There’s certainly been some buzz around this question: Can coffee help you lose weight?
When enjoyed black, without sugar or sweeteners, coffee is a low-calorie beverage, at about 5 calories per cup. Research also suggests that coffee may affect metabolism.
Read on to learn more about whether coffee can help you lose weight and how to maximize this potential.
Coffee may aid your weight loss efforts in the following ways.
It Revs Up Your Metabolism
Coffee contains caffeine, a stimulant that blocks adenosine receptors in the brain, enhancing wakefulness and alertness.
Caffeine also affects your body’s physiology in ways that may support a healthy weight. “Coffee increases metabolism because its main component, caffeine, is a stimulant that enhances your metabolic thermogenesis, which is the process by which the body generates heat from digested food substances,” says Daniel Boyer, MD, a medical researcher in Des Moines, Iowa, who focuses on molecular biology and pharmacology, among other subjects, and is associated with the Farr Institute.
A fast metabolism means you’ll burn more calories during the day, whether you’re moving or at rest. “This means a faster metabolic rate promotes a quicker weight loss than a slower metabolic rate,” Dr. Boyer says.
It Suppresses Your Appetite
For some people, drinking coffee promotes a feeling of fullness. That could affect your weight, since if you’re not reaching for extra meals and snacks throughout the day, you may consume fewer calories overall. Excess calorie intake is a major contributor to weight gain, Boyer says.
Research has found that study participants who consumed caffeine 30 minutes to 4 hours before mealtime ate less. Other studies haven’t confirmed this link, though.
It’s Associated With Reduced Body Fat
In a study of women, those who regularly drank higher amounts of coffee had a lower body fat percentage compared with those who drank less coffee. But the effects were found to be age dependent. Among women ages 20 to 44, those who regularly drank two or three cups of coffee per day had less total body fat compared with those who didn’t drink coffee. The same was true for women ages 45 to 69 who drank four or more cups per day. The researchers point out that there are likely bioactive compounds in coffee other than caffeine that may help regulate weight.
Coffee consumed before a workout may also boost your body’s fat-burning process, Boyer says. A study of 15 men who didn’t habitually drink coffee found that a strong dose of caffeine 30 minutes before aerobic exercise — about 200 milligrams for a 154-pound person, which is about what you’d find in a tall Starbucks coffee — increased fat burning. Even in many popular eating plans that limit or eliminate foods or food groups, such as Whole30 (which limits added sugar, alcohol, legumes, dairy, and grains), coffee is rarely off-limits.
Some diets actually encourage drinking coffee. The ketogenic diet, for instance, promotes bulletproof coffee, which mixes coffee with butter and a supplement called MCT oil.WW, which uses a point system to track what you eat each day, allocates zero points to black coffee, meaning there is no limit on how much you can drink.
If you’re not careful, your cup of coffee can easily swerve into unhealthy territory. If you add sweeteners, milk, or other high-calorie ingredients, you could be pushing 300 to 500 calories per drink. Research shows that drinking more unsweetened coffee is linked to a lower risk of weight gain, while sugary coffee drinks are associated with weight gain.
“Black coffee is certainly preferred if weight loss is the goal, but certain additives may be okay,” says Kristin Gillespie, RD, a nutrition support dietitian for Option Care Health and an adviser for Exercise With Style in Virginia Beach, Virginia. “Sugar-free sweeteners, such as stevia and Truvia, and small amounts of low-fat milk should not interfere with your weight loss goals.” She says to avoid adding sugar and cream (including half-and-half) to keep calories in check.
As for fancy coffee drinks like peppermint mochas and pumpkin spice lattes, try to avoid them. “Those drinks are probably the worst thing for those seeking to lose weight,” Gillespie says. “They are packed with calories and sugar, often containing several hundred calories in just one drink.”
Before you start guzzling coffee all day long, keep in mind that while some scientific evidence supports coffee’s effect on your waistline, you don’t want to go overboard. Coffee may come with certain health risks and side effects, too:
Trouble Sleeping Caffeine can linger in your system. One research review recommends cutting off coffee consumption about nine hours before your bedtime to avoid any detrimental effects on your sleep. Sleep issues and sleep related conditions like insomnia can ultimately affect your weight, because poor sleep increases hunger and appetite by altering the hormones ghrelin, which influences hunger, and leptin, which affects feelings of fullness.
Withdrawal This can occur if you suddenly reduce your caffeine consumption or give up caffeine entirely. Symptoms include headaches, irritability, fatigue, and worsening mood.
Also watch out for these symptoms of overconsumption:
What is considered too much differs from one person to the next. However, it’s recommended that individuals consume no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine per day, the same amount as two or three 12-ounce cups of coffee.
Over time, it is possible to become overly tolerant of the caffeine in coffee. This means that you need to consume a larger dose of caffeine to get the same stimulating benefits as you did before. Research suggests that this could cause an increase in coffee consumption that puts you at a higher risk for the side effects mentioned previously.
That said, in certain instances, increasing your intake may be beneficial if fat loss is your goal. One study of people with metabolic syndrome found that increasing coffee consumption from fewer than three cups per month to moderate consumption (one to seven cups per week) was associated with less body fat, including abdominal fat. However, there were no beneficial effects on fat loss when people moved from no or infrequent coffee consumption to high amounts (more than one cup per day). These results may not apply to people who don’t have metabolic syndrome.
Evidence from research varies as to exactly how much coffee to drink to reap metabolism-boosting, fat-burning benefits and for how long.
There’s some evidence that coffee can support your metabolism, enhance fat burning, and make you feel fuller.
Coffee’s weight loss benefits are modest, and more human studies are needed to fully understand the effects.
What you add to your coffee matters if your goal is weight loss. Stick to sugar-free sweeteners like stevia and small amounts of low-fat milk.
