3 Steps to Drink Less Coffee Without Feeling Deprived, Plus My 15 Fave Coffee Replacers
If you’re anything like my mom, you’ve been waking up to a cup of coffee every day for your entire adult life. She got started young: my grandmother was handing her a bottle full of milk with a dash of joe in it as early as two.
Whatever your history with the holy bean might be, one thing’s for sure: coffee is ubiquitous.
It’s offered up for free in churches, workplaces, even waiting rooms. Roughly every urban square mile has a coffee shop or kiosk available to passersby.
In fact, caffeine is the most consumed psychoactive drug in the world, with about 90% of the population (including children) in the United States regularly consuming caffeine-containing beverages or foods.
Although I dodged the caffeine bullet for most of my life, I gave in when I worked in an office with free-flowing cappuccinos, cold brew on tap, and that sweet roasted smell wafting through the cubicles. These days, I weave in and out of caffeine use in ways that support my body, energy, and nervous system.
If it’s become a staple in your life, skipping out on coffee is no walk in the park.
Here are some simple tips that aren’t based on deprivation to help you give up the cup.
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Three steps for when the coffee mood strikes
I’m a firm believer in replacing undesired habits with healthier, more fulfilling ones rather than white knuckling or going cold turkey.
This is not only a compassionate way to shift a behavior; it’s much more realistic and sustainable.
It’s also important to note that caffeine withdrawal is real, and it’s recommended to slowly reduce your intake over a six-week period to avoid side effects.
This is known as the “crowding out” method. The idea is rather than taking away and leaving a big gaping hole in your life, you fill it up with so much goodness that you don’t even miss that old habit in the first place.
Sounds awesome, right?
When it comes to coffee, I have three steps for doing this:
Sit with the feeling or craving.
Explore other ways to meet the need.
Swap your coffee for one of several delicious, satisfying replacements.
1. Sit with the craving before you act on it
First, be with the desire.
Do you wake up first thing and beeline toward the coffee maker?
Do you feel groggy and tired and sense that a caffeine jolt will set you right?
Is there some resistance to a task you have to do, be it getting up, showering, clothing yourself, or getting to work?
Did you just get a hit of roasting beans as you walked past a Starbucks (they definitely planned that)?
Whatever it is, just be with that initial moment when desire is kindled. Be with the discomfort between the moment you want the coffee and the moment you have it, if only for a few breaths.
Sit with all the icky feelings, the longing, all the sleepy, grumpy messiness. I promise you, this process has a lot of juicy information to give you.
Don’t judge yourself. Don’t resist it. Just sit with it, welcome it, make space for it, and be curious about it.
Let whatever comes up come up.
The important part is to do this from a feeling-space, not a thinking-space.
Feel the desire, where it is in the body, noticing any colors, shapes, or sensations that arise with it. Appreciate the arising of desire itself as a testament to your aliveness, your creativity, your vitality.
Focus on feeling rather than a mental narrative. For instance, your mental story about coffee might sound like:
“I’ve been drinking coffee since I was fifteen years old. It’s a ritual. It’s important to me. I deserve it.”
Or, “Every single one of my coworkers currently has a cup of joe in hand. It’s free in the break room. How am I supposed to resist it? This is hopeless!”
Those mental narratives may come up. Let them. Just remember you don’t have to engage with them, or believe them!
Add in before you take out
My second strategy is to try different replacement behaviors before I give myself the gratification of the desired object.
For instance, instead of drinking coffee when I wake up, I might try one of the following:
jump on my mini trampoline for ten minutes to get my blood flowing and my energy moving
drink a full glass of warm water to quench my thirst, rehydrate, and stimulate digestion
choose another soothing, sweet, and comforting activity like giving myself a warm oil massage, putting on pleasant music, and perfuming the air with essential oils
If my coffee craving is later in the day, I might try:
taking a twenty minute cat nap
going for a walk through my neighborhood
doing a full-on workout
calling a friend for a chat
having a small snack, like nuts or fruit
There are a million ways you can experiment with replacing the desire before you gratify it. And in the end, it’s okay if you still have the coffee.
When you’re getting started, I encourage you to not take away the behavior too soon. Simply add in the other behaviors first.
Feel whether they nourish you, energize you, or satisfy you in a different way. Feel which ways you like better, which ones sustain you more.
In the end, even if you still have the coffee, at least you hydrated, exercised, rested, or whatever else first. You’ve now harnessed the powerful draw of one habit to cultivate another. That’s the beginning of transformation!
Eventually, you may discover that those new behaviors do the trick and you don’t even desire the coffee anymore.
