One Thing To Always Avoid
Despite the fact that they don’t contain calories, most of the experts we spoke with said zero-calorie sweeteners should be avoided during a fastand pretty much all the time.
“I’m not a fan of artificial sweeteners at all,” says Pedre. “Technically these have zero calories, so they would be ‘legal’ during a fast, but we’ve seen how they can disrupt gut balance and cause lots more problems. I would steer clear of them altogether, and if you need a sweetener, use organic 100% stevia sparingly during fasting hours.”
Miller agrees, explaining that even though something has zero calories, it can still negate some of fasting’s most significant benefits, including appetite control. “Just because something is noncaloric doesn’t mean it is free of metabolic influence,” says Miller. “The taste of sweet impacts GLP-1 receptors on the tongue, which enhances insulin releasethis is not ideal, as insulin has a negative impact on fasting and may drive blood sugar drops.” And blood sugar drops, as we all know, can make us miserable and hangry.
Best Coffee Creamer For Intermittent Fasting
This may sound crazy, but I prefer to drink my coffee plain. However, if you want to add creamer to your coffee, heavy cream is a great option .
Heavy cream is technically not a coffee creamer, but its still a solid choice. Some intermittent fasters find heavy cream helps curb their appetite while fasting, thanks to its thickness.
According to Healthline, one teaspoon of heavy cream is unlikely to have a significant impact on your fast .
Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream is one option you may want to consider.
Just make sure youre not loading up your coffee with ingredients like milk and sugar, as they can ruin your fast .
/8does Coffee Promote Weight Loss
Coffee also carries additional health benefits if your prime goal is to lose weight.
Not only is coffee is a low-calorie drink, but it also works amazingly well in suppressing your appetite, reducing any hunger cravings you may be feeling, which is a great way to balance out Intermittent Fasting with your daily lifestyle.
There may also be some benefits that a person can have if they combine coffee and Intermittent Fasting. From improved brain function, reduced inflammation, tapering blood glucose levels, drinking coffee is also associated with a lower risk of metabolic syndrome.
Some clinical trials and animal studies have also found out that drinking coffee may also help dieters reach autophagy faster. Thus, it may be helpful to include a cup of joe in your fasting/ non-fasting window.
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What Can You Put In Your Coffee That Wont Break Your Fast
Although black coffee is perfectly acceptable for an intermittent fast, you may want to know if you can still add any of your usual mix-ins to your cup. In general, many health experts claim a fast isnt broken if you consume less than 50 calories within the timeframe of the fast. With this in mind, lets go over intermittent fasting coffee additions that wont break your fast.
Fats
From strictly a calorie perspective, technically, youre not fasting if you add any of these to your coffee because they all contain calories. However, fats themselves wont influence your insulin or blood sugar levels, so theyre the most recommended choice if youre looking to boost your insulin sensitivity .
While you may have heard recommendations for bulletproof coffee made by adding butter and MCT oil to coffee be aware that it contains over 230 calories in a 16-ounce serving . This fatty concoction is great for those on the keto diet, but it pushes the envelope when it comes to fasting. Its worth noting, though, that if youre fasting for weight loss, a little bit of fat may also help curb your craving so you can fast longer.
To maintain your fast, add only a small amount of either MCT oil, butter, or coconut oil to keep it under 50 calories.
If you’re curious about the ketogenic diet for weight loss, check out our keto diet tips to see if the diet is right for you.
Coffee May Protect From Liver Damage
Long-term liver disorders are one of the most common causes of death globally. The causes of liver disorders such as liver fibrosis are heavy drinking, elevated iron levels, and certain types of hepatitis. In liver fibrosis, scar tissues replace healthy tissues in the liver. In a 2017 study, researchers found that consuming more than 3 cups of coffee per day was associated with a lower risk of liver fibrosis.
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Coffee With Cocoa Powder
You can add some cocoa powder to your coffee, but it is important to be careful with its amount. Cocoa powder has protein, carbs and fat, so if you add more than 1 teaspoon, youll reduce the effect of your diet. It is better to use defatted cocoa powder.
So, as you can see, black coffee is the best option and you can drink it without being afraid to break your fast. It is better to avoid sweetened and high-calorie drinks, such as cappuccinos and lattes. However, if you still want to add something, a teaspoon of butter, coconut oil or heavy cream likely wont be harmful for your weight loss or fast.
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The Dos And Donts Of Using Coffee While Intermittent Fasting
Dos
- Drink black coffee, preferably without sugar, a few times on fasting days. It does not break your fast.
- If you love milk coffee, use nonfat or skim milk and consume no more than 2 cups per day.
- You may add MCT oil but no more than one tablespoon per day. MCT oil can help with weight loss.
- Drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration. Caffeine can cause frequent urination.
- Soymilk is a great and healthy alternative to milk. Nonetheless, soy is also a common allergy-causing food.
Donts
- Avoid drinking more than 3 cups per day regardless of what you add.
- Too much caffeine can cause sleep problems. Intermittent fasting may make these problems worse. Thus, avoid drinking coffee after 2 pm.
- Avoid drinking coffee at your favorite coffee shop. If you need to, make sure to ask for the lowest-calorie variant. Americano and iced mocha are low in calories. Cinnamon shortbread latte and Cafe latte are rich in calories.
Recommended Reading: What Should Your Blood Sugar Be Fasting
If You Feel Like You Always Need Something During Your Fast Try This
Ideally, intermittent fasting will help you curb cravings and reduce hunger over time due to its beneficial effect on insulin sensitivity. But if you’re not fueling well during your eating hours, intense cravings can result, making you feel like you “need” that butter-laced coffee first thing in the morning.
“A few issues that arise when people get super hungry during fasts are that they might not eat enough during eating hours, or they might be eating foods high in carbohydrates that spike and crash their blood sugar,” says B.J. Hardick, D.C. “Keeping a food journal can help ensure you’re eating enough of the right foods. If you’re doing both things correctly and still aren’t losing weight, dial back the fast an hour or two and see if that helps.”
Coffee Is Perfect For Intermittent Fasting
Coffee is a standard go to beverage to have while fasting.
The benefits of coffee for intermittent fasting include, having no calories, hunger and appetite suppression and also, fasted coffee intake can also help with fat usage for energy.
As most people take up intermittent fasting to drop fat and lose weight coffee is probably the ideal beverage to have while fasting.
But black coffee can be too bland or just plain tasteless for a lot of people.
Also as someone who is used to having creamer and sugar in your coffee the adjustment to black coffee can be a little tough to make when you take up intermittent fasting.
Fortunately there are some really great options out there when it comes to intermittent fasting coffee creamers.
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Can I Combine Coffee And Intermittent Fasting
Because a cup of brewed coffee is fat-free and almost no-cal, it wont screw up your fast…so long as it’s black coffee, says Boules. All your regular coffee variations and add-ins will cost you fat and caloriesand consuming fat and calories means you are no longer fasting.
According to the USDA, plain black coffee is around two to five calories . But once you start pouring in sugar, milk, or cream, youre adding anywhere from 16 to nearly 100 more calories to your morning joe. So while coffee can be a decent way to feel like youre consuming something during your fasting hours, make sure youre drinking it black to keep your calories almost nonexistent. The more calories you feed your body, the more outside fuel it has to use as energy, which means it won’t utilize the glucose stored upin your fat cells, in theory. Fast, broken.
But you dont necessarily want to start a coffee-drinking habit just to soothe your hunger pains if you’re doing intermittent fasting. Caffeine can temporarily speed metabolism and potentially take you out of that starvation mode. “But if you’re a regular caffeine consumer, the thermogenic effect is minimal, explains Boules.
In other words, if youre already addicted to an a.m. coffee, you should be okay: The calories are minimal and your body is adjusted to the caffeine. But if you were a decaf tea drinker before, dont start chugging espresso, mmkay?
Concerns And Adjustments With Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is becoming popular, but it’s still not the normal thing to do. As a result, you may have some concerns about it or you may want to make some adjustments to your intermittent fasting schedule. Here are some common questions I’ve seen that should help point you in the right direction.
What if I ate my first meal at breakfast, skipped lunch, and then ate my second meal at dinner time?
This idea would work well for one reason, but not well for another reason. Let’s talk about both.
First, if your goal is to lose weight, then skipping lunch should help because it decreases the number of calories that you’re eating throughout the day. As I said in my article on lessons learned from 1 year of intermittent fasting, even if you try to eat two large meals instead of three regular meals, it’s hard to get the same number of calories. Even if you want to eat more, you often end up eating less.
So the end result of skipping lunch is that you would probably reduce your overall caloric intake and end up losing weight.
However, one of the primary benefits of intermittent fasting is that it puts you in a fat burning state. In other words, fasting makes it more likely that you’ll burn fat and not muscle.
In other words, you need to have at least 8 to 12 hours off from eating before your body enters the fasted, fatburning state. This is why you want to squish your meals into a smaller time frame rather than spreading them throughout the day.
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Consideration #: Multiple Cups Of Coffee With Cream
The fourth consideration is that we tested the effects of one tablespoon of cream over a two-hour period.
If you have three cups of coffee over the course of a morning and you add cream to each of those cups, then you are providing your body with a consistent source of energy instead of burning it from your body stores.
