I have had a coffee addiction for about 6 years now and I show no signs of giving up. Not that it's really that bad for me. As far as addictions go, caffeine addiction is mild in its damage to your body. Cigarettes kill. Coffee just makes you jittery.
Many are torn on the issue of coffee. Some avoid it for its purported damaging health effects and some consume it in copious amounts for its purported health benefits. I don't think coffee is all that bad for you. A quick check on wikipedia will point you to studies that show its benefits. There is very weak evidence that it is bad for you if you're not nursing, pregnant, or elderly.
The only thing that worries me is that caffeine elevates cortisol levels in the body. Considering I drink about 5-6 servings throughout the day that adds up to a healthy amount of cortisol swimming through my veins. Cortisol is a stress hormone that breaks down muscle tissue for energy. Instead of fat as fuel, my body uses muscle for fuel. Not very good for my body composition.
It's difficult for me to quit for both psychological reasons and physical reasons. Psychologically, I crave the desire to drink something all day. It's an OCD like symptom I think a acquired out of the habit of sucking on a straw all day long. I feel naked without that medium size Dunkin' Donuts coffee in my hand. It's kind of like the way ex smokers don't know what to do with their hands after they quit. They've always had a cigarette their and now it's just searching for something to do.
Physically I notice a huge difference in my mood and behavior when I skip my morning coffee. I start to get a headache about mid afternoon and I'm extremely lethargic all day. I'm not as talkative as I usually am (which I'm not all that talkative to begin with) and I have very little patience with people.
As soon as I let that espresso swim in my stomach for a bit I feel the effects of caffeine almost immediately. My finger tips start to tingle and my mood is uplifted almost immediately. I have more energy and feel like doing some kind of physical activity.
Sometimes, I drink way too much caffeine and the pleasant effects of caffeine quickly become unpleasant. As the day wears on I'll start to get tired but can't sleep or lay down and be still for the life of me. I'll want to sleep but be too restless to do so. I feel jittery and I begin to become impatient with people once again.
The worst effect I suspect excess coffee consumption causes is insomnia. If I have a coffee after 3pm there is no way in hell I'm going to bed at a normal hour. I already don't sleep well to begin with so the caffeine will usually cause me to not fall asleep until 3am or later. This makes sense because the half-life of caffeine is about 6 hours. So if I have 2 cups in the morning, two in the afternoon, I still have well over one cup of coffee in my system well after 9pm.
I tolerate a fairly high level of caffeine pretty well and the dangerous effects of caffeine are way overblown so I'm going to continue consumption. I think I will reduce my consumption and not consume it after 3pm.
Everybody is different when it comes to the reactions of drugs so I can't make recommendations. Most tolerate small amounts of caffeine OK but some will go off the walls even if they drink small amounts. As long as you don't continue drinking when you feel the jitters coming on, you're probably fine.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Ethical Eating
I have to admit I'm kind of selfish. An vain.
All I ever cared about when I was younger was to have a nice looking body. My body was not so nice. Quite flabby and pasty actually. I was envious of those guys who actually had visible muscles on their torso. I preferred that most would not notice the love handles. I too wanted that surfer look that those few men had. So, in order to fulfill my vain quest of lookin' good nekkid, I read as many health magazines and websites as I could. I watched what I ate and began to experiment with certain exercises.
I decided to try a psuedo low fat vegetarian diet. Not for the ethical reasons, just the lookin' good nekkid reasons. It didn't work out too well. I was a lot skinnier but still flabby.
It was only until I stumbled across a body building website called T-Nation that I started to have the opinion that meat wasn't that bad for you. Actually from then on I had the opinion that it was quite good for you. Very good actually. Meat was essential to health. I knew this and I still believe it quite strongly.
But that doesn't mean that it's right to eat it. You can get away with good health if you became what is called a lacto-ovo vegetarian (one who eats no meat but does eat milk and eggs). I didn't believe this before but I do now. So does this mean I now have and obligation to not eat meat any more? If I don't have to eat meat than why let the animal be born, raised and slaughtered just for my sake. I just could easily eat a potato stir fry rather than a beef stir fry. Other than their taste, they're the same. They're both filling meals. The beef does fulfill more nutritional requirements but the potato's lack of nutrients can be remedied by simply eating a diverse array of vegetarian foods. And milk and eggs.
