Category: Health

Having reduced my coffee intake, I’m still trying to reduce it even more. I’ve reached a plateau whereby I take an afternoon coffee almost everyday. I’ve decided to try a different approach to break this. I’m now leaving it up to chance — literally. I let my smartphone’s calculator choose a random number. An even number means I can have a coffee. An odd one means I must wait until the morning for a coffee. This approach is just recent, so I can’t say whether it is successful yet.

I allow one cup in the morning no matter what. My afternoon intake was three days on, one day off. That’s a 75% chance that I’ll have an afternoon brew. Now factor in the random number approach (theoretically a 50% cut). It’s been reduced to about 40% chance (2 days of coffee every five days). This may stem my afternoon coffee to just occasional because the want will be tamed.

I’m hopeful this works.

Two weeks have passed since I committed to reducing my coffee intake. The result is that I have, for the most part, been successful.

I no longer brew a full pot of coffee in the morning. Instead, I brew just enough for one of my café-au-lait mugs.

That’s the good news. The difficulty is that every other day, I brew a second cup in the afternoon. However, this is not entirely bad news. I have become so accustomed to making just enough for one cup, that it would feel weird to brew any more.

Thinking back, I probably reduced my intake of coffee by one third. It’s progress that I can live with because I can feel my cravings for coffee going away. By training myself to have just one cup in the morning and one cup in the afternoon every other day, I’m slowly kicking my addiction.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my health. My weight is not something to worry about, but it should be better.

Technically, my BMI (Body Mass Index) for my weight and height means I’m slightly overweight. The people who created that index admit it’s not an indicator of health overall. Only a doctor can determine that. My doctor says I’m OK, but always asks me questions about coffee, sleep, exercise, and what I eat and drink.

I drink too much coffee, don’t get quality sleep, exercise too little, and have an unpredictable diet. In other words, I have plenty of room to improve my health.

I have already begun my commitment to reduce my coffee intake. For me, it’s like telling a chain smoker to quit. I’ll update my progress on that later.

Here are my additional steps:
– Figure out how to get better sleep (I have insomnia and wake up several times a night)
– Go for walks more often and fix my bike (These are the easiest to accomplish)
– Have more fruits and vegetables, eat lunch (I always forget to eat it), don’t eat if I’m not hungry, drink more water

Obviously, changing all of the above takes time. But I can do small things like adding a piece of fruit to my breakfast and walking or biking instead of transit or car. Nothing too radical so that I don’t have too steep of a curve. I’ll update my progress.

Edit: I miscalculated the amount of coffee my cup holds and how much I drink per day. Edits are inline.

If you know me, you know that I like coffee a lot. Perhaps too much. In fact, the amount that I drink is probably unhealthy. Thankfully I don’t have any health scare to force me to realize this — yet.

So, I now find myself wanting to drink a normal amount in the morning. I’ve decided to cut the amount that I brew in half. And also halve the amount that I drink — one cup instead of two.

It’s at this point that I should inform you that my cup is a large café-au-lait mug. I pour about 550 400 mL of coffee into it. That means I drink 1.1 L 800 mL total of coffee each morning. Plus as much 2% milk and sugar to flavour all of it. You can now understand why I need to reduce my intake.

But even at 550 400 mL of coffee, my intake would still be unhealthy. However, I’ve decided that the best approach is to reduce the amount in steps. Half a litre 400 mL is better than a litre 800 mL right now. In a few weeks, it will be less, and so on.

I may even end up quitting my daily coffee and just drink it occasionally. I have quit coffee completely before. The last time was in September last year — cold turkey. It lasted three weeks. This time, I plan on being more successful.

I will update my progress.