Coffee Diet

– Can You Really Lose Weight With Coffee? –

Coffee is amazing in many regards.

There is a good reason why many of us love the empowering dark liquid so much.

In fact, coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world. It not only tastes delicious in all of its various coffee drink creations.

The energizing drink also comes with a lot of great health benefits. Many people even say that it makes them happier and live longer.

But, have you ever heard of the coffee diet already?

Maybe you are wondering, if this is actually something real and if it does work. Indeed, the coffee diet is a relatively new diet plan. But, it is becoming more and more popular these days.

In general, you are supposed to be drinking several cups of coffee per day. At the same time, you are also restricting your calorie intake.

Some people are strong believers and supporters when it comes to the coffee diet. Indeed, several reports are showing successful weight loss, at least in the short term.

However, other critical voices are rather pointing out concerns. And, they emphasize significant downsides of the coffee diet.

Here is everything you need to know about the coffee diet.

Throughout this article, we will both highlight its potential benefits and concerning downsides. And, we will try to answer the question whether the coffee diet is healthy or not.

Coffee Diet – What is it?

There are many different opinions, which person or event made the term ‘coffee diet’ and its concept well-known, first.

Typically, people credit Dr. Bob Arnot as one of the founders of the coffee diet. Through his book, “The Coffee Lover’s Diet”, he surely made the coffee diet more popular.

Especially coffee enthusiasts but also regular people looking for a suitable diet plan became interested to learn more.

For example, in his book, Dr. Arnot suggests that drinking coffee can boost our metabolism.

This is if we are consuming it several times a day. As a result, we can burn more fat, block calorie absorption and reduce our feeling of appetite, according to Dr. Arnot.

After specifically studying the people living on the small Greek island of Icaria, he was inspired to write his book. Because many elderly and healthy people are living there.

It is Dr. Arnot’s belief that these people are so healthy and have such a long life, due to their high intake of coffee.

Because, the energizing beverage is very beneficial in various regards. For example, coffee is particularly rich in antioxidants.

How Does the Coffee Diet Work?

Typically, you are advised to drink a minimum of 3 cups (720 ml) of light-roasted coffee per day.

Overall, there are different roast levels when we are talking about roasting coffee. And, lighter roasts commonly tend to be richer in polyphenol antioxidants, compared to darker roasts.

Furthermore, Dr. Arnot also suggests a particular type of coffee. Ideally, you are choosing and brewing this one then.

He highlights the importance of lightly-roasted, whole bean coffee. Moreover, you could grind it at home and prepare it yourself by using filtered water.

When you are on the diet, you can actually consume as much coffee as you want. It does not even matter, if it is decaffeinated coffee or caffeinated one.

All you need to make sure of is reaching at least your 3-cup (720 ml) minimum per day. However, you should not use any extra additives such as sugar or cream.

Plus, you are recommended to replace one daily meal with a homemade, high-fiber, green smoothie.

And, any of your other meals and snacks should rather be low in calories. But, they are ideally rich in fiber from whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

In addition, Dr. Arnot also recommends avoiding highly processed foods. For example, these include frozen meals and refined snack foods.

Moreover, he showcases sample meal plans. Usually, these meal plans only contain around 1.500 calories per day. This is commonly much fewer calories than a regular person consumes.

Overall, there are quite a few people that reported successfully losing weight with this diet plan.

But, this may also mostly be due to the low and strict calorie intake.

Furthermore, you can also find studies suggesting evidence that coffee may support weight loss.

What are the Potential Benefits?

As mentioned already, coffee naturally comes with a lot of great health benefits.

But, what the beverage is most known for is that it’s rich in caffeine and antioxidants, called polyphenols.

Here are some of several health benefits, which polyphenols can provide us with. For example, they may decrease inflammation and free radical damage.

On top, health experts associate coffee with being able to boost weight loss.

In particular, coffee seems to help decreasing our appetite. And, it can generally help increasing our metabolism.

Let’s have a closer look at these two key points.

Feeling Less Hungry

The coffee diet may actively decrease our appetite.

