INeedCoffee INeedCoffee monthly Caffeination Information
 
 

Home / Health /

Coffee and Dieting

by Michael Allen Smith

Page 1 | Page 2

NOTE: The intended audience for this article is the average coffee drinker who happens to be overweight. This is not intended as medical advice. This article is not geared toward athletes who are already lean and are trying to further reduce bodyfat levels. The author is a fitness-conscious coffee drinker -- not a doctor, nutritionist or dietary expert. Specific dieting questions should be directed at health professionals, not the author.

When it comes to losing fat there are many diets to choose from. There are thousands of diets that combine food choices in such a way to reduce caloric intake and cause fat loss. Most diets work, however not every diet works for every person. One of the goals of dieting is to find a diet that you can follow. Hopefully, you'll find a lifestyle diet that will be easy to stick to once the excess fat is gone. Picking a diet that restricts you too much will be difficult to follow and will increase your chances of failure.

Here at INeedCoffee we believe that any diet without coffee is going to be a miserable disaster. I'd rather be 20 pounds overweight sipping on a hot mug of freshly roasted coffee than lean with only memories of coffees consumed long ago. With that said, I decided to seek out a diet that puts coffee first. To my knowledge none exist. It is then our duty to create a diet or modify an existing diet so we coffee drinkers can lose the fat and not abandon our favorite beverage. Although we strive to drink coffee in our diets, coffee by itself shouldn't be the basis of that diet. Most of our energy should still come from food.

Caffeine as a Fat-Loss Supplement

In addition to coffee's role in the most popular diets, let's briefly address how caffeine by itself can be used to lose fat. There are many fat loss supplements at the nutrition store where the primary ingredient is caffeine. Supplements with names such as Metabolife, Ripped Fuel, and Beta Lean HP all use a combination of caffeine and ephedra (Ma Huang). This combination has been effective at promoting fat loss while preserving muscle. Although there are some critics of ephedra-based supplements regarding safety, this article isn't going to go into that debate. For more information on this topic read Muscle Growth and Fat Loss by Stimulating the ß-Agonist System - The Role of Ephedrine, Caffeine, and Aspirin by Michael C. Prevost Ph.D.

The Role of Coffee in Other Diets

Before we build or modify our own diet let's divide the major diets into 4 groups and examine how they feel about coffee. There are other diets and there are diets that fit into multiple categories. This overview is not meant to be complete and is only intended to serve as a starting point to building a coffee-friendly diet.

  1. Low-Fat/High-Carb Diet
  2. Isocaloric Diet
  3. Low-Carb Diet
  4. Macrobiotic/Holistic

The low-fat/high-carb diet includes the Pritkin Diet, Dean Orish's diet, and countless others. Because coffee is fat-free, this diet is the most coffee friendly. However one of the reasons fat-free diets sometimes fail is the belief that removing the fat makes one immune to excess calories. A mocha made with fat-free milk may be without fat, but it is loaded with sugars and is calorically dense. If you like the sweeter coffee choices, be aware that although the drink may be fat-free you can jeopardize your diet with too many empty calories.

By far the most popular isocaloric diet is The Zone. An isocaloric diet is one where the calories from fat, protein and carbs are equal or close to equal. In the case of The Zone that ratio is 40-30-30 (40% carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat). Isocaloric diets pay very close attention to the quality of carbohydrates. One of the key elements of this diet to avoid sugars. A simplistic overview is that by avoiding sugars the body can become more effective at burning stored body fat. But does Dr. Sears like coffee? No. Caffeine even in absense of calories can affect blood sugar. More on this later.

The low-carb diet made famous by Dr. Atkins restricts carbohydrate intake to the point where the body goes into a state known as ketosis. In the absense of carbs the body becomes very efficent at burning fat. Like the Zone diet, this diet is concerned with blood sugar and insulin levels; therefore, coffee is forbidden.

The last group is the Macrobiotic and Holistic diets. These diets deal with food combining, and Chinese medicines/enzyme therapy. You may be be able to guess how these diets feel about coffee. They don't like caffeine because it is an aggressive stimulant. Often, they recommend ginseng tea or grain coffee as a substitute for real coffee. No thanks.

Coffee and Insulin

Both The Zone and Dr. Atkins frown on coffee because it can negatively affect blood sugar, which will affect the body's ability to burn fat. How can a zero calorie beverage affect blood sugar? According to the Canadian Diabetes Association: Drinking caffeine in large amounts as coffee over a short period of time has been shown to raise blood sugar. Caffeine does this by enhancing the effect of two hormones (adrenaline and glucagon). These two hormones release stored sugar from the liver resulting in high blood sugar. And what happens when blood sugar levels are increased? From the Running Planet article The Glycemic Index – How to use it to Increase Your Energy And Lose Weight: This results in large amounts of insulin being dumped into your blood stream. Remember that the job of insulin is to regulate your blood sugar. It needs to do something with the excess glucose (sugar). The easiest thing for insulin to do with it is to store it in your body as fat. Simply put: coffee can affect your blood sugar which could interfere with the body's ability to burn fat.

These fears of coffee may be over-stated. Even though the authors of these 2 diets do not favor coffee, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that either of these diets can be successful despite the continued consumption of coffee. And there is some non-ancedotal research, which indicates that exercise helps stabilize blood sugar after ingesting caffeine. Our goal, as defined above, is to get lean while continuing to enjoy coffee. So let's address the problems coffee could pose to a diet, and find a solution.

Page 1 | Page 2