Can "Energy Drinks" Actually Improve Your Strength, Endurance, and Energy Levels... Or is it All in Your Mind?

Plus an important lesson on how to help your mind control your exercise and diet results

by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist
author - The Truth About Six Pack Abs

You may have noticed from a lot of my posts that I speak a lot about the power of your mind and how this controls the results you get in your body.
This is yet another example of the power of the placebo effect, and probably the only reason anybody gets any results whatsoever from typical supplements (I'm talking more about bogus "miracle" diet pill supplements rather than legitimate whole food or herbal supplements).
I recently read about an interesting study regarding energy drinks and whether they actually give any results (sorry, I don't have the exact citation or the exact numbers involved), but here was the general details of the study...
The researchers split the group into 2 large groups of people.  The first group they gave one of these typical "energy drinks" that you see everywhere (which I've mentioned before are a complete waste).
Now here's the important part... the researchers specifically told this 1st group of people that the energy drink they were receiving would increase their strength and endurance levels and increase their energy output.
The 2nd group received the exact same "energy drink" but was not told what the drink was, so nothing was said about it improving anything. For all these people knew, they were just being given a drink because they were thirsty.  They were not told that this drink was an "energy drink".
The very interesting results:
The 1st group, which was told that the energy drink would improve their strength and endurance, actually DID increase their strength outputs and endurance tests.
However, the 2nd group, which received the EXACT SAME "energy drink" was NOT TOLD that it would help anything, and therefore, they showed no measurable signs of improvement on any of the tests!
Wow... yet another powerful example of how it's ALL IN YOUR MIND! 
Energy drinks don't really help with anything, but if you strongly believe in your mind that something you are doing will improve your results, it really CAN help your results.  This is the placebo effect at its best!
One way that this phenomenon can be applied to your nutrition and workouts:
1. When you're performing certain exercises, you need to really strongly BELIEVE IN YOUR MIND that those exercises are transforming your body... in return, that strong belief will improve your results in the gym MUCH more than just mindlessly going through the exercises.
2. When you are eating healthy food, you need to really strongly believe and think about how much that food is making you leaner, stronger, and giving you more energy. If you believe strongly how much that food is helping you, it WILL help you much more than if you didn't think positively about what you were eating.

This is very powerful stuff!  Your brain really CAN control your fitness results or lack of results.

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