For the past 4-5 months I’ve been caffeine free having given up tea, coffee and diet coke. I never used to drink any coffee but could quite easily get through about 6-8 cups of tea each day and 2 diet cokes. Of course the caffeine rushes were great but then the lull afterwards always meant the need for another coffee. I also found it quite hard to get off to sleep each night.
At the end of the day caffeine is a drug and I’d rather my body not have anything going around it that it does not really need. My fiancé Sophie has given up caffeine for a long time now (I guess approx 5 years), but my previous attempts only lasted about 14 hours due to bad headaches!
Back at the start of the year I developed a very bad case of man flu and didn’t really feel like anything to eat or drink. 24 hours went past and without even realizing I’d not had any caffeine. I didn’t suffer from any headaches apart from the general lousy feeling that man flu brings. Halfway through the second day I realized that’d I’d not been drinking any of the evil stuff and so committed myself to continuing! The third day was the only time I had a bit of a caffeine withdrawal headache and to tell the truth it wasn’t that bad. 5 months later – and I’m still going! Some of the benefits of giving it up
- no highs and lows of energy, just a good constant flow
- sleeping much better at night now, which helps with the above point
- really enjoying some different teas that don’t have caffeine in such as Jasmine tea and Rooibos tea.
One small caveat to this is that I’ve not given up chocolate (although I have cut down) – so I sometimes get a little caffeine from that now and again.
I saw an interview with Gary Player a while ago talking about first tee nerves when playing golf. He commented how funny it was that 99% of club golfers always have a coffee or tea in the club house before playing. This pre round drink with caffeine in will raise your heart rate, thus making you more nervous on the first tea and more likely to swing too fast and hit a duff shot. So remember golfers – a glass of water or orange juice before tee off!