impRAWvise 

Last week`s post was all about my love for coffee and my coffee rituals and routines as part of a flexible vegan lifestyle, focused mostly on raw vegan choices, aproximately 75% of what I eat of drink and leaving some space for about 25% of the dietary choices that I make for vegan lifestyle choices. As you already know, I am 100% vegan and I am absolutely loving it, but for many years I just kept trying and trying to make things “perfect” reach a certain level or rawness or purity, as I used to reffer to it, until I finally realized that this was not really serving me, nor my purpose of living conscious, healthy, balanced lifestyle, but instead it was just simply creating more pain and discomfort and ultimately more stress. Therefore I decided that a certain degree of flexibility in my raw vegan – vegan lifestyle would be the right place for me to be in order to be able to live a conscious, healthy, balanced lifestyle and since than, all the pieces off the puzzle just felt naturally into place. Coffee is just one of the vegan choices that I make and that is a very important part of my daily rituals and routines. But just like with food and other choices that we make, sometimes, taking a break, meaning basically fasting from something can bring even more benefits and not only this, but also an even greater sense of pleasure in enjoying that specific thing that we love so much, therefore this is why I like to go on a coffee fast from time to time, to just reset myself and basically make myself enjoy coffee and its amazing benefits even more. It can be just one day, 2-3 days or even up to a week or more. One thing is certain, when I restart drinking coffee its just like it tastes better, it feels better and I am enjoying it even more.

One of the reasons why I would choose to go on a coffee fast is that sometimes I am just simply not enjoying its taste that much, it starts to somehow taste fade and I am not having that joyful experience with coffee anymore, and that is how I know it may be about time for a coffee fast. I have to say that while I am aware if its energizing effect (due to caffeine) I mostly drink coffee for its amazing taste, I can get the caffeine from other drinks as well such as green tea or black tea, but coffee is just a different experience. Therefore, when I decide to embark on a coffee fast, in order to be able to reset myself and get back to enjoying it, I would just go slowly, sometimes slowly reducing the quantity on a daily basis, while also gradually switching towards alternatives. The alternatives that I love the most are pretty much the following options: green tea, black tea, yerba mate, roasted chicory, or just simply matcha tea. I love all of those options, and I have to say that I also drink most of them on a regular basis, so its not like a huge change that is happening in my life when I go on a coffee fast, is just like an attention switch, I am making a conscious choice to focus on some alternatives for a while and I am always super happy with the journey as well as with the outcomes of it. Just like it goes with fasting from food or things like that, which I also practice and love as well as I encourage as a way of tapping into getting to know ourselves and our bodies better, fasting from any particular substance, ingredients, lifestyle choice is a way to get to know ourselves better and how we actually react to particular substances, ingredients and practices. Taking the journey inward may be a challenging topic, but it is always worthwhile doing it.