CHAPTER 6
Caffeine Free
CORTISOL RESET: Days 10 to 12
It’s time to spill the beans. Coffee is our favorite upper, but it’s highly addictive and may not be good for you. Ninety percent of Americans drink coffee, and worldwide more than two billion cups of coffee are consumed daily with supply and demand increasing annually. While it may be the most socially acceptable stimulant, many people don’t realize it’s a drug. What you need to know is that coffee becomes toxic at certain levels and may shift your mood from alert to anxious, disrupt your sleep, and give you palpitations—what I would describe as overstimulation. On average, women with sleep problems drink 3.3 cups of caffeinated coffee, tea, or soda daily. Regular consumption of caffeine disconnects you from natural circadian rhythms, which govern your hormonal harmony. Without these natural rhythms, your hormones misfire and you can become fat. That’s because coffee elevates cortisol, one of your body’s key fat-storage hormones and the ultimate director of your inner world.
When cortisol is too high or too low, it becomes the dark lord of your body. In my experience, when you’re highly sensitive to or slow to metabolize it, caffeine leaves you feeling raw and throttled. Living life with chronically high cortisol levels robs you of joy, restful sleep, and control over your weight. Caffeine is another way that women attempt to change their state. Life is hard, and you reach for caffeine to feel less exhausted, or you reach for a bar of chocolate to cope with pain or boredom. I get it, but now it’s time to break the vicious cycle of stress, sleeplessness, and fatigue that keeps many of us addicted to caffeine. When you do, you will clearly see how your innocent cup of coffee is keeping you fat. The transformation takes only three days.
Self-Assessment
How do you know if you are addicted to caffeine and/or need to reset your cortisol? Take the following self-assessment and check off any of the following behaviors or conditions that apply to you now or have occurred in the past six months.
Are you one of the 35 million American women who have difficulty sleeping?
Do you drink coffee or caffeinated beverages most days of the week?
Do you struggle with anxiety or irritability?
Do you drink three or more servings of alcohol per week?
Do you overeat when stressed?
Have you been told you have high and/or low blood sugar? Or is your fasting blood glucose greater than 85 mg/dL?
Does the idea of quitting coffee seem outrageous and leave you looking for ways to avoid giving it up?
Do you suffer from burnout—physical or emotional exhaustion from chronic stress?
Have you been told that your DHEA or testosterone levels are low?
Do you suffer from indigestion, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or stomach ulcers?
Have you been told you have thinning bones, osteopenia, or osteoporosis?
Do you experience breast tenderness, or has a clinician told you that you have fibrocystic breast change?
Do you have premenstrual syndrome (PMS)?
Do you find, perhaps paradoxically, that the more caffeine you drink, the more tired you feel once the buzz wears off?
Interpret Your Results
• If you have five or more of these symptoms, you are very likely addicted to caffeine and it is robbing you of energy.
• If you have fewer than five of these symptoms or are unsure, you might have a caffeine addiction, and I urge you to remove caffeine from your diet periodically, such as once per quarter as outlined in this program.
In my opinion, there are two crucial factors: whether you are genetically hardwired to be slow at metabolizing caffeine (as I am) and what you drink in your coffee (i.e., sugar and/or cream). The takeaway is that I believe you must remove coffee if you want to lose weight, reduce stress, sleep better, live longer, and reset your broken metabolic hormones.
Tracking Joe
Let’s trace the path of your steaming mug of coffee. The caffeine from your cup of joe goes directly from your stomach to your hypothalamus, which regulates hormone levels and prods your pituitary to tell your adrenal glands to release more cortisol. The newly ingested caffeine can also inhibit adenosine, one of your body’s natural calming mechanisms. One serving of strong coffee reduces blood flow to your brain by 20 to 30 percent,1 so you become less resourceful and more irritable.
If you’re already stressed, you’ve got double trouble. Particularly if you are a high-stress type, the elevation in cortisol from the carbs and sugar can raise your blood pressure by constricting your blood vessels.2
Increased cortisol may also keep you from sleeping soundly. Cortisol raises blood glucose, which may make you feel foggy, and when it drops, you feel hungry. As your body demands more glucose, the cells say, “Whoa! We’re shutting down.”
