Karl from Vitruvian Health asks the big question for serial coffee drinkers… Are you addicted to coffee?
March is Caffeine Awareness Month so why not take the opportunity to have a quick check in with yourself and how you rate on the coffee addiction scale.
Ask yourself the following:
- When your alarm goes off, do you immediately think you need to have a coffee because you feel tired?
- Do you have your first coffee before you eat anything?
- Do you have your first coffee with breakfast?
- Do you need a second coffee only a few hours after you’ve had your first?
- Are you sleepy in the second half of your day and crave another caffeine boost then?
- Do you think you use ‘coffee breaks’ to procrastinate doing work or focusing on the task at hand?
- Is drinking/going to get coffee part of your daily ritual?
- Have you tried reducing the number of coffees per day you drink before? Was it successful?
- How would you feel if you weren’t allowed to drink any coffee for 1 month?
- Rate out of 5 whether you can cut all caffeine for 1 whole month (5 – “Easy peasy”, 1 – “Bugger that”)
As health professionals, you’d be well aware that breaking an addiction is more about breaking the ‘habit’ and ‘mindset’ that’s associated with the addictive behaviour.
Your answers to the above questions will give you some insight into how much coffee is tied into your day to day, or your day to day is tied into coffee.
Is being addicted to coffee a bad thing?
It depends.
Like anything, too much of it will, over time, result in side effects.
The important thing here is not to think “I need to cut it out altogether”. Rather, it’s better to simply become more aware of how your coffee intake affects your body.
Quick observations can be made by thinking about how you feel both before, and after, you have your coffee. Likewise when you are tired and opt to have a coffee, why are you doing that? How does it make you feel afterwards?
Simple check-ins with yourself are a powerful way to not only become aware but also make choices that make you feel good and perform at your optimum level, day after day.
This article was provided by Vitruvian Health.