Lose Weight with Coffee

– Does Coffee Help Burning Fat? –

Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world.

You can literally find and drink the empowering dark liquid on every street corner you may go.

Our own created coffee universe provides us with a great variety of different coffee drinks we can try, enjoy and choose from.

But besides the coffee bean (internal link) itself and all of its fantastic flavors it can eventually produce, there is so much more to coffee (internal link) these days.

Health experts and their research are increasingly trying to explore and find out more about the many great health benefits the energizing drink is able to offer us.

In fact, some coffee enthusiasts even say that it makes them happier and live longer.

But what about a coffee diet?

Is it really possible to lose weight with coffee? Can coffee increase our metabolism and help us burn fat?

One big key factor in this discussion is obviously one of the main ingredients of coffee, namely caffeine.

By far, caffeine is the most regularly consumed psychoactive substance worldwide. Besides, many commercial fat-burning supplements use caffeine as ingredient these days. And, this is for a good reason.

Indeed, many health experts associate the stimulant, caffeine, to be one of the few substances that are known to metabolize fat from our fat tissues. Hence, caffeine essentially increases our metabolism.

However, the question still remains for many coffee consumers out there.

Does coffee really help us to lose weight or not?

Here is everything you need to know.

Coffee and its Stimulants

Naturally, coffee comes with a great number of biologically active substances. And, many of those also find their way into the final drink we are consuming.

Here are the ones that can have an effect on our metabolism.

• Caffeine – This is by far the main and most important stimulant in coffee.
• Chlorogenic Acid – The acid is another main biologically active compounds that coffee contains. Health experts link to the ability of slowing down the absorption of carbs.
• Theobromine – Naturally, this is the main stimulant in cocoa. However, you can also find it in coffee in smaller amounts.
• Theophylline – Again, you can find this stimulant in both cocoa and coffee. Health experts are already using it to treat asthma.

As already mentioned, the most important of these substances is caffeine. Health experts claim the stimulant to be very potent. And, they have also studied its effects on our body the most.

In essence, caffeine is capable of blocking the inhibitory neurotransmitter called adenosine.

As a result, caffeine allows the increase of firing neurons. Eventually, this leads to an increased release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine.

Overall and due to this, we feel more energized and awake.

Hence, we can assume that coffee makes us help staying active. Even at times, when we should maybe feel tired already.

Indeed, studies show that caffeine may improve our exercise performance by up to 12%.

So, is it true after all? Can we lose weight with coffee then?

Coffee and our Fat Tissues

Let’s find out, if coffee can essentially help mobilizing fat from fat tissues.

Firstly, caffeine does actively stimulate our nervous system. As a result, our nervous system will send direct signals to our fat cells. Basically, it is ordering them to break down fat.

Secondly, this eventually happens by increasing our blood levels of the hormone epinephrine.

Commonly, people also know epinephrine as adrenaline. The hormone is traveling through our blood and will reach our fat tissues.

Then, the adrenaline will signal these fat tissues to break down. As a result, the broken down fat tissues are being released into our blood.

However, this reaction alone does not eventually help us losing fat.

Something else needs to happen as well. Overall, we need to burn more calories than we are consuming through our diet on a regular basis.

Health experts would describe this condition or life progress as a negative energy balance.

As we all probably know, there are two ways we can reach a negative energy balance throughout our own personal lifestyle. And, this would either be eating less or doing more exercise.

In addition, there are supportive fat-burning supplements we can choose to use as well. Usually, these supplements will also contain caffeine.

Hence, caffeine and therefore also coffee seems to speeding up our metabolism.

Let’s further highlight how we may lose weight with coffee in particular then.

Coffee and our Metabolic Rate

At first, we should maybe clarify what the metabolic rate is.

Because, many health experts suggest that coffee is essentially able to increase our metabolic rate. In short, it is the rate at which we are burning calories when resting. Technically, it is called resting metabolic rate (RMR).

Furthermore, the higher your metabolic rate is getting, the easier it will become for you to eventually lose weight.

Plus, this also means that you can usually eat more without having concerns about gaining extra weight.

A number of studies show that caffeine in particular can increase our RMR rate by 3 to 11%. And, the more caffeine you may consume, the more significant these effects may become.

So, we can lose weight with coffee after all.

Moreover, the majority of the increase in our metabolism will be cause by especially increased fat burning.

However, any of these weight loss effects unfortunately seem to less significant regarding people who are overweight.

Interestingly, one study showed the difference of effects in lean and obese quite clearly.

While caffeine was able to increase fat burning by as much as 29% in lean people, it was only around 10% in obese participants.

Additionally, our individual age also seems to play quite a significant role. Overall, these effects seem to decrease when getting older. And, they are therefore greater in our younger years.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that we cannot or should not stay active whatsoever.

No matter our physical condition and age we are in, staying active will always help us burning fat more efficiently.

As a result, we will be much healthier. And, this will make us feel more satisfied, mentally and physically.

How About the Long-Term Effects?

Let’s have a look at the relationship between coffee and weight loss. And especially, how this connection and its effects plays out in the long run.

However, it is important to keep one thing in mind.

Usually, the more caffeine we consume on a regular basis, we will eventually become more tolerant to the caffeine effects over time.

Yes, in a short time period, caffeine can surely boost our metabolic rate. As we found out, this will then result into fat burning.

But, these effects may diminish or even stop working after a while. Because, very frequent caffeine consumers are become more tolerant to the effects.

However, this does not automatically mean that there would be no benefits at all anymore.

Even if we would not lose more calories through our coffee consumption at some point anymore. It may still help us having less appetite and feeling hungry in the first place.

Of course, this effect alone can still help us eating less and essentially lose weight with coffee.

In fact, studies show that caffeine may indeed reduce our feeling of appetite. But, the effect seems to stronger and more significant in men than in women.

However, there are also other studies reporting no effects for men.

Where does this leaves us to find an answer?

Generally, it seems that coffee and caffeine can help with weight loss in the long term, too. But, this may individually depend on each one of us.

In summary, more research about any long-term benefits and effects regarding caffeine and weight loss still has to be done.

There is still too little evidence to give a definite answer, yet.

Lose Weight with Coffee Diet

So, by now we know that coffee is certainly capable of boosting our metabolism and cardiovascular function. This also causes some weight loss, at least in the short term.

But, is that enough to speak a possible coffee diet recommendable to people already?

Yes and no.

Only drinking huge amounts of coffee will not be enough for a successful and healthy diet.

Therefore, in addition to drinking possibly around three cups of black coffee a day. You should simultaneously also cut down your daily calorie consumption as well.

Ideally, your daily calorie intake should lay between 1.500 and 2.000 per day.

And, those ‘healthier’ calories should come from lean proteins, unrefined grains and a whole bunch of various fruits and vegetables.

In summary, we can lose weight with coffee while eating healthy and ideally staying physically active the same time. There has to be a healthy balance between all of these key components.

Additionally, it would be important to know the following. What would be a health amount of coffee to drink to lose weight and in general?

Typically and on average, health experts recommend that your daily caffeine intake should be around 400 mg.

Roughly, this equals for cups of regular coffee.

And lastly, if you order a ‘double mocha latte macchiato with cream’ on top, then you will certainly also not lose weight with coffee.

Coffee naturally comes with a lot of great health benefits. And, the beverage can also help with weight loss.

But many people use too much sugar, cream or even milk for their daily coffee. This will certainly not help their waistline.

If you are interested, here a few great milk alternatives and also natural sugar substitutes for you to try.

Final Thoughts – Lose Weight with Coffee

So, can we lose weight with coffee?

Firstly, if drinking coffee already motivates you and gives you more energy to get and exercise. Then, coffee is certainly already worth using and good for your diet.

Secondly, if you can even manage to cut down on black coffee with only little creamy or sugary additions. Again, this will surely help.

Thirdly, yes, coffee and its caffeine can boost our metabolism, which eventually leads to weight loss in the short term.

However, these rather immediate effects seem to get lesser and lesser for very regular and long-term coffee drinkers. Because, their tolerance will eventually adapt.

Fourthly, it also depends on our very own individual preferences, caffeine sensitivity, as well as physical preconditions.

Overall, if you are really interested in losing weight with coffee. Then you should possibly try to kind of cycle your coffee drinking habits.

This way your body and tolerance will hardly get used to it and the weight loss effects may last longer.

Nonetheless, there are many other great ways and probably also more efficient strategies to lose weight. And, coffee has so much more to offer than just being there for a potential coffee diet.

In fact, there are plenty of other good reasons to enjoy coffee every day.

So, how about you?

Do you think it is possible to lose weight with coffee? Have you maybe tried it already? What were the results? And, what would be your ideas and recommendations in general?

Feel free to share your experiences.

Until then, stay safe, healthy and properly caffeinated.

Cheers!