Coffee and Dieting
by Michael Allen Smith
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.
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 Caf
feine by Oliver Starr and 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.
- Low-Fat/High-Carb Diet
- Isocaloric Diet
- Low-Carb Diet
- 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 Barry Sears
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.
Step 1 - Clean Up Your
Coffee
Coffee by itself is perfect. It has zero calories, zero
carbs, and zero fat. It even has properties that assist
with fat loss. Coffee by itself isn't the problem.
Lattes, mochas, iced espresso blended with sugar,
whipped cream, ice cream, flavored syrups, alcohol,
and caramel are just a few of things we add into our
coffee. Coffee is derived from the old Arabic
word "qahwah" which means "gives strength".
Consuming popular coffee drinks today that are as
calorically-dense as desserts has the effect of giving
coffee a bad name, and changing the meaning of coffee
from gives strength to gives girth.
In order to succeed on our diet, we must get back to
basics. Regular coffee and straight shots of espresso
are fine. As for milk, that depends upon your specific
diet. An Atkins diet may allow half and half, whereas a
low-fat diet would insist upon skim milk. If you must
use sweeteners, at least make an effort to cut down:
go from 2 packets to 1 packet.
Step 2 - Reduce Your
Coffee Intake
If too much coffee can affect
blood sugar then it only makes sense to reduce your
caffeine intake. However, you don't want to reduce
your coffee intake at the same time you are reducing
your caloric intake unless you have super willpower.
Less calories and less caffeine usually means a
reduction in energy which could lead to binge eating. A
smarter move is to reduce your coffee intake for a
week prior to the diet. Once the diet starts, you can
slightly increase your coffee levels. It's good to have a
clear head when you've got an empty stomach.
Another idea is to space out your coffee intake.
Instead of drinking 4 mugs of coffee back to back,
consider spreading those 4 mugs throughout the day.
One at 6am, 10am, 1pm, and 5pm. As long as you
don't consume too much, caffeine can be an appetite
suppressant. Spreading that effect throughout the day
will not only reduce your chances of increased blood
sugar, but it will also help you cope with the reduced
caloric levels.
Reducing your coffee intake is
important, but it can be painful. Cutting back on
caffeine can cause headaches and constipation. A
good article on reducing caffeine intake is Accelerated Detox by Rachel
Elliot.
Step 3 - Avoid Eating
Simple Carbs with Coffee
Now if you're on a low-carb
diet, you'll want to avoid simple carbs completely.
However, it is a wise idea not to eat simple carbs on
any diet while drinking your coffee. You know the
simple carbs I'm referring to: the bagels, croissants,
and scones that you see in every coffee shop. Going
back to the insulin argument: if caffeine
could affect blood sugar negatively then
the last thing you want to do is combine it with
something that is certain to cause an insulin spike.
Step 4 - Exercise
It's common sense that
exercise helps one lose fat on almost any diet. In the
words of the The Illinois Department of Human Servies
exercise ...helps the body use insulin more
efficiently, and this lowers blood sugar. If
exercise can help us stablize our blood sugar then
maybe we don't have to get rid of our coffee in order
to get lean. So lift some weights, do some aerobic
activity, and keep drinking coffee. If you don't have
access to a gym, you can perform body-weight
exercises such as the push-up and the Hindu
Squat.
The 4 Diets
Revisited
People are often more fanatical about their diet choice
than their religion. So far be it from me to slam or
endorse any particular diet. Each of the four groups
mentioned restrict food selection and the result is often
a caloric reduction, which translates to fat loss. What
happens behind the curtains may be different, but a
combination of healthy eating and exercise has always
been the secret to getting lean. Using the above steps
we can keep our relationship with coffee while dieting.
Even a macrobiotic diet will be successful if your only
deviation is pitching the herbal coffee in favor of the
real stuff.
Everybody Is
Different
It is possible to try the above
steps with your chosen diet and not succeed. If you
find that you must decide between coffee and getting
lean, that's a personal decision you should discuss with
your doctor and roaster. In addition to weight training
and power walking, this author followed a modified Zone
Diet using the above 4 steps. The result was a body
fat reduction from 18% to 9% in 4 months.
Coffee and Dieting »
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