The result? You’re in a vicious cycle of caffeine, rising cortisol, and unstable blood sugar. Remember insulin resistance? That’s when your body doesn’t have the capacity to regulate your insulin levels. It turns your waist into a magnet for fat, and because visceral fat has four times the cortisol receptors of fat elsewhere, you keep taking on more fat.
From Dr. Sara’s Case Files: Kim, Age Forty-Eight
• Lost 14 pounds, 4 inches off her waist, and 2 inches off her hips.
• No longer depressed or feeling had about how she looks.
• “I better understand about my body and hormones and how certain foods can affect how you feel. My hormones are finally back to normal because I feel alive inside. I walk around with a smile on my face now. No more aches and pains in my joints and muscles. Thank you for giving me my life back. I will continue on this journey of great health and better food choices. Food is now my medicine.”
Don’t Worry If You’re a Coffee Addict
Jill, a patient of mine, felt a true physiological need for caffeine, similar to how a diabetic needs insulin. She couldn’t imagine life without coffee. The thought of removing it from her daily routine almost caused her to miss out on one of the most important decisions of her life, which was doing the Hormone Reset Diet. In retrospect, she was glad that she didn’t run screaming from my office when I suggested she remove caffeine for twenty-one days. Instead, she dove in and emerged detoxified, caffeine free, and slimmer.
Believe me, I understand. I’ve been looking high and low for medical reasons to stay addicted to caffeine. But when I put my doctor hat on, I simply have to conclude from the science and the observations in my medical practice that there are strong links between caffeine and weight gain, anxiety, insomnia, and maybe even breast cancer. Over the past decade working with women, and in my own life, I have become a believer in the periodic reset of cortisol with the complete removal of caffeine. I see the proof in my own flat belly and thousands of other flat bellies from the twenty-one-day Hormone Reset Diet. As a recovering caffeine addict, I know your first instinct might be to plead for mercy regarding caffeine and insist on being the exception to the rule. If you stand up to that voice, believe me: you’ll be happier, well rested, and thinner!
Never fear. I will make this caffeine free process painless, even fun. You’ll see the positive results almost immediately, which will give you motivation to keep going. Let’s get started!
If you are wigging out about how you can possibly survive without caffeine, I understand. I have an addictive personality. If something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. When a friend texted me about her favorite new dry shampoo, I found myself applying so much I ran through an entire bottle in one week. When I learned from my friend Dave Asprey that his mycotoxin-free coffee, Bulletproof, was being studied by researchers at Stanford for its effect on cognitive performance, I immediately ordered twenty pounds.
I get it. You need energy, and when there is a strong-smelling, delicious-tasting habit widely available every morning, it’s hard to resist. Let me help you with my simple, top-secret strategy to employ in the days leading up to the Big Wean. Ideally, you’ll start weaning off caffeine the day you start your Hormone Reset, during Meatless.
• Days 1–3: Say goodbye to your last cup of coffee. Drop your caffeine intake in half.
• Days 3–5: Greet the day with a mug of black tea, no more than two cups.
• Days 6–8: Switch to green or white tea, no more than two cups on days 6 and 7. By day 8, one cup only.
• Day 10: It’s herbal tea from now on, baby—for the rest of your Hormone Reset. You’ve got this!
When you are getting off coffee while living in a coffee-obsessed culture, I urge you to keep your eyes on the prize and on how to create greater ease with weight loss via normalized cortisol.