I used to believe that carbohydrates make you fat. This was because I, and many others around me have had great success losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet. Say what you will about low carb diets but you can't deny the facts. They help you lose a lot of weight and fast. Because of my propensity to gain weight easily, I ate a lot of meat (being a no carbohydrate food and all)and very little plant foods because plant foods are mostly carbohydrate. I don't even want to think about the number of Italian sausages I have consumed in the past 5 years. It ain't a small number. I ate a lot of meat because I thought for sure that yams and bananas would make me bloat to the size of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I do just fine with carbohydrates. As I think most health people do (I still think low-carb is necessary for some people who want to lose weight and/or normalize their blood sugar).
Now that I think more about it, my opinion is that meat can be healthy and necessary sometimes, but it doesn't have to be a staple food. It could just be something to make sure I cover all my nutritional bases (Vitamin B12, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, etc.). My staples could just be white rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and plantains. I'm moving more towards the vegetarian side of the omnivore spectrum.
All this being said, I have no naivete at the destructiveness my just being has on living creatures and the environment as a whole. Just because I'm not eating a sentient animal doesn't mean sentient animals don't suffer on my behalf. The agricultural plot of land that grows my food displaces thousands of animals. Agriculture, even vegetarian agriculture, does do damage. A lot of damage. Animals die, dams destroy underwater ecosystems, and a lot of cheap labor is exploited because of our current industrial agricultural system. So as an effort to reduce the amount of suffering I cause in the world, I will look more into where my food comes from. I will be shopping at more farmers markets and get my meat from a grass fed source. Also, I will be more involved with gardening for my own food.
All I ever cared about when I was younger was to have a nice looking body. My body was not so nice. Quite flabby and pasty actually. I was envious of those guys who actually had visible muscles on their torso. I preferred that most would not notice the love handles. I too wanted that surfer look that those few men had. So, in order to fulfill my vain quest of lookin' good nekkid, I read as many health magazines and websites as I could. I watched what I ate and began to experiment with certain exercises.
I decided to try a psuedo low fat vegetarian diet. Not for the ethical reasons, just the lookin' good nekkid reasons. It didn't work out too well. I was a lot skinnier but still flabby.
It was only until I stumbled across a body building website called T-Nation that I started to have the opinion that meat wasn't that bad for you. Actually from then on I had the opinion that it was quite good for you. Very good actually. Meat was essential to health. I knew this and I still believe it quite strongly.
But that doesn't mean that it's right to eat it. You can get away with good health if you became what is called a lacto-ovo vegetarian (one who eats no meat but does eat milk and eggs). I didn't believe this before but I do now. So does this mean I now have and obligation to not eat meat any more? If I don't have to eat meat than why let the animal be born, raised and slaughtered just for my sake. I just could easily eat a potato stir fry rather than a beef stir fry. Other than their taste, they're the same. They're both filling meals. The beef does fulfill more nutritional requirements but the potato's lack of nutrients can be remedied by simply eating a diverse array of vegetarian foods. And milk and eggs.
I used to believe that carbohydrates make you fat. This was because I, and many others around me have had great success losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet. Say what you will about low carb diets but you can't deny the facts. They help you lose a lot of weight and fast. Because of my propensity to gain weight easily, I ate a lot of meat (being a no carbohydrate food and all)and very little plant foods because plant foods are mostly carbohydrate. I don't even want to think about the number of Italian sausages I have consumed in the past 5 years. It ain't a small number. I ate a lot of meat because I thought for sure that yams and bananas would make me bloat to the size of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I do just fine with carbohydrates. As I think most health people do (I still think low-carb is necessary for some people who want to lose weight and/or normalize their blood sugar).
