So it’s this time of the year again where I am almost done with my university exams. All my studying has been greatly facilitated by a daily dosage of caffeine, namely coffee. I have also tinkered with Snacking on Coffee Beans which has helped my mental focus in the later afternoon hours by getting a slow and steady caffeine influx. While drinking coffee (I usually do one cup of black each morning) and eating the beans are useful biohacks during high focus times, it’s not that sustainable for me in the long-term.
There are people who drink a lot more coffee (up to 5 cups/shots) than I do during the day and seem to be fine with it. However, I want to regain the feeling where a cup of coffee really kicks up my productivity by giving me a more noticeable caffeine buzz than it currently does. I still get a caffeine buzz nowadays but it’s not as pronounced as it used be when I first started drinking coffee. I also want to test my body and see how it copes with less daily caffeine. My plan is try to reset my caffeine sensitivity in the next few weeks using the following approaches.
How To Reset Caffeine Sensitivity?
1. Reduce the Amount Gradually
The key to making your body more sensitive to caffeine again is to progressively curb down the dosage over time. For me, this meant that I gradually reduced the number of grams of coffee beans I used. A couple of months ago, I was still using roughly 15 grams for my morning cup. This morning I used only 7 grams and have been doing so for the past few days. I probably have been reducing the amount by roughly 1 gram per week. My body was fine with that because I didn’t completely cut out the caffeine entirely by going ‚cold turkey‘. The withdrawal symptoms of going from 15 grams to 0 grams per day would have been a lot more noticeable and I would be groggy for the first half of the day.
2. Go Travelling
Another tactic which will help my body to get off the caffeine drug will be to take an extended journey. In a few days time, I am about to embark on a backpack tour through the Balkan countries where the plan is not to drink any coffee at all. I think I will cope with that pretty well due to the reduction of the amount of beans I have been using during the past few weeks. I have found for myself that being on the road and away from your daily habitat is an effective method to eliminate some of the negative habits we practice on a daily basis.
3. Replace Coffee with Breakfast
I usually skip breakfast and have my cup of joe instead. This reduces my hunger sensation and allows me to stay lean by doing a bit of intermittent fasting. My first meal is probably lunch around noon. However, when trying to reset my caffeine sensitivity I will replace my cup of coffee with a proper breakfast.
I have found that this greatly eliminates my urge to drink have coffee afterwards. Breakfast-wise I will mostly stick to the basics: eggs, bacon, fruit, oats, milk etc. I have lost a bunch of weight recently with no intention of doing so, so the extra calories in the morning will help me to regain that weight and hopefully add some mass to my frame.
When you are sitting on your butt most of the day with summer weather outside, your energy expenditure hovers on the lower end and you don’t really feel like eating a lot. And by the way, hot black coffee in the morning is nowhere near as enjoyable in the scorching heat of summer as it is on a bitter-cold winter morning.
That’s the plan – I will report back in a few weeks and let you know how good coffee tastes again after allowing my body to reset its sensitivity to caffeine.
The post Resetting My Caffeine Sensitivity appeared first on Fitness, Nutrition, Self-Improvement, and How to Become the Best Version of Yourself.