How much coffee do you drink a day when CFA studying?

Be sure not to get over caffeinated! Just look at how spiders react to caffeine…

Note the high dose caffeine is one of the worst webs, they just bounce around without order or planning – kind of like I feel if I’ve had too much coffee.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/07/06/weekend-diversion-spider-webs-on-drugs/

@policedog It was not easy , But I had to do it.  My friends suggested I should drop or reduce the amount of consumption until 0 and it should all be good, but that was going to take more time, You are right about me getting migraines ( Definitely not from coffee) as it was a withdrawal symptom. 

Its been over a month now and I am perfectly fine, migraines have reduced 😉 

@paulpassedtense‌ Thanks for sharing the spider webs! Really interesting to know. :smiley: 

anything from 0-2 cups, although tends to be the higher end…

@Maverick‌ The caffeine content depends on a lot of factors – decaf/normal, size, brewed/instant, black/with milk etc.

Here’s a detailed report –
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/caffeine/art-20049372

I’m going to try to switch to green tea. 🙂

@jessmat on mobile so can’t properly see the report – what does it say about coffee?

@Maverick‌ at least the fumes will keep you going…

Jokes aside, surely that can’t be healthy.

Red Bull themselves recommend no more than 5 a day, and that’s with no other caffeine. http://energydrink-uk.redbull.com/how-many-red-bulls-can-you-drink

And really recommend 2 a day + man that possibly had problems with drinking too much: http://mobile.news.com.au/national/mans-heart-stops-after-too-much-red-bull/story-e6frfkp9-1111114213642

@Maverick‌, this is for you:

@WesMantooth‌ urgh. Hope you’re feeling better now. Thanks for the warning!

@WesMantooth‌ 
Ouch, sorry to hear that! But did your brain seem to move faster while curled up in a ball 😉

I would bet its the “Brain Juice” coconut oil. I can’t eat coconut oil straight without stomach pains. We cook with it a lot, but whenever I’ve eaten a spoonful of it it’ll hit me like a rock. That said, my wife makes some dynamite fudge (melted but not baked) from coconut oil, cacao, and honey which I greatly enjoy without stomach pain.

Hmmm… Well  @policedog‌. Being honest it’s probably 1 getting ready for work, they took the free coffee away at work, but I’d imagine I do 2 or 3 there anyway, a couple pre-study after getting home and then one every hour to hour and a half during study.
Let’s add that up…
Between 7 and 9 a day? Perhaps up to 10 or 11 on really late sessions such as the 3am one I did last Friday night. I also normally kick off the study session with a can of red bull, maybe having another one after a few hours if I’m going to be up late.
Maybe this is why I’m reading between 14 to 20 pages per hour (if there’s a few with pretty diagrams or data tables in there)?

Not sure if it’s ‘safe’ but I’m not dead yet, so I’d guess it’s okay?

Well @hairyfairy‌, now you’re just adding an entirely different level of complexity to the discussion. Perhaps the poll needs to be “how many mg of caffeine do you consume a day?” But that may just blow our brains as all caffeine sources must be counted, including tea / coke / etc.

Out of interest, I decided to keep track yesterday and the result was;- 8 Coffees and 2 Red Bulls. A pretty average day.

On a typical working day, I tend to drink somewhere from 1-4 cups of coffee, although mostly cappuccino and latte (I prefer milk with some coffee over coffee with some milk!). However, for the final month of preparation before the CFA exam last June, I did not drink anything holding caffeine, as I didn’t want to experience any type of ‘dip’ on exam day. It was difficult for the first couple of days, but I believe it helped my exam performance 🙂 

Wow, I think I will shake at >2 cups, it’s my daily limit, and happens on ‘bad’ days. I tend to count my ‘cups’ in shots (seems more standardised), so max 2 shots a day. 

@WesMantooth‌ Hadn’t even heard of this as a concept. I’m surprised that the fat from the butter doesn’t just float on the top of the water / coffee. Glad you’re more in my frame of coffee consumption. Though even I’m not sure that my 1 to 3 cans of red bull daily on top of the coffee is the best of ideas.

I’m not sure if this is related but I do find that my crashes are getting worse. Like the other night I put the kids to bed, flipped the book open and literally passed out after 3 pages before eventually being kicked towards bed by the missus at 8:30. Perhaps the fact that I’m studying harder and harder as d-day approaches, combined with other factors may be doing it.

@WesMantooth I found the bulletproof coffee interesting. I want to hear how it affects you. 

I think what I drink daily is kind of like bulletproof coffee. I no longer drink coffee as I found it made me unfocused, especially in the afternoons. Even tea wasn’t doing the best for me. Now in the mornings I drink full fat raw milk (sheep or goat from local farm) with raw fermented cacao and raw local honey. Cacao has far more nutrients and antioxidants than cocoa, which is just roasted cacao. Cacao has theobromine, which is a stimulant more pleasant than caffeine, plus anandamide, tryptophan, and phenylethlamine, all of which are “mood enhancers”. Cacao tastes a whole lot better too, its not bitter like chocolate.

It seems my cacao drink is similar to bulletproof coffee:
– high fat content
– stimulants
– probiotics (naturally occurring in raw milk)
– high nutrient and antioxidant content
I will try adding coconut oil to it, which seems to be the additional bulletproof ingredient. 

Since I’ve been drinking it (a number of months now) I feel great and am regularly very alert and productive for 9-10 hours straight without afternoon crashes.

I’m a big proponent of raw milk, its healed my lifelong “lactose intolerance” and has greatly improved my overall digestive health. We found out the benefits from Nourishing Traditions. We went from being vegetarian to eating a high nutrient diet involving eggs, butter, bacon/sausage (high quality of course), grass fed beef, cheese, raw milk, fermented vegetables, fermented dairy, honey, and tons of bone broth (in soups or by itself). Its a delicious way to live. Feel free to message me if you want to learn more.

