I switched from coffee to tea for 17 days and this is what happened

17 days without coffee. Yes, 17 long days without coffee. If I were to make a top three of my life’s favorite drinks, coffee would be number one (followed, of course, by beer and wine). It’s incredible his power to turn the grayest of days into a rainbow, to give that strong hug when all you want is to cry in the company bathroom, to truly be your companion in health and, mainly, in illness – except, of course, when you develop gastritis.

Read more: Everything you need to know about tea

Do you think I’m exaggerating? You’re welcome! Although caffeine is still a somewhat mysterious substance, it makes coffee a powerful ally just like that. Who claims it is science, okay? It is proven, for example, how it stimulates neurons, reduces fatigue and increases concentration and memory capacity. Basically, it acts as a sweet kiss and that little push that everyone needs in the morning. In addition, in recent years, several studies have emerged that prove how coffee is the Wonder Woman from the world of drinks: it fights cellulite, reduces dark circles, is a friend of beauty, can prevent cancer and helps control type 2 diabetes. And to think that before 2016 they believed it could be carcinogenic…

And oh, he’s also more famous than ever! Okay, tea, after water, is still the most popular drink in the world (yes, I was shocked too), but coffee, a national darling (Brazil is the world’s biggest exporter), is experiencing a period of glory in the United States. United. To get an idea, half of the US population consumes the drink daily. And, thanks to millennials, the way it is enjoyed has also changed: people are switching from home-brewed coffee to options gourmetized produced “on the street” – whether from a small hipster store in Brooklyn, or from Starbucks. According to a report by the National Coffee Association (NCDT), in the United States, the sale of gourmet coffees, for example, between 2008 and 2016, rose from 13% to 36% among the population aged 18 to 24, and 19 % to 41% among the public aged 25 to 39 years. the coffee turned cult🇧🇷

My coffee, my rules

It’s kind of embarrassing how I started liking coffee, but come on, I’ll be honest: I started drinking it because of “Gilmore Girls”. Yup. Imagine yourself, a teenager enchanted by the world of Gilmore girls: the references to pop culture, the close relationship of a mother-daughter friendship, something I would never have with mine, for example, the terrible eating habits, the most awkward dialogues faster than the gay kisses on Globo, and, of course, the two hundred cups of coffee consumed daily by those deliciously selfish and charismatic characters. I surrendered.

Soon, coffee became my mantra, my addiction, and unfortunately, too often, my crutch. If I could, to paraphrase Lorelai, I would put coffee in my veins every morning. Lie. I mean, true. Well, I don’t think I’m a big addict, but maybe the four cups of coffee consumed by little me a day are a bit exaggerated, yes (Since 2003, the recommended caffeine limit is 400 mg or about three cups of 150 ml of coffee, as reported by the Life Science Institute).

During these more than (AGE ALERT) ten years devoted to coffee, I have summarily ignored his more famous brother (I’m talking about tea, folks). Out of pure ignorance, I always associated tea with the figure of a grandmother (I love you, grandma!), with that consumption relegated only to nap time… I always considered tea as that ugly half-brother of coffee, without all the strength and , of course, the charm of coffee. I was mistaken.

According to several studies, tea can be as powerful as coffee: it brings the same benefits, offers the same level of alertness, reduces the risk of depression and with the advantage of not impairing sleep. I surrendered. #sorrycoffee

17 days without coffee

With all these amazing things about tea, I thought, ‘yeah, this is going to be tough, but I think I’ll adapt.’ The truth is that I’m a very stubborn person – I’m a Taurus, right? – and wanted to prove by A + B the undeniable superiority of coffee – no matter how hard this period was.

Did I pay my tongue? Somehow. The first week was horrible. HORRIBLE. I looked like one of Daenerys’ dragons, Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, Mysha, Queen of the Andals of the Rhoynars and the First Men. Our. I wanted to blow everyone’s heads. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t even talk properly with my friends. I couldn’t handle having lunch with anyone for more than an hour. I wasn’t holding up either.

Result? I started discounting everything I couldn’t drink from coffee on sweets. And hey, I don’t even like sweets that much. All the time I kept saying to my inner self ‘why the hell did you decide to get into this?’, ‘calm down, Lucas, this will be over soon’, ‘damn it, I HATE TEA’. It was like that.

What I didn’t count on was the plot twist. Life, that naughty thing, waited for me to go through those first horrible days to, in the second week, pummel me with a rather inconvenient truth: human beings adapt to everything.

And there I was, happy to try all these new tea flavors: lemon, jasmine, bergamotta and other names as difficult to “type off the top of my head” as Arnold Schwarzenegger🇧🇷 I had built the drink into my routine and heated the water in the morning, after lunch, and occasionally in the late afternoon. I was at peace with myself. I made peace with my friends. I went back to lunch with other people. Yes, I had come out of that hidden cave. From that dead end vortex I found myself in the week before.

Needless to say, the third week went smoothly and smoothly…

what I learned

Today, after the first cup of coffee after 17 days, I cried and realized that, yes, coffee can be easily replaced with tea. I felt on my skin what science already warned: the benefits are the same.

And, in reality, our head is very villainous, right? We get into “fires” that make the ride seem much worse than it really is. I think I complained more for the pleasure of complaining about not having coffee than about the lack of it.

Physically I didn’t notice any changes: my weight remained the same, my skin remained the same and my mood remained the same. Maybe I was lucky too, as many people complain of horrible headaches after retiring coffee and other rather annoying changes.

The truth is, even with this experiment, I’m not going to trade tea for coffee anyway. I love coffee. It’s my ritual. I love this experience which, for me, is almost spiritual. But I will, yes, look more fondly at tea and include it, once and for all, in my life even if it doesn’t even make it into my top five favorite drinks.

The biggest lesson? It sucks for pride to prove you were being stubborn. But being quite moralistic and ending this text with the traditional motivational message that this text deserves, it’s wonderful when we decide to be less hard on ourselves and allow ourselves to open up to the new, allow ourselves to be wrong. I was wrong.