I Quit Caffeine For 6 Months (and i'm never going back)

when i was in eighth grade my first period class was algebra and i was always extremely tired during this class i had trouble focusing and paying attention for more than a few seconds at a time and it definitely didn't help that i wasn't too good at math during this time either was this due to a lack of sleep from playing call of duty black ops till 2 am in the morning probably but my mom suggested that i try coffee to perk me up and start improving my attention in the class and thus my caffeine addiction was born since 8th grade up until 2019 i drank at least a cup of coffee every single day caffeine was a crucial part of my life and the thought of not consuming it at all never crossed my mind even when i switched to consuming green tea earlier this year these past few months i've definitely been on a journey to a better self i quit alcohol and smoking weed and the next step for me was to ask this question what if i did the unthinkable for 85 percent of americans and i quit caffeine completely and not just for 30 days like most self-help youtubers do but for six whole months this is the story of what happened when i quit caffeine for six months and why i'm never going to drink it again and why you might want to consider doing the same [Music] now i have already tried to quit caffeine before in fact i have a video on this channel of me quitting drinking coffee for seven days and i just don't think that that was a long enough period of time to have an actual lasting impact on me and after this i went back to drinking coffee shortly after so i wanted to do it for real for real this time for a extended period of time so that's why i chose half of an entire year and i had no idea the incredible change that i would experience from six months of no caffeine so here was the plan i didn't actually have any sort of super structured plan i just knew that i didn't want to consume any type of caffeine whether that's coffee green tea energy drinks or anything else you can think of for the next six months since i started this challenge only consuming one cup of green tea a day i just decided to go cold turkey right away green tea has about half the amount of caffeine his coffee does so i felt my dependency wasn't as big and therefore i could go cold turkey the first month was brutal every morning i'd get up and feel groggy unmotivated and unattentive and during this month it always felt like something was missing from me or at least my morning routine you know you wake up you get that warm cup of whatever in your hands you get the smell of it that first sip all of that was taken away from me and to be honest during this period i felt less productive focusing for longer periods of time was just not an option right now my mind was wandering off several times every hour when i was doing work and i had less energy when i was working out and of course the headaches the headaches were outrageous and this made me start to question if this was even the right move to do some of the most successful people on the planet drink it every single day so it must not be that bad right and just before i was about to quit this challenge i stopped myself and i told myself that this is just the first few weeks that we're getting through and that the symptoms that i was feeling were withdrawal symptoms from a drug and thinking about it that way was enough to get me to push through the next few months in months two and three this is when the transformation really started to blossom i was no longer dependent on caffeine all those nasty side effects went away and i found that i had even more energy than when i used to consume caffeine i also felt like i was consistently happier because i didn't have that mindset where before i have my coffee i'm just angry and bitter and i need that coffee or else i'm gonna be this type of person and my workouts returned to normal and i kept progressing just fine i didn't need that extra energy from caffeine to bang out one more rep and probably the biggest benefit to my experience personally was the vastly improved quality of sleep now you might be saying cole how did it affect your sleep if you were only consuming one cup of tea in the morning before the studies say that caffeine affects your sleep and my answer to that would be i don't really know most studies say that if you consume it eight hours before you sleep it will wear off but even with that low amount of caffeine in the morning it must have affected my sleep quality somehow because every day when i get up now i just feel so much more well rested and now the most recent months months four through six at this moment in the present day i feel fantastic without caffeine to be honest the benefits are all still there no headaches no grogginess just the natural energy that my body produces on its own without anything outside of it and now i never plan to drink it regularly again seeing all of these benefits that i've experienced over the past few months it just makes no sense for me to get back on it and to start relying on something external maybe every once in a while i'll have like a few sips of coffee or something when i'm feeling real down but for the most part i'm just gonna stay completely off of it so why should you quit caffeine if the majority of americans and people around the world consume it and it's been proven to be good for productivity in your memory what's even the point of quitting and if you do quit it'll kind of make you an outcast it's kind of taboo to not consume some form of caffeine at least in american culture like when i tell people that i don't drink any sort of coffee they look at me funny but the biggest reason as to why i believe you need to quit caffeine is because no matter how you look at it it is a drug that you are dependent on i simply do not want to rely on an external substance to enhance the state of my body that was naturally given to me i try to take a holistic approach to things and i just think that eating right moving your body and resting adequately is the best way to reach an optimal human state if something has all those side effects that i experienced when i came off of it even on just one cup of tea a day then clearly it is not good to drink this thing every single day you might know why to quit but how do you quit how can you get yourself to quit and what's the best method to approach this for most of you out there if you are drinking caffeine then you're almost definitely drinking more than i was drinking when i decided to quit so what i suggest for you is to slowly wean off of it if you usually have two cups a day go to one and a half cups for a week and then go to one cup for a week and then go down to just half a cup the next week i think that half cup intervals every week will reduce those side effects that i talked about earlier and once you do accomplish the weaning aspect of it and fully come off of it it's important not to just jump right back on the coffee grind like i did the first time i tried this the best and most easy way to do this is to remove any and all caffeine from your house that way even if you are tempted you have no chance to succumb to your temptations and to replace that warm cup of coffee feeling in the morning try drinking a caffeine-free herbal tea instead no it definitely won't give you the same feeling as a real caffeinated drink but it will certainly help you stay off of it and before you feel like giving up just give yourself one or two months to get off of it to really start to feel the benefits and you will be very very very happy that you did hope this gave you the motivation that you need to quit coffee or start weaning off of it if you enjoyed the video please leave a like for me it helps out my channel it helps push this out to more avid coffee drinkers and caffeine drinkers thank you for sticking around till the end i hope you have a great rest of your day and this is cole hastings the myth the man the legend i'm just an average guy to be honest i'm gonna go now before i embarrass myself any further [Music]

Channel: Cole Hastings

Views: 101,375

Rating: 4.9197297 out of 5

Keywords: i quit caffeine, cole hastings, matt davella coffee, quitting caffeine changed my life, quitting caffeine benefits, quitting caffeine cold turkey, quit caffeine cold turkey, quit caffeine, why i quit caffeine, caffeine, coffee, quitting coffee, i quit coffee, i quit caffeine for 6 months, caffeine quitting, caffeine quit benefits, quit caffeine for 30 days, quitting caffeine, quitting caffeine effects, quitting caffeine results, quit coffee, caffeine addiction

Id: sLPXdSXitJg

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ShowMebs]

Video's not as good as Alex Becker's, but still good to see more people talking about quitting caffeine. Also, you can tell how powerful this drug is because almost all these videos that are like "I'LL NEVER DRINK CAFFEINE AFTER LEARNING THIS" and then at some point in the video they slip and say something like "I'll probably only drink coffee as a special reward or if I'm very sad".

[u/nickkgar]

Regarding the half-life of caffeine in our body that is mentioned in the video, yes a coffee that we consume in the morning still affects our sleep next night.

That caffeine has 6 hours half-life means that if we consume 150 mg of caffeine at 9 am, after 6 hours at 3 pm 75 mg still exist in our body. After another 6 hours, at 9 pm half of these 75 mg will remain in the body, that is 38 mg and after another 6 hours, half of it, that is 19 mg.

Even 19-38 mg are enough to affect our sleep, not breaking it completely, but reducing significantly the quality and duration of deep sleep. And this is why we will feel more sleepy when the time comes to wake up next morning, than the time we went to bed, because this is when almost none of the caffeine from the previous morning has remained in our body. So, we need another coffee and the cycle goes on.

Not to mention what happens if we drink a second coffee at noon, we may still have more than 100 mg in our body when we go to sleep at midnight.

Before going decaf, I also was drinking only one coffee in the early morning and after cutting it completely, my sleep quality and deep sleep increased a lot (monitored with a fitness band and some apps). The deep sleep and REM duration almost tripled and I feel more refreshed and motivated every morning, compared to when I was drinking coffee.

[u/J15_12]

It’s almost like he skipped PAWS.... hmmmm