#21: How to Use Caffeine

Hey friends,

Hope you’re ready for some more caffeine talk because this will be my third and final newsletter in my caffeine series. After talking through what caffeine is, how it works, the benefits, and some negatives, this week I’ll be giving a couple tips that I feel will help you get as many benefits from your caffeine as possible, while trying to avoid the drawbacks. If you missed the last two weeks, you can find them here.

Weekly Action Point:

☕️Try to delay drinking your caffeine in the morning for 90-120 minutes after waking up.

Last week we had the goal of not drinking any caffeine after 2:00pm, bonus points if you can continue doing that this week. I’ll touch on both of these things today in how I think you should be using caffeine.

Caffeine Do’s and Don’ts

Before I get into my points, I wanna mention that I base most of my opinions about caffeine on discussions from Andrew Huberman, who is a neuroscience professor for Stanford School of Medicine. He has a variety of caffeine content that I think is absolutely worth your time if you’re a regular user. For starters, you can check out this 5 min youtube video:

✅Do: Wait 90-120 minutes after waking up to drink your first caffeine

Why: helps to avoid the afternoon crash, more consistent energy boost instead of a sharp spike, and allows the body to go through its natural cortisol peak, which will prevent your caffeine tolerance from increasing (as much) over the long term.

Avoiding the afternoon crash also helps prevent you from drinking more caffeine to recover from that crash, which leads me to my next point…

❌ Don’t: Drink caffeine after 2pm in the afternoon

Why: enhances your ability to fall and stay asleep at night, but also increases the quality and structure of your sleep when you avoid drinking caffeine in the evening (even if you have no issue falling/staying asleep)

✅ Do: Alternate days you drink caffeine or take a couple days off so that you don’t have to rely on it every day

Why: Decreases your tolerance and dependence on caffeine, allowing you to get a more meaningful boost on the days when you really need it.

Some of you might disagree with this, but yes, in my opinion you will get the most benefit from caffeine if you don’t need it every single day.

❌ Don’t: Load up your caffeine with sugar and other calories

Why: Drinking a bunch of sugar with your caffeine can make you crash harder, and drinking the extra calories is not helpful for fat loss or muscle building goals.

A 500 calorie latte from Starbuck should be thought of almost like a dessert: a treat that tastes phenomenal to have on occasion, but probably isn’t the best thing for your fitness goals.

✅ Do: Eat before drinking your caffeine

Why: drinking caffeine on an empty stomach increases the chances for jitters, anxious feelings, and crashes.

If you’re waiting to drink caffeine for 90-120 minutes after you wake up, hopefully you have enough time to get some breakfast in.

❌ Don’t: Drink more than the FDA’s max recommended 400mg of caffeine per day

Why: there really is no reason you should ever be needing that much caffeine. Drinking that much is your best way to have poor sleep, high tolerance/dependence, and huge spikes/crashes. Put simply, I talk about avoiding the negatives of caffeine. Drinking more than 400mg per day is the best way to experience the negatives.

Depending on the type of coffee, we’ll say that the average 8 oz cup has roughly 100mg of caffeine. If you wake up at 6am, maybe you have one cup at 8am, and another at 11am, and that 200mg could be sufficient.

❌ Don’t: Stop drinking caffeine “cold turkey”

Why: If you are a regular caffeine drinker, stopping all together will likely cause you to feel terrible due to withdrawal symptoms. If you are ever wanting to decrease your caffeine consumption, start slowly by cutting down how much you drink before just stopping altogether.

If you’re sick of me talking about caffeine, don’t worry because that was it! We’ll dive into some different topics with next week’s issue.

I want to remind you that the whole reason I did a three week series on caffeine is just to encourage you to be more mindful of your caffeine consumption. Caffeine is so widely used, and honestly just being aware of how you are using it will put you miles ahead of most people.

Have a great week!

Ben’s Best

🥗Food for this week was this spicy korean bbq chicken. I get gochujang in the global foods aisle, and it has a bunch of uses in different meal preps. I didn’t do the cucumber salad like he did in the video, I just did the chicken with some rice and green beans.

ice.karimcooks

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💭 I enjoyed this Youtube video this week talking about things you can do to have more positive relaitonships: