Coffee is NOT Good for You

With all the hype about antioxidants in recent years--exotic fruits boasting the more antioxidants that you need in a year and thousands of other antioxidant drinks, pills and supplements--I was shocked to come across the following study's conclusion...

"Coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the U.S. Diet--not because it is especially high in antioxidants, but because Americans drink so much of it."

Yikes.

Joe Vinson, Ph.D., and the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pa. announced the findings of their study at the end of August to the public... the public meaning MSN, MSNBC, WSJ Online and any other news source that will take the story (most likely all of them--coffee is always a hot topic.)

Coffee, to me, follows the same lines of any non-prescription or prescription medication. You take it as a quick fix to eliminate some ailment and don't worry nor care about the other effects the drug may have on the rest of your body. Give me the Vioxx now, I'll worry about the impotence and suicide stuff later.

Yes, coffee is similar. Give me the pick-me-up now, I'll worry about the acidity level in my body, the adverse effects of caffeine, the nasty breath and tooth stains later. I'll take mine with sugar and cream as well to make the drink just as nutritious as a bottle of Pepsi-- add the artificial sweetener and forget it.

Yes, there are antioxidants in coffee just as Advil stops your headache. Unfortunately, there are other ingredients in your daily joe that create free radicals in your body--this means all the good in your coffee is wiped out by all the bad it is creating. Remember--antioxidants wipe out free radicals. As for the Advil, take some time to read about Advil and the liver when you have a few minutes in the next few days.

Don't believe the hype.

Coffee drinkers are always protecting their fix. "They say one to two cups are fine" and "Plus, I couldn't imagine living without it in the morning." This is an addictive behavior and, surprise, coffee is an addictive substance.

How do I know coffee is addictive? Stop for a week. Stop cold-turkey for a week and tell me if you don't suffer from headaches, jitters, edginess. If you don't at all, then you can go right back to the drink. If you do suffer from any of these withdrawl symptoms, you should consider making your experiment a permanent diet change.

When you don't eat apples for a week, do you get headaches? Are you on edge? No.

Know why? Because apples don't change your body chemistry like coffee does. The caffeine effects the way your body works. It speeds up your heart, it messes with your metabolism. It sends you out of whack.

I see similar veins in this study and the red wine studies. Yes, there are antioxidants in red wine. Antioxidants are good for you. There is also alcohol. Alcohol negates all the good you'll ever get in a glass of red wine.

When I drank coffee a few years ago, I never thought it was a problem until I started feeling it in my heart. My heart would skip beats the more I drank coffee. Many heart arrhythmias are directly related to caffeine intake. When I stopped drinking coffee the irregular heart beat stopped as well. I haven't missed a beat in 3 years.

Get your antioxidants from fruit not coffee or tea.

Polyphenols (powerful antioxidants) are found in cranberries (very high content) and are followed in descending order by apple, red grape, strawberry, pineapple, banana, peach, lemon, orange, pear and grapefruit.

Eat these, not coffee. You will feel better, you will be more productive at work and you will be able to do what you want to do without feeling tired and weak from coffee withdrawl.

You'll hear the evangelists on the TV:

"Drink coffee for better health!"
"Get your antioxidants AND your pick-me-up!"

Just remember who the information is coming from... an alcoholic would tell you the best thing in the world for you is to have a drink every once in a while. Expect the same from a die-hard coffee drinker.

Learn to listen to your body and eventually you'll recognize what is good for you--not for anyone else. Read these new studies with a critical eye. Ask questions. Read between the lines.

Your body will thank you.

Good Luck,
Kevin

Be Easy on Yourself

Achieve Fitness Goals by Being Easy on Yourself (A Story of a Cheetah)

Sometimes we get down on ourselves.

Maybe we didn’t perform the way we wanted to at a presentation for work, didn’t do all the studying we could for an exam or review, needed more time and put out a product that was only good--not the best.

When this happens, most people (myself included!)tend to get a bit down on ourselves. We feel like we have failed our expectations and didn’t live up to our standards. And maybe this is true, maybe we could have taken some more time to prepare that PowerPoint for a presentation, studied a little bit harder or spent more quality time developing a killer product--all these, we could have done and the end result would have been better.

These are our lessons, the reason we have them is to grow. So let’s look at it that way... as growing experiences... and STOP BEING HARD ON YOURSELF!

Being hard on yourself will only bring you into a dark place where the only thing around is question marks about your potential success. What is going to happen to me? Who noticed that I messed up? Will I ever do what I want to do? Get out of the negative and your life will ease up, I promise.

This is no different with your fitness and health goals. If you become your own worst drill sergeant--screaming and shouting at your last mess up--you will not build the positive support within yourself to sustain an enlightened and lasting fitness and health program. I promise you this as well.

You can see how this affects professional athletes all the time. Watch tennis and take careful notice of how the players react to their own missed shots. If a player hits the ball into the net and reacts poorly, chances are the next three or four rallies will have more errors on his or her part. What is happening is this...

His conscience is being a drill sergeant. He is screaming his head off at the player telling him to stop screwing up! While he’s still screaming, he’s still playing tennis and so now he’s listening to his drill sergeant and trying to hit a first serve that’s over 100 mph! Talk about some serious multitasking! These conversations are negative and counter-productive.

