How I Kicked The Excess Coffee
I get up early, and I work late. My alarm goes off at 3:45AM. I’m doing my best to get in bed by 9PM. That doesn’t leave much time for super restful and quality sleep.
Before we brought on Launa and Daniel (#DreamTeam), I was coaching 30 classes a week. Every morning I was bright eyed and bushy tailed by 4:50AM when I arrive, and I had to keep the coach energy flowing until 7:30PM each evening. While we don’t have any classes in the middle of the day, we do have business to take care of! Finish building out the gym, admin work, clean the bathrooms, mop the floors, accounting, social media, content creation, errands, meetings…. ALL the things. I was working consistent 14-16 hour days.
I did all of this with the help of the magic bean water we know as the elixir of life… more commonly known as coffee. I mainlined the stuff! I’d wake up, make a french press full of that delicious dark roast, and drink the whole damn thing before 4:30AM. THEN I’d slap a k-cup into the Keurig for another cup of caffeine (with much less taste) for the trip up to the gym. I could ride that close to 4 cup of coffee high until about 7:45AM towards the tail end of morning classes. I’d get done, do the cleaning around the gym like a zombie, then head home to do the back office work. Upon arrival, another french press to keep me going. I’d work late morning to early afternoon, then slap ANOTHER k-cup in the system before I went back up for the evening time.
On most days, I would drink at least 8 cups of coffee a day. Maybe 10. Oh, and a pre-workout drink… because I probably wasn’t getting enough caffeine in my system.
There’s definitely a viscous cycle when it comes to caffeine consumption. You assume you need the caffeine because you don’t sleep well… but in all reality, you PROBABLY aren’t sleeping well because of all the caffeine you’re ingesting. When you hit that realization, you quickly want to make a change.
I watched another video of my man-crush Chase Jarvis that talks about his morning routines. One thing that struck me was how much water he drinks every morning. He starts each day with a minimum of 30oz of water! That seemed pretty crazy to me, but I also knew that I wasn’t getting enough water (just like the majority of us living in a chronic dehydrated state). I figured I could try this out no problem.
It was funny, as soon as I started drinking 30oz of water every morning FIRST thing (before coffee), everything got better. I no longer felt like I needed 4 cups of coffee to get started. I just needed one. Not only that, I didn’t get that post coffee crash either like I was getting around 7:45AM each day. I went from 4:30AM to Noon without even thinking about an extra cup of coffee. Then, THE BEST THING EVER HAPPENED THAT NIGHT. I feel asleep fast, and I stayed asleep. No tossing and turning, no hard time waking up. I went to sleep, slept as long as I could, and got up ready to conquer another day. There’s definitely some fancier science stuff that I’m not qualified to talk about behind this reasoning…. but for now, I’m just going to keep drinking my water first thing every morning. I no longer feel like I’m a slave to coffee to get my day going. I can actually enjoy my cup of coffee rather than feel like it has a death grip on my level of success for that day.
Why don’t you try it? TRY IT FOR 7 DAYS! First thing you do in the morning – drink 30 oz of water (if you have a Yeti/Rtic, that’s perfect!). See how this will effect your morning routine.
Let me know if I can be of any help to you!
-Clark Hibbs
15 down, 16 to go.
