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Coffee ???
Hozan
Veteran
Hi all
Any feedback in relation to coffee/ caffeine. Developed quite a taste for coffee since needing it to stay awake/ focused while driving after nights awake with young baby. Baby sleeps fine now but I cant kick the coffee habit. Any tips or shared experiences much appreciated. Also has coffee had a negative affect on your meditation practice? Thank you.
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Comments
No effect on meditation but the coffee/tea/caffiene makes the mind race or jittery ... which just effects the nature of arisings ...
It is a drug. Cut back cold turkey or gradually. Depends on your temprament. I just drink more herbal teas.
Thank you! Have you completely cut out coffee or just limited your daily/weekly intake?
Varies.
I am drinking green tea and one coffee every few days . . .
I make it a real filter coffee and add a cardamon.
Another option is barley cup and jaffna coffee. Basically drink more other stuff . . .
Great! Thank you
I've stopped drinking, smoking, gambling, hugely reduced my sugar and carb intake; there's no way any living person or thing in the universe is going to take coffee away from me.
That's one attachment too far, I'm afraid.
Hey Tosh thats a serious turn around. I admire your discipline to give up those things. I find sugar a big hurdle personally
Me too.
I've a big pot of coffee keeping warm downstairs; I'm going to the gym, so will have a large mug in a bit.
Coffee makes me jittery, I switched to green tea. I find the energy much smoother for me.
Caffeine has been used for a long time by monks to help stay awake. There's a myth that says Bodhidharma cut off his eyelids to stay awake and where they fell tea plants grew.
http://www.tsiosophy.com/2012/09/tea-and-bodhidharma/
Thank you person. Appreciate the feedback. Think i'm going to try green tea for a while
I love coffee but I do have to be careful. One or two cups in the morning is ok.
Not really sure how it affects my meditation as I've always had it!
I am a bit like @Tosh - pretty much given up everything but coffee is another story.....
Thanks Bunks. I hear ya.
Interesting stuff, coffee. I normally have a large cup in the morning in lieu of breakfast, and it helps to wake me up and to comfort me after the ordeal of having to fight my way out from under a pile of dogs in the morning.
In the evening, if I am very tired, a cup o' joe actually relaxes me and enables me to sleep in spite of the dogs. A dual purpose food. Very useful.
Long ago, I used to guzzle coffee all day long, but over the years I seem to have lost the urge to do so. Drink mostly water now, perhaps with a dab of sweetening.
Hozan I highly recommend green tea with jasmine blend. Smoother.
Thanks guys. Im going to give the green tea with jasmine a crack. @lobster what brands are good? Loose leaf or bags?
Loose is better quality, bags more convenient - get my tea bags from Aldi if you have one ...
Thanks for that. I have an aldi nearby!
Get the stomach flu, it's easy to kick anything when you have that for a couple days. Then just don't start drinking it again,
I drink a cup a day, but it's little enough that it doesn't bother me if I miss a few days. If you are drinking several cups, I personally would taper off because I get bad headaches and cannot deal with them as nothing works to ease them. So back in the day when I worked nights and drank a ton of coffee, tapering worked better for me.
Have you tried switching to decaf? I think there's nothing wrong with enjoying the flavor of coffee; the caffeine can cause symptoms some people prefer to avoid, though. I can see how the caffeine could interfere with meditation, in that it might stimulate the nervous system and make it difficult to calm the mind, even with proper breathing technique.
I drink decaff but that's a whole other story I'll not get in to. When i first started decaff i went cold turkey and just cut it out, tea/coffee/chocolate/fizzy drinks. You feel really drained for about a week as your body readjusts, then after that you're fine and your body has lost its dependence on it. By going cold turkey you realise just how much caffeine affects your body, I've never looked back, it's nearly 10 years now.
Wow no caffeine for 10 years! Well done. Im going to give it up too
Good luck @Hozan
You will feel rubbish and tired for a while but it will pass soon enough.
@Lee 82 thank you. Appreciate it. Do you drink decaff coffee and tea ?
Yes I drink decaff coffee, both at home and from coffee shops, don't drink tea. I also drink decaff coke if i want something fizzy.
I am actually struggling with this too. About two weeks ago I replaced coffee with black tea and then that with chai tea and now I'm on green tea. I was drinking it two to three times a day and today was my first day with just once. You have two choices with caffeine, ween your self off slowly with minimal discomfort or cold turkey. I tried cold turkey and caffeine detox is no joke! I'm not interested in a month long migraine and chronic tiredness and irritability. Good luck with your decision.
I'm Italian.
I drink maybe one cup of coffee a fortnight. Maybe. It's lovely, and delicious, but I'm not bothered one way or the other, how much I have. Maybe that's why Italians are so fired up and crazy. It's not 'the Mediterranean personality'. It's all those 'corto', 'espresso', 'ristretto' coffees they all drink.....
Just an interesting note, when my caffeine comes from coffee, I don't have the same problem decreasing or stopping it as I do when it comes from soda. I think much of the time in addition to the caffeine we are dealing with going off all the other crap that is in soda. Coffee itself can actually have some beneficial properties at least. Soda not a single one. I enjoy my one cup a day but I am grateful I do not need it to wake me up anymore. I prefer instead to get enough sleep.
Sugar is a hundred countless times more addictive than caffeine. It's been acknowledged that it is far more addictive than cocaine, so caffeine is a poor competitor....
