Why you should cut down on coffee every once in a while
What i’ve learned from my week without caffeine
Me and coffee have a love-hate relationship. I love coffee because of its taste and texture, the ritual and craft of making it and enjoying it with other people. But most of all I love coffee because of the benefits that caffeine provides: the feel-good effect, the energy boost, the mental clarity, focus and flow state, the endorphins rush and the “painkiller” effect.
So you might be wondering why cut it down if it brings all these benefits?
In this article I’m going to explore the reasons why I decided to cut down on caffeine for a week, what I learned from it and why you too should consider cutting your caffeine intake every once in a while.
Coffee and caffeine
First of all, I’m not by any means against coffee and caffeine, quite the opposite. I love it and so do millions of people around the world. Coffee is one of the most traded commodities in the world: just in the US it is estimated that people drink around 400 million cups a coffee every day.
Coffee is delicious, it brings people together and also has many benefits related to health and well-being. There’s a lot of evidence that links coffee to improving health and longevity: some benefits are tied to the phytonutrients that coffee cointans, others to the caffeine that is in it.
Caffeine is one of the most popular performance-enhancing substances: it gives us energy and reduces perception of fatigue, improves endurance, strength and power, improves concentration, increases motivation and eagerness, suppresses appetite and increases fat burning.
But despite all the benefits that coffee and caffeine have, due to the reasons I’ll mention in this article it’s important to take breaks and cut down the intake.
Why I decided to cut down and take a pause off of caffeine
Last week was my deload week in the gym. I schedule a deload week — a week of training with less volume and less intensity — every 4th week, so my body can fully recover and I don’t burn out my central nervous system. Because I also wanted to give my body a bit more room to regenerate and recover, I decided that I was going to cut down on caffeine and take a break from it after a long time.
The weeks leading up to last week, I had been feeling a bit on the edge: more tired than usual, my digestion had been working worse, I had been having worse regeneration and recovery, I’d been waking up more fatigued, my recovery metrics on Whoop tracking device — my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Resting Heart Rate (RHR) — had been lower than usual and I had been having more on those hard days with malaise and feeling of being burned out.
The reason behind this was partly also because I had been drinking too much caffeine — or let’s say more than usual — because I wanted to feel good, be mentally productive with my work and train well in the gym.
The last longer pause with caffeine I did was at the end of August / beginning of September when I got sick with Covid — so it was about time that I reset my system once again.
My love-hate relationship with coffee and caffeine
As I wrote in the beginning of the article, me and coffee have a love-hate relationship.
I love coffee because of its taste and texture, the ritual and craft of making it and enjoying it with other people. But most of all I love coffee because of the benefits that caffeine provides: the feel-good effect, the energy boost, the mental clarity, focus and flow state, the endorphins rush and the “painkiller” effect.
But at the same time, sometimes I really “hate” coffee and caffeine.
I’m very sensitive to caffeine: I digest and process it very quickly which means that I feel its effects very much — which has its advantages and disadvantages. The upside is that I feel all of the effects that caffeine provides: while someone might not feel any different after a double espresso shot, I feel its effect right away and sometimes they might last for hours — which again, can be a good thing or not: if I know I need energy and mental focus to do a good workout or finish a project at work, caffeine gives me the means to do it.
But because I’m very sensitive to caffeine, I can very easily overdo it.
If I drink too much of it in one sitting or shorter period of time, I get “caffeine jitters”, I get stressed out, and sometimes even anxious. Caffeine also drains our energy stores to provide us with energy right now: and when you’re very sensitive to caffeine, if you drink too much of it for too long, you’ll very quickly end up drained or even burned out because caffeine will drain all of your body’s energy stores.
Being very caffeine sensitive also means that you will feel the negative symptoms of cutting down on it or taking a pause from it that much more.
Caffeine withdrawal symptoms
Caffeine withdrawal is a real thing.
Caffeine binds to the adenosine receptors in the brain which signal about tiredness, fatigue and sleep rhythm. Caffeine takes the role of adenosine and in this way tells us that we’re not tired, that we have energy and it’s not the time to sleep yet.
But our brain is smart: in response to caffeine intake, the brain will create more of these adenosine receptors and thus balance things out. We develop a tolerance and we need more caffeine than before for the same effect.
But when we cut down on caffeine, suddenly there are so many more of these adenosine receptors and they all signal the brain about the tiredness and fatigue: that’s why we feel so tired, fatigued and sluggish when we cut down on caffeine or take a pause off of it.
Since I’m very sensitive to caffeine, I feel the caffeine withdrawal symptoms so much more. I can date it since my teenage years: almost every time I skipped or cut down on caffeine, I felt extreme fatigue, inability to focus, extreme dip in energy levels, strong headaches and even migraines at times, irritability and sometimes even melancholy or mild depression.
Because of this love-hate relationship with coffee I too often get caught up in the “caffeine trap”. I drink too much for too long because I’ve built a tolerance and “need” it to function properly. As a result, I end up depleting all of my energy stores and I end up burned out and I’m forced to cut down or even quit caffeine which brings withdrawal symptoms with extreme feelings of fatigue and inability to do anything.
But this time I set the goal to do a decaf week the week prior to that: I planned on lowering my work load, taking it more easy and made the commitment that I’ll stick to it no matter how I felt.
What I’ve learned from a week off of caffeine
Here are my 5 lessons I learned from my “decaf” week.
