I’m on team coffee, though I’m a big green tea fan as well. For me, they are both good, but I have a different feeling after drinking each one. Tea and coffee both have health benefits, when used in moderation.
Coffee is a powerful appetite suppressant. It helps to improve focus and memory and is a decent fat burner as well. It’s the most common source of antioxidants in the modern diet, I kid you not. It is also great for performance, especially endurance training.
Confine your coffee drinking to the morning, though. It’s very easy to experience disrupted sleep otherwise, as it has a half life of around four to five hours for most people. According to the Mayo Clinic, studies have been done which suggest that drinking coffee — whether caffeinated and decaffeinated — may actually reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The studies also found that if you already have diabetes, the impact of caffeine on insulin action may be associated with higher or lower blood sugar levels. Just remember that adding cream and sugar will increase blood sugar levels so don’t get the sugary ones.
Tea, like coffee, has caffeine, but it also has L-theanine, an amino acid that exerts calming effects. Tea also has antioxidants known as catechins, which can help shed more fat during exercise. Green tea is especially high in catechins. Different types of tea, such as black and oolong have also been proven to help in weight loss by speeding up metabolism. The advice for tea drinking is the same as coffee: it’s better to drink it earlier in the day and avoid adding cream and sugar. Remember that saying, once you go black, you don’t go back and keep it in mind.
Does workout duration matter?
I typically workout around 60-90 minutes at the gym per workout usually four times a week. This includes filming for my IG or FB stories, which does add some time. I don’t really time my workouts, however long they take is just however long they take, and it’s a fairly meaningless metric.
I strongly advise against caring about how long you workout, if at all possible. It’s entirely possible to spend a lot of time in the gym and go nowhere.
Other people make exceptional progress on under four hours of lifting per week if they make that time count.
Counting your time in the gym is actually pretty meaningless. Instead, focus on:
● Executing each movement
correctly
● Pushing your sets sufficiently
hard
● Staying focused between sets
● Doing enough volume but not an
excessive amount
● Progressing week to week, month
after month
● Being consistent over the course
of many months.
• Staying healthy and injury free.
Simply being in the gym doesn’t actually do anything. Gains in strength, size or stamina don’t merely happen by magic. They are forced by focused exertions, linked together over many months. In the era of COVID-19, spend your time in the gym wisely.
