I’ve been into healthy eating and living for over a decade, and while it is a huge part of my life, I’ve always believed in being flexible and keeping a bit of an open mind. Anything that feels too rigid to me is not sustainable. I like to eat from my intuition rather than from strict guidelines even though 99% of the time, I choose the healthy option. My diet these days is plant-centered, the majority of it being raw, because that’s where my intuition is guiding me.

However, there was one area of my life that I tossed intuition to the sidelines, and it wasn’t until this last February that I decided to finally kick the habit for good… coffee. What prompted this? Truthfully it was more my decision to give up dairy, something I’ve wanted to do for years, than coffee at first. Cream in coffee tastes amazing. And that fact, led me back again and again and again and again… feeling like a bit of a health and wellness and animal lover fraud if I can be honest. Promoting health but drinking coffee with cream, which is acidic in the body, blocks the absorption of minerals, and can wreck havoc on your nervous system by tricking it to feel alert, made me feel like a big old fraud.

Let me get back to the dairy part first. It turns out even small amounts of even the highest quality of organic, pasture raised, and local when I could find it cow’s milk makes my face look like someone placed a jelly fish on it. Swelling around my eyes, redness, itchiness, burning, and like these tiny little micro blisters that would sting. Not sexy at all. It would come and go and be exacerbated by the heat, hot showers, and exercising. I didn’t always have this issue either. It started in March 2019, and I’ve been ashamed of it ever since.

When you promote a certain lifestyle and healthy living, you do become aware of if you are in fact radiating health and happiness. Walking around with swollen eczema around my eyes did none of that. I could not figure out what was going on because I’m healthy and I’m really not stressed out, which is a common trigger of eczema. Life is good. But it kept getting worse and worse. Finally, I needed a prescription cream, which I absolutely hated getting. And then I thought to myself, what if I just give up half and half from my coffee? That was pretty much the only dairy I was regularly eating. Three days later, eczema gone.

Okay, so what does any of this have to do with coffee?

Here’s the thing. I don’t like coffee without cream in it. I’ve tried oat milk, coconut milk, almond milk, and so forth. I tried mushroom coffee blended with a combo of the milks, and even heated up oat milk and added in organic instant coffee thinking it would be like a cheap latte (It was nothing of the like, btw). All of these desperate attempts to keep coffee in my life made me hyper aware of how addicted I was. I started feeling depressed. It’s like my morning ritual was being taken from me. The act of making that organic pour over coffee and relaxing with it while I start the day with Bodie was a highlight for me. You know that saying, “sleep is like a portal to coffee time”? That was how I felt every damn night.

Noticing my addiction, both the physical and psychological components, made me realize I truly needed to walk away and never look back. I don’t want to be hooked on a substance. Even if most of America is. I don’t eat, live, work, or go about my day like most Americans do. I am a huge proponent of living freely, and feeling addicted to coffee (or any kind of food/substance) does not feel freeing to me.

Withdrawal is real, fam. I usually would drink 1-2 mugs in the morning. I definitely was never a heavy coffee drinker. I also would have matcha a few times a week over the winter when it was cold and I wanted something warm in the afternoon. Matcha is obviously different, but it still contains caffeine. I’ve given it all up while I adjust. I had a splitting headache the first 48 hours. I was probably bitchy, too. You can ask my husband. Isn’t it fucked up that we drink this substance every single day, and when we don’t we get a migraine? After the headache passed, I had moments of feeling incredible mixed with moments of feeling intense anxiety. I found myself finding ways to go out for a latte, in fact, I broke down a few times and had one with oat milk... A 12 ouncer. Then I would deal with the headache again.

But I’ve turned a page, and it seems to be turning into a distant memory now. I start the day with a glass of Kangen water, and instead of that coffee, I’m looking forward to my daily green. I’ve lost weight, feel energized, and my skin looks like a normal person again. No more swelling or redness.

Looking back, I feel like I actually don’t even do that well on coffee. It wasn’t just the dairy. I always felt like I needed to brush my teeth immediately after drinking it. Like that alone makes me feel kind of gross to think about. Coffee breath is yucky. I am feeling calmer in general, and my sleep has hit a new level of amazing. There’s a lot of research to support that coffee is beneficial for us, and I ate that shit up, but when I really assess how I feel in comparison, it’s a no brainer for me.

I would like to think that I’m going to stay strong over here even though I literally seem to see coffee everywhere I look. I currently have about 5 different fun ways to prepare coffee within 10 feet of me (anyone need a pour over, or two french presses, or a cold brew maker?) Dairy and coffee are gone from my life, and when I do get that urge to have a cup maybe after a rough night with Bodie or when I have a lot of work to do, I’m going to come back and reread this post as my little reminder.

Don’t do it, Lindsay. Choose freedom.

Are you a coffee drinker? Ever given it up?

With LOVE,

Lindsay