The Coffee Lover’s Diet: Change Your Coffee, Change Your Life. / Bob Arnot, 2017. William Morrow. 373 p., charts and tables, notes, resources. No index.
A clear and simple message comes through The Coffee Lover’s Diet. Drinking the right kind of coffee will help you to lose weight and to build endurance.
Did we read that right? Are there really health benefits to drinking coffee? You bet, says author Bob Arnot.
In other words, intake of caffeine isn’t the sole reason for consuming coffee.
Caffeine, although a product of the coffee bean and originally an incentive for high consumption, is also considered a drug (a substance that changes your physiology). But you can obtain much higher benefits from the right coffees—actual health benefits—even if you think you’re only getting a caffeine fix.
Bob Arnot is an energetic author who’s also a medical doctor and athlete. His quest for the benefits of coffee consumption included research and experiments and lots of data. Seeing the results from testing a variety of beans and brews he knew he could offer exciting news for coffee lovers. He says in The Coffee Lover’s Diet that if supplied with enough of the right bean and brew, your body will acquire health benefits from simply enjoying 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day.
Substances in coffee have been shown to provide provide anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant activity, and better endothelial (arterial lining) function. They are also seen as inhibiting cancer and type 2 diabetes and more. Drinking coffee helps your metabolism work more efficiently and so drinking it in a committed way also helps you to lose weight. And you should also drink plenty of water during your coffee-drinking day.
Whether a standard brew from boiling water or a cold brew, and whether brewed at home or by a barista, Arnot says specific constituents of coffee have to be the right quality to make a healthful difference. For example you want to have high-phenol coffee, and coffee with high chlorogenic acid, and lower caffeine where possible—and you can still have high benefits in a decaf coffee.
If your objectives include building physical endurance, you’ll need specific substances in coffee to get there. Where there’s inflammation, its discomfort could impede your progress.
As you know, extra weight and physical endurance have an inverse relationship. Without physical endurance, it might be worthless to exercise with the goal of losing weight, even though the right food choices also play a role—see below. However with physical endurance, you can workout longer, or workout with more energy, and that will help you burn fat.
Some of the terms you’ll acquire for your coffee vocabulary are polyphenol, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and CGAs (short for chlorogenic acid, a polyphenol that reduces inflammation, p.21).
Polyphenols, or phenols—and you want those to be high-phenols, not just ordinary low-quality ones if you are going to have the anti-inflammatory and anti-jittery effects—are one of coffee’s mainstay substances. These are two of the more important substances for physical endurance, mental clarity and agility.
Options covered in The Coffee Lover’s Diet include coffee roasts and varieties of tastes from light and medium roasts. Dark roasts have the flavor and high-phenols and other benefits baked out of the beans and so are better left alone. Arnot’s charts show acidity levels, caffeine levels, chlorogenic benefit levels in specialty blends and then he offers suggestions on what to ask for at a cafe or coffee roaster, which decaffeinated coffees are best, which coffee makers will deliver the best flavors.
Coffee can be added to smoothies or paired with food for maximum effect. Arnot’s conviction is that you need the distinct advantages high-phenol coffee has to offer, along with the right foods. Recipes for meals, smoothies and coffees are provided that will ensure high-quality nutrition and weight loss if followed per his plan. That includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, chicken, turkey, salmon, tuna, eggs. Meals— you are allowed two, plus a hefty smoothie compiled with greens, fruits and chia seeds—may amount to a 1,500 calorie day (which can be appended to 2,000 calories, etc.).
Dr. Bob also fills in the dieter’s gap in satiety (which is sure to plague any dieter) with a sample list of go-to foods for hunger pangs and extra protein needs which he calls the War Chest. A little bit of an odd name, but he’s serious about having you be prepared for an unmistakably fast-paced diet that primes your brain as well as your gut.
All—data, description and intel—is food (or drink) for thought. Although neither an athlete nor candidate for weight loss at the moment, I gained much information about the range of coffee flavor. As a vegetarian I can use the recipes for smoothies, and many of the vegetable dish recipes, knowing that they won’t throw my weight off by a mile! I liked the inclusion of peanut butter on crackers—just that puts Dr. Bob in my neighborhood coffee klatch! But seriously, a book with references and notes should at least contain an index.
Questions you’ve never had, or the ones you actually have had, but were too caffeinated to listen for the answer, might be satisfactorily answered in the pages of The Coffee Lover’s Diet more especially if you’re athletic and would like that activity to help you lose some weight and gain back a positive outlook on your life.
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