📝 Without

2024.01.03

I saw a post by Kev Quirk about "living without" and it ended up being a chain of posts based on other posts, so I read them all, including all the recap posts for the various experiments. These are the posts (in order of publish, oldest to newest, recaps are linked within the respective posts):

• A Year of Living Without by zen habits
• My year of living without by Manu
• Yet another year of living without by Manu
• One Month Without by Kev Quirk

There is a lot of interesting information throughout these posts. It got me thinking of some things I'd like to try out. I don't know that I want to go the Manu route and give up a couple things for a whole year. I also don't know that I want to do the giving up something every month thing, but I do want to work on cutting some things out and changing how I consume other things.

Coffee

This is a difficult one for me. I hated coffee for years, and in my early 20s, started taking a liking to it. I've since moved into loving coffee, owning multiple manual brewers, and drinking at least a cup a day, but sometimes more. I love coffee, and I do not want to remove it from my life.

That being said, I do want to change my relationship with coffee. As of writing this, I am addicted to coffee. Not only that, but I'm specifically addicted to black coffee. Drinking an espresso drink and/or tea does not work for me. Even if I have other drinks, containing the same amount of caffeine, I get a headache and/or don't feel good. Yes that sounds ridiculous, because it is.

I do not want to give up coffee entirely, but I would like to give up my addiction to it, and also make it something that I enjoy in the moment, not just something I consume every day.

Previously I exclusively drank tea before starting on coffee. I still love tea. Tea never gave me side effects when I didn't have any, and I feel better in general after drinking tea vs coffee. I would like to drink a tea each morning, and have coffee occasionally as a treat, not as a daily habit.

My plan is to slowly wean myself off of coffee so I no longer feel like I need it every day. I'll do this by lowering the amount I drink each day, and when I'm comfortable moving on to skipping days, until I've gotten through the withdrawal. At the same time I will start making a tea every morning, which should help some as I will still get caffeine.

Some benefits once I've succeeded in this will be:

• Making tea is much easier for me than making coffee, as there is a lot of setup and cleanup with my coffee making ritual, so I will be able to have a tea even if I'm pressed for time.
• I miss drinking tea and I think it will be a calming, enjoyable activity, even if I'm doing it every day. I'll do my best to make a moment of it instead of just taking it on the go. I view this as more of a ritual vs a habit.
• I will be able to have coffee sometimes as a nice drink, and thus enjoy it more when I do have it.
• I won't drink coffee I don't like when I'm in a rush, just for the sake of having coffee.
• I will likely drink more water. When I go to pick up a drink, I'll have water available instead of coffee.

Sugar

A year or so ago my wife and I decided to go no sugar. I avoided foods with added sugars, tried to eat foods with less natural sugar when possible, and ate no sweets at all. This was great for both of us. I felt much better, lost a few pounds, no longer craved sweets, and could even notice the sugar content in foods like fruit, so things tasted better.

I will be doing something similar, but not as intense. I will actively work on selecting foods with a low or no sugar content, avoid foods with added sugar, and only have sweets as a small treat. This means not having a giant slice of cake, or multiple cookies, but truly enjoying a piece of dark chocolate. I want my sweet consumption to be small treats that I'm fully present in enjoying, as opposed to just flying through large desserts, making myself sick and not truly enjoying it.

Misc changes

Those are the main two things I will be doing, but I have some other things I am starting up as well:

• Fasting: This has helped me in the past by preventing me from eating late at night, eating too much, and making unhealthy choices because I don't have time in the morning. I will make a good effort to fast at least 16 hours each day, but I will also allow myself to break it if it makes life much more difficult (like if my family is going out to breakfast or something).
• Meat and dairy: Red meat and specifically dairy don't usually sit well with my stomach. I know that being vegan or vegetarian will not be possible with my current life, and I'm okay with that. I will, however, actively choose to limit these things in my diet. I will serve myself less meat and more vegetables when putting food on plates for dinner. I will choose to eat vegetarian when eating on my own, which is usually the case for breakfast and lunch. If I can opt to not have something or substitute something, without making my own food entirely while others have something else, I'll do that.
• Sitting: I know sitting is bad for me and I do a lot of it. I already decided that every day I am in the office (weather and other things permitting) I will take a lunch walk. I will also start switching my desk to standing mode at work more often, and work at the counter more when at home.

Recap

I know this sounds like a lot, but really the coffee is the difficult/new thing here. I will easily be able to jump in to limiting sugar/meat/dairy in my diet, fasting again, and sitting less. These are just going to be things I have decided so I will do every day, while going easy on myself when I'm not doing perfectly. As long as I continue and do my best, that will be enough and they will turn into habits I don't even need to try to achieve.

So these are the things I will be doing:

• Breaking my coffee habit/starting a tea ritual
• Limit sugar in my diet
• Limit meat and dairy in my diet
• Go on lunch walks
• Work standing when possible

Post 033/100 of #100DaysToOffload

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