Quitting coffee is not easy. Its regular consumption is alive and well in our society where the average office worker drinks a bit over 3 cups a day, over 50% of people have coffee in the morning, and hundreds of millions of cups of are drank daily in the U.S. alone. I can't get through a city block without seeing a Starbucks or other coffee shop, and considering that coffee is the second highest traded commodity in the world after petroleum I'm not surprised. The health benefits of coffee are numerous. It can decrease your risk of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Type 2 Diabetes, Oral and Esophageal Cancer, Asthma Attacks, Strokes, and it has a lot of antioxidants and minerals that prevent against disease in general. Unfortunately, the potential side effects are also numerous. Changes in sleep patterns, auditory hallucinations, increased blood pressure, heartburn, dehydration, and jitters. Most of these are only relevant when you consume a large amount of coffee. But many of the good effects also require large scale consumption. Why Quit Coffee I don't believe there's a strong reason to quit coffee for health reasons. I quit drinking coffee (from 5-6 cups a day) for entirely different reasons, mostly related to its impact on sleep and productivity, and you may want to do the same. Having lived with coffee and without it, here are the best reasons to quit it. Caffeine Addiction If you get headaches every time you don't drink coffee in the morning, you're probably addicted to caffeine. Another sign would be if people don't want to be around you until you've had your first cup, or if the first thing you can think to do when you get out of bed is get coffee. No substance addiction is good, and you might want to try to stop. Expensive Coffee is expensive. If you're fortunate enough to be in an office where they provide halfway decent coffee for free, then you have it quite as bad. But even then, you might be getting a coffee from Starbucks on the way to work. That's $2 minimum, and more likely closer to 3 or 4 dollars. Say you do that every workday for a month. That's about 20 workdays, at we'll say 3 dollars a day, so 60 dollars a month. That means you're spending $720 on coffee a year just by buying one cup a day, and most of us are buying more then that. It can quickly add up. Don't like the Crash Any drug like caffeine that causes your mind to go into a form of "overdrive" has to have a crash to it. It's not possible to burn up your mental energy faster than normal and not have it need recuperation later, and this is what leads to the afternoon crash most heavy coffee drinkers experience. One of the benefits of quitting is that you no longer have this crash, and are able to be productive throughout your day instead of having no concentration or energy after noon. Cutting Calories I always drank my coffee black, but most people prefer to add some sugar and milk. If you're going on a diet the calories from milk and sugar can be detrimental to your efforts. A single sugar packet has around 15 calories, and two tablespoons of milk or creamer has 15-30 calories. If you're adding milk and sugar it's about 30 calories a coffee minimum, and over a day it can really add up. Productivity For a while I thought caffeine was great for productivity, but now I'm quite sure it actually hurts it. The jittery focus you get after a couple cups makes it very hard to monotask, making you much more likely to multitask, and multitasking doesn't work. Combine this with the crash later and coffee does a lot more harm than good for productivity even though it makes us feel the opposite. Ultimately it's up to you whether or not you want to quit drinking coffee. I'm glad I did, and I'd recommend anyone else who drinks it consistently at least try living without it. Even if you go back, you'll at least know why you're drinking it and not just doing it out of habit. How to Quit Coffee Using Charles Duhigg's habit change method from "The Power of Habit" you have to identify what the "cue" is that causes you to drink or get coffee, and then the "reward" you get from it. To change the habit, you pick a new "routine" that you go through in response to the cue that will provide the same reward, then you implement it until it becomes second nature. These aren't always cut and dry--you might think you're getting coffee because you're tired, but it could actually be that you just needed a break from working and walking to the coffee pot provided that. These are the most likely reasons, and how to change the habit if they apply to you: A Break From Work If you notice that you're always getting coffee when your work seems particularly overwhelming or daunting, you may be getting up just out of fatigue or as a way to regain your mental energy. If this is the case, then the coffee isn't necessary at all. You could replace it with anything, such as tea or water, and you would get the same effect. Or consider not getting a drink at all, but finding other ways to recharge your mental batteries like taking a walk outside or saying hi to a friend. You'll suddenly feel much more refreshed. Lack of Energy It may be though that you're actually quite tired and need the pick-me-up from coffee. If this is the case, ask yourself this question: "Am I always this tired around now? Or is this a rare instance?" If you're always tired around a certain time, there are two explanations: either you're not sleeping well, or since you always get coffee around that time your brain knows to expend less energy since you're about to ingest caffeine anyway. To counter your brain anticipating the caffeine, you might try weaning yourself off with lots of tea or water, both of which will still give you energy but with fewer of the side effects. For the situational tiredness, you likely just sat through a horrid meeting or presentation in a dark room after lunch. Don't beat yourself up, it's perfectly natural to be tired afterwards. Have some water or tea, go for a walk, get yourself woken back up before you try to sit back down to work. You'll be fine without the coffee kick. Flavor I drank my coffee black because I love the taste of coffee. I think it's delicious, and picking out the different flavors in fine coffee is quite pleasurable. Unfortunately, there's no way to supplement the flavor of coffee if you're a connoisseur. You simply have to accept that if you're quitting coffee you will lose this pleasurable part of life, but I've really enjoyed applying that curiosity to good tea. Tea is even more diverse in its flavors than coffee, so if you enjoy trying different types of coffees and savoring the flavors you may feel the same way about tea. Caffeine Addiction Having a caffeine addiction makes very hard to stop drinking coffee. If I tried going without it for a day I would get headaches, be grumpy, and generally not very happy. I don't recommend quitting caffeine entirely cold turkey, since that won't be fun for anyone, but you can wean yourself off. The first thing to do would be to switch to either tea, or half-caff coffee then tea. Once you're drinking tea, drink however much you want, and focus on strong brews like English Breakfast or Mate, which both have a lot of caffeine compared to other teas. Now that you're on tea, you'll probably have 10+ cups to get your necessary caffeine, but you can start winding it down. Try drinking only decaf teas after noon, then having fewer and fewer caffeinated teas in the morning, then eventually switching to non-caffeinated or at least low-caffeine teas entirely. Taking it gradually does a much better job of setting you up for success. Focus "I better get a cup of coffee before I start this" is a phrase I hear all the time. I did the same thing for a while, until I realized that coffee doesn't actually help with getting things done all that much. As I said before, it makes us jittery and causes us to multitask, and when we multitask you don't really get anything done. To be productive we need to be calm, not jumping in our seats, and I think that we all only feel like we're being productive when we have a lot of caffeine. It also goes back to the problem of burning up extra mental energy now which we won't have later. Being crashed from all that coffee you had in the morning won't help with your big project, and it's much better to have sustained productivity throughout the day. The Routine Last but not least, the routine of making coffee can be addictive itself. I used a french press to make my coffee, and the process of selecting beans, boiling water, grinding the beans, putting them in the press with the water, and pouring out the fresh coffee was very pleasant and an almost meditative way to start the day. If you feel the same, then I'd recommend getting loose tea leaves that you can either bag yourself, or steep in a tea pot using a built in strainer. Not only is this a more enjoyable process, but the tea tends to taste much better than anything you can get in a bag, and you'll get more cups of tea from a given amount of leaves. Source
