Cutting Coffee to One Cup a Day Transformed My Sleep
Less Coffee, Better Sleep
After years of drinking four to five mugs of coffee daily, the author cut back to a single cup each morning. The result: falling asleep easily, waking refreshed, and feeling clear-headed all day. The first day without caffeine was brutal—headaches, lethargy, and exhaustion—but it revealed how tired he truly was. Now, with just one cup, his sleep quality has dramatically improved, proving that less coffee can lead to better rest.
I was drinking coffee because I was tired, and I was tired because I was drinking coffee.
- maccard
I’ve always struggled with sleep. A few things that helped me (in order of importance)
- go to bed and get up at the same time every day. Getting up is more important than going to bed.
- no phone in bed, and limit stimulating activities (intense video games, programming, planning the vacation etc) to 90 minutes before bed. I read during that time but TV, cleaning, music, whatever works.
- a bad nights sleep will happen, often a few nights in a row. Be ok with that (easier said than done, I did CBT for this). Instead of lying in bed restless get up and watch TV, or read.
- leave the house for 30 minutes every day.
- journal as often as possible. Ideally daily, but a few times a eeek. Don’t ever read it back but just write down your feelings and the things on your mind. Do good and bad.
- exercise every other day.
- no coffee after lunch, and never more than 3 in a morning.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint and overall I have way less bad nights than I did before, and I don’t beat myself up as much for the bad nights.
- kitbrennan
One of the unexpected impacts I experienced when going to zero cups per-day was that I suddenly started dreaming more often and more vividly. It was like how I remember sleep as a child, with nights full of weird and wonderful dreams, rather than only remembering one or two dreams a week as an adult.
I only had this effect when going completely zero caffeine, not when I cut down to one cup a day.
Unfortunately coffee is a vicious cycle, where I end up picking the habit back up on work trips. Before I know it I'm drinking a cup of coffee while writing a reply on HN about how great it was when I gave it up.
- foft
Cutting coffee to just the morning definitely helped me.
My problem now is that if I think of anything vaguely interesting in the evening then my brain refuses to stop thinking about it. That and restless legs.
Evening if my main time for hobby projects so having them lead to disrupted sleep is really annoying. Any tips?
- Mwntalhwalth
Recently cut out cannabis, cbd, coffee and all alcohol and its shocking how different your sleep becomes. There needs to be more research done on stimulant free brains and my theory of how better our brains are at "taking the trash out" at night when not pumped full of quick/easy dopamine.
- scoofy
>Normally I’d drink 4, sometimes 5 large cups of coffee throughout the day (I say cups but it’s literal tea mugs), and it wasn’t until the third I really could get going. Didn’t feel jittery or anything like that, mostly different shades of tired.
This behavioral pattern describes a nontrivial caffeine dependence, not the effects of standard daily coffee consumption.