Although it is luring to hit the snooze button and remain in bed for a few more minutes, it is often said that the first 5 minutes of your morning determine how you spend the remaining time of your day.
Thus, the ideal recipe for a perfectly productive day starts with a wonderful, motivating morning routine (you can check out our life-changing healthy morning routine here). And what better way to energize your system than a sip of hot aromatic coffee?
However, we often hear that drinking lemon water in the morning is more preferable for countless reasons, including its ability to help people lose weight and to boost their energy. Who wouldn’t want to lose weight while waking up? Sure, lemon water sounds fantastic, but what if coffee can also aid us to lose weight? Is coffee for weight loss a real deal? If it can, which type of coffee serves this purpose best? How much should one drink per day and when? Furthermore, can coffee have other essential benefits? Does it have harmful side effects? These are all questions about weight loss coffee this article aims to solve. So, without further ado, let’s dig right in!
Is Weight Loss Coffee Real?
While most people associate coffee with energy and productivity, some people also drink coffee because it is believed to help in weight loss. Caffeine is the most important ingredient in coffee and is a popular psychoactive substance. It can help you mobilize fats from your fat tissues and thereby increase your metabolism. It is because of this reason that people associate coffee with weight loss and believe in weight loss coffee benefits.
Caffeine raises the blood levels of your adrenaline hormones. These hormones travel through your blood to the fat tissues signalling them to break down your body fat. This promotes the release of fatty acids, which help in reducing weight.
What is the Coffee Diet?
The coffee diet originated with Dr. Bob Arnot’s book, The Coffee lover’s Diet: Change your Coffee, Change your Life, where he explains the health benefits of coffee and talks about the right kind and balance of coffee consumption. He mentions that coffee holds numerous benefits like mood improvement, higher energy levels, faster metabolism, and weight loss.
He was inspired to write this book after studying the healthy impact of coffee consumption on the people living on a small Greek island of Ikaria. The island boosted a large population of healthy elderly people who had a high intake of antioxidant-rich coffee.
He mentions how certain types of coffee (like a light roast) and the quality of your beans have an impact on your health. He places special importance on the part of choosing and brewing your coffee. He recommends a light-roasted whole-bean coffee that can be easily grinded at home and prepared using filtered water.
Further, he thinks of the coffee diet as a strong replacement of a meal with high-fiber coffee smoothies. He has also suggested some popular smoothie recipes in the book. He suggests that the coffee diet should be supplemented with other food items that are low in calories and rich in fiber. His sample meal plans contain about 1500 calories a day. He also asks his readers to avoid processed foods and frozen meals and switch to whole foods.
As coffee aids in weight loss, this coffee diet has shown weight loss success in some users because of the calorie restrictions involved.
Coffee for Weight Loss: The Truth
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In his book, The Coffee lover’s Diet, Dr. Bob Arnot claims that drinking coffee multiple times a day can boost your metabolism, reduce your appetite, and aid in the easy burning of fat. Hence, it is advisable to drink coffee for weight loss.
Caffeine is also found in medications used for weight loss, and sometimes you are advised by your dietician to drink coffee in your snack. Why? Because many theories have proven that caffeine can:
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Suppress your Appetite: Caffeine can make you feel full for longer. Thus, decreasing feelings of hunger or desires to eat more.
- Burn Calories: Caffeine invigorates thermogenesis. In other words, caffeine boosts your body’s production of brown adipose tissues or fats, which increase your body’s heat production and energy even while you are resting—this aids in burning calories. What is more, coffee stimulates lipid oxidation which breaks down your fatty acids. One study conducted by Harvard’s health researchers in 2020showed that some people actually noticed a 4% decrease in their body fats.
So, the truth is that coffee can indeed be good to lose fat. Weight loss coffee is not a myth but can work wonders with a proper diet.
Is Black Coffee Good for Weight Loss?
Black coffee acts as a catalyst for weight loss. It has zero calories, fats, or cholesterol, and it contains chlorogenic acids that accelerate the process of weight loss. Chlorogenic acids can slow down the production of glucose in the body and thereby aid in weight loss. Black coffee is consumed without milk or cream and does not contain any calorie. Further, it can help in increasing your metabolism and also help you exercise a little harder. We now understand that black coffee is good for weight loss.
Let us also have a look at the numerous other benefits that black coffee holds:
1) It decreases the risks of diabetes
Black coffee helps in controlling diabetes by increasing your body’s insulin production. This is due to the fact that coffee contains a chlorogenic acid that diminishes glucose concentration in the blood. Therefore, reducing and in some cases treating diabetes. Not only that but also it can decrease kidney diseases.
2) It reduces stress, anxiety, and depression
The changing lifestyles and hectic work patterns can sometimes lead to stress and anxiety, which in turn can lead to serious health issues. Consuming black coffee can boost your mood instantly and make you feel positive. It can elevate the nervous system as it stimulates the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline that will remove thoughts of anxiety and depression, thereby increasing your energy and productivity at work.
3) It improves your workout performance
Black coffee has a tremendous impact on your physical performances, especially during your workout session. A recent study showed that drinking 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight can enhance your endurance by 2-3%, as it increases your adrenaline level and mental alertness (find out numerous other ways to improve your mental alertness). By improving your workout performance, black coffee provides a powerful influx of energy in your body and keeps you active for the day. What more, it can decrease breakages in your DNA, making your DNA stronger. As a result, it protects you from tumors and cancer.