You may be wondering if you can just switch to decaffeinated coffee. The answer: no. Even though decaf coffee contains smaller amounts of caffeine, like regular coffee it also contains acids that affect blood sugar and cortisol levels, and it has similar effects on cholesterol. Decaf coffee also raises blood pressure and sympathetic nervous system activity.3
Women, Stress, Overeating, and Coffee
According to the annual stress survey by the American Psychological Association, women report higher stress than men, are more likely to feel their stress is on the rise, and experience more extreme stress: 25 percent of women state their stress is at an 8 or higher (on a 10-point scale) versus 16 percent of men. Many studies now document what I’ve seen in my medical office: women are more likely to overeat in response to stress compared with men.4 Overeating can elevate cortisol, glucose, and insulin levels; fan the fire of persistent inflammation and oxidative stress (which is like the industrial waste of your body and makes you feel prematurely old and toxic); and ultimately, cause weight gain.5
Growing evidence suggests that these biological factors work together to accelerate cellular aging by shutting down the telomere care system (the caps on your chromosomes that are an indicator of how fast you are aging).6 In fact, excess cortisol can shrink the hippocampus by killing brain cells (your hippocampus is where you store memories and regulate emotions). Keep in mind that you’re already producing more cortisol as you age. Let’s not hasten the process by downing a cup of coffee to rev up.
In my practice, many women have stress stuck in the “redline” position, and stress eating is a typical response, which leads to weight gain. Even worse, chronic stress changes food preferences. Studies show that when you are under stress, you are more likely to eat foods high in sugar or fat, or both. High-fat and sugary foods temporarily comfort your stressed-out brain, and that’s why you crave them. But the effects last only while eating, and in the long term, you are left with extra weight and continued cravings.
Chronic stress not only alters your appetite and the types of foods you crave, but it also leads to your losing sleep, drinking more alcohol, and getting less exercise. When you are sleep deprived and hungover, what do you crave? Coffee! All of these factors contribute to weight gain. It started with stress and coffee, and it escalates to overeating the wrong foods and gaining more weight. So, let’s keep it simple: dump the caffeine.
Obesity results from chronic problems with energy balance in your body, which is definitely caused in part by high stress. Scientists define stress as the behavioral and physiological responses generated in the face of perceived threat. In girlfriend language, you press the “on” button for your sympathetic nervous system (the fight-or-flight half of your nervous system), which tells your adrenal glands to pump out more adrenaline and cortisol. The system works well for most humans, unless you happen to be female and stuck with a prolonged stressor—such as working at a demanding job, raising a family, or just having a lot on your plate, no pun intended. In this case, you may start to see the ravages of stress and high cortisol: sugar cravings, increased fat storage, and ultimately, stress-induced obesity. Get a group of girlfriends together, and I’m sure you’ll hear familiar refrains: Stressed all the time. Can’t lose weight. No time for myself. Can’t live without coffee or wine. It all drives me to drink, but I know better.
You aren’t alone. Chronic stress, overeating, and drinking coffee are extremely common and may lead to the type of metabolic harm that sets you up for rapid fat storage and difficulty losing weight. We’re again in that vicious cycle of caffeine and cortisol.
WHY DEEP SLEEP IS GOOD FOR WEIGHT LOSS
Deep sleep doesn’t just feel good. It has solid benefits when it comes to weight loss, and I absolutely love it when I can lose weight during sleep. I advise a few simple rules for great sleep: eat a modest dinner three to four hours before bedtime, turn off screens (TV, tablet, laptop) one hour before bedtime, and refrain from alcohol, which limits deep sleep. (Remember, alcohol also has the unfortunate property of slowing down your fat-burning mechanism.) Most important, become caffeine free so you can fall and stay asleep.
Aim for eight hours of sleep. The irony is that caffeine is used to counteract sleepiness, yet consuming caffeine limits your subsequent sleep by disturbing your delicate inner clock. Don’t wait to catch up on the weekend—it doesn’t work, especially if you’re middle aged!7
A good night’s rest is also good for your waistline. Sleep:
• increases glucose metabolism and is linked to better blood sugar control;8
• boosts secretion of growth hormone, which—along with cortisol—regulates belly fat;
• activates cellular repair and mends injury;
• normalizes cortisol levels during the day (and the corollary: one bad night of sleep raises cortisol);9 and
• improves memory.
One study showed that women who sleep five hours or less per night weigh more but eat less than women who sleep seven hours or more. Clearly, if you want to master your weight, you must master your sleep.