Indeed. I was thinking more so diet soda. I don't add sugar to my coffee so on the rare occasion I have pop it's always diet. I can't even stand the syrupy sweetness of regular soda anymore. But diet soda most definitely has its evils, and depending how you look at it can be worse than regular soda.
I totally agree. In fact, UK guidelines for diabetics is to not touch 'sugar-free' or soda with 'no artificial sweeteners' with a barge-pole. In the long term, the nocive effects are far worse than ordinary sodas...
@federica I wish that were the case here! Here, calorie/carb free sweetened drinks are recommended by doctors so they don't feel "left out." Even though our son was 2 when he was diagnosed, they suggested crystal lite and Mio to add to his water. I asked why you'd want to train a 2 year old to rely on that stuff instead of just drink water. To me, 2 is a great age to teach them better habits rather than let them have all kinds of crap and try to take it away when they are older (which is largely what we were told to do...). They seemed a bit flabbergasted at why someone would want to drink unflavored water and why we'd have a 2 year old do so.
People often say "I can't even look at cheesecake without gaining weight!" It's not that far off from the truth, our initial process of hormonal response to foods and digestion begins before we even take the first bite. It's pretty crazy how we try to circumvent the entire process by looking at one small aspect of it (ie calories) and not the entire system as a whole. It's quite fascinating when you start to learn how it all works. Our bodies are insane in what they do.
There has recently been a series of three programmes on food, ("The secrets of your food", UK BBC2, available on iplayer) its contents, broken down to infinitesimal detail: the first episode was titled "You are what you eat" and outlined the protein fat, carb and mineral content of everything we eat.
The second, "A matter of taste" explored the now established fallacy of the tongue having 5 different areas for flavour detection, and instead, outlined the highly complex and almost miraculous process our taste receptors go through in order to detect different tastes and flavours.
The third was fascinating, and was titled "Food on the brain" and one thing it detailed was that there is only one naturally-ocurring food that contains equal amounts of fat and sugar, and that is mothers' breast milk. So we are drawn - naturally - towards sweet things which are also high in fat - like chocolate, cakes, Devonshire cream teas, ice cream (! @SpinyNorman !) and doughnuts and biscuits....
It also explained which areas of the brain respond to different foods through our senses picking up on the 5 different aspects of food appreciation, and it's incredible how we are so unconsciously affected by everything we eat, consume, digest and enjoy.
I hope you can get it on bbc iplayer; a friend of mine living in Italy, can....fascinating!
I will take a look! Sounds fascinating!
Coffee with no sugar. Good plan.
... well how about coffee with cocoa, ginseng (indian ginseng if you can find it) or goji berries ...
Yep it might just be good for you ...
http://www.mydomaine.com/healthy-latte-recipes
Anyone have an opinion on the use of Stevia as a sweetener?
Bleah.
Yeah, tastes kind of funny.
I've just stopped adding any sugar to anything that doesn't require it. I've even cut it back in specific recipes, when possible...
I hate labels which read "No artificial sweeteners!" which is a total lie because in my eyes, anything that doesn't end in 'ose' is an artificial sweetener. How they can say 'aspartame' isn't artificial, is utterly beyond me. I can detect it instantly and it has a violent reaction with my system. It literally makes me feel sick.
I tried stevia once and it didn't appeal to me in the slightest.
I bought some cacao nibs off amazon earlier today that I wanna try in my coffee (among other things).
A lady (Kaylah Cupcake) who lost a bunch of weight on youtube swears by erythritol she bought off amazon. She said stevia makes her retch.
Hmmmm I gave up coffee because of the caffeine - it sucked.
In fact it sucked so much I started drinking Coke then Coke Zero (no sugar).
I'm not willing to live without caffeine. And it's not safe for people if I'm deprived from caffeine either.
No affect, in fact I read somewhere that some Buddhist monks drink green tea in order to keep them alert whilst meditating.
tea is a good option.
the problem with no calorie/no sugar artificially sweetened drinks is that your body starts the complex process of digestion as soon as it realizes what you are about to take in. When it senses sweet, and sweet hits the tongue, the pancreas is already starting the process to send out insulin to deal with it. Except the sugar never arrives that needs transporting to your cells, and it completely messes with your hormonal process. Overtime, it's a big part of what leads people to gain weight on diet drinks.
Indeed.
Relaxed. Attentive. Awake.
http://thedragonswell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/bodhi-dharmas-eyelids.html
I am devoted to that magical transporting brew known as coffee. Truly a gift for mere mortals. Black without sugar or cream. That first wonderful sip in the morning. The aroma so rewarding to your snout. Insipid brews are not for this old boy. Many a friendship has been forged by that first cup together.
Your compassion is an example to us all ...
@grackle is another alternative boddhisatva 
OH MAN I JAH VA OH RA MA (non-traditional mantra)
My caffeine weaning program leading up to my Refuge Ceremony on April 08th.
Decaff?????? Good God do you have a death wish?????
Well you know what they say, @dhammachick ... 'die before you die'....
@dhammachick. On a business trip to Alaska I had the joy of consuming Raven's Brew coffee. The coffee is excellent and with the raven as a logo it was a double pleasure. Decaf is down right nasty.
Most studies agree that coffee and green tea are good for the brain
(woo). I drink a couple of cups in the morning and afternoon but find it keep me up if I drink past 3-4pm!