Don’t go cold turkey
In a way, this step is simply an extension of step 2. Rather than replacing the coffee with a behavior, you’re literally replacing it with another beverage.
This is another compassionate way to give the mind what it wants while experimenting with what it’s willing to tolerate. It’s kind of like graduating a toddler from a bottle to a sippy cup.
That said, what do you replace it with? Check out a breakdown of my favorite coffee replacement options below, from easy to advanced.
My favorite coffee replacers
The list starts out with the highest caffeine content and most “coffee-like” taste and decreases from there. Start yourself off replacing your coffee habit with what feels most realistic, appropriate, AND satisfying for you.
Adjust your coffeee/milk ratio
Go decaf
FourSigmatic
Rasa Coffee
Mud/Watr
Blue Lotus chai tea
Earl Grey
Matcha
Cacao
Ashwalatte/Golden Milk
Dandy Blend
Roasted Chicory
Barley coffee
Rooibos tea
Hot water with lemon/lime (and ginger)
Have a little coffee with your milk
Milk with coffee is essentially coffee with milk in reverse. Instead of adding a bit of milk to your coffee, add a little bit of coffee to your milk.
Think back to my 2-year-old mom getting bottle fed her morning joe.
You want to find the sweet spot where you’ve put in just enough coffee to get the taste, the smell, and maybe even a little caffeine kick, but you’re slowly reducing your quantity over time.
This is the easiest replacement option because the only change it requires is going a little easier on the pour.
PRO TIP: Add ghee or butter to soften the effect of caffeine on your adrenals, nervous system, and myelin sheath!
Decaf
Decaf is the next best thing. There’s still quite a bit of caffeine in decaf coffee, and you can likely find your favorite blend in a decaf variety.
This is also a great option for those who drink their coffee black.
You don’t have to start full decaf, either. Try ¼ or ½ to get going, and experiment with moving the needle a little bit at a time.
FourSigmatic
FourSigmatic offers several types of coffee with adaptogenic mushrooms, which is one may to increase the quality and health benefits if you’re not ready to give up coffee completely.
I’m a big fan of the caffeine-free chai latte mix with turkey tail and reishi mushroom. My only complaint is it comes in tiny single-use packets, and I’d love if they offered a reusable tin or jar.
Rasa Coffee
If you’re ready to shake things up and introduce some new flavors to your coffee, RASA Adaptogenic Coffee Alternative is a stellar option.
They offer several different blends, one of which they call RASA Dirty. In an 8-ounce cup, you’ll get 35 mg caffeine, or roughly a ¼ cup of coffee.
In addition, their blends are full of adaptogens and Ayurvedic herbs, so you’re getting lots of goodness and introducing new flavors while still gratifying the craving for a little bit of coffee. Combining new and old flavors can help teach your palate to desire something else other than dark roast or Arabica.
MUD\WTR
This is one of my faves for its simplicity. MUD\WTR offers two products: A masala chai blend with black tea and a decaf rooibos chai.
The masala blend contains:
black tea
awesome digestive spices - ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper
cacao
turmeric
sea salt
cinnamon
chaga
cordyceps
reishi
lions mane
It’s really good stuff, and the starter kit comes with a funny mug and a handheld frother. Yes please!
Blue Lotus chai tea
Plain ol’ chai tea may sound boring after all that, but don’t let it fool you. I love Blue Lotus Chai for several reasons, including:
you can choose the level of caffeine by adding more or less chai blend
you can doctor your chai any way you’d like
you can buy in bulk to refill the little metal tin
This is a great option if you want to get witchy and add your ingredients, control the level of sweetness, etc. Feeling cacao one day? Taking a specific herb for a bit? Want to add some collagen?
This chai is a great base for all of it without there being too much going on already.
Earl Grey
I got into Earl Grey while living in Thailand, where there were surprisingly (to me) a lot of British trends. These days, I’m all about my London Fog latte.
When I’m really wanting a little jolt but don’t want to go full-caf, this is a great, tasty, creamy option. The subtle note of bergamot is all the things.
Matcha
Matcha is another coffee alternative that can really satisfy the urge for a pick me up and something creamy and comforting. The Vital Proteins Matcha Collagen Latte is a good option for getting in some extra protein and nutrients, and it already has coconut milk powder mixed in.
Cacao
Who doesn’t like a little chocolate now and then?
My fave is Laird Foods Hot Chocolate with adoptogens and functional mushrooms.
Ashwalatte/Golden Milk
This is my usual go-to breakfast: some high-quality full-fat organic milk and my Ashwalatte blend. I love Banyan Botanicals Ashwagandha Latte Mix because it already has a hint of sweet and contains one of my favorite herbs, Shatavari. Grab some at 15% off with code SIMPLE15.