Exercise, relaxation techniques, bedtime rituals—all of these plus the Hormone Reset Diet helps with insomnia. There are countless websites and many books on sleep. One recommended to me that focuses on cognitive behavioral therapy is Say Good Night to Insomnia by Gregg D. Jacobs, an insomnia specialist at the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. Here are a few of his suggestions:10
• Get out of bed within a half hour of the same time each day—even weekends—regardless of how much or little you slept.
• Exercise by taking a brisk walk about three or more hours before bedtime, which will improve your sleep by causing a greater rise and fall in your body temperature.
• Boost your exposure to morning sun (around ten A.M.) to establish a more consistent circadian rhythm and increase melatonin.
About Burnout
Burnout occurs when life demands and chronic stress exceed your coping, which may lead to a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. You may be surprised to learn that emotional eaters overeat in response to stress, whereas normal eaters undereat in response to stress.11 Burnout is an important precursor to emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, and weight gain.12 We know your eating patterns affect whether you gain weight and become obese. Stressed people crave sugar, fat, salt, and alcohol. When your life or work burns you out, there’s a much greater likelihood of disordered eating in a misguided attempt to reverse sadness, loneliness, or boredom. In order to reset normal eating, we need to address the root causes of burnout, which can include unrelenting stress, wayward cortisol, fatigue, dependence on coffee, perceived lack of control, and even loss of self-respect.
Let’s summarize: When you get stressed, cortisol rises, you overeat, you drink coffee, cortisol rises higher, and then you get fat. Stress makes most women become hypervigilant and struggle with sleep. Coffee, excess cortisol, and even cortisol resistance are the most common hormonal reasons for slow metabolism in women.
The Science Behind Caffeine Free
We hear all sorts of conflicting information about the benefits and drawbacks of caffeine. You might be wondering just how harmful your cup of coffee is to your health, especially if you’re addicted and feeling skeptical about why you need to cut it out of your food plan. I’m here to set the record straight on caffeine and weight, and settle once and for all why you must give up your beloved caffeine for the next three days and for the remainder of your Hormone Resets.
The problem with caffeine is that most people consume too much, then show signs of toxicity. How much is too much depends on your age, your cortisol levels, your stress resilience, and how you process caffeine. For the average adult, toxicity occurs at 500 to 1,000 milligrams. Lower doses may cause toxicity if you metabolize caffeine slowly. Furthermore, the cascading hormonal effects from caffeine add to stress and sugar cravings. I know that you coffee worshippers may take offense. Let’s start with an objective look at where we are right now with respect to the scientific answer to the question “Cuppa joe—yes or no?” (For citations, go to www.HormoneReset.com/bonus.)
Bottom line? All of us benefit from taking time off from caffeine and seeing what happens—to our sleep, weight, and energy.
BEYOND COFFEE
We know coffee isn’t the only culprit when it comes to our nation’s amped-up stress boosters. You can suffer from caffeine toxicity in many ways. We drive ourselves hard and expect our bodies to meet every demand we heap upon them. But sometimes this backfires, particularly when you reach a certain threshold of caffeine. Furthermore, your safe level of caffeine and your liver’s ability to detoxify you from caffeine declines with age and with liver congestion. Your cortisol levels naturally rise with age; a person of sixty-five has far higher levels of circulating cortisol than a twenty-five-year-old, and drinking caffeine may contribute to menopausal weight gain.
When you drink too much caffeine, you’re robbing your own bank. The theft results from the high biological cost of overstimulation, excess production of stress hormones, and ultimately, depleted reserves of your adrenal glands. When you’re overweight and stressed, the scorecard favors periodic removal of caffeine.
Caffeine Free: The Three-Day Reset for Cortisol
It’s time to stop robbing your body’s bank: eliminate caffeine and reset cortisol immediately. Try it for the remainder of the twenty-one days. You might like how you feel so much that you continue, and I strongly urge you to do so.
CAFFEINE FREE RULES: DO THESE EACH DAY
Follow these simple yet powerful rules to reset your stress and cortisol levels, and remember to continue the rules you’ve already implemented from the previous resets:
1. Eliminate all caffeine. This includes coffee, black tea, green tea, soda, and energy drinks.
Caffeine Alternatives List: Hot water with lemon and cayenne, hot water with cardamom, herbal teas, mushroom teas (see Resources).
