The Benefits of Reducing Your Caffeine Intake

If you're like me you love you coffee, and you may even sometimes feel like you can't function without it. Thats because caffeine is a highly addictive substance. And from time to time it's always a good idea to look at ways that you can reduce your daily intake.

1. Break The Addiction

It becomes a vicious cycle when you become dependent on a substance to function normally or even stay awake. As caffeine changes the brain's chemistry it results in the need for more of the substance to achieve the desired effect over time.

Its usually a really good idea to reduce consumption if you are looking to give it up entirely as going cold turkey will cause some serious withdrawals and if you are trying to go about your day to day life these withdrawals will make the simplest of tasks seem way more difficult. So what I mean here is, if you drink 3 cups of coffee daily reduce to 2 and then to 1 and so on. So depending how much you are drinking right now look to reduce by one cup for a couple of weeks and then one more allowing yourself adjustment periods on each reduction.

2. Save Some Serious Dough

The cost of that take-away American can add up and super quickly, by giving up coffee or simply giving up buying your daily fix imagine how much money you could be saving. I think the average cup of coffee is about EUR 2.50 and over the course of a 5 day week (typically) that's a saving of EUR12.50 and in a month (typical 4 week) that's EUR50.00 .

Take a look at your daily spending coffee and see how much you could be saving. I have found simply keeping my Starbucks to the weekend has made a huge difference in the past. And while I will be undergoing this challenge myself this will be one of my. reducing tricks - but this time I'm going to put the money I would be spending on coffee into a jar to be put towards something special. Just a little tip for you there.

3. Better Sleep

We all know that caffeine can and does disrupt our sleep patterns, but did you know that caffeine stays in your system for up to 6 hours? Yeah, I was shocked too. So that 3pm or 4pm coffee you grab will be having an affect on your body at the exact time you should be winding down. And this caffeine will be causing a cortisol (our stress hormone) spike right when it should be tapering to allow for melatonin (our sleep hormone) production.

4. You Will Feel Better. I Promise!

Caffeine plays a role in altering our mood, we've all been there, there are even memes about it... "But First... Coffee" most people can feel grumpy and irritable before having their first cup. So giving up coffee can help you to stabilise those ups and downs

5. Weight Loss

Now, unless you drink your coffee black caffeinated drinks tend to add empty calories to our diets that we really don't need. A study found that when caffeine was present along side sugar this caused people to consume more compared to a sugary drink without the caffeine.

*Bonus Benefit

Our environment! Think of how reducing your caffeine intake alone can benefit the environment. We all know that this is a HUGE issue now so this would be a way for us to reduce our own carbon footprint... or alternatively you can purchase your own keep cup.