If you’re thinking of giving intermittent fasting a try, you must know that you need to fast for 12-18 hours. That being said, the best fasting hours are from dinner until breakfast. So if you’re worried that morning fasting will interfere with your coffee, then we have news for you.
Yes. You can have coffee, but it needs to be black. This means that if you’re used to drinking coffee with cream or sugar, you’ll have to shift to black.
Because a cup of coffee is fat-free and has almost zero calories, it won’t screw up your fasting period. But it has to be black coffee because all the other coffee variations and add-ins contain fat and calories. And when you’re consuming calories, you are negating your fasting period.
According to USDA, black coffee contains around three to five calories per cup. When you start pouring sugar, cream, milk, or anything else, you add anywhere from 10 to 100 calories to it. The more calories you feed your body, the more your body consumes it as energy. This means that it won’t make use of the glucose stored in your fuel cells; thus, negating the fasting period.
Benefits of coffee when fasting
Coffee does not only helps you satisfy your hunger, but there are also other benefits to it.
When you drink coffee, your brain function has improved, reduced blood sugar, and reduced heart disease risk.
- Coffee intake can also decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes. Consuming 3 cups of coffee a day can also reduce the risk of health from heart disease.
- Coffee also has benefits to brain health. Intermittent fasting and regular coffee consumption help reduce the risk of mental decline. It also reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
- The caffeine in coffee helps to suppress your appetite. This is a great beverage to drink if you’re hungry during your fasting period.
- Coffee is also known to promote ketone production.
If you don’t like coffee, here are some alternatives:
You can drink water, but water alone won’t ease your hunger. You can infuse water with fresh fruit or squeeze lemon for flavor, but don’t eat the fruit.
You can also drink unsweetened tea. Tea contains zero calories if it doesn’t have anything added to it.
Remember that the concept of this fasting is to not consume calories for a prolonged period of not consuming calories or your body will consume the calories, not the stored fat. Therefore, making fruit juices, green juices, and smoothies will stuff you up with calories, and they have enough calories to break your fast.
Regardless if you’re doing 16, 24, alternate-day fasting, or any other fasting methods, it leads only to one goal. By limiting food consumption during the fasting window, you are also limiting the number of calories you consume.
That is why drinking fluids that contain zero calories such as coffee and tea are ok during the fasting period as long as it doesn’t contain any additives such as milk, cream, and sugar.