How much caffeine do you consume a day?

[Michael Tree]

I cut out caffeine about a month ago. Before that I drank a cup of coffee in the morning, and a couple cans of soda or iced tea during the day. Not a lot, but enough to make me jittery.

I use to drink 3 litres of Coca-cola a day, as well as anywhere to 4 to 6 chocolate bars. That's a lot of caffeine... and it affected me in ways I didn't even realize until I gave up cola. I felt better and dropped 30+ lbs easy.

Your weight loss probably had a lot more to do with sugar intake than caffeine. Coke has tons of sugar in it, and of course chocolate bars do too. Eating that much sugar, your blood sugar probably fluctuated like crazy, and caffeine helps to destabilizes blood sugar too. Let me guess, you felt inexplicably sleepy, so you drank caffeine, and then felt jitty and edgy but fatigued at the same time.

Another nasty effect of drinking lots of caffeine is that your body develops a tolerance to it, so it takes more and more to give you the same jolt of stimulation. So by the time you use enough to wake up, you've already consumed enough to be jittery. One of the benefits of giving up caffeine is that if you really need to wake up, a single cup will send you soaring again.

Caffeine also has a metabolic half-life of about four hours. This means that four hours after drinking caffeine, you still have half the amount that you consumed in your bloodstream, long after the jolt of energy has gone away. So if a person drinks caffiene throughout the day, it accumulates, and if you drink it even a few hours before bedtime, it may affect your ability to fall asleep.

 

[BOZ]

me? too much.

 

[pogre]

Tons. Pot of coffee in the AM and at least 4 diet cokes during the day.

I have a good friend who is a programmer who drinks a pot (yes, a pot) of cappuccino every morning.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I drink between one or two 12 oz. cans of Coke per day. I usually have a Slurpee on days that I game.

I mainly drink caffeine when I'm writing. I find that I produce more prose on caffeine. That is a question I've been meaning to ask some of the other people who enjoy writing, if they use some kind of supplement to kickstart the creative juices and get focused on writing.

 

[LcKedovan]

The hazard is that too much caffeine isn't good for you, sort of like anything that is taken to excess.

From what a friend told me there are studies showing that caffeine as a drug is worse for your body than cocaine.

I wonder if I can dig that info up....

-W.

 

[Thresher]

After much head scratching over this 'oz' rubbish Ive figured out Im on 500-600mg a day, that factors in a bottle of really mean arse energy drink with a lot of vitamin caffine sort of like Jolt cola except its got vitamin b in it for a bit of extra bang.
I dont like mornings, mornings dont like me and Ive found the extra-homicidal blood sugar levels tend to give you an edge in heavy traffic and ability to terrify most other homosapiens into submission that are still lethargic that time of day.

Dont drink coffee, and very rarely drink tea so most of thats comming from cola's.

 

[Gellion]

I am trying to cut back on my caffeien intake. I have heard it makes you urinate a lot, and i was going to the bathroom every twenty minutes or so. Now that i have cut back, i do not go so often. I do not think anyone needed to know that.

 

[Desdichado]

No coffee, no tea and no (or little chocolate.) However, I've recently been disturbingly attracted to the big energy drinks in the morning at work, and Mountain Dew in the evenings -- especially game nights. If I go out to eat, I often get Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper also.

I'm not too concerned about my caffeine intake, with the exception of the energy drinks. I really should cut them out. Plus they cost like $2 a pop.

 

[diaglo]

i drink coffee so i can sleep.

about 3 full pots a day i guess.

 

[Tewligan]

Also note that something like Jolt has way more caffeine in it than a regualr cola. I'm not sure how much but I think it's at least twice the amount.

Wasn't Jolt's slogan something like "All the sugar and twice the caffeine"?