BY EMMET RUSHE, RUSHE FITNESS: Sometimes I feel like I’m in an endless cycle. It’s like I’m in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ and I keep having to repeat the same things over and over again.
This week, yet another magical weight loss product came to my attention and once again it was a trainer who was selling it.
This time it was a coffee that if you drank once a day, you’d lose huge amounts of weight. Just by drinking coffee.!
If I was an emoji, I’d be the one that bangs its head off of the wall over and over again.
I get it.
I get that for some of you, weight loss is hard and whenever one of these products comes on the market, you are willing to try it in the hope that it might be the answer to your weight issue.
Deep down, you know that it won’t, but it’s the one that requires the least amount of work and you may even be able to stick to it, for a while at least.
Ultimately, you will be back to square one once this ‘miracle cure’ runs its course and you have to go back to normality.
Back to the matter on hand.
Can coffee help you to lose weight?
• Caffeine is found in almost every fat-burning supplement and with good reason.
• Caffeine is one of the few natural substances that have actually been proven to aid fat burning.
• Caffeine has been shown to boost the metabolic rate by 3-11%.
• Caffeine can also increase the burning of fat, by as much as 10% in obese individuals and 29% in lean people.
• However, these benefits can decrease for people who consume coffee daily.
So far so good.
What does that mean to someone hoping that just drinking coffee will have a profound effect on their weight?
Not much.
Kamal Patel from Examine.com sums up the effectiveness of caffeine on metabolic rate and fat loss.
“Caffeine has the mechanisms to increase metabolic rate and fat loss, but this is a mechanism that one can become desensitized to. Best usage for caffeine as a stimulant for weight loss should be intermittently and in conjunction with caloric deficits.”
Things to note with this;
1. You can become desensitized to the effects of caffeine, which will limit its effectiveness for fat loss.
2. It has to be in conjunction with a caloric deficit. You cannot lose weight without one.
Increasing metabolic rate and increasing the metabolism of fat may sound great, but if you are not in a calorie deficit, (eating less calories than you are expending through exercise and daily life) you WILL NOT LOSE WEIGHT. It is impossible.
The “weight loss” coffee also has a list of other ingredients that supposedly help with the weight loss effects:
• Chorogenic Acid
Although the reductions seen with chlorogenic acid seem remarkable, the studies conducted at this moment in time are somewhat industry influenced and most of this can be attributed to its laxative effects.
• Garcinia Cambogia
Although there is some counter evidence, it tends to be less robust and for the most part there is no significant weight reducing effect of garcinia cambogia supplementation
• Phaseolamine
It is not recommended as a first-line fat burner due to its inability to induce fat loss.
• Cassiolamine + Green tea.
There appears to be a slight but unreliable increase in fat oxidation (percentage of overall calories used coming from fatty acids rather than glucose) associated with consumption of green tea catechins.
• L-Carnitine
Rates of fat oxidation appear unaffected following carnitine supplementation
limited studies in otherwise healthy youth and adults fail to note an effect on fat reduction.
• Ginseng
Rates of fat oxidation during exercise appear unchanged
• Chromium
There is no significant influence of chromium on weight in either healthy persons or those with diabetes, and although a possible interaction may occur in some instances of better glucose control or reduced appetite they are not frequent enough to establish a solid relationship to chromium.
Out of all of the extra ingredients that this miracle coffee lists, only one of them (green tea) appears to have any effect on weight and that was minimal at best.
It also begs the question, why not just have a cup of green tea and save some money?
This isn’t the first article I have written on these weight loss products and it won’t be the last.
They sell because the people selling them play on our fears and insecurities and make outlandish promises that they know their products cannot keep.
But by that stage, they already have your money.
The golden rule is always and will always be this – If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.
#TrainSmart
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