Now that dust has settled and I am free from the coffee addiction for more than four months, it’s time to organize my experience into a coherent strategy.
STRATEGY
MENTAL HEALTH
- Get your mind right: clearly outline why you want to kick the coffee addiction and what benefit you are looking to gain from it. Write it all down if you are a visual creature. I did, anything that I put on paper makes me feel more accountable to myself.
- Take time off, about a week, to dedicate yourself to the efforts, especially if you are a mom and have a professional career. Juggling so many responsibilities plus the extra task of not drinking coffee, and feeling low on energy, will not be helpful and probably lead to giving up.
EXERCISE
- If you exercise on a regular basis, and it’s one of your priorities, this will be hard, but accept that your motivation for working out will take a nose-dive. Most likely you will stop exercising for a few weeks. The good news is, it’s temporary and you will come back better and stronger.
WILL POWER
- Support your will power. You will experience unending self-talk to justify why you should cheat “this one time”. Use a breathing technique to interrupt the self-talk. I used the Wim Hof method (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0BNejY1e9ik). Also, keep in mind that our will power is strongest in the morning, and gets weaker as the day progresses, so pay attention to your mindset and will power going into afternoon and evening. If it starts going into negative territories, do something to interrupt it, like Wim Hof breathing.
CHANGE IT UP
- Replace your old habit with a new one. Instead of brewing and enjoying my coffee in the morning for about 30 mins, I started doing Yoga instead. By any means, I am not advanced or particularly good at it, but the fact of conditioning the body and mind to do something new, something different, will take your mind off the old habit. In case of yoga, you may find so many benefits, that you will get addicted all over again just to a more beneficial thing!
- Introduce substitute beverages. If possible, opt for no sugar drinks. For the first couple of weeks I needed something warm in the morning. I have lots of dietary restrictions due to my autoimmunity, so replacements such as roasted fig, cacao or French chicory weren’t an option. However, I found something that supports the healing of my gut: I mix beef gelatin with colostrum powder and add warm water to it. The flavor is decent, and the warmth and texture reminded me of coffee. On top of that, it felt really good on my gut. My hair, skin and nails were really thankful too! I still continue drinking this odd mixture now, mostly because of the benefits to skin, hair and nails.
- Add some supplements (for a limited period of time). Withdrawing from coffee can expose mineral deficiencies. In particular, coffee may block absorption of magnesium. And since about 80% of the population is deficient in magnesium, I thought I would start there. My mental fog and fatigue weren’t lifting even though I was three weeks into being caffeine free. When I added magnesium, in just a couple of days, the fog and fatigue went away, and I was back to feeling productive and wanted to go for a run!
CONCLUSION
I tried breaking the coffee addiction million times before, and I failed every time.
This time wasn’t easy either, but I am confident that the steps I took were key to my success. And…I love how I feel, I am not planning to go back to regular coffee consumption ever again!
