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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Conquered Coffee and Cookie Cameo

I have been attending a weekly meeting for the Body By God program our family is participating in. My daughter has been cooking and providing healthy meals for the event and posting the recipes over on her site.

After being in the fitness industry for a decade, I still am amazed at how much I learn every day. I've always looked into coffee, for example, as a "lesser evil" vice, which I still believe it is, but never really understood just what impact it had on energy systems. I've read the literature and reviewed the diagrams of cAMP and other energy cycles but it was the talk by Dr. Eric of Healthsprout that helped drive the message home.

I had actually first heard about concerns with coffee almost 7 years ago when I had the opportunity to spend several days with Dr. John Berardi at a seminar in Canada. His argument was not just that caffeine can impact energy systems, but specifically it has a negative impact on the way your body processes sugars. I respect his opinion but didn't know enough and had already lost a ton of fat myself while drinking copious amounts of coffee, so I sort of dismissed it.

Dr. Eric brought it back into focus because now that I am no longer a card-carrying member of the "Not Much Club" (hint: if you ask me what's new, it's highly unlikely you'll hear me say, "Not much") energy and time are important. So when he started talking again about coffee and how it robs your body of it's God-given ability to replenish its own energy reserves (caffeine likes to sneak in and take over) I sat up and listened.

First, I knew then and there I needed to write an article to explain the process in "layman's terms" to help educate others, and second, I decided I would stop drinking coffee. Understand I had progressed from someone who drank several pots a day throughout the day to limiting my intake to before lunch, but it was still rampant. So, I quit.

Today is the third day. I feel fine. I'm not 100% caffeine free - the alternative I have is two cups of green tea which has far less caffeine and more healthy properties. I'll slowly cut back. Right now my focus isn't "caffeine free" but more "coffee free" and getting my fluids in. Yes, fluids.

That leads me to the second epiphany. I've long known about BIA (bioelectric impedance analysis) but only from the traditional "bodybuilding trainer" perspective. Sure, it's those expensive devices that you have people squeeze onto or those scales you step on and it passes a current through your body and gives you a body fat reading. The reading is highly erratic and women wonder why their body "cycles up and down" over the months and trainers like to charge to have people grab that device but does it REALLY give you body fat? I pretty much dismissed this in Measure Your Success.

Then I found out what BIA is REALLY about. It's far, far more than just "body fat." A true BIA test does more than have you grab a contraption. They take the current from your ankle to your wrist so it passes through one of the most important areas of your body - your midsection! They also extrapolate far more than estimated body fat. There is resistance, reactance, and an important reading known as "phase angle." Heard of phase angle? Did you know it is one of the best predictors of overall health around, far more valuable than cholesterol readings or even blood pressure? That's okay, neither did I (which will result in, of course, another article).

So I was intrigued and had my BIA done ... the right way. It was exciting to receive the results. I suspected that I was not hydrating enough but the read out gave me an indication that my body contains about 50 liters of water. The advice is to replace water about every 10 days so that's 5 liters per day ... whew! Fortunately, my healthy living has paid off ...my phase angle was high, in the "optimal health" range, almost up at "extremely healthy" ... unfortunately, as I have known and why I decided to change strategies from running distances to shedding fat ... my body fat is right where I thought it was: too high. I need to shed about 20 pounds to get to a comfortable body fat. (Yes, it's a bit of the cobbler with broken shoes syndrome).

At any rate, I take full responsibility even though the evidence was caught on tape. Yes, my wife and daughter cook very tasty, healthy foods, but their signature recipe is Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies. These are the best cookies I've tasted and I'm not just saying that because they're family ... these things are darned good! So good, in fact, when I returned home from the office and found them wrapping up a demonstration video in the kitchen (yes, it really happened randomly this way), I was caught on camera biting into one of my favorite vices ... check it out here!.

Take care and God bless,

posted by Jeremy Likness | 7:27 AM

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