Wet your whistle!

Water is an oomph-inducing essential. "Because the human body is made up of 60 to 75 percent water, when you're dehydrated you also become fatigued," says Jim Karas. How much H2O do you need? Many experts recommend 64 ounces daily. Both Karas and Kimball suggest drinking half your body weight in ounces, because water intake should be relative to your body mass (e.g., a 140-pound woman requires 70 ounces of water daily).

Feed Your Muscles

Lifting weights makes your metabolism race as your body works to replenish energy and repair muscle tissue. "If you don't take in enough calories and protein, you won't have the resources you need to recover," says Durkin. He recommends consuming 300 to 500 additional calories on workout days, and skewing those calories toward protein, the building block of muscle. "Shoot for 1 gram per pound of body weight," says Durkin.

Why Bad Coffee Makes You Weak .. WARNING

Good coffee is magic.

It can promote brain function, memory, and energy levels.  It can serve as a massive source of antioxidants and is associated with all sorts of positive health outcomes.  Coffee can even effect your body and mind like Chi Gong exercises.  It can even help you build muscle without exercising. However, the wrong coffee can sap your health and hurt your performance.

When I started using espresso in college, I got the highest calculus grades of my life. However, I also had severe joint pain, jitters, anxiety, and (although I didn’t know it) I was about to get brain fog. Even bad coffee was an improvement for me then. But after I biohacked myself, I got used to feeling great.

The only problem is that I didn’t feel so great when I drink coffee anymore. Sure, I would get a caffeine driven burst of energy but then I would feel edgy, cranky, and often my joint pain would return. And when the coffee wore off, I was useless mentally.

I thought the negative effects were simply a compromise I would have to live with in order to enjoy coffee.  Strangely, I didn’t get these problems with every type of coffee.  When I traveled to Europe, I could more often enjoy coffee without any of the negative side effects. So I gave up coffee for 5 very long years.

After years of researching ways I could return to the hot, bitter arms of my great love (coffee, ahem), I finally uncovered the secret to my acute onset coffee malaise.

Why Bad Coffee Is Bad For You
Sometimes your taste buds know best.
Keurig K-Cup Portion Pack Starbucks Veranda Blend Blonde Coffee - (Google Affiliate Ad)
You don’t like the taste of bad coffee for the same reason you don’t like the taste of gasoline: your body is telling you it’s toxic.

The data on coffee consumption goes back and forth.  Some studies show health benefits, while others show negative outcomes.  This might seem confusing, but the reason is simple: bad coffee is bad for you, and scientists suck at differentiating types of coffee when they run studies on coffee.

Studies on coffee and health don’t control for processing methods or the source of the beans.  This means the coffee beans are almost always contaminated with mycotoxins.  Mycotoxins are damaging compounds created by molds which grow on coffee beans (among other things).  These compounds cause all sorts of health problems like cardiomyopathy, cancer, hypertension, kidney disease, and even brain damage.  They also make your coffee taste bitter, like it needs sugar.

Some types of coffee have more mycotoxins than others, which is why you see some studies showing a benefit to drinking coffee, and others showing negative health outcomes.  The problem isn’t coffee per se, it’s the mold on your coffee. It even can vary by individual batch, especially for large coffee producers. (like ones with big ugly green logos on every street corner)

Mycotoxins are in almost all low quality brands of coffee.  One study showed that 91.7% of green coffee beans were contaminated with mold.  This is before they were processed, which allows even more mold to grow.  Another study showed 52% of green coffee beans and almost 50 percent of brewed coffees are moldy.  Coffee is easily one of the largest sources of mycotoxins in the food supply.

As the researchers concluded,

“…regular coffee consumption may contribute to exposure of humans to OA (ochratoxin).”

Ochratoxin A is bad news. It hits your kidneys, causes cancer, and messes up your immune system. Trust me, I know. I’m an ochratoxin canary, having lived in a house with ochratoxin-generating toxic mold that caused some serious damage to my immune function and autonomic nervous system. (If I can be Bulletproof with all that going on, so can you!)

Coffee is only bad for you if it serves as a delivery platform for mold.

Cheaper coffee varieties cost less because they use poor quality beans and they allow a higher percentage of damaged (moldy) beans, then companies process them with techniques that add flavor but amplify the amount of toxins.

“Blends” of coffee are bad news because they mix cheap beans from multiple areas, almost guaranteeing that you’ll get some moldy ones.  This is why its important to buy your coffee from a single estate, as outlined in the process for finding the highest performance coffee in your city. If you drink mass market coffee, the beans in your grinder may come from several countries. It’s the same logic that tells you not to eat a hamburger made from the meat of 10,000 animals.

Decaf coffee is even worse.  Caffeine is a natural anti-insect and antifungal defense mechanism for the plant.  It deters mold and other organisms from growing on the beans.  Mold is everywhere, but caffeine helps prevent it from growing on the beans while they’re in storage. When you remove the caffeine, your beans are defenseless.  Decaf coffee is higher in both aflatoxin and ochratoxin.  This is one of the reasons decaf tastes like camel sweat.

You might think the more expensive types of coffee will be good for you, but this isn’t the case.  Arabica beans are typically less moldy than robusta beans. (Robusta is what you find in Folgers and cheap coffee.) But even expensive types of coffee are usually processed with methods that allow mold to grow.

The natural process method is common in African coffee.  This allows the beans to sit outside where they can collect bird feces and other debris.  They mold. One of my favorite high end coffee roasters, Carsen at Drumroaster Coffee, describes natural process beans as, “Delicious, flavorful, and psychedelic” because they affect how his brain works.

Wet process is not much better. Here, coffee growers toss the beans into giant vats and add water, then let the beans spoil for a while (ferment) so it’s easier to remove the outer parts of the bean. What grows on each batch of beans is unpredictable, but it usually makes more toxins.

Health “experts” enjoy vilifying coffee almost as much as saturated fat.  The evidence is only conflicting if you don’t look at the whole picture.  The truth is that the right kind of coffee is a health food.

There is a large body of data showing people who drink coffee are healthier and live higher performance lives.  Drinking coffee lowers your risk of stroke and diabetes.  Coffee improves focus, memory recall, and exercise performance.  Its also the largest source of antioxidants in the Standard American Diet.  Coffee is a potent thermogenic which stimulates fat loss. In an upcoming post, I’ll explain how coffee grows muscles too.

The right coffee is good for you.  Mold is bad for you.  Never mix the two.

Miracle Fat Busting Extract...

Green Coffee Beans have been shown to inhibit fat absorption and also stimulate the activation of fat metabolism in the liver, both major supporters of weight reduction. The Chlorogenic acid found in Green Coffee Beans is a natural phytochemical that is found in a wide array of plants, with very high concentrations in Green Coffee Beans. It has been found to inhibit the release of glucose into the blood, particularly after meals, and appears to help people lose weight as a result. Chlorogenic acid may also be able to induce body fat loss by increasing body heat produced, thus promoting thermogenesis, the natural burning of fat for energy. It is also believed to reduce the generation of new fat cells due to its superior anti-oxidant effects.

What To Expect From Green Coffee Bean Capsules:

Rapid Weight Loss (Average of 17lb loss)
Found to increase metabolism, boosting weight loss by more than 800%.
Studies have shown a 39% reduction in cholesterol
Average 2 inch reduction in belly fat within 28 days
Effective Appetite Suppressant
Works Quickly, Proven Results
Increase in Focus
Increased Energy
No Crash
No Side Effects