2. Continue eating one pound of vegetables per day, along with healthy, plant-based fats and proteins and small servings of low-glycemic fruits.
3. Keep your net carbs between 20 and 49 grams per day.
CAFFEINE AMOUNTS
When you’re overweight and highly sensitive to caffeine and cortisol, it doesn’t matter if you have two cups or ten cups of caffeine; the drawbacks are similar.
• A typical 8-ounce (240-milliliter) cup of instant coffee contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine—about twice as much as a cup of tea or a 12-ounce (360-milliliter) can or bottle of soda.
• One ounce of dark chocolate contains 12 milligrams of caffeine, which is why I suggest that you eat no more than one ounce of dark chocolate (80 percent cacao or higher) but skip the coffee.
Here is a suggested menu for resetting your cortisol. For nutritional data, check out the Notes section.13
When you remove your upper, you won’t need your downer—otherwise known as alcohol. But as a woman of a certain age, I need a periodic reminder of why it’s not a good idea to pour a glass of wine at six P.M.
Alcohol raises your cortisol level and makes you more stressed, not less. Sure, there’s the little buzz at the beginning, and who doesn’t love that? But it’s another hijacker of the restorative sleep you need to clean up the metabolic mess that you’re in. It also raises breast cancer risk, even at low doses of as little as three glasses of zin per week.
You will not be surprised to learn that alcoholics have a problem with the stress-response loop in their bodies, particularly in the hippocampus, the part of the brain where you perform memory organization and consolidation, plus emotional regulation.14 Not only does the brain shrink and stop rewiring, but also, when you drink more than two servings per day, 639 genes are changed for the worse. Why should you care about the 639 genes? They regulate vitally important functions, such as the actions of the cortisol receptor (known more generally as the glucocorticoid receptor), mineral transport (such as zinc, performed by the SLC39A10 gene), and inflammation (IL1R1).
The bottom line: keep your fat loss going by resetting your cortisol, and stay off alcohol through the full twenty-one days of your Hormone Reset. If you need some concrete ways to help you, see Ways to Wean Yourself Off Alcohol in chapter 3 (page 65).
SIX WAYS TO HELP YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING
1. ChiWalking. Lose weight, strengthen your core, and improve your posture—all before breakfast! Check out the Exercise section (page 141) for instructions.
2. Sun salutations. There’s no better way to wake up than saluting the sun! Go to a beginner’s yoga class or follow the instructions on my YouTube channel.
3. Bellows breathing. This energizing yogic breathing is better than any upper. Inhale and exhale fast through your nose, with your mouth shut. Aim for one to three breath cycles per second, and continue for ten to thirty seconds. Your breath duration in and out should be equivalent, but as short as possible, like a bellows. Don’t be afraid to make some noise.
4. Meditation. News flash! Meditation isn’t the same as sleeping or just some woo-woo way to focus the mind. On the contrary, a short meditation can leave you feeling energized and alert, and it’s a killer swap for caffeine. Find a comfortable cross-legged position and take a few deep breaths. Then slowly start to breathe normally. When thoughts arise, simply bring your awareness back to your breath.
5. Five minutes of burst training. You don’t need anything fancy to get your morning blood flowing. Do twenty-five push-ups, really taking time with the “down” part of the push-up, and practice staying present with what you see while you get your heart moving.
6. Five minutes of fun-factor cardio. There’s no excuse not to do five minutes of fun cardio at home. Blast some Taylor Swift, run up and down the stairs, anything that gets you a little sweaty will do. Just don’t overdo it.
Supplements
When it comes to your caffeine-free reset, I recommend supplements that increase your metabolic rate safely without overstimulating your nervous system, a side effect I often observe with weight-reduction formulas that contain caffeine. One of my favorite supplements is decaffeinated green tea extract. Here’s why: your risk versus benefit from caffeine is subject to your own individual tolerance, and that’s why I believe everybody benefits from taking time off from caffeine and seeing what happens with sleep and weight loss. Green tea clearly has benefits for the majority of people based on the best evidence, but be aware that much of the health improvements with regard to weight loss and insulin sensitivity seems to result from polyphenols—a group of powerful antioxidants from tea leaves—not necessarily from caffeine.15 Green tea (Camellia sinensis) contains the highest concentration of polyphenols, called catechins.16 The most abundant is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which is linked to cancer-prevention activity,17 lower blood glucose,18 reduced risk of heart disease,19 and modest weight loss of up to 8 pounds.20 I recommend EGCG at a dose of 400 milligrams twice per day. You get the benefit without the caffeine.