Paavani Ayurveda Golden Milk is another option I love. They make a sugar-free version and also offer a jar recycling program.
Dandy Blend
I discovered Dandy Blend several years back when I was exploring a health food store in the Thonglor district of Bangkok. The woman working there made me a machine-made dandelion “espresso” that tasted so close to the real thing, I was floored!
This is another great option for getting witchy: you can even mix it with your chai blend to make it “dirty” and give it a little kick.
Chicory Coffee
Chicory coffee is another tasty alternative that offers up a delicious, nutty flavor. One of the most common brands I’ve seen is Community Coffee, which offers coffee/chicory blends as well as straight up chicory.
Barley Coffee
Pero Instant Natural Beverage is a blend of barley, malted barley, chicory, and rye. As such, it has a very malty flavor that foams nicely, and it’s 100% caffeine-free.
Rooibos tea
I will not pretend that rooibos tea tastes at all like coffee. However, it’s a great tea to bulk up with add-ins or make into a creamy-sweet comfort bevvy.
You can brew true rooibos (also known as redbush) into a deep burgundy color, and the sweet flavor makes a great base that’s a little more robust than your average chamomile.
Hot water with lemon/lime (and ginger)
This is an Ayurvedic classic, and yes, it can eventually replace your cuppa altogether. It’s essential to hydrate first thing in the morning, and the added enzymes is this little number will start to wake up your digestive juices and get things going.
Even if you’re sticking with the coffee for awhile, I highly recommend having a cup or two of lemon/ginger water to start your day anyway. This means you’ll get hydrated and stimulate digestion before you add in the caffeine.
PRO TIP: Go for lemon unless you run hot, have a lot of inflammation, or are generally more acidic. In that case, go for lime.
The why of giving up the cup
Have you read this far and you’re still wondering why you would want to give up coffee in the first place?
While coffee isn’t evil, there are several solid reasons to reduce or eliminate your consumption, including:
decreased anxiety and improved mood
deeper sleep
digestive regularity
hormone and chemistry balance
a commitment to living stimulant-free
While coffee may have some health benefits, from a holistic perspective, stimulants are “borrowing energy from tomorrow.” In other words, what goes up must come down.
It can stimulate the fight, flight, freeze response, also known as the sympathetic nervous system, which can lead to anxiety, stress, and irritability. This is especially true if you already experience any of these symptoms.
In rare cases, high doses of caffeine have been known to trigger psychotic and manic symptoms. While this is extremely uncommon, I only note it to illustrate that caffeine does have an impact on the mind.
If you’ve ever tried to meditate after a cup or two of coffee, you’ll know what I mean.
Caffein has also been shown to disrupt reproductive hormones in women.
Research from 2007 noted that regular caffeine intake is associated with disturbed sleep and daytime sleepiness. Evidence also shows that rather than enhancing performance, caffeine is merely restoring performance degraded by sleepiness.
While many use coffee for its laxative effect, reliance on a stimulant to help you “go” every day means you’re out of touch with your natural urge. This likely indicates that your digestion needs some support to help you get regular, and coffee use may be covering it up.
Fundamentally, caffeine is a stimulant. While it can feel like a life-saver sometimes, it’s possible to be addicted to it. Caffeine withdrawal has even been recognized as a legitimate disorder.
The coffee dilemma
It may seem like it’s out of your reach to have abundant natural energy that doesn’t come from an outside source, but it’s a real possibility.
At the same time, coffee isn’t evil. It even offers some health benefits, and above all, true health isn’t about perfection.
When it comes to your relationship with caffeine, find realistic options that work for you, nourish you, and support you, whatever those may be.
Sources:
Chandio ZA, et al. (2020). Review Effect of Caffeine Overdose. https://jbas.juw.edu.pk/index.php/JBAS/article/view/266
Ferré S. (2007). An update on the mechanisms of the psychostimulant effects of caffeine. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2007.05196.x
Johns Hopkins Medicine. (2004). CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL RECOGNIZED AS A DISORDER. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2004/09_29_04.html
Klevebrant L, et al. (2021). Effects of caffeine on anxiety and panic attacks in patients with panic disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163834321001614
Lara DR, et al. (2010). Caffeine, mental health, and psychiatric disorders. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20164571/
Roerhs T, et al. (2007). Caffeine: sleep and daytime sleepiness. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17950009/
Schliep KC, et al. (2012). Caffeinated beverage intake and reproductive hormones among premenopausal women in the BioCycle Study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22237060/