1. It wasn’t as bad as I feared it would have been
Although I would describe my previous week with a simple “Meh…”, overall it went fine.
Although I felt more tired, I wasn’t able to do as much quality mental work and I was generally feeling a bit worse, I was still able to accomplish my weekly goals and do most of the items from my weekly to-do list.
Because my caffeine withdrawals are often very extreme, I have a strong fear of cutting down and quitting caffeine. But as usually ends up happening with the majority of things that we fear doing, we realize that what we feared doing wasn’t that scary after all.
Last week I missed caffeine and its positive effects the most on these three occasions:
- As a part of my daily routine: during my regular coffee time at 10am
- During mental productive work hours because of the decreased ability to focus and do quality mental work and
- Later on in the day — from 5 to 7pm — when the caffeine withdrawals were the strongest.
On day 3 I added back into my routine a decaf coffee, but it just wasn’t the same: it really got me to realize that I don’t love coffee as much as a drink itself but because of its caffeine content.
Days 1, 3 and 4 were the hardest: those were the days that the caffeine withdrawals were the strongest with the most tiredness and fatigue, the most mental fatigue, brain fog and inability to fully focus mentally. On Day 4 I was also in a very bad mood with some melancholy and slight feeling of depression which I think was a side effect of caffeine withdrawals. But once I overcame that day, I began to feel better: on Day 5 I felt good for the first days since I quit caffeine.
I’m going to talk about how to successfully cut down on caffeine next week, so stay tuned for that.
Also I realized that If I can do my work with no caffeine, I can do it anytime. I got a boost in confidence and overcame my fear that I can’t live and function optimally without caffeine.
2. Easier to fall asleep and meditate
Although my sleep quality last week didn’t improve much, I did notice that I could fall asleep faster. Not just at night: I was able to fall asleep into a nap in the afternoon easier and faster.
Most days I often find it difficult to nap — except when I really didn’t sleep enough that night. Reason for this is that it’s really hard for me to relax my mind and body completely and take a nap and it takes me a lot of time and effort to do it. But without caffeine I was able to relax faster and better and take a nap more effortlessly, which improved my energy levels and caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
Because I was able to fall asleep faster at night and able to do more naps, my overall recovery and regeneration improved and this week I feel better, I have more energy and more strength in the gym.
I also noticed that it was easier for me to meditate last week. Most often in meditation I tend to struggle and fight with my thoughts for 7–10 minutes, sometimes even more until I can finally achieve a space of less thoughts.
Sidenote: you can’t completely stop the mind from thinking, that’s impossible and it’s just a meditation myth.
But last week, during my meditations, just a few minutes in and I was in that space of less thoughts, which was nice and beneficial for my overall well-being.
3. Better recovery
Coming out of a decaf week, now I feel much better than before: I have more energy, I feel stronger, I wake up fresher, and I generally feel better.
It’s not just because of better sleep, napping, better meditations and because I lower my overall work and training load for the week. It’s also because of the fact that caffeine gives us energy “on a loan”.
Caffeine being a stimulant, it numbs our perceived levels of tiredness, fatigue, sleepiness and pain, so we end up doing more than we are capable of — which can be beneficial at times — but can also be detrimental over a long period of time and can lead to burnout.
Caffeine triggers the adrenal glands to produce a cascade of stress hormones which puts the body in Fight of Flight mode and consumes our energy stores very rapidly. Caffeine also takes a loan out on energy from later on the day or from the next day: it’s a debt that has to be repaid.
When we cut down or off of caffeine, we give our body more space and time to take a step back, to spend more time in parasympathetic Rest and Digest mode where the body can better recover, heal and rejuvenate.
4. Less energy crashes throughout the day
After a few days with no caffeine, when my energy levels began to stabilize, I started noticing that I had less energy crashes later in the day — at around 4 to 5 pm. I also wasn’t as exhausted at the end of the day and I started waking up more refreshed and I still wake up less fatigued than before I did the pause off of caffeine.
5. Regular caffeine breaks going forward
Because I saw the benefits of lowering and quitting caffeine, going forward I’m planning on implementing regular breaks off of caffeine, because:
1.I want to limit the withdrawal symptoms
I find that the longer I go without cutting down or taking a pause away from caffeine, the more difficult it is for me to cut it down or off completely. It’s also easier for me to refall into the caffeine trap that I talked about above if I don’t do regular caffeine cycling and spend some extra time in recovery mode.
2. I want to take advantage of positive effects from caffeine breaks
I also want to take advantage of the benefits that cutting down caffeine brings — better recovery, better sleep, reset of adenosine receptors, etc — on a weekly basis.
So my goal going forward is to cut down and off caffeine completely once to twice a week.
So if you feel you’re on the edge, if you feel that coffee makes you more stressed out, anxious, you feel it’s burning you out or makes you generally worse, it’s probably a sign that you should cut it down a bit or even cut it off completely.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to give up completely — you just need a “reset”: it can be a week, some take a longer break, a month or 6 weeks. I personally like one week as it allows me to reset my body, but at the same time it doesn’t completely wean it off caffeine, which would be a big shock to the system when I reintroduced caffeine back into my routine.
If you don’t know how to cut down on caffeine or have problems doing so, stay tuned for next week’s article where I’ll share with you some tips on how to easily and successfully cut down on caffeine and limit the potential side effects that might come with withdrawal symptoms of caffeine cutdown.
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Love and take care of yourself, forget about worries and enjoy life!
~ Jani