Cell to Soul Practice
In my cell-to-soul philosophy, which is informed by Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine, and ayurveda, the urge for caffeine is an important sign that the body, mind, and/or spirit are out of balance. I’ve learned to get curious about cravings and query the deeper message coming from our bodies. You might be burned out, need more social connection and love, need more sleep, or discover that you may not like your work or your spouse. Whatever you learn, you are much more likely to find a source of true energy within yourself that doesn’t deplete your body. You might try a restorative yoga pose like butterfly, a green smoothie, a cup of hot water with fresh lemon and cayenne, a good conversation with a girlfriend, or even an adaptogenic supplement that balances the body. Sources of true energy provide a more modulated ride that doesn’t have extreme highs and lows, and the result is more-stable blood sugar, fewer sugar cravings, and no more hormonal roller-coaster rides.
I often look to other cultures to see their perspective on stimulants like coffee. In ayurveda, the five-thousand-year-old Indian system of natural healing and traditional medicine, coffee overactivates your mind and takes you further from the goal of balance, which should be felt as the stilling of the mind. Ayurveda translates as the science of life, and at the root of balanced living is optimal digestion of not just physical nutrients but emotional and spiritual food as well. When you are in a state of balance, your nervous system and endocrine system perform well without stimulants and your energy is consistent. No roller coaster. Just a sustained, buoyant feeling of energy and optimism, and it rests on the key circadian driver of deep sleep each night. This is called the sattva, the ideal state of calm and equilibrium.
In Chinese medicine, you are born with a fixed amount of energy, known as prenatal chi, which you received from your parents. Your prenatal chi cannot be supplemented; it can only be conserved. Coffee depletes your natal chi. Because of the difficulty of giving up coffee and the importance of resetting cortisol, I recommend “left nostril breathing,” which my friend and Harvard psychologist Sharon Melnick calls “back-to-sleep” breathing.
Left Nostril Breathing (or Back-to-Sleep Breathing)
Coffee makes you more reactive, meaning that you’re less able to hit the pause button before you react to some emotional trigger. Besides the weight loss you can expect when you quit coffee, another benefit is that you can more easily shift from being reactive to being proactive, which is a cardinal sign of stress resilience, emotional growth, and psychological maturity.
Being reactive is good for grim conditions, such as hunting wild animals for sustenance or self-defense. But it’s not good for enduring relationships, a happy marriage, satisfying parenting, personal growth, quality of life, or—for our purposes—achieving and maintaining lean body mass. As my colleague Rick Hanson taught me, reactivity makes us “overlearn from bad experiences and underlearn from good ones”: we’re Teflon for positive experiences and Velcro for negative ones. Being reactive, or triggered emotionally like a cornered animal, feels bad and sidelines your ability to tap into more advanced emotional resources. It leads to overeating, drinking too much alcohol, watching too much TV, maybe even using shopping as a balm. Most of all, reactivity limits your body’s repair mechanisms, which are essential to keeping you in physical and emotional balance.
Left nostril breathing can help you get a handle on your reactivity. Do it when you wake up too early or are in a potentially explosive situation.
Here’s how to do it:
• Cover your right nostril with your right thumb, and inhale through your left nostril while counting slowly to ten.
• Hold your breath for another count of ten.
• Move your right ring finger to cover your left nostril, release your thumb to uncover your right nostril, and exhale through your right nostril while slowly counting to ten.
• Inhale through your right nostril while counting slowly to ten.
• Hold your breath for another count of ten.
• Move your thumb back to cover your right nostril and exhale through your left nostril while slowly counting to ten.
• Repeat this sequence three times.