According to Dr. Arnot, coffee has the ability to suppress our feeling of being hungry. As a result, it can assumingly help us reducing our daily calorie intake.

Furthermore, there is also some research indicating that this assumption may be accurate to some extent. In specific, drinking a cup of coffee right before your meal may decrease the amount of how much you will be eating.

However, coffee will have no such effect, if you are already drinking it 3 to 4 hours before having a meal.

Additionally, some health experts conducted a study in 33 people. These participants were either overweight. Or, they also had normal weight.

The findings showed that drinking coffee lowered the calorie intake in those who were particularly overweight.

Throughout the course of 3 sessions in the study, each participant received a breakfast. Alongside, they were either served normal water, regular coffee, or coffee with half caffeine.

Quite interestingly, those overweight people who drank 6 ounces (200 ml) of coffee, consumed significantly fewer calories afterward. This is compared to other participants, who were drinking normal water or coffee with half the amount of caffeine.

However, not every study shows the same results and supports these findings.

Another research study in 12 people showed no differences when it came to their calorie intake or general appetite.

It didn’t matter, if these people either drank caffeinated coffee, or decaf coffee, or some type of placebo beverage before having their meal.

So, in summary, we can maybe assume that caffeinated coffee may help decreasing the calorie intake for some people. But, not everyone seems to get the same results.

Overall, more research is needed in order to get a clearer answer.

Fat Burning

Especially caffeinated coffee can increase the number of calories and amount of fat we are burning. This can then make it easier for us to lose weight.

For instance, one study case included more than 600 people regularly consuming caffeine.

The researchers found that an increased caffeine intake can be linked to decreased weight, body mass index (BMI), and fat mass.

In fact, when the participating people doubled their caffeine intake, their weight, BMI and fat mass was reduced between 17 and 28%.

Additional studies showed that also caffeinated supplements caused participants to burn significantly more fat.

Plus, coffee may also help us boosting the amount of fat we are burning from working out.

Several studies support this assumption. Namely, that people who drank coffee burned more fat than others who were only drinking water.

However, the majority of this research is quite outdated already.

Most of the research on coffee and metabolism was already done around 20 to 30 years ago.

More comprehensive and recent research is needed in order to fully understand how coffee may affect our weight control.

Overall, and when further investigating some stronger claims made by Dr. Arnot, there is actually still too little evidence. It is still problematic to support some of his findings with full confidence.

What are the Potential Downsides of Coffee Diet?

As we mentioned already, coffee can provide us with many great benefits.

For example, the beverage contains quite high amounts of healthy antioxidants. This may help us to better control our appetite and increase our metabolism.

However, there are also several potential concerns or downsides of the coffee diet. We should discuss these as well.

Overconsumption of Caffeine

What happens when people excessively consume caffeine? How much caffeine is actually too much?

Are there any potential health concerns or withdrawal side effects we need to be aware of?

Actually, decaffeinated coffee can also be used as option for the coffee diet. However, most people prefer to go with caffeinated coffee.

This also has to do with the metabolic attributes of coffee that are linked to its ingredient, caffeine.

But, health experts warn that excessive consumption of caffeine can lead to several health risks. For example, one of these potential health problems is high blood pressure.

Indeed, one particular study analyzed the association between coffee and blood pressure. More than 1.100 people with high blood pressure were participating.

Apparently, those people who consumed more than 3 cups of coffee per day had a higher blood pressure. This is compared to the people, who were drinking less.

Additionally, caffeine is also a diuretic.

This means that it may cause you to excrete more fluid through urine. In other words, you are likely to go to the restroom more often.

Furthermore, health experts also link excessive overconsumption of caffeine to heart attacks, headaches and restlessness.

Plus, it can potentially lead to increased risks of bone fractures, osteoporosis and even depression. But these health risks are rather rare. They only occur in quite extreme circumstances.

In summary, an overuse of caffeine intake can be harmful. But, if you are consuming around 400 mg of caffeine per day, it is generally considered to be safe.

