Coffee is well known for helping us stay awake and even boosting our mood. But drinking just a few cups each day could also help us lose weight, Dr Michael Mosley explains.
In his BBC podcast Just One Thing, the nutrition and diet expert discussed the little-known benefits of the bean for shedding those pounds. He also shared just how much coffee you should drink each day, and what type.
It’s commonly known that coffee contains the stimulant caffeine which helps us increase our energy levels and alertness. This can help us burn more calories whilst doing exercise and to work out for longer, but caffeine isn’t the only factor at play.
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Dr Mosley said: “Coffee as most people know contains caffeine which is a powerful stimulant produced by plants to help ward off insects. Coffee is also rich in polyphenols, which are antioxidants that have powerful anti-inflammatory effects.
“Surprisingly, drinking coffee not only picks us up mentally, but has been shown to boost up performance in all sorts of other ways, including increasing the amount of fat you burn while doing exercise and improving endurance so you can keep going for longer.”
Speaking to Dr James Betts, a Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath, Dr Mosley determined that the best time to have a strong coffee was within an hour of your workout. This helps to maximise your calorie output.
Dr Betts told BBC’s Just One Thing : “Despite the number of supplements athletes may take, I genuinely feel you can count on one hand the things that actually work and I put caffeine on top of that list both for the size of effect that you get, and the breadth. Most events require a combination of speed, scale, endurance, strength, and caffeine seems to tick all the boxes.”
The coffee plant, originating from Ethiopia, is the most popular drink in the world after water. In the UK we drink 95 million cups each day, the BBC reports.
Dr Mosley also pointed to a number of studies that have found coffee to aid weight loss. The most prominent of these was carried out by the University of Nottingham in 2019.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports , discovered that drinking a cup of coffee stimulates brown adipose tissue, known as brown fat. This fat’s main function is to “generate body heat by burning calories”, and acts as the body’s own “fat-fighting defences”. Researchers believe the findings could help tackle obesity and diabetes.
Dr Mosley added: “It doesn’t have to be a fancy espresso. You get mainly the same benefits from instant, so feel free to drink whatever you like.”
He advised that three to four coffees a day is likely to be the “sweet spot” to get the most benefits for your health. Pregnant women should drink less, Dr Mosley added.
But you can have too much of a good thing. Dr Mosley warned that too much caffeine can disrupt your sleep and raise your blood pressure. Drinking more than five to six cups can have a diuretic effect leaving you dehydrated.
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