I Survived: A Week Without Coffee (Yeah, Seriously!)

Can you believe it?! I made it a whole week without my beloved coffee and didn’t actually die! I will admit, when I started this challenge, I was a bit worried.  Anyway, I kept a log the entire week so I could report back on how I felt each day: 

Day 1: Guys, this day was ROUGH.  Like, I thought I wasn’t going to make it.  I didn’t realize I was so addicted until now.  I was mostly tired until 2pm when I started to get a headache and began to feel woozy.  So I got out of the gym and went to Starbucks to get some iced green tea.  I realize it still has caffeine, but it’s not coffee, and I just needed something cold to pretend I was having coffee with.  But it hardly helped.  My headache turned into a full-on migraine, and then the nausea and chills set in. I was suffering.  I had to go sit in the employee bathroom for 20 minutes because I thought I was going to get sick.  The ride home wasn’t a blast either, especially since one of my trainer friends rode home with me and kept telling me that I was just detoxing, and that’s ‘why I shouldn’t do drugs.’ I think I know what an addict going through withdrawl feels like now.   

Day 2:  The worst was over, but I still didn’t feel fab.  I was super tired, but it was manageable.  I started to get a slight headache a couple times throughout the day, but I was able to head them off with ibuprofen to keep them from turning into full-blown monster migraines like the one from the day before.  I was tired earlier than usual, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing since I’d been up since 6:30am. 

Day 3:  Woke up tired and with a tiny headache, but I think that’s more from lack of sleep than lack of my coffee fix.  I was up late watching a movie the night before, and then I got up at 6:30am again (on a Saturday? Who am I?), so maybe that’s to blame.  I ended up hitting up Starbucks early since I was up, so I grabbed some green tea just so I could sit and do some work.  When I ordered it, two of my fave baristas just stared open-mouth, and the one who was already making my iced coffee (the usual) could only say, “Heather, shut up!” The manager asked me what was up, and I told her about my experiment and she laughed and said, “Well, that’s just silly.” If I was an addict, these people were my dealers.

Day 4: I slept in today so I had a lot of energy, and the headaches were totally gone! I grabbed green tea later in the day – I’m getting used to it, but it’s still not the same.  Now I just miss the taste of coffee!

Day 5: I was tired today, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.  I was craving coffee, but more for the taste.  I ended up not having any caffeine at all today, When I went to Starbucks, I got Passion tea instead just so I had something to sip on while I did work.  A full day without any caffeine and I survived!

Day 6: I only had a small cup of green tea today and that was it! Almost there!

Day 7:  I made it! A whole week without coffee – and I’m actually totally fine.  I had a half cup of hot green tea this morning, but I honestly didn’t need it.  I feel great, but I also feel like I sort of lost part of my identity since I was such an addict!

So I guess I didn’t NEED coffee the way I always thought I did! Now, in the future, I may make it a weekend treat (because I honestly do love the taste), but not yet since I just made it out of the detox phase and don’t want to sabotage myself just yet.  But it’s really nice to know that I could do this and that I only had to go through one really awful day to get there! What about everyone else?  If you did the challenge? How did you do? I want to hear allll about it!