You may experience jitters, or even boredom from your daily routine, and that’s fine. Not having a morning coffee does not entail a zombie-like state throughout the day. Many substitutes are available to provide energy, help with warmth, and are comfort rituals to help with your daily ritual. Tea is a reasonable choice. Green tea is refreshing and provides caffeine with antioxidants and energy, and it will likely make you feel even healthier. Black tea will help if you need the morning caffeine. Earl Grey? Fancy. Chai? Spicy and warming. Matcha powder whisked into hot water creates this earthy, almost meditative experience that coffee drinkers often find surprising.
Herbal teas don’t get the appreciation they deserve. Peppermint tea is refreshing and energizing, and it contains no caffeine. Ginger tea is a little painful to drink, but it is great for settling the stomach. Rooibos tea from South Africa is a naturally sweet and nutty herbal tea. Energy drinks constitute a form of cheating, but they do work and there is no escaping a daily habit of one unless you want to enjoy heart palpitations come 2 PM. The fusion of coffee and mushrooms sounds weird and tastes… well, earthy. Four Sigmatic and a few other companies blend lion’s mane and chaga mushrooms to coffee and claim one gets a sustained release of energy without the spike and crash cycle of regular coffee. It is a great claim, but I think it is weird. My friend is a loyal customer.
For days when comfort is all you need, there is hot chocolate. No coffee creation can compete with the richness and satisfaction of real cocoa powder mixed with milk. Cinnamon and vanilla can dress it up. A description of yerba mate deserves its own paragraph. This drink from South America, which contains caffeine, releases it slowly to provide hours of sustained energy. The traditional gourd and metal straw ceremony might prepare you in your morning. A fair warning is that it tastes like grass the first few times. You adapt. No caffeine, but the ritual satisfaction remains with you. Golden milk (turmeric latte) became trendy for good reason. This warming, anti-inflammatory drink which is made of turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and milk is enough to make you feel healthy and grounded.
Kombucha can start the day. It has the fizz to wake up and the probiotics to keep your gut healthy. It has a slight tang that gives a little complexity to otherwise plain water. The gingerade variety makes a refreshing ginger drink. Many cold alternatives work too. Fruit smoothies work to sneak in early veggies while the fruit provides ample energizing sugary water. Coffee is dehydrating while coconut water provides hydration. The combination of fresh veggies may sound terrible but vegetable fresh juice is energizing. The simplest replacement to coffee is hot water with lemon and honey. It may sound boring but lemon increases vitamin C. Honey provides energizing sugar, and the warm warmth of the water can substitute the comfort of coffee. It is meant to serve as a comfort drink. Your habit of forming coffee might have taken years to develop. The coffee habit might have taken years to develop, and won’t be easy to replace.
Certain individuals switch between different options based on their mood, time of year, or what their energy levels are like. Green tea on a Monday, yerba mate on a Wednesday, and hot chocolate on a Friday are perfect! Having flexible options is much more valuable than being stuck with fixed replacements. The goal is not to pinpoint the ideal coffee replacement. It is to figure out what suits your body, your routine, and your likes without having to conform to another person’s morning schedule.