When I was studying for level one, there was only one place in the city where I could buy real coffee, and we were broke. So… one cup for week. 

I don’t drink coffee.  Hate the taste, and not willing to force myself to “acquire the taste.”  
But I do start my morning off with a cup of Diet Dr. Pepper. 

Wow @alphadoll – seems like I’m the opposite. I think having a hot drink in the morning is a habit and was never used to carbonated drinks. Studying for the CFA exams is hard to focus enough, I couldn’t afford burping as a form of distraction, because anything was more fun than reading CFA texts at times 😉

Nice little illustration there @paulpassedtense‌. I’m surprised that the spider could be bothered to even try and spin a web after a dose of hash.

Well, we have a split vote of 33/33/33% making an arithmetic mean of 2.33 recurring cups (assuming that all over 5’s are counted as 5). So far the study is somewhat inconclusive. Either that or people under the 5 mark simply don’t really know, and therefore hit the button that’s half-way between 4 and 0.

@jessmat I’m led to believe that Tea contains more caffeine than coffee per ml?

policedog said:

Maverick said:

Well @hairyfairy‌, now you’re just adding an entirely different level of complexity to the discussion. Perhaps the poll needs to be “how many mg of caffeine do you consume a day?” But that may just blow our brains as all caffeine sources must be counted, including tea / coke / etc.

Out of interest, I decided to keep track yesterday and the result was;- 8 Coffees and 2 Red Bulls. A pretty average day.

That’s pretty much the highest amount of caffeine I’ve ever seen anyone take in 24 hours.

I’ve been known to push it to 10+ cups and 3 red bull…

New Poll:
Do you think that Maverick will make it to the end of the CFA exams (L1/2/3) before having a serious heart attack?
Yes?
No?

In all honesty, I’m 6ft 5″ and 95KG, so it’s all relative :smiling_imp: 

@policedog‌ I wasn’t expecting to be so ‘abnormal’! Most of the people I know drink coffee and I thought it was a standard part of living in the modern, high-stress world.

@WesMantooth‌ curious to know if it works!

Not a big coffee drinker. I do take red bulls though 🙂

@paulpassedtense @hairyfairy @policedog @maverick For anyone interested…I finally received my shipment of bulletproof coffee. For my first experiment I tried a small cup before going in to work on the weekend. The taste is interesting, like a rich latte, not bad in small doses. I didn’t notice any significant difference, I wasn’t overly energized but didn’t feel terrible either. Round 2 I invnited my wife to try with me and decided to up the dose and try my normal larger size coffee cup with an increased ratio of butter. The taste is great at first but by the latter half of the cup the buttery flavor is too rich for my liking, leaving a lingering taste in my mouth that I would soon regret. What followed was disastrous, both my wife and I spent the day curled up in a ball from stomach pains. I don’t think i’ll be able to experiment further with this buttery concoction, at least not any time soon. I will continue with the “upgraded” coffee beans and brain juice or whatever its called.

In all fairness this is simply a reflection of my ‘almost every day’, and not just cfa study days. 

Got used to it on night shifts a good 15 years ago when regular coffee and pro plus breaks were all that got me through. Probably heading for a heart attack, but at least I had fun along the way.

@policedog‌ 

1 cup of tea – morning
1 cup of tea/coffee – midmorning – at 11 am
1 cup of green tea – afternoon post lunch – at 2 pm
1 cup of tea – evening – around 5 pm
1 cup of tea – evening – around 7.30 pm
1 cup of coffee – night – around 10 pm

I don’t drink more than two cups of coffee per day. I have tea instead. However, so much tea isn’t healthy either :disappointed: 
Need to cut down…big time! 

I also think it depends on how strong your coffee is, whether it’s instant / nespresso / something else, and how strong the particular coffee blend is. 🙂

Wow , @policedog,@Maverick,@hairyfairy, @paulpassedtense , This seems like a serious discussion on Caffeine. I was drinking atleast  4-5 cups of Espresso everyday until i started to study CFA L1. I hate that i get weird one sided Headaches.

I have stopped that completely now and just to compensate or stop-myself from trying to Brewing a Cup , I keep a Bottle of warm water with Lime slice in it.

On big study days at home (5+ hours) i’ll crush at least a full pot of home brew coffee- not sure what that equates to in cups. Normal work/study days I limit my intake to the AM and probably go through 6-8 cups. Its 9AM now and i’ve just finished my third xlarge cup of coffee from the keurig at work. I like to always have a hot beverage on the go. Goal is to work in more water intake in between.
I don’t think drinking coffee is bad for you…6+cups if probably excessive though.
Anyone tried the bulletproof coffee? Its super popular in Vancouver right now. You mix in a large chunk of unsalted butter to your coffee and blend it up, supposedly it’ll give you 6+ hours of instant energy without the crash! worth a shot?? Check it out here https://www.bulletproofexec.com/
I have not tried it yet.

mikey said:

Not a big coffee drinker. I do take red bulls though 🙂

Lol, because that’s a lot safer / better :smiling_imp:

Only had 7 yesterday because my books drank one for me. Not happy, having to dry out each page individually. Disaster.

I drink coffee everyday now. Usually, I’ll only have a couple cups a week. Now I’m drinking 4-5 cups a day. 

@policedog I agree about the pseudo-science, but on the off chance that it works I just placed my first order…worth a shot…either way I get coffee out of the deal. I’ll let you know if it works for me.
@maverick i’m guessing you are right about your crashes getting worse, probably a few factors at play there! Don’t burn yourself out!

ps I can’t stand red bull…in 15 years i’m betting it (and all the other ‘energy’ drinks) will be outlawed as poisonous.