How I learned to stop drinking coffee and bottled water, and consuming sugar

This is personal, so make your own choices and decisions.

When the prices of coffee kept going up, I bought cheaper and cheaper brands of coffee, so they got more and more bitter.

That meant I put more sugar and half&Half which also doubled in price.

My monthly cost for “coffee” kept going up and I enjoyed it less.

Also I was drinking more bottled water, and watching those cleanup videos taking plastics out of rivers, beaches and such.

I tried buying water filters because I could not stand the chlorine taste of the tap water.

So. I stopped all bottled water, by adding half ounce or so of my bitter coffee to the tap water in a gallon container of water in the fridge. It tastes better and better each week and I drink a couple of liters each day. Sort of self balancing now. I feel more properly hydrated, and the coffee addition is smaller each time.

I keep my black coffee pot in the fridge to add to new water. And like this morning, I put an ounce in a coffee cup, filled with tap water, heated and have a nice warm cup of water with coffee taste like in the old days. Very refreshing.

I stopped paying for creamers and milk and coffee additives.

I completely stopped buying and using sugar.

I do not crash from caffeine withdrawal every week or so (when I missed a day).

It feels better, costs less, seems to help the environment, puts less demand on dairy, and cost me less on an ever shrinking retiree budget.

I lost 14 pounds in the last month, my legs stopped swelling, I don’t worry about bottled water, no longer have to throw out trash bags with crushed bottles. No longer buy sodas (because of sugar cravings and thirst) and that trash.

I am old enough to remember when plastic was pushed into society, when McDonald’s got the world hooked on “just throw away your bag and napkins, straw, wrapper and cup in the trash.”

The crux of it was several things, but “healthy” multigrain cereal was the crux of the crux of it. When I measured out how many grams of sugar are in a large sized box of cereal it has 15 servings of 8 grams each which is 120 grams or 4.2 ounces. The salt is .52 ounces. 4.2/20.6 is 20.39 % sugar.

It added up to “I do not need or want that stuff” and more I did not want to be spending money on companies I feel are not giving back proportionately to all humans, not just a few.

Not sure if this is in a form that explains my tiny journey, but there are a lot of things I have eaten or consumed all because the advertising slogans ring in my ears, the lavish praise of products and lifestyles is embedded in my childhood memories. It was what we all ate and drank. And then coffee shops pushed a bitter taste and massive additives into our lives at high prices and profit to them.

I like rags to riches startup stories, but I do not like when it seems to act like “lazy profiteering from indoctrinated consumers”.

This is what I do, it does not matter, but I feel better and can more afford unprocessed foods.