I never thought I’d say that the winner for me is green tea… Don’t get me wrong, I still drink and love coffee, but not in the morning. Since I have made the switch and changed coffee to green tea, I feel better and healthier.
It all started when I decided on intermittent fasting (I did it for quite some time). I decided on a ratio of 18:6, meaning my eating window was 6 hours, from 12 pm to 6 pm. It’s not the most extreme intermittent fasting ratio, but it’s up there. That meant one sad thing — no coffee in the morning. I mean, you can still drink coffee, but it has to be without anything. Since I can only drink coffee with milk and sugar (meaning I would open my eating window), that was not an option for me. I had to search for an alternative.
It came down to a tea. For a long time, it was a homemade ginger tea, but after some time, I was too lazy to make it. Although I admit, I felt the best when I was drinking it. I will write a recipe for it in another blog. The tea had to be without sugar, so the fruity teas were out. I don’t find them nice without sugar. Next on the list was a classic: green tea. The problem was I hated the taste of it… Still, I decided to drink it every morning on an empty stomach instead of coffee. Good news for green tea haters! After some time, I didn’t mind the taste anymore, actually, I started to like it.
I’m not intermittent fasting at the moment, but my routine of drinking tea in the morning stayed. There are a few reasons for that. It’s known that green tea can support focus and attention, boost metabolism, reduce the risk of heart diseases, improve gut health, and so on. A recent study even revealed that regular intake of green tea can lower DNA damage and increase the activity of a DNA enzyme involved in base repair in human lymphocyte extracts. They also call green tea the natural ozempic. Another reason is that consuming warm water (basically tea) in the morning can ‘wake up’ your digestive system. If you’re still not convinced about green tea, you could drink black tea, but it’s a bit stronger. For comparison, black tea has almost half of the amount of caffeine compared to coffee, while green tea has around a quarter.
The most important reason for my decision was feeling more awake throughout the day. YES! Because if you think about it, in the morning you’ll always feel tired. Drinking coffee might speed up that process, but isn’t it better to let the body do that on its own? I like to limit my coffee intake to two cups a day, preferably one, so the practice of drinking it only in the afternoon is perfect for me. In the morning, I still have a routine of drinking a warm beverage, but this time it’s green tea (arguably healthier). After half an hour of waking up, I don’t feel tired whatsoever. Then when my afternoon energy crash occurs, I just drink my cup of coffee, and I feel brand new. Afternoon naps are in the past, which is a real blessing. They are a waste of time anyway.
You have my biggest recommendation for switching coffee with tea first thing in the morning. You don’t have to forget about coffee, just drink a cup later when you feel your afternoon energy crash coming. I think it’s a pretty nice hack since you’ll feel energized and awake throughout the entire day!