4) It cleanses your stomach
Coffee is a diuretic beverage, meaning that it will make you urinate often. This helps in flushing out all the harmful toxins and bacteria from your body and cleaning your stomach. Further, black coffee can also reduce the excess water content in your body and aid in easy weight loss. Too much coffee may dehydrate you, so please make sure to keep yourself hydrated with enough water to balance coffee’s effect.
5) It is a powerhouse of vitamins and antioxidants
Black coffee is a powerhouse of vitamins like B2, B3 and B5, and antioxidants like potassium and magnesium. These help in converting food to energy and makes your skin, muscles, brain, and nerves healthy. Additionally, they are utilized in the creation of hormones, hemoglobin, and pyridoxine, which play vital roles in sleep and appetite orders. It is because of this reason that coffee is an essential ingredient in various health supplements.
6) It makes you age gracefully
Black coffee is usually consumed with sugar that can keep your mind and body young. Mind your sugar intake, and it can help you age gracefully and make you look younger. Black coffee also protects you from Parkinson disease by boosting the dopamine levels in your body. This disease is a brain disorder that may lead to shaking, stiffness, and difficulty in walking, talking as well as coordination. It may also cause sleep problems, depression, difficulty in remembering things, and fatigue. Black coffee (as mentioned above) can treat or reduce the risk of those symptoms.
Thus, black coffee holds immense health benefits and can be associated with preventing numerous chronic diseases and also keeping you energized, recharged, and rejuvenated always.
How much Caffeine per day for weight loss?
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Having known that black coffee is the most suitable type of coffee and that it is extremely instrumental in weight loss as well as in making you healthier and happier, how much coffee should you consume? Well, research says that consuming 400 milligrams of coffee (equivalent to 2-4 cups) is safe for most adults. So, if you are thinking of having coffee for weight loss, this is the amount you need.
You must try to retain your consumption to this quantity to keep a healthy diet. Consuming more coffee than specified can often lead to the following side effects:
- Nervous jitters
- Headache
- Irritation
- Insomnia
- Muscle tremors
- Increased heartbeat
- Increased blood pressure
- Caffeine-ism in which people who drink too much are anxious or agitated until they consume their regular dosage of coffee
Hence, you should drink coffee at the recommended dosage to stay awake, active, and happy in life.
Best time to drink Coffee for weight loss
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Most people enjoy drinking coffee shortly after waking up or on an empty stomach. Coffee seems to be their energy drink, and they find it difficult even to open their eyes without coffee.
If you need coffee to wake you up and have been consuming it that way, you might need to rethink. Contrary to popular belief, coffee should not be consumed on an empty stomach. This is due to the fact that once you are awake, your cortisol is at its peak. Cortisol is a hormone that regulates your metabolism, immune system, and blood pressure. This hormone is at its highest once you wake up and decreases as the day goes on.
Drinking coffee for weight loss when cortisol is high can increase it further, and can damage your immune system over a long period of time. Think of it this way, you are running. When at a normal pace, it is fun and beneficial. But what if a friend challenges you for a race? It is cool to beat them once, twice… However, after several times, pushing yourself harder and harder drains your energy. Smart runners begin the race with a slow pace and then increase their speed as others start to feel tired.
Drinking coffee in the evening is also not the right choice. Coffee is known for its energizing effect, and consuming coffee in the evening will take away your sleep. All efforts for weight loss, concentration, and glow-ups will go in vain if you don’t get enough good-quality sleep at night.
Thus, the best time to drink coffee would be during the mid or late morning, when your cortisol is lower. Drinking coffee at this time can also supply you with the necessary energy needed for your morning workout session and also keep you energized for the day ahead.
Takeaways
To everyone who is on a weight loss spree, weight loss coffee is actually a thing. Drinking coffee is advantageous because it is a catalyst for weight loss, helps you burn calories, work out effectively and control your appetite. But coffee is not the only thing that will help you lose weight, you also need to follow a healthy lifestyle, balanced diet, and regular workout to speed up the process of weight loss.
Additionally, coffee can also protect or treat numerous diseases like type 2 diabetes, kidney diseases, gouts, tumors, and cancer. It contains many vitamins that are essential for your brain, skin, and muscles. It can also help you live a little longer, giving you the chance to cross those wonderful things off your bucket list and make you more productive, healthier, and stronger. Maybe even a bit younger. But most importantly, it will keep your cognitive functions in place and provide a strong boost to your energy, and help you stay sharp and active in life.
References:
9 reasons why (the right amount of) coffee is good for you. Retrieved from: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/9-reasons-why-the-right-amount-of-coffee-is-good-for-you
12 health benefits and 6 disadvantages of coffee- smashing it! Retrieved from: https://blog.warriorcoffee.com/blog/12-health-benefits-and-6-disadvantages-of-coffee-smashing-it
Byungsung, K. (2012). Coffee consumption and stroke risk: A meta-analysis of epidemiologic studies. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3526718/#:~:text=On%20the%20other%20hand%2C%20a,CI%2C%200.74%20to%200.92).