-Ruya
