I’ve decided to give up coffee.

There. I said it.

No reason for alarm really. No health issues (that I know of). And no, I’m not crazy.

On Saturday, I poured a cup and it just tasted gross to me. I couldn’t finish it, and I decided to stop drinking it.

I’ve always liked coffee.  It’s been a morning ritual for me.  My second book is even about a coffee barista, a job I held once. So, I know a lot about coffee though I don’t consider myself a fine connoisseur of it or anything. I’m a three cup-a-day Maxwell House or Folgers type of guy. I rarely order coffee out or pick it up at a gas station. I don’t like Starbucks. I don’t hang out in coffee shops.

In fact, by the time I add creamer (powder or liquid, regular or flavored, I like both) and sweetener, it’s not really coffee anymore, just some fancy tasting cocoa or hot chocolate I suppose.

Have you ever liked a food and suddenly you found you didn’t like it anymore?  Maybe it reminded you of something. Maybe it gave you food poisoning once. Or maybe you’ve just had enough.

I have.

That’s how I feel about scrambled eggs.  I loved them once, but not anymore. I’ll still eat them, but I can do without so I don’t usually fix them for myself or order them.

Strange? Yeah, but there’s actually a serious psychology behind this behavior called food or taste aversion. It pretty much applies to your brain turning you off to foods that have made you sick before, but it goes much deeper than that.

So if I had to think about it and figure out why I drink coffee anyway, I’d say it’s for comfort. It’s a morning habit, part of the daily ritual.  It’s also comforting.  Yeah, I suppose it helps wake you up but I don’t really like strong coffee. It’s also a good laxative if anything.

So, what’s going to replace coffee for me then? A couple of things actually…

I read something a while back about how you should drink a cup or two of water each morning as soon as you wake up, even before you have coffee. It said you should drink it in large gulps and as quickly as possible. The article actually said you should try to work up to about 4 cups.

The reason for this is because you are sluggish in the morning usually due to dehydration. Most people think they are sleepy and so they go right for the coffee, but your body is actually dehydrated. There’s lots of other good healthy reasons that I won’t go into, but you can read all about the benefits of morning water drinking here.

I’ve done this off and on for a while now, and yes, I’ve done it every morning since putting down the coffee.  And guess what? It does work. I feel more awake and not so sluggish, and I’d say I almost feel even better than I did when I was drinking coffee.

But who wants to just drink water in the morning, right?

Last week I read a blog post from a woman who replaced her morning coffee with a warm cup of water, lemon, and honey. She did this for a year and claimed that she never got sick. And she lives in a household with two small school children. They always caught some cold or flu bug, but she never got it.  She also claimed it helped prevent constipation and gas, and listed some other benefits from the lemon/honey mixture including weight loss. So, I researched this option a bit and found it to be true! You can read more for yourself here.

So, yep, I bought 5 lemons this weekend and I’ve already had my first cup of lemon/honey water yesterday morning and  drank four cups of water and I felt fine. I think this might work so I did it again today and plan to keep it up.  I don’t have a craving for coffee. I feel awake and ready to go.