How to Crave Coffee less

I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of person who needs their coffee by 9 am or a massive headache starts to kick in. And when this headache decides to come, there’s no changing its mind. I might try to have a cup of coffee to appease the pain but alas it’s too late and my head is pounding for the next few hours. Luckily my 11 month old is usually up by 7 am and I have plenty of time to get the first cup in before my 9 o’clock deadline. I started to get kind of sick of being bossed around coffee and hence decided to do something about the vicious cycle.  

Drink (warm) water

There are times when I feel like I’m craving a nice warm cup of coffee but at the same some, I’m not really in the mood for coffee. Anyone else ever feel that way? In these moments I’ve found that it’s not really the coffee I’m craving, but really just a warm drink in general. I’m always trying to up my water intake as well because coffee can badly dehydrate you. So, even if it sounds kinda weird, try getting a warm cup of water and see if it helps the craving at all. You’ll be warmed by the temperature of the water and hydrated as well. Win win!

Drink tea (with or without caffein)

I used to drink coffee at all times of the day- morning, mid morning, afternoon, night. And then I found myself laying in bed thinking, “Why do you keep doing this!” Now there is the option of decaf coffee but I usually try to shy away from decaffeinated coffee when possible because I know that certain chemicals are used that aren’t beneficial to our bodies. I have learned to love teas. Even if a tea doesn’t taste all the great, if it has some sort of supplemental value, then I will love drinking it.

Some of my favorite teas are:

• A good Green Tea with Matcha which is a type of green tea that is ground up. Green tea is full of antioxidants which aid in cancer prevention.
• Detox teas. The one I have most recently found uses dendelion and stinging nettle (of all things!) as herbal detoxes. The taste is very herbal but I honestly feel great the day after drinking a cup at night.
• Right after I had David someone gave me Mothers’ Milk Tea which uses fennel as a way to promote natural breast milk production. The taste is a little like licorice but I learned to love it especially when I saw how well it worked. This is a gift I would give to any expecting mom who plans to breastfeed and I still drink this myself from time to time!
  

Exercise

Sundays are usually a lazier day for me but this Sunday was a little different. It was pretty nice out to Josh and I decided to go for a run with babe and do some home exercises. And even though my body was tired afterwards from the exertion, my mind was fully awake a ready to go. I found that I didn’t crave coffee for the rest of the day because I simply felt like I didn’t need it. Not to mention the extra water intake that goes along with working out.

Make/buy smaller portions

• Our bodies can become not only addicted to caffeine, but addicted to the amount of caffeine we’re used to having. A brewed 8 oz cup of coffee will contain anywhere from 95-200mg of caffeine. a specialty drink from a coffee shop will contain anywhere from 63-175 (also 8oz but no one really orders those sizes. A tall [small] cup measures 12 oz and a grande [medium] is 16 oz. These are most likely the sizes you will buy from a coffee shop).
• Green tea (known to have the most caffein of the teas) will have around 24-45mg whereas black tea has 14-70mg. You should be able to find the caffeine content somewhere on the packaging of the tea box.

*caffein measurements are taken from this article from the Mayo clinic.

Have you ever tried to cut or cut back on your caffeine intake? What methods did you try and how well did they work for you. Cutting back on caffeine is a struggle but we coffee addicts need to stick together!