If you follow the previous blog of “Are You a Health Watcher and Wondering How Many Calories in Coffee?” you would know that espresso coffee contains only very little calories. Understanding that some calories are added when you have extras added to your coffee, such as sprinkles, syrup, full cream milk, etc. As many coffee enthusiasts are particularly concerned when it comes to the question “is coffee fattening?”

Is Coffee Fattening?

For instance, NO, coffee is not fattening at all, BUT this is depending on how you prepare your coffee.

As mentioned before, a cup of espresso coffee (black) only contain one calorie. You need to understand that the high calories come from your daily coffee beverage are all the extras. Coffee, in fact, is one healthy drink if you are drinking it black.

However, there are other natural substitutes for creamer and sugar flavored syrups

Instead of consuming replicate non-dairy creamer and other syrups, try to add a splash of fresh milk as creamer to your coffee. Milk naturally contains a high level of calcium in it, and it is an excellent way to get vitamins A, D and B12, all these vitamins are vital for the bones health. If you are calorie watcher, use 1% or 2% of fresh skim milk instead.

Make Your Own Creamer

Making your creamer is healthier, cheap and it is very easy to make, too. Mix 250ml of condensed milk with a cup of low-fat milk. Be sure that you store the creamer in the fridge after every use to extend its shelf life.

Natural Sweetener

Also, if you like your coffee sweeter, you can always add honey, agave and maple syrup. Pop in some of the natural vanilla extracts or vanilla beans is good to sweeten your coffee, too!

While agave, maple syrup or honey are not necessary a healthier choice but they are definitely less evil than sugar. Try to decrease the amount of consuming replicate sweeteners because those products often contained a high level of sugar and had little to no health benefits at all.

So, is coffee fattening? Well, it does if you are taking in with extra stuff like cream and sugar or other additional flavouring like caramel.

“Yep, the Starbuck Caramel Macchiato is pretty fattening if you do the calorie math”

Interesting Facts about Having Coffee in the Morning

According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

“Caffeinated Coffee Consumption Impairs Blood Glucose Homeostasis in Response to High and Low Glycemic Index Meals in Healthy Men”, you might want to drink decaffeinated coffee in the morning instead of the caffeinated one.

Why?

The human body needs sufficient amount of carbohydrates in the morning because glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity are at the peak in the morning.

Furthermore, human body tends to digest and absorb carbohydrates better during the few hours of the day in the morning, and that ability would decrease as the day goes on.

Based on the research result by 3 Ph.D. students on American Diabetes Association, “The increased fasting insulin concentration after high coffee consumption in our study probably reflects decreased insulin sensitivity. In short-term metabolic studies, caffeine intake acutely lowered insulin sensitivity.”

In Summary

Drinking caffeinated coffee with either high or low glycemic index meal significantly impairs acute blood glucose management and insulin sensitivity compared to drinking decaffeinated coffee.

Benefits of Coffee

Drinking coffee does help in weight loss. YES, you did not read it wrong, caffeine does boost your energy level and metabolism rate, enable losing weight faster. Coffee is a performance enhancer!

Accelerates Fat-Burning

Next time before you hit the gym, you should probably grab a cup of black coffee half an hour before your gym session. Remember, it's black coffee, WITHOUT milk, creamer nor any extras.

Fitness experts suggest that consume coffee before the gym session would help boost energy levels (how you often get the jittery feeling after drinking the coffee), sweat all the excess energy out at the gym which also burn calories faster.

Now you understand why sometimes you get the jitters after drinking the coffee while sitting in an office, it was due to excessive energy and you will not feel the jitters once you spend time working out in the gym!

Add this new tips to your workout plan! Coffee before gym for better and faster weight loss!

Focus Improvement

Besides help fat-burning, black coffee provides an increase in mental focus, too. Along with the energy boost during tough workouts, focus improvement will also contribute to keeping workouts more productive and efficient.

Muscle Pain Reduction

Caffeine has the properties of pain reducing, in fact, we can find caffeine as one of the main ingredients in some pain relievers like Excedrin and Anacin.

According to the researchers at the University of Illinois found that experimenters who consumed coffee before a workout would experience less muscle pain during the exercise session compared to those who drank decaffeinated coffee.

The bright side of drinking coffee before exercise training is that it helps you to complete more reps at a higher resistance practices run faster and longer during the cardio workouts, too!

Prevent Disease

Another benefit of consuming coffee is that the coffee helps protect your body from diseases. Coffee consists of high levels of antioxidants. Therefore, coffee consumption has many more health benefits correlated certain forms of cancer.

Also, studies result show that the people who drink coffee would lower the risk of developing the Parkinson and Alzheimer’s disease.

Summary

Is coffee fattening? The answer to that is NO, and in fact, by drinking black coffee have many health beneficiaries for us. Should you be drinking your coffee black today? I say why not. Want to be a healthier self? Start it right now!

P.S: I write a lot more about coffee at at my blog here.