Coffee
This week I decided to give up coffee. I am taking a more controlled approach to weaning off of it, and have taken all my coffee drinks as ½ decaf this week. I will keep this up until Monday 3/18, at which time I will drop down to ¾ decaf, ¼ regular. I will continue that for another week or so, until I'm 100% decaf. As of the past week, I was consuming an average of 3 cups of coffee per day, usually a medium sized iced coffee from Starbucks in the morning, and another cup of coffee after lunch. Mm, even writing about it makes me crave the stuff. At least I'll still have decaf.
A few observations I've noticed so far: – I have a headache in the morning. It is not debilitating, probably a 5 out of 10 on the pain scale, but it is there and somewhat distracting. – On the night of the first day, I went to bed at 9:15 (about 2 hours earlier than usual) and slept all the way through to 8:30. That is over 11 hours of sleep, about 3 hours more than normal. I woke up feeling about the same as I normally do (slightly groggy but ready for the day). – No discernible differences in energy level, ability to concentrate, or mood. – I haven't exercised too much this week besides a Tuesday morning working pre-coffee, so I haven't noticed any changes here.