Can You Lose Belly Fat By Intermittent Fasting
According to a 2014 review of the scientific literature, intermittent fasting can cause weight loss of 3-8% over 3-24 weeks . Not only this but people lost 4-7% of their waist circumference as well indicating a large loss of the harmful belly fat in the abdominal cavity, strongly linked to chronic disease.
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Coffee Benefits For General Health
Coffee isn’t just for waking up in the morning. It has numerous, well-researched health and wellness benefits,such as:
4. Heightened physical performance
5. Contains many essential nutrients
6. High in antioxidants
7. Lowered risk of cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and cardiovascular issues
8. Live longer
But there can be a downside to coffee, especially if consumed daily in large quantities.
- Women especially are at risk for increased bone fractures .
- Coffee can increase anxiety and disturb sleep .
- Most commercial coffees have toxic additives and fillers.
- Many coffee drinkers report higher levels of gastro-esophageal reflux disease .
It Assists With Intermittent Fasting
Lastly, butter coffee can displace or delay breakfast, allowing for intermittent fasting or aiding with nutritional ketosis.
But, before you try intermittent fasting, you should definitely check with your doctor first, especially if you are a pre-menopausal woman . You might also want to check out this article on how to reduce estrogen dominance if you are having hormonal imbalances.
Also Check: What Does Intermitten Fasting Do
Coffee For Intermittent Fasting
Butter coffee is a high-fat, low-carb drink that is essentially hot coffee blended with butter or another healthy fat such as coconut oil. Butter coffee generally has between 150-300 calories per serving, depending on how much fat you add.
The benefit of butter coffee is that it has no carbs or sugar. If you are practicing intermittent fasting, then butter coffee is a way to help extend your fast without raising your blood sugar enough to break your fast.
It should be noted, however, that there are no long-term studies on the risks or benefits of drinking butter coffee. But, studies do seem to agree that moderate consumption of coffee imparts numerous health benefits.
Coffee During Intermittent Fasting: Yay Or Nay
Short answer: Yes! Good news, right? Dont go running to your local foam parlor just yet its not that simple.
First, lets define coffee. Any aficionados will know that theres a myriad more on offer than a simple cup of dark roast.
The part you wont like: A double mocha cappuccino with whipped cream and sprinkles does not qualify. Neither does a latte with 8 ounces of milk. While fasting, coffee is coffee with nothing in it.
So, yes, drinking black coffee during most types of intermittent fasting is totally OK. The popular 16:8 Leangains protocol actually goes so far as to say that coffee with a splash of milk is acceptable in the fasted state .
With just 4.8 calories per medium brewed coffee, it makes sense that a cup of coffee wont do much damage to your metabolism or blood sugar.
Coffee may actually help you speed up weight loss, according to recent research. Bakuradze T, et al. . Antioxidant-rich coffee reduces DNA damage, elevates glutathione status and contributes to weight control: results from an intervention study. You may have to get used to the taste of black coffee , but we have faith in you.
Heres a list that gets the green light during the fasting phase, according to some IF experts.
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Can I Just Drink Regular Coffee On Keto
If you dont like the way bulletproof coffee tastes its ok, you still can enjoy drinking a regular cup of coffee while still remaining on keto.
Some of you may just be a black coffee drinker , while others may like theirs on the sweeter and lighter side.
If thats the case then go ahead and try our recipe for keto coffee creamer. We have about 9 different flavor combinations so whatever your favorite flavor is, you will love it.
Can Coffee Enhance The Effects Of Intermittent Fasting
Since coffee makes you feel revved up, its only natural to wonder if it can give you an added boost when youre fasting. Heres the thing: Theres no data to either support this idea or shut it down, so its really hard for experts to say one way or another.
But its unlikely that coffee will do much, if anything, to give you a weight-loss boost of any sort when youre fasting, says Scott Keatley, RD, of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy.
Black, unsweetened coffee increases metabolic rate by about 3 to 4 percent, Keatley says, noting that this can be seen in a very slight increase in your body temperature. The effect peaks at about 90 minutes after consumption, and the effect is seen in subsequent cups of coffee as long as they are spaced out by about two to three hours, he says.
Got all that? Cool, cool. Heres the slight issue with this, Keatley adds: Fasting actually slows down your metabolism as your body tries to decrease your metabolic rate to conserve energy. So, while coffee might increase your metabolism slightly during a fasting state, your body is also operating at a slower speed. Essentially, youre really not gaining anything special by drinking black coffee.
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Does Truvia Cause Gas
Gas is part of the digestive issues that erythritol can cause and since thats the main ingredient in Truvia, you may certainly experience it. However, for most people, this shouldnt be an issue, especially if you consume it in moderate amounts. Again, if you have issues like IBS and IBD, use Truvia, and any other sweeteners, with caution.
