Is Coffee Good For You?
Is Coffee Good For You?
The world drinks 400 billion cups of coffee a year. Finland is the biggest coffee drinker. They average 5 cups of coffee a day! There have been many studies done on coffee and I am always asked: “Is coffee good for you or not?”
The short answer…It’s not good for you.
The Facts
A cup of coffee in the morning can help you exercise harder and burn more fat after you work out…but not for long!
Here are the downsides:
1. It needs to be a freshly ground dark roast because pre-ground coffee gets rancid quickly.
2. It needs to be organic because coffee beans are one of the most heavily sprayed crops around.
3. It cannot be mixed with milk or sugar or any artificial sweeteners because they negate the compounds in coffee that are supposed to be good for you.
Through my own experience with the use of coffee/caffeine and the feedback from thousands of clients over the last 20 years I have come to the conclusion that it’s just not good for you and it’s just not worth it. Here’s why - coffee gives many people bad breathe. If it gives you bad breath there has got to be something bad happening in your gut. It also stains your teeth.
The caffeine in coffee is the addictive stimulant that activates the pleasure centre in your brain, which makes you feel good and wakes you up. But as you should already know (if you have watched Video 1 of my Fat loss and Health DVD series) the body adapts to anything that puts it out of balance. So the effect you get the second time you drink coffee won’t be as good as the first time. The body has already learned to blunt the effect. In a few days you would need to double the amount of coffee to get the desired effect. Before long even 10 cups of coffee does nothing. You will only notice how bad coffee is for you when you want to stop. The detoxing headaches can last for days.
I have experimented with caffeine, on myself, several times. In 1997 when I was training for my second Iron Man I was experimenting with different ways to hydrate myself for long distance running. Back then Gatorade had just come out and it was being heavily marketed to athletes. It was very expensive. I looked at the ingredients (water, sugar, colour, flavour and a pinch of salt for minerals) the most expensive ingredient was the glass bottle it came in and the metal screw top lid. I tested it but the only good thing about Gatorade was that it tasted nicer than water. A fellow triathlete told me to try Coca Cola. The ingredients of coke are water, sugar and caffeine.
One of my favourite training runs was a hilly 12 km circuit. I would put a big bottle of water in my letter box and run around the circuit 3 times. Each time I got to the letter box I would guzzle down a litre of water. I decided to test coke so one day I bought a big plastic bottle of coke and put that in the letter box instead of water. I opened the cap to let the fizz out so I could guzzle it without having to wait for a burp. I ran the first circuit (when you are a long distance runner 12kms is just the warm up) and guzzled half the bottle. After the second circuit I was feeling great and I noticed I had run the circuit faster than normal. I guzzled the other half of the coke and ran the last 12km in record time.
Well I thought I had hit the jack pot! I was going to train on this stuff and get really fast and surprise everyone at the next race. Not only that, it was cheap and tasted great. Next Wednesday, same run, same coke but not quite the same reaction. Hmmm maybe it was just a bad day? Next Wednesday, same run, same coke, didn’t feel any different than water? I was also using coke on my other runs and bike rides. Within 3 weeks the caffeine was no longer having any effect. I started to wonder what the long term effects of sugar and caffeine might be doing to me. I went back to water.
In 1999 I had switched to power lifting. One day, during a weight lifting session I felt like I needed a boost so I went down stairs to the shop and grabbed a V Drink. The ingredients in V are basically water, sugar and caffeine. It gave me a real kick and got me through a gruelling workout so next time I trained I took a V drink with me. In 2 weeks I was drinking 2 V’s to get the same hit. In 4 weeks even 4 V’s a workout didn’t seem to help much. I went back to water.
In 2002 I had switched to Body Building. The goal is to lose fat without losing muscle. Using the skin fold callipers I would test my fat weight each week to make sure I was on target for the next Body Building show. The “new idea” was to drink black coffee before the workout to increase the fat burning after effect. Black coffee is basically water and caffeine. I tested black coffee on myself and also other Body Builders. We found no benefit. My conclusion was that the initial benefits I got from the coke in 1997 and the V drink in 1999 was more likely from the sugar and not the caffeine. The reason the sugar in the coke and V drink stopped giving me a boost is because my body became resistant to it. Our body is always trying to return to balance. You can trick it once but not for long. It also remembers. So when you try the trick again it won’t work. That’s why the latest diet pill (green coffee bean extract) gets superseded by the next latest diet fad (weight loss tea) which gets superseded by the next fat loss trick (Zephanol-HP) and on and on it goes. Costing you more and more money and making you sicker and sicker (see Video 5 - Body Buzz Fat loss and Health DVD Series).
Take my word for it. There is only one way to look good and be healthy and that is…don’t eat until you get hungry and then nourish yourself. So what is nourishing food? Well that’s what Video 2 and 3 are all about.
Marty