Less than two months from today, my wife and I will welcome our first kid into the world (🥰+🥳). That’s the real reason I quit caffeine for a month—and why I plan on staying off of it for the foreseeable future—at least on workdays.
What’s the connection to this experiment? Quite a bit. A newborn means months of broken sleep, and I know what I’m usually like on a sleep deficit: cranky, short, and irritable. Anxious and sleep-deprived is the precise opposite of the thing I want to be for my daughter and Ardyn.
At the start of the experiment, I had a theory that caffeine was making me anxious. I didn’t have a ton of it—a cup of coffee on some days, a couple cups of tea on others. But I had it every day, as most of us do. And it had started to take its toll on my mind and body. This doesn’t happen for everyone—or even most people! But it happened for me.
Your chemistry is probably different. But if you have the same reaction to caffeine that I do, you’ll be surprised.
We all metabolize caffeine differently. Depending on the way your body is wired, you may be a fast metabolizer (e.g., you sleep well after an evening espresso), or a slow metabolizer (e.g., you never sleep again after a venti Starbucks coffee). Most of that difference comes down to a couple of genes (CYP1A2, for those following along at home). We all have a different stress response to caffeine, too—how stressed we feel from the drug, which includes how much cortisol and adrenaline our body releases after consuming caffeine.
The effects of the drug are highly individualistic. It’s no wonder that, at the exact same time, there is a large body of research on how caffeine is good for us—while there are entire communities trying to wean themselves off of the drug. (Here’s a subreddit I found myself frequenting for the latter during the experiment.)
I’m definitely on the extreme end of how I metabolize caffeine. A month later, I’m shocked at the results of the experiment. So is my wife, Ardyn.
Here are just a few of the things that have changed in my body and mind since getting “off the sauce”:
- My anxiety is almost entirely gone. I’m truly not fazed by what happens during the day. I take the day as it rolls. I feel more kidlike. The effect is real enough to have its own entry in the DSM-5: caffeine-induced anxiety disorder.
- I can focus more deeply, for longer, with less fatigue. Caffeine narrows our focus while sharpening our attention. This is helpful for getting stuff done. But on it, I found that I typically got fatigued faster, and that my focus was weaker—I had to push myself to read long passages in a journal article, for example. Now, I just read.
- I’m better at filtering through ideas to find which ones are valuable. I’ll write about this in a future newsletter, because it’s an effect I find difficult to articulate.
- My face is noticeably slimmer and my cheeks look less puffy. I’ve been eating in a calorie deficit for months, and have struggled to lose the remaining stubborn pounds. They’re melting off—including in the places where cortisol tells our body to store fat. I was already in a deficit, though, so I can’t tell you how much of that is the caffeine.
- What I lost: the ritual. The first hot thing of the morning, made carefully, drunk slowly. I replaced the drink but not the ceremony, and I missed it for about three weeks. The first two weeks of the experiment were also hell, which I’ll write about in a future article.
Your mileage will vary, and I’ll write more about this experiment—and others!—going forward.
If you’re feeling anxious, caffeine may be the culprit. As it was for me. I may still have it on weekends. But during the week, I now believe it makes me less, not more, productive. Again, your mileage will vary.
As our due date of October 4 approaches, I’ve been doing more experimenting with what I need to do in order to be present when baby is here. For all the reasons I mentioned—from the unique/weird way I metabolize caffeine, to the anti-anxiety benefits, to being more present—I’m planning on staying off the sauce.
Time will tell whether I cave once baby arrives 😉 I’m excited to find out.
