One Year, No Caffeine

[LiveLean]

A year ago I finished a 10-day juice cleanse and thought I'd see which of these three I could go longest without: alcohol, caffeine, or meat. I didn't think a year later I'd still be going without one of them. I would have thought caffeine would be the hardest. Go figure.

http://www.tolivelean.com/decaffeinated/

[GuitarStv]

Makes sense to me actually.

Once you've quit for two weeks, all the physical dependence upon caffeine works it's way out of your system.  I find that there's much less social pressure to drink coffee/tea than to drink alcohol . . . and changing ingrained dietary/eating habits is often very difficult once they're formed and entrenched.

[LiveLean]

Makes sense to me actually.

Once you've quit for two weeks, all the physical dependence upon caffeine works it's way out of your system.  I find that there's much less social pressure to drink coffee/tea than to drink alcohol . . . and changing ingrained dietary/eating habits is often very difficult once they're formed and entrenched.

So true. I went nearly five months without alcohol, but DW enjoys her wine, especially on vacation, and I went back to the occasional glass of wine.

Meat was challenging from a social standpoint, too. I was on a business trip at a cattle ranch and my host said in an aggressive tone, "You're not a vegetarian or nothing, are you?"

I'm glad I said no as he produced the best steak I've ever had --- for lunch, no less.

[sonofsven]

That's great! I quit coffee/caffeine a little over a month ago, we'll see if I make it a full year.

[Highbeam]

I'm on about two years without caffeine. It was super easy to quit and really lowered my blood pressure. No reason to miss out, all of our favorite coffee shops have decaf. I drink lots of decaf coffee. Also, there's a pretty big punishment for consuming caffeine. Nobody likes unwanted sleepless nights. I stopped regular alcohol consumption at the same time and used decaf coffee as an alternative to cocktails.

Send me all of your meat. I've been trying to increase meat and protein consumption.

[Tyson]

I quit coffee a few months ago and it's been pretty great.  I fall asleep easier, way less tossing and turning. 

The main thing I had to break myself out of was the feeling that I needed a 'boost' in the mornings.  I had to learn to just accept that some mornings I'm going to feel sluggish and that's OK. 

[Chris Pascale]

Pete, this is great to see. Last August I switched to primarily decaf when I became debilitatingly physically sick 36 hours after my last cup - meaning the withdrawal took over a day to hit.

The reason for this is because the half-life of caffeine (according to a doctor who studied this) is something like 8 hours, meaning if you drink cups at 8am, noon and 4pm, you go to bed with a cup's worth of caffeine in your system, and wake up needing to replenish. I was drinking 5+ cups a good number of days, and would purposely abstain here and there, but by putting so much of the drug into my body I was maybe accumulating growing amounts and so when I stopped, the half-life had to be cut down several times before I was lacking in it.