I posted 7 days of my caffeine reduction plan on this website. After that life got the best of me. I won’t make excuses but instead move forward and provide some good tips that I discovered while reducing the amount of caffeine I drink.

This was not an easy journey, but I found following the paleo diet while doing this made things much easier. My body felt better and cleaner and therefore it was easier to kick the habit.

A body full of carbs really made me crave coffee and soda for some reason. However, when I cut out the grains and stuck to vegetables, fruits, and lean meats I lost the craving for any of that.

I admit there were a few days that stress got the better of me and I resorted back to bad habits. You see, if I don’t get much sleep and have a stressful day lined up I go to coffee to get through it. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink, I go for coffee. The flavors and smells give me comfort and push me forward. Using it a little bit wouldn’t be that bad, but when half a pot is gone before noon…we have a problem.

I have studied a lot of caffeine reduction plans and they all have similar ideas on how to do this. I will give you 5 conventional ideas and then 5 not-so-conventional ideas. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Lots of water: Make sure you are staying hydrated. This will help with your headaches and any withdrawal symptoms. Chances are you were dehydrated from your caffeine addiction in the first place.
2. Meds if you have to: If your headache gets to bad, and water and stretching isn’t working. Use the meds. I know I know…a Paleo diet follower wouldn’t touch Advil, but if you are serious about kicking your caffeine addiction you are going to need to use any tools you can get.
3. Early morning walks: If you are like me and live in the Pacific Northwest, you can take a morning walk and be exposed to brisk fresh air. This really helped me whenever I started to feel withdrawal symptoms. It kept me awake and relieved my headaches.
4. Fruit: I found that cold fresh fruit really curved my cravings for coffee and soda. Whenever I had the craving I would find some fresh fruit and enjoy. The natural sugar boost was great for my energy levels and it got rid of the craving.
5. Tea: If you want to take slow steps to reduce your caffeine consumption, go to tea. Puerh teas can have coffee like flavors if that is what you are missing. If you are just looking to make steps start with tea, and slowly work down to herbal tea. Sometimes we find out that our coffee addictions are just addictions to your morning ritual of drinking a hot liquid.

Now those are some great conventional caffeine reduction tips that will help you out. Here are some other things I found worked for me during my 30 day reduction phase.

1. Binge: A couple of days during my reduction phase, I binged. I had way too much coffee…or even GASP an energy drink. You know what? It helped me. I had reduced my dependency on caffeine enough that the amount I drank really gave me the shakes. I felt like crap, because of this the next day I really didn’t want anything to do with the stuff.
2. Get a cold: I got a cold around day 11, believe it or not it was a great thing. I was getting a lot of sleep in order to recover and thus my need to stay up was gone. Also the cold medicine really helped with any withdrawal symptoms I was having.
3. Waking up early: I found that if I got up super early, 4:30 am, that I was tired at a normal time (9:00pm) the next day I would get up at a more normal time and because I got a good nights sleep I had a reduced need for caffeine.
4. Focusing on it: Because I was writing about it, or at least for a while, I was aware of my decisions. I highly recommend either blogging or journaling about your experience while you go through it. It will keep you going.
5. Don’t take it too seriously: Like I said, there were a few days that really required my full presence being there. I needed to be at a high level of intensity and so I used caffeine to get me there. I was using the drug in order to enhance my performance. You know what, I didn’t feel bad about binging. If I did, I could have sabotaged the whole process.

I hope both sets of tips can help you out in regards to your journey to drink less caffeine. I love not being quite as addicted to the drug that runs America.

Got any tips that you have used to get off the sweet crazy energy drug? Leave them in the comments or email me at paleoaddict@gmail.com

Keep it lean!

Related articles:

• Caffeine Reduction: Day 6 & 7 (paleoaddict.com)
• Caffeine Reduction: Day 2-5 (paleoaddict.com)
• Caffeine reduction (paleoaddict.com)

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