Your Lost Weight Might Come Back Quickly

When choosing the coffee diet, to regain your initially lost weight is quite likely.

If you are drastically reducing your calorie intake to maybe around 1.500 calories per day on the coffee diet, your body will go through a number of changes.

And, due to these changes and drastic calorie restriction, you may regain the weight in many cases.

In general, our body will always adapt to the number of calories that we usually consume.

So, if we drastically change and decrease our calorie intake significantly, our body will react to it and find a solution. This typically happens by slowing down our metabolism and reducing the number of calories our body is burning from then on.

On top, it can also lead to hormonal changes, due to the sudden calorie restriction. As a result, your overall appetite for food can actually increase.

Naturally, our body has a very useful hormone, called Leptin.

Basically, this hormone promotes a feeling of fullness. And, it sends signals to our brain telling us to stop eating.

However, when we are on a low-calorie diet, our Leptin levels can significantly decrease in our body. This may also be the case with the coffee diet. Thus, we may regain all of our lost weight again.

Indeed, several studies support these findings.

Some research suggests that around 80% of people, who initially lost weight on a low-calorie diet can eventually regain some weight in their first month off the diet.

After 5 years of ending their diet, almost all people will have regained their original weight again.

So, this actually means that we should always stay active in a healthy way.

Coffee Diet and its Long-Term Effects

On average, people seem to typically follow the coffee for about 2 to 7 weeks.

Keeping this in mind, it is important to mention that the coffee diet may be unsafe in the long run. There are several reasons for it.

Firstly, drinking large amounts of coffee on a regular basis can lead to excessive caffeine consumption in general. And, this may cause several health risk and side effects. For example, these may include insomnia and depression.

Secondly, the coffee diet is essentially a low-calorie diet. This may make it quite hard and challenging to successfully lose weight and also keeping it off.

As of now, there are no real long-term studies on the coffee diet yet. Especially, when it comes to reassuring the safety and effectiveness of this type of diet.

So, these reasons and circumstances should rather make you doubt and reconsider to follow the coffee diet over the long term.

Is The Coffee Diet Healthy?

Overall, we can actually come to the following conclusion. The coffee diet is not necessarily an ideal and effective weight loss plan.

As we just pointed out, the diet plan suggests to follow a more or less unlimited coffee intake. And, this may lead to excessive overconsumption of caffeine.

Plus, the coffee diet recommends a quite important calorie restriction plan for success. However, you may eventually regain the weight again, that you initially might have lost.

Commonly, there are actually many other great and maybe even easier ways to lose weight.

Basically, all you need to do is properly increasing your fiber and protein intake. At the same time, you should reduce the amount of refined sugar you are consuming.

In fact, there are many great natural sugar substitutes for you to try out there. Plus, there are also many good ways to make your coffee healthier as well.

Lastly, exercising regularly and having plenty of good sleep will surely always help you to lose weight.

And, you should find a diet plan that fits you and your personal needs. Because that’s also making it easier for you to continue it for a long time.

The Bottom Line – Coffee Diet

In general, the coffee diet suggests drinking at least 3 cups of coffee per day. And, you are to follow a rather strict calorie intake.

Yes, there may be positive short-term results for weight loss. However, it doesn’t seem a healthy diet plan in the long run.

You will have a high risk of weight regain. Plus, you are consuming high amounts of caffeine. And, this may cause certain side effects.

Nonetheless, this should not discourage you from drinking and enjoying coffee overall.

Because, if you are drinking around 4 cups of caffeinated coffee a day. It is more than safe and actually very healthy.

In fact, this fascinating and energizing beverage provides us with a lot of great health benefits. And, many coffee lovers even claim that it makes them happier and live longer.

For any real success with a healthy and safe weight loss plan, you should maybe better avoid restrictive programs. Alternatively, you can try more sustainable diet plans.

So, how about you?

Have you maybe tried the coffee diet already? Or, are you considering to give it a go? What are your thoughts, comments and ideas on this subject?

Would you rather approve or not recommend the coffee diet?

Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with us.

Until then, stay safe, healthy and properly caffeinated.

Cheers!