Can you actually feel better without caffeine?
If you remember from this post a few weeks ago, I have been experimenting to see what it would be like if I removed caffeine from my life for 30 days. After hearing Jeff Goldblum say that he hadn’t had any caffeine in years and he felt better because of it, I wanted to give it a try. I figured that 30 days would be long enough that I would be past the withdrawals and it would give me a pretty good indication of how my body would feel without it in my life.
Well, I’m happy to report that this past Monday (February 17th) I celebrated 30 days caffeine free!
So How Was It?
I’ll be completely honest, it was pretty tough for me in the beginning. Like I mentioned in the post linked above, that first week not only did I stop using caffeine, but I had to get up 2 hours earlier than normal because it was the last week of 6:00am prayer time at church. So I was going through the headaches and the out-of-body feeling that goes with not having the caffeine in my system plus I was sleeping less. It wasn’t my best week.
Since then though, it really hasn’t been too tough. There have been times when I’ve been super tired where I would normally have reached for a caffeinated drink only to replace it with a nap. Let me tell you, having the occasional nap back in my life again has been awesome.
Plus it’s not like I just stopped drinking caffeine and replaced it entirely with water. There are still plenty of sugary, overly-intense flavored, high-fructose corn syrup wielding drinks out there that don’t have caffeine. I’ve had my fair share of root beer and Hi-C and other such things. So while I’ve made strides when it comes to one chemical in my body, there are still plenty more that I need to work on removing from my life.
One step at a time here folks.
How Do You Feel?
I feel good. I think I was expecting to be feel sluggish and run down all the time but I really don’t. My body is reacting just fine to it. If anything the struggle I have is habitual. It’s been harder than I thought it would be to just be able to stop wanting the thing I know I’m trying to get rid of. My habit of going to the grocery store or gas station and getting a Mountain Dew off the shelf is a hard one to break. Right now, I’m doing that by grabbing something non-caffeinated. In the future though, I can see myself wanting to remove sugary drinks entirely too. That one will be a little harder to work through, I think. I haven’t gotten to the point where I love water enough by itself to not drink anything but that. That day may come though. And maybe sooner than I think.
If this is something that you’ve been contemplating, it’s totally doable and worth it. You don’t need that mood-altering substance in your body anyway. Be prepared for the first week to be hard, but after that things should get easier for you.
As for me, I’m going to keep going on the non-caffeinated track. I feel pretty good so far. Let’s see where this thing leads.