{"id":237208,"date":"2025-11-01T04:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T04:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/237208\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T04:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T04:53:07","slug":"i-quit-caffeine-for-good-heres-what-i-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/237208\/","title":{"rendered":"I Quit Caffeine for Good. Here\u2019s What I Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

On what was supposed to be my first day of caffeine abstinence<\/a>, my girlfriend woke me up, as she often does, by telling me she was making coffee and asking if I wanted one. I responded, as I often do, with something along the lines of \u201cMmmmmmmyes please hhhhhhthannkyou\u201d\u2014before shouting \u201cNO! WAIT! I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

She turned from the doorway with detectable contempt as I reminded her that it was the first day of the no caffeine thing. She repeated this back to me mockingly (\u201coooh, the no caffeine thing\u201d). Approximately 15 minutes later, I caved and reached for the moka pot only to find she\u2019d been so confident of my impending failure that she\u2019d made enough coffee for both of us anyway.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s into quitting things right now. Grindset culture has encouraged many of us to consider how we can eke out a few extra performance points, whether that’s by taking up new healthy habits or giving up old, unhelpful ones\u2014like that cup (or six) of morning joe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen consumed excessively and in large amounts, caffeine can lead to restlessness, heart palpitations, irritability, insomnia, and many other negative side effects,\u201d says Professor Anu Realo<\/a>, who heads up the Wellbeing, Culture and Personality Research Group at the University of Warwick. I\u2019ve definitely felt some of those unpleasant side effects, so I was intrigued by the possibility of quitting caffeine. Would it be the secret to unlocking Peak Me?<\/p>\n

According to scientists, the best way to quit caffeine is to do so gradually, so I needn\u2019t go cold turkey right away. Instead, I weaned myself down from my usual daily intake of two black coffees and one weaker source of caffeine (a tea or a Coke Zero), to one coffee and two teas\/Cokes, then one coffee and one tea\/Coke (you get the idea here) all the way down to\u2026 nada. This would apparently help limit the headaches, fatigue, irritability and difficulty concentrating that could otherwise be coming my way.<\/p>\n

The approach might seem a bit serious\u2014like kicking an addiction such as alcohol or heroin\u2014but caffeine is humankind\u2019s favorite drug,<\/a> and everyone who drinks it regularly\u2014around 80% of us, according to some estimates<\/a>\u2014are to some extent dependent on it. Breaking said dependence is therefore likely to be accompanied by some sort of withdrawal.<\/p>\n

The first signs of mine came on the afternoon of day four, when, having already consumed my allotted single coffee of the day that morning (a huge bowl of a thing from a greasy spoon, whose primary detectable quality was: hot), I found myself really quite seriously hankering for another. I was trying to get some work done, and experiencing a lack of concentration that I would\u2019ve ordinarily amended with a quick Americano and a light \u201cpull yourself together\u201d talk. The talk on its own turned out to be largely ineffectual, and I simply did not get the work done. Ominous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On what was supposed to be my first day of caffeine abstinence, my girlfriend woke me up, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[9013,1991,102,6636,13399,56,54,55,7268],"class_list":{"0":"post-237208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-digital_syndication","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-nutrition","12":"tag-textbelowcentergridwidth","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom","16":"tag-wellness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}