[epalmer]

I gave up coffee and sodas and feel so much better. My energy during the day is more level and I don't get headaches much anymore. I do drink green tea mostly and maybe 2 cups of black tea a week. I have had 3 cups of coffee in 4 months when I just needed to drive to the airport at 3 am and similar. My concentration is better but I still like a good nap mid day. At 62 years old, a nap is a great thing.

I recommend giving up coffee. I tracked my habit and when I gave up it took me only about 10 days to completely stop drinking coffee. Soda as easier. I drink carbonated water now.

I was drinking 100+ oz of coffee a day most days. I had it easy giving up but I have heard that others with heavy habits get a lot of withdrawal symptoms. I had a few headaches and I quelled them with tea.

[task_queue]

I started drinking green tea and black tea in the morning in high school. Then I ran out. Cue a few days of headaches, bad moods, falling asleep and cold-like symptoms.

Then a few years later I started drinking coffee regularly. Same thing happened when I quit.

Now, I drink green tea in the mornings occasionally and have had no problems with stopping.

If you don't have a need consume caffeine, don't start. It seems to follow the tolerance/withdrawal pattern at even small doses.

[swozey]

I've been drinking only water for years and I don't feel any different from when I drank sugared soda and coffee and everything else. Absolutely no different. I quit smoking and also don't feel different albeit my endurance and lung capacity is much better. Maybe I should go on a month long binge just to remind myself of this mystical awful feeling that people always mention when they've given up sugar.

[flaie]

Two months ago I also evicted anything that's not water during 101 days, meaning no soda, no coffee, no tea, no fruit juice, only plain water. At the end of these 101 days I wasn't feeling better, not that I was feeling bad before but it didn't changed anything during the day, I didn't felt more energy or anything else. Admittedly, it was tough to quit during the first two weeks.

[swozey]

The most interesting thing that occurred was my now intolerance to sweet drinks. Every so often I'll treat (barf) myself to nostalgic trip down high school lane, which consists of a mexican pizza and mountain dew from Taco Bell. I take one sip of the mountain dew (my drink all through my childhood) and throw it out as soon as I get to a trash can. I can't even drink zoke ceros or anything along those lines because they make me feel so bloated.

It's awesome.

There's a bowl of starbursts in my office that I'm currently fighting against. It's new. It's refilled every Monday. It's evil. I actually grabbed a handful on Friday to sneak home, luckily karma kicked in and all of the bags were missing the pink flavor so I didn't eat any.

[sotojuan]

Same thing happened to me. Every time I try a Sprite (used to be my favorite), I feel physically bad after drinking it.

[coldtea]

>I've been drinking only water for years and I don't feel any different from when I drank sugared soda and coffee and everything else.

Did you drank a LOT of them? Because if you were just drinking some in moderation (as opposed to 1 or even 2 bottles of Pepsi a day like I did), it probably didn't matter anyway.

Also were you younger? Because if you did that "break" at, say 25, it's not like you'll see much difference. Your body can still tolerate a whole lot of abuse at that age.

[swozey]

I'm an American who grew up in the 90s, so I drank more soda than water for sure. In fact I don't think I drank water my entire middle school-high school career. Jugs and jugs of mt dew. Thankfully I had an insane metabolism back then.

I stopped drinking soda around 21 or so, I'm 31 now.

[coldtea]

This just in: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/cutting-sugar-impro...

[imrehg]

I'm doing my 2nd round this year of "30 days without coffee & tea" now (7 days into it). I primarily do it because I feel my more frequent heartburns were because of that, and because after a while coffee gives me the jitters and makes me very impatient, instead of energize me.

Looking at all the comments, and thinking about the effects I feel during this 7 days (and the experience of the previous 30 days), I will definitely want to keep that coffee low, no matter how much I like cafes, the drinking, the flavour...

By the way, for me it took about 3 weeks after quitting coffee cold turkey to stop thinking like "I'm a grown-up goddamnit, I can have a coffee whenever I want!". The 4th week then was really-really good.

Tea is works a lot better, and I'm lucky here in Taiwan for the awesome teas available. But have to be careful about that, a strong oolong (that I like a lot) just as a hammer-hit to the head as a cup of coffee sometimes....