Whether you get up at 4 or 8, feeling refreshed or drained...we all start our days in the same way, with a cup of fresh morning brewed coffee.
Have you ever wondered what would happen to your body if you didn’t have that coffee... or perhaps what would happen if you had 3 of those coffees...
The question I will be answering in today's video is: HOW does coffee affect your weight AND WHAT can you do to improve your weight loss results?
Coffee is awesome! ADULTS especially seem to love it! My clients often ask me whether drinking coffee can hurt your weight...so let's look into that!
Coffee can be your superpower, but with great power comes great responsibility!
Coffee can boost your metabolism, suppress your appetite, enhance your exercise performance AND keep you awake for insane periods!
Stefan, this sounds awesome! so where’s the catch?
Good question! To understand the full importance of responsible coffee drinking, let's dive into how coffee affects the physiology of our bodies.
The caffeine found in coffee is a stimulant, thus - it stimulates your metabolic wheel to turn faster.
however, according to recent studies, you would need to consume approximately 7 cups of coffee to effectively increase your metabolic rate.
They say you can expect a boost of 13%... now that is significant... so we should consider it a weight loss tool!
But remember...As I said caffeine is a stimulant,
so not only does it increase your metabolic rate but it also stimulates a fight or flight response in the body
which means your body will increase the release of adrenalin and stimulate your sympathetic nervous system...
in simple terms- if you're not running away from a loin trying to eat you all of these bottled-up hormones will make you feel anxious and jittery. So keep that in mind!
I recommend 3-5 cups per day ( This includes black tea)
Coffee can also be great to keep your hunger at bay. The way Coffee suppresses your appetite is by suppressing the release of a hormone called ghrelin. This is a hormone released by your gut and it acts on the satiety center in your brain. So if there is less of this hormone, you won’t feel as hungry. its effects however only last a short while and often leads to a total craving control crash and are usually followed by a binge eating episode. So it's important to not replace your meals with only a coffee.
you have probably noticed by now that I haven’t mentioned whether it is better to drink coffee with or without milk... and whether is it that bad to add a teaspoon of sugar to your coffee...
to understand the reasoning behind what I'm about to say- let's do a quick calculation.
I’m sure you’ve heard this term before “calories in calories out” you have to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. Meaning- you have to consume less energy in a day than your body needs to force it to use stored energy to perform daily functions” and that’s how you lose weight.
so the average female weighing 70kg needs around 1500 calories per day To maintain weight.
One cup of coffee contains 2 calories... meaning coffee by itself doesn’t seem to be a threat to weightless at all.. thus far..it even seems like a good idea to drink a few cups of coffee for weight loss purposes (wink) ... but now you add some milk...100ml = 70calories...that makes a bit of a dent. so do that 5 times a day... that’s 350 calories without even eating anything yet... so let's say you add a teaspoon of sugar with every cup...That's another 100 calories ... meaning that 1/3 of your daily energy intake just came from a few cups of coffee...
if you’ve ever counted calories, you will know that the 1000 calories you theoretically have left, really aren’t a lot and the odds are that by the time you have dinner you won’t be eating much... This will be the reason for feeling hungry when you go to bed and overall could lead to bad dietary habits and even worse relationships with food to develop.
So if you drink coffee it would defiantly be best to drink black coffee without sugar, adding a sweetener is okay, although I don’t recommend you overdo it with that either- the science isn’t conclusive on this yet but moderation is key.
at the beginning of this video, I mentioned that coffee can be a great exercise performance enhancer
Seeing that caffeine releases adrenalin, it makes a great pre-workout drink-
this means you can push a little harder during a workout which would in theory help you burn more energy in your session
and subsequently could lead to an increased calorie deficit which will give you greater weight loss results...
however, you should remember that with that whole fight or flight response comes another hormone called cortisol, our primary stress hormone.
This hormone is most often chronically elevated in people who suffer from depression and therefore you should steer clear from excess caffeine intake if you are a person who often finds yourself feeling anxious or depressed.
The reward is just not worth the risk.
it's important that we also have a look at how coffee affects sleep. if you think that coffee doesn’t impact your ability to fall asleep and you are one of those people who say “I can drink a cup of coffee and go right to bed” You must know that falling asleep, and optimally sleeping are two different things.
as the day goes by your body produces a hormone called adenosine, the amount of this hormone increases as the day goes by, and more and more of it binds to adenosine receptors.
This is what makes you feel sleepy... where coffee comes into play is that the caffeine molecules sneak up on these adenosine receptors and bind to them, basically inhibiting the adenosine molecules from telling your body you are tired. This appears great for most of us because this means we can push the body a little harder after we had coffee. and this doesn’t generally negatively affect our weight
however
coffee can impact sleep patterns- studies have shown that people who drink coffee within 3 hours of going to bed take approximately 45 minutes longer to enter a state of deep sleep (REM sleep) which is a sleeping state you want to be in to optimally recover. poor sleep efficiency often leads to a decrease in the ability to control your cravings during the day and increased stimulation from your apatite centre to eat- the body often tries to compensate for a lack of energy during the day by wanting more food.
So after hearing all of this -the question remains- should you or should you not drink coffee...
from all of my experience with clients and based on all the science I’ve read out there, the best is to drink approximately 3 cups of black coffee per day, DON'T drinks coffee to tattoo at night, DO drink a coffee before your workout, and remember that at the end of the day, it's all about total daily energy intake and energy expenditure.
So make sure you exercise often, and don't over consume!
