I gave up caffeine. Cold turkey. Twice.
Yeah, caffeine has been shown to enhance performance in everything from sprinting, to 1 rep maximum weight lifting, to endurance running. So why give it up?
I’ve had migraines for the past 15 yrs.
Let me back up.
Probably like you, I’ve had different cycles in my life when I’ve been more or less serious about my weight training and physical health. As a grad student, I was pretty serious about a regular workout routine. And I never drank coffee, just an occasional soda.
Then, probably also like you, I fell in love and had children. When you’ve got young kids, sleep and exercise are rare luxuries. So what did I do? I reached for that coffee!
I spent a few years doing little exercise and getting addicted to caffeine. And my health suffered.
I was getting migraines regularly, and I was gaining weight. Caffeine has some weird duality where it can relieve a migraine in low doses, but can cause migraines in higher doses.
I’ll save all the gory details of those years and my battle with migraines for another story, but let me get to the point: I’ve twice gone cold turkey in kicking the caffeine habit.
And the best way to kick caffeine is to replace it with intense exercise.
Depending on how much caffeine you are used to (I was up to 10 cups a day at one point), you may suffer a huge backlash when you quit. Headaches, moodiness, cravings, sluggishness, poor sleeping. These withdrawal symptoms usually start about 24 hrs after quitting and last for about 3 days (depending on the intensity of your addiction). And then the cravings for caffeine continue for weeks.
The best way to deal with this is to dive into intense weight training, early in the morning.
Most people have their most intense caffeine cravings in the morning. But sometimes you have that afternoon hump to get through. Whenever your hardest time is, that’s when you need to exercise. You can even exercise twice a day for those first few days (yes, twice a day! but just for those few withdrawal days).
But make sure it’s intense both times, or else it won’t help relieve the withdrawal symptoms as much.
- Replace that morning coffee with a set of deadlifts.
- Switch some heavy squats for that soda.
- Go for a 30 minute run with sprints to shake off that morning headache.
- Do 20 minutes of hardcore bodyweight exercises to get through the 2:00 slowdown.
Intense exercise relieves the immediate withdrawal symptoms and reduces the cravings for weeks after you’ve kicked the physical addiction.
I’ve gone cold turkey twice in the past 10 years and the way I did it was by rededicating myself to intense exercise at the same time that I kicked the habit.
The first time I beat back the beast was about 8 years ago and I planned out the 3-day period by running on morning 1 and morning 3, with a general full body weight workout on morning 2.
That caffeine-free period lasted about 5 years.
Then, after an intense period at work with long hours, I got re-addicted to caffeine and so 2 yrs ago, I kicked it again. Solution: same thing but reverse: morning 1 and morning 3 were weight training, with a long run on morning 2. I resumed my regular workouts thereafter.
Both times worked like a charm. Very little headache and successful battle against the addiction.
Of course, there a lot of other things you need to do to kick the caffeine addiction all day long:
- Water (try seltzer water if soda is your caffeine delivery vehicle).
- Drink decaf coffee.
- Go for walks.
- Taper rather than cold turkey.
- Chew gum.
- Etc.
- But the best thing is intense exercise.
Why does this work?
I’ve going to keep this very simple.
At a very simple level, exercise is a vasodilator for the muscles being worked (so the blood flow increases) but is a vasocontrictor for the non-working parts of the body (so they get less blood flow.
For example, as you bench press, you get more blood flowing to your pecs and other secondary muscles. But blood flow to your organs (like your brain) is slightly constricted.
Caffeine is an overall vasoconstrictor. (It’s also a stimulant, but that’s a different phenomenon.)
Headaches are caused (generally by increased blood flow to the head (vasodilation).
So it works like this: you are used to caffeine, which artificially restricts blood flow. When you give it up, the blood flow to your head is higher than you are used to. So you get a withdrawal headache. By lifting weights, you force extra blood to your muscles, thus reducing the blood flow to your head. This reduces the severity of the headache.
This is an oversimplification for sure!
I’m not a doctor, and I know there are a lot more physiological things going on in the body than I’ve mentioned above. But this should suffice for our purposes.
Nowadays, I might have one “dose” of caffeine per week usually in a coffee (or sometimes in an energy gel if I’m doing a 12+ mile run). I love not being addicted to it and being able to start my mornings without it.
What about you? Have you kicked caffeine? Or are you still addicted? What role does your exercise play vs. caffeine?
Just starting out with weightlifting? Want to get bigger muscles this winter?
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Related posts:
- The 19 Weight Training Must-Dos For Beginners – Part 2 of 2
- Fat Burning Weight Training
- The Big 7 – The Seven Most Important Weight Training Exercises
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May 1st, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I feel ya, brother. I never drank coffee, but I can’t have caffeine either. I have to be very careful about the type of tea I drink. I know what you mean about the headaches. I recently changed my pillow to a water pillow so my head rests at the proper natural angle. When you have six or seven headaches in a day, plus during sleep, it’s a b*tch.
Nick
May 1st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I drink cofee but it is ok for me. I don’t have headache and if there not cofee availible I’m ok. But I highly respect you and your drive to beat this habbit!
May 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Being in the Navy and on deployment right now this is going to be a hard one. As the old saying goes, “The Navy runs on coffee”.
I’ll try it for two weeks. Wait…it’s 3am right now. I’ll start tomorrow.
May 3rd, 2009 at 2:25 am
Why have you given it up TWICE ?
