My Very Personal Story of Giving up Coffee (what is yours?)

Are you coffee addicted? Are you trying to give up coffee or have you recently given up. Its a big journey to give up an addiction and I want to share my journey with those of you who are interested.

Drinking coffee has been something very familiar to me practically my whole life. As a teenager I would buy my thirty three cent Pauls's Iced coffee from the school canteen each and every day. Apart from spending time with my gorgeous friend Penny Curtis it really was the only thing I enjoyed about attending school each and every day. Unbeknown to me then I was coffee addicted as a twelve year old. I continued drinking iced coffee until I left home at eighteen and then hit Sydney where I drank coffee here and there at Italian cafes but after that it didn't feature much in my life until my mid thirties when it was once again the thing I looked forward to the most in my working day.

Coffee was one of those things I could have every day or just have when I felt like it normally only drinking one coffee a day, and sometimes going weeks without touching the stuff. Then I started my business and over a short time I began to rely on it, it really helped me get through sixteen hour working days with ease. I didn't mind drinking it everyday as I knew once I had a break from work I would also have a break from coffee.

As my business has grown the breaks got shorter and shorter and up until this last May I don't think I had had a break from coffee for a good eighteen months. I kept saying I needed a break but just couldn't do it while working. Then the crunch came to the crunch when on one retreat I was working on I realised Id left my coffee percolator at home and was forced to cycle up to the local bakery each morning to get my fix. What really got to me was that I finally understood how strong the addiction was and that I was prepared to drink coffee from a bakery that didn't use organic coffee nor organic milk. The day after that retreat finished I gave up coffee.

That is now just over three months ago and it has been a fascinating journey. I felt quite sick for weeks after giving up, not the usual headache but bloatedness in my belly and very tired most of the time. Detox was happening big time. After three weeks or so I finally felt normal again and actually was happy not to have the urge each morning to down my usual cup of deliciousness and now just drink a glass of water instead.

Then I started working sixteen hour days again and realised why I had drunk coffee every day in the first place. Just one cup a day would see me sailing through long and rigorous days but without coffee fatigue set in by 3 pm and I still had hours to put in. What a fantastic drug it is, it really could keep me going with seemingly very few side effects. The negative was that it gave me a false sense of how much my body could actually endure pushing it well beyond its limits. Now without coffee I really get a better understanding of what my natural limits are and now I employ more staff so i can have a long break at three pm and get a snooze in, attend to some yoga and psoas work in order for my body to feel in ship shape for the next shift.

I am not going to say i will never drink coffee again because I live with the best coffee maker I have ever met and I adore the aroma of it when he makes it for himself, but I am very happy to not be addicted to it and finding a way to manage without it in order to take better self care. I don't even really know if coffee is all that bad for you but the pure addiction was enough to want me to stop at least for a while. There are some lovely alternatives out there that can give you the pick me up that coffee does and I will share those below but the one that I have personally found the most effective is cucumber so in this blog post I share a deliciously simple cucumber dish with you.

Some alternatives are

raw cacoa - have a raw chocolate or make a smoothie with raw cacoa

teas- green, dandelion, roibos, caro

licorice root or tea (there are these wonderful little licorice pellets made of pure licorice root with no sugar or additives)

cucumbers- have the right amount of carbohydrates in them accompanied by B vitamins which will give you a boost of energy- you can just eat one, cut it up and put it in your water or make an afternoon tea salsa- recipe below- I eat it served in organic lettuce cups for a lovely snack.

High energy fruit and vegetables and nuts- bananas, spinach (so you could make a smoothie with 1/4 banana some spinach leaves and some spirulina), sweet potato, almonds, dried apricots.

Cucumber and fennel salsa

enough for 2

small bulb of fennel finely sliced

1 small Lebanese cucumber cut in half then into half rounds (finely sliced)

1/2 avocado cut into thin slices

squeeze of half a lime

sprinkling of salt

small dash of cayenne pepper

few leaves of coriander

Mix all of the ingredients together and serve in lettuce cups for a lovely afternoon snack.

I would love to read your stories with giving or not giving up coffee so please leave a comment at the end of this blog post and share this blog on one of the social media sites.