It’s been 12 days since I’ve had coffee.  No regular and no decaf.  I haven’t had any caffeinated tea either.  In the past when I’ve tried to quit coffee or cut down on caffeine, I’ve usually just substituted regular coffee for decaf or strong gunpowder green tea.  By the way, decaffeinated coffee tastes terrible!  I’ll just say it.  It might be placebo.  When I drink decaf I sit there wondering what in the world I’m doing.  Why am I drinking burned beans in hot water that don’t taste that good?  It’s times like those when I wonder if the only reason I used to drink the coffee was for the caffeine.  The answer is … probably yes.

Here are some of the top benefits I’ve noticed since quitting ALL FORMS of caffeine.

WAY LESS ANXIETY … ESPECIALLY WAKING UP

I used to get anxious for seemingly no reason.  Things were going well … anxious.  Things weren’t going well … anxious.  Not all the time but often.  And I’d often wake up anxious.  That waking up anxious is a terrible feeling.  It would put me in a pretty negative state right at the start of the day as my brain would try to figure out why I was feeling anxious and I’d mentally flip through the catalogue of possible causes.  As Tony Robbins says, where focus goes, energy flows and when focus goes to what’s wrong in life then positive energy goes right down with it.

LESS DESIRE TO MEDITATE

I used to spend a lot of time meditating because I thought that was the only way to rid myself of this anxiety and overwhelm that I seemed to be constantly feeling.  After quitting coffee, I still meditate but not nearly as much and I don’t have that thought that if I don’t meditate then things will go badly.  Meditating is awesome, don’t get me wrong.  Maybe the way to put it is that I used to do it almost out of desperation.  As if I absolutely needed to meditate to be a whole person.  There’s no more desperation to meditate anymore.

LESS OF THE DREADED CRASHES

Caffeine crashes are the worst … the absolute worst.  The thing is, it took me a long time to figure out that the crashes I would have were caused by caffeine.  They usually happened in the late afternoon between 2 and 4, or in the evening as I was putting my kids to bed.  In the afternoon, it often came up as an overwhelming desire to take a nap.  In the evening, I would often put the kids to bed and then just fall asleep with them because I was “so exhausted”.   I put that in quotes because I usually attributed my “exhaustion” to the fact that I was expending large quantities of energy taking care of my kids or running my business and that it was normal!  For the longest time I also tracked what I ate for dinner to see if I could correlate it with evening crashes.  All the while it was the coffee.

NOT CONSTANTLY PLANNING OUT MY NEXT CUP OF COFFEE

I used to go to bed looking forward to coffee the next day.  I would think about where I would get it, and when.  I would plan out whether I would want Bulletproof Coffee, black coffee, or better yet … both!  A Bulletproof Coffee on the way to Crossfit … to perform better in the workout of course, not because I was addicted.  Then I’d stop by a coffee shop afterwards and get a large delicious black coffee.

MY KIDS ARE BETTER REGULATED

They’re better regulated because I’m better regulated, thanks to mirror neurons.

I’M A BETTER PARENT

I’m calmer, less prone to agitation, and have a more constant source of energy.  I don’t need to nap in the afternoon and am wide awake in the morning when they get up.