I’ve decided I consume too much caffeine. Mainly through the consumption of Coke. Because of this I am also contributing to many of my hard-earned dollars to lining the pockets of a company that is rich enough.

My tale of addiction I suspect is repeated many times over. A few years back I was overweight (not obese, just 10kg (22lbs) heavier than I wanted to be), mainly due to poor diet. Apart from eating better, I cut back my drinking; beer, full cream milk and softdrinks. This was good and helped me reach my weight target, but I was now hooked on diet softdrinks; in particular Diet Coke with Lemon.

Since Coke dropped the lemon flavour, and brought out lime, I switched. This wasn’t a problem, but the amount I drunk slowly crept higher, to the point that I was consuming a whole 1.5L bottle in a morning every morning. This is about the equivalent of six cups of coffee in caffeine.

So now to beat it, same some money and my kidneys. I’ve hunted around the net and everything I have read says not to go cold turkey. That’s going to be kind of hard for me. It’s how I approach most change, how I quit smoking. So this is how I’m going to do it:

  1. Switch from coke to the crap office coffee
  2. Reduce the coffee intake to near zero over 3 weeks

I’m doing it this way for a couple of reasons: It saves money – I don’t have to pay for office coffee, it tastes terrible – it won’t be hard to give up, I’m not a huge coffee drinker – I generally only have about one (proper coffee) a week.