Amazing Benefits of Quitting Coffee For Good

This blog post is all about quitting coffee benefits

Coffee used to be one of my favorite things in the world. I started drinking at the age of 14 and over time I developed an addiction to the wonderful, cozy drink. I still love everything about coffee, the smell, the taste, the cozy feelings. But sadly, my body does not love coffee.

I spent the early years of adulthood feeling sick and anxious all the time. It began to affect my mental and physical health. I had friends and doctors telling me I needed to stop drinking it. But I refused to believe coffee was an issue.

Then one day I woke up and could not take feeling sick all the time. So I started with small movements. I would stop drinking it for a week and then a month. Now I rarely have coffee at all.

Since quitting the drink I have noticed so many improvements to my health. Some of them weren’t even things I thought were related to coffee.

Here are some benefits of quitting coffee

First, you aren’t the only one

Coffee is a cultural thing. So many things are surrounded by coffee. Going to work you spend time talking while getting coffee, there are coffee dates with friends, and morning activities. It is a drink that is readily available and almost always offered to you.

When I stopped drinking coffee I was most worried about what people said. I was known to have a morning routine of sitting and drinking my coffee. I never turned down a cup of coffee.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized I wasn’t the only one. I have always heard of other people not drinking coffee, but it was more of a flavor thing. But recently I went to a tea class and everyone there was asking for coffee alternatives. They also suffered from health problems when drinking coffee but still missed it.

So if you do plan on removing coffee from your diet, just know you aren’t the only one out there.

Skin improvement 

To be honest, this was the biggest reason why I chose to stop drinking coffee. My skin was horrible. I developed acne at the age of 14, and while that is a normal age, it continued until now. Honestly, I still struggle with my skin. But there has been a noticeable improvement since I quit the drink. Other people have even commented on it.

Coffee has lots of caffeine, which is why we love it. But this can trick our bodies into a stress response. When we are in this response, the hormone cortisol is released. And an increased production of this can lead to excess oil in the sebaceous glands causing more ace.

A lot of health biology to say that drinks with high caffeine will cause us to have bad skin.

Better sleep 

Being in college and working at the time was already stressful for me, so I assumed my poor sleep was from the stress. I focused on changing my environment to help improve my sleep. But I soon realized that the added caffeine increased my cortisol level to the point that my body never was shutting down.

Even with drinking coffee only in the morning, I would be up all night with ruminating thoughts.

The lack of sleep ended up creating an endless cycle of needing more coffee. I wasn’t sleeping at night, so I would drink more coffee to make it through the day. This would keep increasing my stress levels which would then keep me up at night because my body wasn’t able to shut down.

The cycle of more coffee would continue because I always felt tired.

It seems that cutting out coffee or other forms of caffeine would make you more tired. And for a while, it might.

But cutting out coffee will help your body relax better at night You won’t have stress hormones keeping you in a fight or flight response 24 hours a day. Eventually your body will learn to adjust its energy levels so you have more during the day and less at night.

Improved mental health

Not only do the high-stress levels affect your skin, but also your mental health. When your body is constantly feeling the stress hormone, you will go into fight or flight. If you have ever dealt with this, you know how unfun it is. Your body will either react in an intense way or you will freeze on the spot.

This can translate into your mental health. You might start snapping at people because you feel anxious. Or you will sit on the couch feeling sad and unable to think.

For me, I started having high levels of anxiety and lots of heart palpitations. I was on medications but they never seemed to help. This with the endless cycle of no sleep was not a good mix. And the days I didn’t feel anxious, it instead felt like my brain couldn’t work. I was unable to think or make a decision.

I did not expect cutting out coffee to make such a huge improvement in my mental health. Since stopping the drink, I feel calmer throughout my day. It is easier to make decisions because I no longer have brain fog.

No longer feeling sick all the time

Are you one of those people who wake up and don’t eat breakfast? You say you aren’t hungry, but by the time lunch comes around you feel like you might pass out from hunger. Yea, it’s the coffee.

Coffee is acidic. With large amounts of coffee, you will begin to feel sick, especially if you have nothing to absorb the coffee in your stomach.

I was one of those people who would only have coffee for breakfast. With the large amounts that I was drinking, I would begin to feel sick and not want to eat food. The lack of food and nutrients made me tired and want to drink more coffee. This then created another negative coffee cycle. 

Since I stopped drinking coffee I have been able to eat breakfast again. And I never thought I would be a breakfast person. I also have more energy because I can tell when I need to eat food. 

If you are someone who still chooses to drink coffee, I highly recommend eating before you do.

So now you know the benefits of quitting coffee, but is it worth it?

While I miss coffee dearly, my health has been much better since I stopped drinking it. Coffee was putting me through an endless cycle of stress, sleepiness, and cravings. Coffee can be known to be good for people, but there are some of us who are just better off staying away. For now, it is on to tea.