Instead, to avoid this berating, he should acknowledge his mistake and calmly peacefully let it go. How? Take a breath. Concentrate more. Don’t correct his swing or positioning, just concentrate on what his doing--in this case hitting a tennis ball. I guarantee he will not flub his next few shots.

Same with baseball pitchers. You’ve seen the guys who miss a few strikes then start getting into their heads and swearing and cursing on the mound. What happens is the same, the drill sergeant gets talking and the concentration is out the window. This is when they give up homeruns and unintentional walks.

Master pitchers have learned to shrug off bad pitches and concentrate on the task they are there to complete. I’ve seen many games where a great pitcher has missed on one pitch and given up a homerun, then come back and shut the other team out for the remaining innings. Pitchers like these are masters not only at throwing the ball hard--but of concentration.

You cannot do everything perfectly.

If you get off track, take a day to breathe, look over your goals and then refocus your concentration. For many of us, fitness and health require a lifestyle change that creates LASTING habits! You’re bound to slip up once and a while, so don’t kill yourself.

Here’s a great story my coach, Nick, told me when I was struggling with being too hard on myself.

There was a young boy named Michael, about 10 years old, that Nick had been counseling for a short period of time. Michael was overweight and was having a tremendously difficult time in school. He had trouble with his math and was a level or two behind in reading. He just didn’t feel good about himself and the other kids were starting to pick on him because of his reading deficiencies and, of course, his weight.

Nick had met with Michael a few times and now the issue they were discussing was his performance at school. After pulling some teeth to get Michael to talk about his problems in school and with the other kids, Nick was unsure of how to proceed with the session. So he asked Michael a very blunt and straightforward question. "How do you felt about yourself?"

Michael responded with this, "I feel like a big fat failure."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on a second," Nick said, "What makes you feel like that?"

"I don’t know, I just am."

"Well Michael, why don’t you tell me about something that you really like."

Michael looked up to the ceiling. "I like animals!"

"And tell me, what’s your favorite animal?"

"The Cheetah!" Michael nearly jumped out of his seat.

"Great!" Nick matched his enthusiasm, "and tell me about the cheetah."

In double-time, Michael began to tell Nick all about the cheetah, how it walks, how it eats, how it sleeps, when it sleeps, again what it eats--to the point where a non-caring Nick would have kicked himself for asking this question at all.

When Michael seemed to be winding down, Nick gently interrupted.

"Wow, you certainly know a lot about the cheetah don’t you? You mentioned something that I want to talk about. You said that the cheetah eats zebras, right?"

"Yeah, and antelope, and..."

"Well, Michael, when the cheetah goes out and hunts, so you know how many times he gets the prey and can eat dinner?"

Michael thought for a minute then exclaimed, "All the time!"

Nick’s face became more serious, knowing Michael was wrong and he slowly gave Michael his lesson, "That’s not true, Michael. The cheetah is lucky if he gets to eat once or twice a week. He hunts many times and doesn’t catch a thing. Did you know that?"

"No, I didn’t"

"Michael, the Cheetah is a very special animal because it keeps trying all the time, day after day so it can eat. He may miss his dinner 4 or 5 times in a week. Now would you call the cheetah a big fat failure for not being successful every time?"

Michael got the lesson Nick was trying to teach him and started performing better in school.

We can’t be at our prime all the time, and when we aren’t we absolutely cannot punish ourselves for it. Be more like the Cheetah, go out everyday knowing that you are doing what you need to be successful.

If you fail, breathe, and come back more concentrated the next day. You will be a success, I’m sure of it!

How to be a Cheetah

Here are the tools that will allow you to tell your drill sergeant that he or she’s better off making sure we don’t forget our business appointments that interfering with our fitness and health successes!

Step One: When you start to hear the drill sergeant, listen to his speak for a short time. Listen to what he says. They will probably be similar to things like this, "You stupid..." or "I don’t believe you just..." or "Why can’t you ever keep a commitment for..." For this step, just be aware that this is happening so you can recognize it when it happens again.

Step Two: Tell your drill sergeant that you are thankful he is around. Seriously. Thank him for sharing his thoughts because this same drill sergeant is the one who gets you out of bed in the morning (he’s not all negative!).

Step Three: Take a few deep breaths.

Step Four: Ask your conscience to move on to the next thought. If the next thought is just as negative and just as degrading, repeat the four steps!

When you master this, you will be able to deal with your drill sergeant easily and quickly before you begin to start the self-doubt that can destroy your chances of reaching your ultimate fitness goals!

BMI, the NFL and You

At the end of last week, Thomas Herrion, a lineman for the San Francisco 49ers died after a preseason NFL football game. He was 23 years old and 330 pounds. His Body Mass Index (normally below 30 or so for athletes) was 41. He was morbidly obese. The doctors say that arrhythmia (irregular heart beat) was the probable cause of his death.

I'm a football fan, so I watch the game all the time. For those of you who don't and only watch the Superbowl at a friend's party, it is not difficult to confirm that most NFL linemen are just plain fat.

