Can Coffee Help Burn Fat?

What if there was a substance that could help your burn fat while working out? 

Due to the caffeine in coffee it helps stimulate the nervous system, sending direct signals to the fat cells to break down. This happens because blood levels have been increased due to the hormone, epinephrine. 

Epinephrine is commonly known as adrenaline. As it travels through the bloodstream and fat tissues, adrenaline signals the fat cells to break down, releasing them into your blood. 

As coffee is consumed, the caffeine also speeds up your metabolism, burning calories as your metabolic rate goes higher. 

Studies have shown that caffeine can increase your resting metabolic rate, when you burn calories while resting, by 3-11% when larger doses of caffeine are put into effect. 

New research from the University of Granda has found that consuming at least 3 milligrams of coffee 30 minutes before any aerobic-style exercise can increase the rate of fat burning in adult men. 

15 study participants completed a graded exercise test four times during a seven day period. The subjects ingested 3 mg of caffeine at 8 o’clock in the morning and at 5 o’clock in the evening. This can equal to 1/16 of caffeine in a regular 4oz shot of espresso.

The study showed with or without caffeine, fat breaking down was most effective in the afternoon while in the morning caffeine-induced exercise created fat to burn more than in non-caffeinated sessions. 

In the research study’s conclusion, they found that their previously reported day use of caffeine increased fat burning by 11% and 13% in the afternoon compared to the morning.

Of course, these men in the study were all athletes, weighing in about the same with the average height of a male. Other studies have shown where leaner people can increase fat oxidation by 29% when consuming caffeine where people who are obese only increase fat burning by 10%. 

Caffeine also affects women differently than men. One study showed where caffeine had an appetite-reducing effect on men where women were enticed to eat less. 

When drinking coffee on a day to day basis, your tolerance builds up. This unfortunately diminishes the boost your metabolism receives from caffeine. If you’d like to have coffee or caffeine affect your metabolism in a positive way, try only drinking coffee every two weeks. 

But this also means you need to enact the caffeine to help burn fat. Exercise can help speed up that process. Caffeine only kick starts the oxidation of fat cells when exercise is what gets your metabolism working. 

Yet, a study from January of last year found that drinking four cups of coffee daily could help reduce body fat by 4% as well. This was constructed by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They did a 24 week study where they observed 126 overweight adults drinking 4 cups of coffee everyday. 

Connie Diekman, a food and nutrition consultant and former president of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said, “The 4 cups allocated in this study appear to be on the high side of intake, so not what I would recommend. The higher caffeine content might have helped suppress appetite.”

While in this study, it may seem that instead of fat burning due to the amount of caffeine consumed, participants were losing fat due to them eating less, which resulted in more fat burning because less calories were consumed. 

When drinking over the daily limit in a short amount of time, people also tend to receive headaches, jitters, a rapid heartbeat, or stomach distress. Be sure to not intact too much caffeine or it could result in negative effects. 

Listen to your body when needing a caffeine boost. It may help in fat burning, but it could also result in stomach cramps and fatigue.