When I cut back on caffeine I have to do it slowly but that will work just fine for me. Nice tip though about the intense exercise. Maybe I’l adjust the timing of my workouts better with dropping caffeine. (no migraines here so no need to stop using it I guess)
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:06 am
Hey all – just for the record, I wasn’t really saying everyone should stop caffeine! I was just saying that if you are already planning to stop caffeine, then you can use your training to help you get through the withdrawal hump.
@wazzup – After giving it up the first time, I “fell off the wagon” several years later during an extremely busy period for my work where I started using caffeine again to work longer hours. A really bad habit. So, I had to kick that habit again!
May 4th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Very nice post. I believe exercise can help you kick out addictions/ depression/ flu out of your system. However I feel that a good expresso after a hearty breakfast can be a pleasure and a source of motivation if you commute/ exercise before work. Keep up the good work Darrin.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:27 am
i have qustions
1-Explain the different physiological responses the body has to aerobic training vs anaerobic training. What adaptations must the body undergo if either of the training protocols are performed exclusively for over a year?
May 5th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Hi Tweodros,
This is a pretty intense question, and it’s a bit off topic from the idea of using weight training to kick a caffeine addiction. I decided to punt here – instead of me answering, here is what trainer Ainsley Laing says:
As a trainer, I often get this question: don’t I need to do long duration aerobic training to burn fat? The answer is (drum roll please) both aerobic (low intensity) training and anaerobic (high intensity) training will do the trick. In fact, if you really want to burn fat, include BOTH in your routine.
Let’s look at why:
The word aerobic means in the presence of oxygen. Activities performed at low to moderate intensity for around 90 seconds allow oxygen to be used to generate energy for the muscles. An example of this would be brisk walking, slow running or, for us weight lifting aficionados, very low weight high repetition exercises.
Anaerobic activity is any activity where the body does not use oxygen to generate energy. The body uses different metabolic pathways (which I won’t bore you with the specifics here) to react to this activity. Anaerobic activities tend to be short duration, burst of activity things where the body just doesn’t have time to circulate oxygen to the muscles (less than 90 seconds). Sprints and very heavy low repetition weight lifting are examples of anaerobic exercises.
The benefits of aerobic activity:
Increased cardiovascular endurance
Decreased body fat
The liabilities are:
Decreased muscle mass
Decreased speed
Decreased power
Here’s the rub, when the body uses fat for energy it also breaks down muscle. Since muscle cells burn energy and fat cells store it, you need muscle to use energy that would otherwise be stored as fat!
Now, anaerobic training, the kind where you push yourself hard for short periods of time, uses a different metabolic system to supply the muscles with energy, which trains the body to respond in a different way to exercise.
The benefits of Anaerobic Training are:
Increased Cardiovascular Capacity
Increased Cardiovascular Recovery Ability
Strength Gains
Power Gains
Improved Speed
Decreased Body Fat
The liabilities:
Increased Risk of Injury in Untrained People
Requires a Good Aerobic Foundation
When we look at all of the elements of fitness, which include:
Endurance
Strength
Flexibility
Power
Speed
Agility
Balance
It’s easy to see why a combination of aerobic and aerobic training will do the most for your fitness level. And, since both aerobic and anaerobic training burn fat (anaerobic training actually yields the most post workout fat burning), the combining the two in your routine will burn fat and maintain muscle. Not only will you burn fat faster, you will keep the fat off and won’t be bored in the process!
Sources:
“Aerobic vs Anaerobic, What’s the Controversy About?” Eddie Lomax.
http://www.boeafitness.com/art.....0_4010.php
International Fitness Professionals Association, “Personal Fitness Training Manual”.
Copyright (c) 2008 Ainsley Laing
About the Author:
Ainsley Laing, MSc. has been a Fitness Trainer for 27 years and writes exclusively Body for Mind eZine. She holds certifications in Group Exercise, Sports Nutrition and Personal Fitness Training. She is also a professional engineer and mom. To see more articles by Ainsley visit http://www.bodyformind.com or the blog at http://www.bodyformind.blogspot.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ainsley_Laing
August 18th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Last year I went on a cycling trip around Germany for a week (yep biking and beer!) and I trained for two months three times a week after work in the hottest time of the day ranging anywhere from 90-105F. During my training or on the trip, not once did I get a headache. There was a even a two week period during the training where we had about 5 large fires surrounding the area, the sky had a brown haze, and the air quality index was severe…..I still rode, mainly because I needed to get in good shape, and suffered no ill effects and still had no headaches.
This year, I have a second kid and find myself drinking 1-1/2 to 2 cups of coffee everyday during work, and getting no caffeine at all on the weekends. I’ve gone mountain biking several times, and nearly every time I’ve suffered a headache that starts 1-2 hours afterwards, and lasts about 4-6 hours. Taking acetometaphine helps, but I hate the idea of having to rely on drugs. If I don’t go mountain biking I don’t get headaches.
This leads me to believe I’m prone to “exertion headaches”, but based on experience with training for the trip last year, I don’t think I’m prone to “exertion headaches.” I’ve gotten less than 5 caffeine withdrawl headaches in my entire life, so I don’t think I’m prone to that either.
However, because I don’t get caffeine the day I exercise PLUS I put myself through severe exertion, the combination may be the cause of my headache after I’m done…..YEAY I THINK I FINALLY FOUND THE SOLUTION!!!
I’m eliminating caffeine immediately, and now lets see how I feel after my next few hard bike rides!
August 18th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
@Eddie – please let us know how it goes!