Exercise
When you are resetting your cortisol pathway, you need to perform “adaptive” exercise so that you don’t raise your cortisol even further and fry your hardworking adrenal glands. As you know by now, cortisol is produced in your adrenals. When you run around with stress overload, certain forms of exercise, particularly running and spinning, raise cortisol. I recommend ChiWalking or jogging instead. The benefit to ChiWalking or running compared with the regular way that you walk or run is twofold: you retain more energy and prevent injury. I’m a runner. In my twenties and thirties, I experienced several knee injuries, including a constantly tight IT (iliotibial) band. At some point, I felt like the impact might be too much on my poor body, and I began to look for ways to avoid further stress. ChiWalking is a great choice if you find walking stale or if walking doesn’t seem to help with losing weight.
Danny and Katherine Dreyer get the credit for knitting together the concepts of tai chi with walking, jogging, and running in their book ChiWalking. However, I have to credit my dad for my interest too, because I remember seeing a ChiRunning book (also by Danny and Katherine Dreyer) in his study while I was home from college. ChiWalking is different from regular walking because you use your body more efficiently and reduce impact. The magic is in the engagement of your core muscles and the change in the foot strike.21
Here’s a primer on how to do it:
1. Place your feet together, distributing your weight evenly. Wiggle your toes, gently bend your knees, and imagine a triangle of your weight spread evenly between your big toe, little toe, and heel.
2. Align your spine. Put your hand on your heart and lengthen through your crown, to reduce swayback (common for women, which causes low back pain).
3. Keep your chin level with the ground. Look to the horizon, and allow the information that comes in through your eyes to energize you. Relax your eye muscles, and relax your body.
4. Relax your shoulders. Your shoulders are not earrings—they do not belong up near your head, in the vicinity of your earlobes. Let your arms swing from your shoulders, back and forth, like you’re rubbing a volleyball in front of you at belly level.
5. Engage your dan tien. Yes, I know it’s a weird, new term, but just focus on this: your dan tien is where your life force is centered. It’s in an important place: three fingerbreadths below your navel and two inches deep into your core. Pull your energy into your body, concentrating at that spot, and focus it.
6. Place all your weight onto one leg (this leg becomes your yang). Lift the foot of your other leg, which is now empty of weight (this leg becomes your yin), and move your foot forward to take a natural step. Transfer your weight from your front foot to your back foot, until all your weight is on the back foot. Lift the toes of your front foot and turn it on your heel until the toes point outward at a 45-degree angle, then place your front foot back on the floor and shift weight to your front foot. Pick up your back foot and move it toward your front foot. You are now ChiWalking, sister!
7. Lean forward at the ankles to walk faster.
AFTER THREE DAYS: WHAT’S NEXT?
After you complete your three days of resetting cortisol by going caffeine free, it’s time to focus on the bigger project of resetting your inner clock to lock in your improved metabolism. Studies show the connection between an inner clock gone haywire and getting fat.22 What’s the best way to reset your inner clock?
• Get at least twenty minutes of bright sunlight each morning. This helps you make more melatonin, which is another inner clock regulator, along with cortisol.
• Make bedtime darker by removing from your bedroom all exterior light, alarm clocks, toys, and other electronics with LED lights. The light suppresses your pineal gland (the endocrine gland in the middle of your brain that secretes melatonin).
• Take your vitamins. Melatonin is made in your body from serotonin, and you can make more with the help of a little vitamin B6 and vitamin C. Aim for 50 to 100 milligrams per day of vitamin B6 and 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams per day of vitamin C.
• Actively hit the “pause” button on stress by making it a habit every day to feel and express gratitude or any other positive emotion. I have a favorite app on my iPhone called Inner Balance that helps me do this, or I share a long, lingering hug with someone I love. We know that hugs raise oxytocin, the hormone of love, bonding, and social connection, and it’s your best ally against chronic stress.
After you complete the seventy-two-hour Caffeine Free reset, I urge you to stay off caffeine for the rest of the twenty-one-day Hormone Reset. Many of my clients find that weight loss and maintenance are easier without the battery acid.
