The What Happened When I Quit Drinking Coffee For One Year

4 min readNov 22, 2020

Raise your hand if you want to quit drinking coffee.

Why, though????

Who would want to do such an awful thing?

Coffee makes the world go round (at least for coffee lovers, anyway).

I get it. Coffee is awesome! Whether you drink it black or you get it from Starbucks, coffee fills plenty of needs and can help you accomplish a lot of things. And I mean a LOT!

A Brief History Of My Coffee Habit

I was living in Singapore from 2009 to 2013. I was working in a hotel and used to work night shifts. When I worked at night, I usually had a packet or two of Old Town 3-in-1 white coffee with me to keep me awake. It tasted so good (more sweet than bitter) that I soon found myself drinking it for breakfast or on rainy days, as well.

Fast forward to 2013 when I moved to Norway.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

It’s common to drink black coffee in Norway. And when I learned that drinking black coffee helps you lose weight, I was sold right away!

It’s like drinking water, but with added benefits such as:

Improved energy levels
Possible fat-burning effects
Improved physical performance
Essential nutrients
The biggest source of antioxidants in the Western diet
Fights depression

Being a fitness nut, I just couldn’t resist the appeal.

I started by drinking a cup (about 500ml) of freshly brewed black coffee before each workout. Soon after that, I started doing intermittent fasting so I doubled my coffee intake to keep me going till I broke my 16-hour fast. I realized that some days I could go longer than 16-hour fasts as long as I had coffee, so this reinforced my habit to drink more black coffee to help me lose weight further.

It wasn’t long before I started associating coffee with a lot of things.

Waking up? Coffee

Eating breakfast? Coffee

Want to read a book? Coffee

Working out? Coffee

Tired? Coffee

Bored? Coffee

Depressed? Coffee

Happy? Coffee

Eating dessert? Coffee

Driving? Coffee

Cold, rainy, or snowing outside? Coffee

Somebody asks if I want coffee? Coffee!

Want to go to a birthday party? Sure! They probably have coffee there (like I don’t have any at home)

I didn’t realize that I was slowly using coffee as a crutch to get me through almost anything. I started drinking between two to three liters of black coffee a day. Was I addicted to it? I’m not sure. But I’m positive I was utterly dependent, so much so that I would get cranky when I couldn’t get a cup in any of the above situations. That’s when I turned into a zombie.

So what happened?

My wakeup call

I didn’t think that coffee affected my sleep at all. I could drink coffee at 8 pm and have no problem going to bed at 10 pm, sometimes even earlier than that. I was a light sleeper, though. I’d wake up whenever I heard footsteps or a door opening but would quickly go back to sleep after. I didn’t think that was a problem. In hindsight, it was probably a sign.

As the years went by, I felt the effects of coffee less and less so I had to keep drinking more.

Until one day in January 2019.

After my usual 2 cups of coffee in the morning, I was preparing to work out when I noticed something was wrong. I’d just had 7 hours of sleep (which to me is a lot) but I felt exhausted. Like, late in the day exhausted, even if it was only 10 am. On top of that, my whole body was sore, like I had just played basketball for two hours.

The What Happened When I Quit Drinking Coffee For One Year

A Brief History Of My Coffee Habit

My wakeup call

Written by ufclive249