What's scary is that if someone came to me for training and I measured their BMI and it was anywhere close to Herrion's, I would prescribe no more than 20-30 minutes of walking a day to start. Even if he was an NFL player. I would not even suggest he play in a pickup game of flag football. Regardless of how "fit" someone may be underneath their fat they are still carrying extra weight, fatty acids and probably excess glucose.

There's another sport where you'll find similar levels of obesity and here is the prognosis for those athletes as well from and article by Dr. Eric S. Freedland,

"Japanese sumo wrestlers are a good example of how exercise can only do so much for so long to offset the harmful effects of obesity. Competitive sumos carry most of their abdominal fat subcutaneously with relatively little visceral fat (which is more strongly associated with insulin resistance). They are able to maintain insulin sensitivity until after they retire when they develop large amounts of abdominal visceral fat, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and premature death."

Now let's step away from athletes for a moment. I've only used them to make a point.

Do you know how much extra weight you are carrying? You could be in worse condition than some of these athletes because you do less activity than they do. If your BMI is around 30-35 and you don't do any physical activity, your health is being compromised tremendously. You practically have the same prognosis as the Sumo Wrestlers without the "after retirement." All those diseases and instances have started already and it is up to you to start working out to reverse them.

This might be the most incredible thing about exercise... you can reverse the decline of your health!

How can you calculate BMI? For someone who is not mathematically inclined, you can do this at our site! I've just added a page with a calculator and I think you should consider finding out just what your BMI is, because it can give you an idea of what you may need to do to help keep cardiovascular disease and other nasty aliments at bay.

If you find your BMI is over 30, do yourself a favor and consider going for a walk tonight. Just 20 minutes or so. Don't get too crazy. When you're walking think about how good it feels to be outside. Think about how the breeze brushes against your face and how the sounds of nature call to you.

When you get back, sit down and take a moment to scan your body and see how good it feels to get your heart moving and your body jump started.

After you do this for a few nights, I know you'll begin to enjoy it. Make it a habit and the quality of your life will dramatically increase. You'll have more energy, be more productive and be able to spend more time doing the things you want to do because you'll have a clearer mind!

So go calculate your BMI and see where you stand. http://www.yourlifestylefitness.com/bmi_calculator.shtml

Then regardless of the numbers, take a walk tonight anyway and enjoy the weather!

Best,
Kevin

Post Your Goals Everywhere!

Do You Know What's Keeping You From Your Fitness Goals?

Yes, I know this next newsletter was supposed to be about fluoride in your water... but I was away for a few days this week and really started thinking again about how important goal setting is.

I recently met a guy (who actually bought our old stove!) and was talking to him about goals and how you achieve what you set out to do... in the middle of our conversation, he invited me to look at his collage of goals.... and not only that... he began to tell me about the ones that he was moving toward every single day.

It is imperative to set goals. If you are not doing it... you are not succeeding. I can almost guarantee it.

The most prevalent cause of fitness failure may not be what you think it is. It has nothing to do with heredity, gender, attitude, laziness, motivation or the always-prevalent gimmick, quick-fix diet market.

Many strong-willed and positive thinking individuals have let their workout programs and health falter for long periods of time--gaining extra pounds, loosing muscle strength and sending their systems way out of balance.

Take a deep breath... this does not mean you are a failure! It only means you haven't used a system of goal setting that guarantees results every time you do it.

It doesn’t matter how motivated, energetic or gung-ho about an exercise or fitness program you are. If you neglect putting your goals on paper you will NEVER achieve success to the level that you deserve. Actually, let me reword that... if you neglect putting your goals EVERYWHERE--the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror, your dashboard--you will NEVER achieve the rewarding success of being healthy and fit for life.

When you have set an unwritten fitness goal, as many of us have in the past, generally what happens is a newly found energy and drive leads you through the first couple of weeks of energetic workouts and solid gains. This is a tremendous feeling and we embrace it with excitement. This energy is a powerful motivator during that time--it can make you get up off the couch when you are feeling lazy or convince you to get up an hour or so earlier for yoga or a run.

Unfortunately, as strong as that energy comes on, it drops off just as quickly. For most people, when that energy fades so does the frequency of workouts. This not only leads to failure to complete your unwritten goals, it also leads to self-doubt. After not living up to a commitment, people tend to be harder on themselves and give up making similar goals all together. I call this the New Year’s Resolution Syndrome. What’s the point in making a New Year’s Resolution if they never last until February?!

Posting your goals is an action that will serve as a reminder of the energy you had when you initially made them. When you are two months into a new fitness and health program and you feel too tired to go out and ride a bike, you can look at your goals and be reminded of how important those goals were to you then and how they are just as important now. Remembering why you posted them and bringing back that positive unstoppable energy is essential to your lasting fitness success.

I've practiced posting goals for a while now and demand that all my clients do the same. The results are staggering. People reach their goals and then they continue to use the system to keep succeeding. I'll tell you what, there is nothing like reaching a goal way before you thought you could do it. It is a fantastic feeling and gives you a positive energy that bursts out of your seams.

So think about writing down your goals and putting them in places where you can see them all the time. It will work. I promise you.

To Your Success,

Kevin