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It’s 3:00am, almost exactly. 😩
My brain is racing a mile a minute with a never-ending cycle of anxiety, work, and life. How much more of this am I going to have to put up with? Let me explain how I got here.
Easter Sunday 2023
I give myself significant starting points with memorable dates because it makes the conversation and backtracking much easier to remember. For example, I can tell you that last year, Easter Sunday of 2023, was the day I decided to begin a massive life-changing diet, which led me to lose 35 pounds over a year. 35 pounds is a lot of weight, but when you do the math, 52 weeks in a year, it comes to .67 of a pound per week.
The combination of diet, exercise, and an Apple Watch for awareness to get the weight loss started, and then I bought a Whoop to bring more data and accuracy to increase results.
3/1/2024 No Sleep Til..
This year, I had a new goal for myself: Biohack to reverse my aging as much as possible. I use this term loosely because I’m not doing any extraordinary medical procedures or taking any pills that could make or break me. I am talking about improving one of the critical elements of life besides diet: Sleep.
The Whoop is a powerful body-tracking device that displays your Sleep, Recovery, and daily Strain (stress, exercise). I used to think my sleep was fine and there were no issues. In fact, with my Apple Watch, I always received a positive score of 90 – 95% and it made me feel great. It declined on nights I would go out and have a few drinks, which bothered me a bit. When I put the Whoop on, the device was more honest and not trying to sugarcoat my lifestyle.
“Your sleep is garbage,” the device would fictitiously yell at me with the red and yellow numbers. I ignored it for a while (because ignorance is bliss) and continued my weight loss journey. I did, however, realize the impact of even just a couple of drinks so I decided to remove alcohol from my lifestyle altogether (and still have to this day).
Being an entrepreneur, you value your focus and drive. If you feel sluggish or if your brain is foggy, the day is chalked up as a loss. It’s important to be that driving force, roll with the punches, and make smart decisions (not emotional decisions). Sleep is an investment to improve my daily drive, so I bought an Eight Sleep mattress cover, which is a temperature-controlled cover that can be adjusted based on your sleep data. The investment paid off from Day One. My Whoop sleep score was no longer in red, and I was seeing yellow and green scores. This increased my daily confidence, focus, and drive (I’m sure the positive reinforcement also aided this).
How do I keep getting green scores? How do I achieve the perfect sleep every night? What’s next on my biohacking list?
The next low hanging fruit to alter won’t cost me anything, and in fact will save me money!
RELATED: 10 Emerging Coffee Chains You’ll Need To Try
4/1/2024 No Coffee For 30 Days
I enjoy the taste and process of coffee just as much as the boost in brain power I get every morning. Medical studies also back up that having coffee every day is healthy for you, as long as it’s in moderation. Studies have shown that it has great impacts on reducing brain degeneration and the likelihood of being a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease, a disease I had to watch my Grandmother suffer through.
I decided to remove coffee for 30 days and then I’ll reunite with my love again. My sister even decided to go through the process to assist with my purge.
April 1 – May 1: No coffee or any caffeine. Not even decaf coffee.
I was curious to see how my sleep would improve after taking this break. I thought that I might experience lucid dreams or that the Whoop would finally congratulate me for having consistent green numbers. My research even showed that I would experience steady energy throughout the day without needing coffee. WOW! I thought to myself. I’m a pretty driven person now with coffee; I’m excited to see what my brain will do once it neutralizes from the withdrawals. Oh yeah, the withdrawals.
A Bad Week of Withdrawal 😩
If you’re like me, Monday’s are always hectic and crazy. Your colleagues, vendors, whoever seem to push harder than ever to make up for the weekend and it turns out to always get me more stressed. Prince knew what he was talking about when he wrote Manic Monday for the Bangles.
Choosing to go Cold Turkey on a Monday wasn’t my brightest of ideas. But if I’m being honest, choosing to shift my brain’s dependency while my company is growing full speed isn’t also very smart. Too late, I already said I would do it and my sister said the same.
The day was expected: Groggy, lack of focus, brain fog. During the entire day, all I was thinking about was coffee and my fight against it. I was also anticipating another brutal day right after but figured it would taper off after Day 2.
Wrong! My body was really mad at me and would not turn my brain on. I had an entire week of brain fog; lack of motivation, and my sleep was horrible! In fact, one night I woke up in the middle of the night because my legs felt like they were in pain!
Both legs were stiff, and it felt like gravity was pushing the blood out of them. It was 2:00 a.m., and I got out of bed, unable to sleep the rest of the night.