Now that I think more about it, my opinion is that meat can be healthy and necessary sometimes, but it doesn't have to be a staple food. It could just be something to make sure I cover all my nutritional bases (Vitamin B12, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, etc.). My staples could just be white rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and plantains. I'm moving more towards the vegetarian side of the omnivore spectrum.
All this being said, I have no naivete at the destructiveness my just being has on living creatures and the environment as a whole. Just because I'm not eating a sentient animal doesn't mean sentient animals don't suffer on my behalf. The agricultural plot of land that grows my food displaces thousands of animals. Agriculture, even vegetarian agriculture, does do damage. A lot of damage. Animals die, dams destroy underwater ecosystems, and a lot of cheap labor is exploited because of our current industrial agricultural system. So as an effort to reduce the amount of suffering I cause in the world, I will look more into where my food comes from. I will be shopping at more farmers markets and get my meat from a grass fed source. Also, I will be more involved with gardening for my own food.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Deadlift Comp
I'm entering a powerlifting competition in Wallingford, CT on July 31st. It should be interesting considering I've never done anything like this before. I will only be competing in the deadlift because I'm most comfortable with that lift. I'm a terrible bench presser and even worse squatter.
Weight lifting has been a dear friend of mine ever since high school. As a health conscious kid that read a lot of health magazines I eventually came to understand that lifting heavy objects was superior in almost every single way to chronic cardio. Those poor joggers look so pathetic whenever I see them on the side of the road.
I'll be in the 181 lb class so I have to make sure my weight is below that for the competition. It's been hovering in the low 180's but I'm trying to get down to 175 so I have some head room. It wouldn't be fun to compete in the next weight class.
I don't remember exactly what my all time best deadlift was but it was definitely in the low 400 range. But this was back in college when I weighed about 20lbs more than I do now so I expect my one rep max to be considerably lower now. Hopefully I'll be lifting at least 400 lbs by the competition.
Weight lifting has been a dear friend of mine ever since high school. As a health conscious kid that read a lot of health magazines I eventually came to understand that lifting heavy objects was superior in almost every single way to chronic cardio. Those poor joggers look so pathetic whenever I see them on the side of the road.
I'll be in the 181 lb class so I have to make sure my weight is below that for the competition. It's been hovering in the low 180's but I'm trying to get down to 175 so I have some head room. It wouldn't be fun to compete in the next weight class.
I don't remember exactly what my all time best deadlift was but it was definitely in the low 400 range. But this was back in college when I weighed about 20lbs more than I do now so I expect my one rep max to be considerably lower now. Hopefully I'll be lifting at least 400 lbs by the competition.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Fasting Experience
I just completed my month long fasting experience and it went quite well. I don't know exactly how much weight I lost but it must have been significant because many people told me I looked thinner. For the month of May, I fasted for ten days. Not in a row, mind you. They were separated by at least a day.
The first couple of days were very hard. It wasn't that hard to skip breakfast as I am usually not hungry in the morning but it was incredibly difficult not to eat something as the evening rolled around. Going to bed a little hungry is hard but going to bed really hungry is really hard. I remember having quite vivid dreams of food that first fasted night.
Overall, it was a good experience. I haven't fasted for a full day before this experiment and can tell you your body adapts to the fasting quite well. By the last few days I was not nearly as hungry as I was. I would recommend fasting to anyone for its therapeutic effects. You'd be amazed at how much more bloated you feel when you're in a fed state. In a completely fasted state, your body feels very light and lean.
The first couple of days were very hard. It wasn't that hard to skip breakfast as I am usually not hungry in the morning but it was incredibly difficult not to eat something as the evening rolled around. Going to bed a little hungry is hard but going to bed really hungry is really hard. I remember having quite vivid dreams of food that first fasted night.
Overall, it was a good experience. I haven't fasted for a full day before this experiment and can tell you your body adapts to the fasting quite well. By the last few days I was not nearly as hungry as I was. I would recommend fasting to anyone for its therapeutic effects. You'd be amazed at how much more bloated you feel when you're in a fed state. In a completely fasted state, your body feels very light and lean.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)