Test Yourself
There are two tests that I recommend in the Caffeine Free reset: heart rate variability and diurnal cortisol.
Heart rate variability (HRV), which is at the core of research conducted by the Institute of HeartMath, is a measure of the naturally occurring beat-to-beat changes in heart rate/heart rhythms. It serves as a critical method for gauging human health and stress resiliency. You can measure HRV with your iPhone (using the app I just mentioned, GPS for the Soul, which can be downloaded for free, or Inner Balance, which requires a sensor for your earlobe to measure your HRV) or use HeartMath’s handheld heart monitor, the emWave. HeartMath methodology is based on the fact that the time between each beat of your heart varies according to emotional arousal. Loss of variability is a sign of inner emotional stress and waning adaptive suppleness, as well as of possible heart disease.
Diurnal cortisol. We produce different amounts of cortisol at different points throughout the day; ideally, it’s a gentle downward slope with the highest amount produced in the morning and then a slowly decreasing amount because that sets up the best circadian rhythm for energy during the day and sleep at night. While you can get a single blood test in the morning to test your cortisol, the diurnal test is quite useful because it indicates your cortisol level at four points throughout the day, between six A.M. and ten P.M., rather than basing your findings on one snapshot. (You can test your cortisol levels yourself using the labs listed in Resources.) With more information on the pattern of your cortisol levels, you’ll know the best option for treatment—i.e., if your cortisol is too high at night, you need methods to wind down and lower your cortisol, and if your cortisol is too low in the morning, you may need to do more stimulating exercise, such as jogging or a dance class.
Notes from Hormone Resetters
“I used to enjoy swimming and I haven’t done it in over a year. For some reason I gravitated back to it this week…. It’s like natural caffeine. Nothing wakes you up like jumping into a cold pool! It also just feels very meditative, nurturing, and gentle on my body.” —Holly
“I have been ignoring my coworkers’ resistance to my giving up coffee. We’re a coffee-fueled org, and I think my choice is a threat to some folks. I just keep saying, ‘It feels right for me right now. I’m not sure what I’ll do long-term.’ Sticking to my guns!” —Ashley
“I wasn’t too excited to get rid of my coffee and wine … but wow, I’ve learned so much and feel good. And the bonus: losing 20 pounds. Yup, 20!” —Renee
“I am off caffeine and sleeping better, waking up feeling rested without that feeling of ‘I need coffee.’ This REAL energy is so much better than any caffeine fix! I have not had any sugar and don’t even want it! I am working on no snacking between meals, which has been kind of hard since I don’t really eat large meals when I do eat. I have lost several pounds, and I just feel happy inside!” —Vivian
Final Word
I have found that feeling chronically stressed is one of the greatest obstacles to weight loss. Yet most of my patients feel chronically stressed. No wonder they have trouble losing weight! Learning how to de-stress is crucial to reaching your weight-loss goals and being able to dump the caffeine.
Stress is in the eye of the beholder. You might think stress is based on external factors, but it’s your internal response to the external stressors that matters most. The good news is that this inside job creates an exciting opportunity to navigate your response to external factors—that is, your internal landscape is under your control.
I know a woman who has learned a mantra from a teacher informed by Christian and Eastern traditions: I give up my desire for esteem and affection, for power and control, for security and survival. Now, that’s letting go of the need to react to your emotional buttons.
We all have stressors we can’t control. But you are creating the emotional distress that accompanies chronic stress. Women are wired to take on others’ needs. But I want you to focus on actively de-stressing by not just getting off caffeine but also owning your role in stress, establishing boundaries on what you can reasonably accomplish within your current bandwidth, and applying proven strategies to improve your sleep and reduce your stress load. Detoxifying your food and drink won’t have the full impact if you continue to keep your mind and spirit toxic with your thoughts and emotions. We all need to address the mental, emotional, and psychological toxins in addition to meat, sugar, and caffeine. Getting off coffee is a big step, but you also need to make a point each day to de-stress and reset your cortisol levels. Your body will reward you by repairing your metabolism and losing stubborn fat. I can feel your commitment! And if that commitment wanes, act “as if” and I promise it will become a habit. Amen!