My Whoop yelled at me once again. This feeling was horrible. I had to walk around the entire day to remove the pain shooting through both thighs down to my feet. There has to be a way to stop this.
When you google ‘coffee withdrawal side effects,’ they give you the typical brain fog, headaches, etc. But I kept reading and discovered that several sources mentioned not going cold turkey because the withdrawals can be more intense, which includes MUSCLE STIFFNESS and JOINT PAIN. Fortunately, one of the suggestions is to take Ibuprofen to help with the pain. I took one right before bed. So I did.
I had no idea how long the pain will continue so to avoid my body getting used to the Ibuproferin, I saved it for sleep. During the day I just did a lot of stretching which helped. This lasted 5 days! I kept asking myself, ‘Is this coffee detox really worth it?’
How Much Caffeine in Coffee?
The research states drinking moderate coffee is good for you; drinking a lot of coffee is bad for you. “A lot of coffee” is based on your tolerance, body size, diet, exercise, etc.. From the Mayo Clinic studies: If you have issues sleeping, if you get anxiety easily, or if you feel your heart beating out of your chest, that is a sign to do this type of purge and to give yourself a restart. However, if you have any health issues, I recommend consulting with your doctor first.
The rule of thumb for a healthy amount of coffee is 4-6 cups. But before you decide to celebrate and think you’re in the clear, let me define to you what a cup of coffee is:
- 1 shot of espresso
- 1 x 8 ounce cup of American coffee
Most coffee shops serve a regular size (a la Grande) with 3 shots of espresso. An 8 ounce cup of American coffee is the small size (a la Tall). Given this as a guideline, you should be safe for an easy two Starbucks drinks to get your morning and lunch routine moving; just be careful of the sugar that can crash you hard.
Does Tea or Energy Drinks Have the Same Benefits?
I questioned this next. Tea, especially green and black tea, also have a lot of healthy benefits. The caffeine isn’t as sharp or strong as coffee but it has a steady climb and gradually drop. Throwing in some matcha green tea a couple times a week may assist with improving your brain, burning fat, and antioxidant effects.
Energy drinks are a hard pass. Every medical study said the same thing: Either loaded with sugar or fake sugar on top of injected Taurine and guarana will do nothing but harm to you.
The Last Week of Detox
It’s been three weeks. My body doesn’t have any withdrawals, but one thing I did notice during the past three weeks is that I have eaten a lot more than usual. Instead of grabbing a coffee and powering through work, I’d get distracted and make myself a big Sunday morning breakfast on a Tuesday and that’s most of my morning.
My energy levels never catch up to my energy when I’m drinking coffee. I’m sorry but whoever said that must not have a million things to do when running a business. If I had a simple task to do every day, sure. But when I’m trying to grow my business and manage my team, it’s just not the same.
My sister was also over it. She has a two-year-old daughter, and this kid is a nonstop energy machine! My sister just couldn’t keep up, and the three weeks, finishing the fourth, had her conclude that cutting out coffee wasn’t that beneficial either.
The Return of Coffee
Bringing back coffee into my daily routine was treated like a first date: I had to set the mood, get a great coffee to celebrate, and get ready for the caffeine to kick back in.
It’s Spring, so I celebrated with a Starbucks Lavender Latte (Grande). The first few sips, I kid you not, felt like a scene from Fast and the Furious, when the Nitros shoots into the car’s engine and blasts the car into warp speed. It was crazy!
I got so much work done in that one day, from just one coffee, I made up for all of the 4 weeks of slow days before it! My sister had a similar experience: She was able to keep up with her daughter and didn’t feel rundown.
There was a small caveat I faced: One Grande coffee equals three shots of espresso. I was wired from 7:00 a.m. until 12:00 a.m. that evening, when I went to bed. I somehow managed to fall asleep, but I only got a few horrible hours of sleep. Another red score from the Whoop. And if you didn’t guess by now, it’s 3:00 a.m., and I’m sharing my story.
Is a Coffee Detox Necessary?
Looking back at this 30-day detox, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what works best for me. Everybody is different. The detox allowed me to reset and to stick with a much smaller amount of coffee than what I had before. I currently drink either two cups of American coffee, or I’ll have a single Grande for the day.
Would I do this 30-day detox again? Heck no. Lol. I’m glad it’s over, and with my moderate consumption, I hope I’ll never experience those leg pains and constant brain fog again. Would you try it?