Good morning! Have a good sleep? Probably not since you drink coffee like me! but now that you’re sitting down to read this, may I ask a question? What type of coffee drinker are you?
Are you a two cream two sugar type of person? Or a single, single? Well, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is if you’re drinking coffee. Now if you’re a two cup of coffee a day type of person I would assume you are long over do for that buzz. After all, that’s why your here isn’t it?
For me to share the secret method to fight caffeine tolerance.
Right?
Of course, you are! Now, take a sip of that warm coffee and listen up!
1. You need a battle plan.
Before we get into how to fight caffeine tolerance, we need to see how our body responds to zero caffeine levels for a day, and our daily dosage.
This is our battle plan. Tomorrow when you wake up, I want you to put a piece of paper by you as you drink your coffee. I need you to write down how many hours you slept, and how you feel before you drink the coffee, and write down how you feel after. For example, today I slept for eight hours. I feel tired. After drinking my cup of coffee I feel awake and normal. Now when you drink your second cup of coffee see how you feel.
Do you feel more awake?
Do you feel the same?
Do you feel tired?
After you do this, when noon rolls around, write down how you feel. By supper, same thing and just before bed. The next day I need you to mimic the day almost identically. EXCEPT no coffee.
Do you feel tired?
Do you feel the same?
Do you feel more awake?
Logically, you might tell me: duh, you’re going to be tired.
And you’re right. You’re going to be tired because it’s the morning. But how do you feel at night? How do you feel at supper? And I ask this because most people think of caffeine as a “jitter drug.” But in reality, it’s an imposter. Caffeine doesn’t give you energy. All it does it slows the “tired” process. That’s why you always crash. if I was going to describe how caffeine works in the brain I would describe it as building a wall to try and keep a bunch of tired zombies out of your home. Eventually, that wall will crumble. No matter how high you build that wall it will fall. And the higher you build it, the harder you fall. That is why they call it a crash.
And every time you build that wall, more tired zombies come. Now, I need you to keep those results. We will get back to them.
2. Understand the half-life of caffeine.
The secret method to fighting caffeine is a complex one. It involves paper and numbers. Now, going by a study done on caffeine informer we can safely say the half-life of caffeine is 5.7 hours. Or, five hours and forty-two minutes. Now, if you don’t know what a half-life is I’ll explain quickly and you will understand. Trust me.
If you consumed 200mg of caffeine in one cup of coffee, in 5.7 hours you will have 100mg left in your system. 5.7 hours after, your will have 50mg, then 25mg, then 12.5mg.
Now, you see the problem here? If I drank two cups of coffee a day for 240mg of caffeine at eight o’clock in the morning. It will take more than 40 hours to get out of my system.
Now, if I had two cups of coffee every day at 8 am, I would already have around 30mg of caffeine in my system when I’m drinking another cup of coffee in the morning. So, all of a sudden 240mg + 30mg = 270mg of caffeine.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the pattern here. You and I consume caffeine at a rate quicker than our body can get rid of. Thus, our body raises our caffeine tolerance to compensate for the amount of caffeine in our bodies our body simply increases the number of receptors.
So how do we stop this?
3. Know Your Limit, Stay Within It.
I never said the secret method would be easy. And it isn’t, but it is rewarding. And this requires self-reflection. Ask yourself these questions:
How do I respond to caffeine?
Why do I drink coffee?
I drink coffee for the taste, and I have found through experimentation that I develop a tolerance very quickly, and lose it just as fast.
Thus, I have no problem drinking decaf coffee. Maxwell to be exact. I enjoy it. And the little bit of caffeine in it, 15mg-25mg is just enough to bring me to “normal.” Now that is considered low. an adult can safely consume 400mg of caffeine and be okay. I just happen to by hypersensitive to caffeine, thus, I need less to get the same effects. But, I’ve also found my caffeine tolerance grows quickly if I consume a couple cups a day.
So figure out how you respond to caffeine!
4. Time To Prepare For War.
Now that we have found out how our body responds to caffeine we need to put our battle plan into action. Compare your results. Did you find that you felt better or worse drinking coffee? and to what extent? has drinking decaf helped you at all? has going without coffee for a day killed your productivity?
Now, this is the hardest part. Depending on how long you’ve been drinking coffee, we will need to either go cold turkey or switch to decaf for a few months.
I know my body pretty well and when I hit the caffeine-tolerant wall I have a tendency to go on decaf for a week, and get back on coffee with no issues. But again, I’m pretty caffeine sensitive. Depending on how sensitive to caffeine you are, some of you may find yourselves going on decaf for a week, to a few months. Some researchers even suggest staying off coffee entirely for three months! But, that’s absurd. After all, we know your body starts growing a tolerance after a minimum of four days of drinking coffee!
No matter your results you will need to remove regular coffee from your daily consumption for a minimum of one week. After one week, I suggest having one cup of coffee and reevaluating how you feel. Once you have a “desired” caffeine buzz you will need to be conscious of your daily caffeine consumption. No more than 500ml of coffee a day or a maximum of 300mg of caffeine. And in a session, you should have about 125ml of coffee or roughly 50-70mg of caffeine spread out every three to five hours. More or less depending on you tolerance level. Also, feel free to adjust accordingly. After all, your body is different from everyone else
Now you know that the method to fight caffeine tolerance isn’t much a secret after all. It’s just being conscious of how your body responds to caffeine. The key is to learn to how your body responds to caffeine and maximizing the time it takes for your body to grow tolerant is the key to having a beautiful buzz every morning.
Featured photo credit: VIKTOR HANACEK via picjumbo.com
