Are you addicted to coffee? You're not sure? Just ask yourself if you can commit to living without it. For most people, coffee is a must have in the morning. Without coffee they don't feel alive. I know some people who instantly get a headache if they don't have their coffee in the morning.
What's wrong with coffee you may ask? Coffee is a drug and it can manipulate your feelings.
If you drink coffee after lunch sometimes or occasionally in the morning that's fine.
The big problem starts when you need it every day and it gets worse when you want to lose weight.
Coffee interferes with your natural weight loss program.
There are two things about coffee and weight loss that you should know:
1) Coffee Changes Your Mood
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That's great, you may say, I want to feel more alive and happy so I drink coffee. That's what most of us are doing and it's so common that it feels normal. The truth is that the caffeine may repress other feelings that are important and that need to be recognized.
When you want to lose physical weight you also need to lose mental weight. There are thought patterns and attitudes toward life that need to change. Sometimes on a weight loss path, feelings of depression, frustration and anger come up.
The worse thing you can do is to numb them away with coffee. These feelings are important and they can lead you to a new level of awareness and recognition in your life. You are entering the unknown and entering the unknown means you are discovering new territory in your life. If you embrace all the feelings your life, you will come to an understanding and appreciation of new viewpoints on important issues which have been affecting you physically as well as mentally.
When feelings which make us uncomfortable arise, it seems they will last forever. The nice thing about feelings is that they are in the moment, they are your truth and they are timeless.
Your mind can kick in and tell you:
"Oh my god, I am suffering, this will go on forever". It seems this feeling will never end.
The only way to get through them is to experience them fully. By repressing them with coffee, or any other drug, they will continue to show up in your life in different places over and over again. You might find you need more drugs every day to repress these feelings. As soon as you make a break and stop anesthetizing yourself, the feelings resurface.
Embrace them for the lessons they have brought you. Feel the pain, let it evolve to gratitude and eventually, with a breath of kindness, you can blow them away with the wind.
2) Coffee Changes Your Digestion
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The next important thing you should know is that coffee, especially in the morning, is a burden for your stomach. As I explained in some previous articles, when you get up in the morning your stomach and your whole system is in a cleansing process.
The best support for this process is to "break the fast" with fruit. What happens to the stomach in the morning if you give it coffee? The cleansing process of the body stops immediately.
Caffeine gets moving into your blood and endorphins stimulate you. All the things that the body would normally clean out will stay.
You can imagine what happens after 5-10 years inside your body when there is no cleansing. Just imagine not cleaning your house for 5-10 years. How would you feeling living in it?
There is something else about coffee you should know. In the early days, coffee was made differently. People would just boil water, put the coffee into it, then wait for the coffee sink to the bottom of the pot. This way of preparing coffee is much healthier than our "civilized" way of preparing it with a filter.
There are qualities in coffee which support the stomach and the digestion which are lost in the filtering process.
Conclusion:
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You don't need to drop coffee totally from your list. Just be aware if it is something you feel addicted to. If this is the case just recognize it and try to cut back a little every day. If you want to lose more weight drop it from the morning breakfast.
Remember, the freedom is not to take any of these recommendations as requirements. The freedom is for you to decide what it is you want to change in your life and then change it!
If you really love coffee, try having it after lunch and always drink it with water. This makes it easier on the stomach and therefore makes it easier to digest. In Italy or France when you order coffee, they automatically serve it with a glass of water. This is why!
Thomas Herold