Coffee Redux

Newsletter Issue #80

I gave up coffee a little over six weeks ago. It was both easy and difficult. I got a good headstart because I was too ill to drink coffee for nearly a week, so in that sense, it was easy. I was through the worst of it by the time I came out of my fog. It was difficult in the sense that I was not only physically addicted to coffee, I was emotionally addicted to it, too. Coffee was a huge part of my life—my mornings practically revolved around it.

When I say that I gave up coffee, what I mean is that I gave up making and drinking coffee at home every morning. I did not give up drinking coffee socially. By the time I had my first post-coffee coffee date, with my son Robert, I’d been caffeine free for a month. I enjoyed a tiny bit of a cappuccino before I felt the caffeine jolt and cut myself off. It was mind-blowing to think I’d been operating on ten times that amount of caffeine every morning (two to three full cups) for many years. But I enjoyed the coffee, and that small amount wasn’t life-altering. I’d continue to enjoy it now and again.

Last week, though, was extremely busy and filled with opportunities for social coffee drinking.

Wednesday morning, I met my friend Jaime for breakfast (and coffee) at the Madonna Inn. She’d graciously come down the night before to speak to SLO NightWriters about podcasting and her thriller Vicious Cycle.

Friday morning, I headed to Hollywood for Jaime’s book launch party. I traveled alone, so it was me, myself, and I—not social at all. But it was a fun trip for a social purpose, so I made an exception and got a latté for the road. I had another when I stopped at a coffee shop in Carpinteria for a late breakfast/early lunch. And it was going to be a late night, so I had another when my friend Anna and I went to dinner at a little café on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. I do not regret that last latté—it was the most delicious latté I’ve ever had in my life.

Saturday morning, I met my friends Trey and Flinn for breakfast (and more coffee) at Bottega Louie, a restaurant, gourmet market, patisserie, and café. The food was fantastic, the latté was great, but check out the rows and rows of pastries I had to willpower my way past on the way out.

Sunday morning, I met my friend Gina for coffee at Seven Sisters Coffee.

Monday morning, my son and I went to get routine fasting bloodwork. We were hungry after, so we went to Budget Cafe for breakfast … and coffee, of course.

Tuesday morning, I met my co-worker Julie for breakfast (and coffee) at the Oak Grill.

I’m not usually anywhere near this social, so this was highly unusual for me, but it’s been a full week of social gatherings and social coffee.

When I made the decision to give up coffee, I did a little research, and I wondered whether it was worth it to give up something I enjoyed so much. Some of the things I read mentioned the adverse effects of caffeine, including on sleep. But others touted the benefits of caffeine, including increased focus and even health benefits. I wasn’t sure my giving up coffee was going to make that big a difference in my health or my sleep.

I gave up something else when I gave up coffee, too—added sugar. By the time my Week O’ Coffee began, I hadn’t had any added sugar for six weeks or so, and my sugar cravings were gone. But last week, I noticed them returning. I even mentioned it to my roommate: “I haven’t had any sugar cravings for weeks,” I said. “But suddenly, I am craving sugar again. It’s so weird.”

I thought about what had changed recently, what might have caused my sugar cravings, and I thought about coffee. It was the only thing that had really been different in my diet over the past week. So I looked it up: Can coffee cause sugar cravings? I think all such things are pretty individual—it depends on the person and their physiology—but the answer is yes, it can, and here’s one reason why:

There’s more to it, of course. This is just one article I found. The topic is out there, all over the internet, including Reddit. And my son Tim gave me some food for thought as well—I usually drink almond milk in my coffee, which has zero sugar, but some of the time during the past week, I had lattés with whole milk, or I added half-and-half to black coffee. Dairy products don’t have added sugar in them, but most of them are chock full of sugar. That could have triggered my sugar cravings as well.

I haven’t had coffee in two days now, and I don’t seem to be craving sugar as much as I was a few days ago, although I wouldn’t trust myself in Bottega Louie just yet. So, it seems coffee is the culprit, but I can’t be certain. We shall see.

The macaron case at Bottega Louie in West Hollywood.

XOXO

Leanne

“Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.”

—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

WHAT I’M READING

I’m 30 years late, but I’m reading Anne Tyler’s 1995 novel Ladder of Years. It’s what I guess we would call a “dramedy” these days—it’s deep, but it’s also quite funny. The protagonist, Delia, is a woman who is unhappy with her life, her marriage, and herself. She walks out on her family during a vacation, just walks off down the beach without a word, and decides to start over. This sounds like quite a dire situation, but the opening—a newspaper clipping about Delia’s disappearance—sets the tone. It’s hilarious!

“Sometimes she felt like a tiny gnat, whirring around her family’s edges.”

—Anne Tyler, Ladder of Years

SOME THINGS FOR READERS

Whoa, Nelly! Humblebragging my way to the apocalypse
(Julia Park Tracey for Book & Bone)

The Holiday Hustle Hangover: Why Doing Less Creates More Peace
(Wendy Burbridge for Reinvention Made Real)

Does Age Matter? Learning to play music over 50
(Cathe Fein Olson for Cathe Fein Olson)

Why Silence Isn’t Safety; It’s Self-Erasure
(Sandra Postma for Sandra Postma)

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
(Book Review by Stephanie Wheeless for Wheeless Edits)

“Write the kind of story you like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”

—Meg Cabot

SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS

How to Legally Quote Song Lyrics in Your Book
(Andre Calilhanna for Book Baby)

Why Every Writer Should Be Writing Book Reviews
(David Wogahn for The Brevity Blog)

What Does It Mean to Write and Publish a Viral Article?
(Rebecca Morrison for Jane Friedman)

Pre-Order Campaigns Are a Tell on How a Book is Going to Perform
(Jeffrey Yamaguchi for Book Publishing Brick by Brick)

3 Keys to a Successful Writing Accountability Partnership
(Trisha Jenn Loehr for Jane Friedman)

“Create dangerously, for people that read dangerously … [Write] knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

—Edwidge Danticat

SOMETHING TO MAKE YOU SMILE

Meme credit: @authorsguild

“To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.”

—Lili Saintcrow

Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
​leannephillips.com

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