words Alexa Wang
Health and wellness programs and products seem to pop up all around. From podcast ads to Instagram influencer posts to multi-level marketing pitches from your friends on Facebook, you’ll see weight loss products everywhere.
With som much hype and advertising, it can be difficult to know what information you can trust. When it comes to maintaining your health and wellness, you don’t want to risk trying solutions with no scientific evidence supporting their claims.
Keto coffee is one such product that a lot of consumers frequently encounter through ads but know very little about. If you’re looking for a tool to help you lose weight, you may be asking yourself: is keto coffee healthy?
Before making any judgments about keto coffee, you should understand how it works, how it supposedly supports weight loss, how people drink it, and if it has any associated risks.
What’s In Keto Coffee?
Coffee lovers revel in the health benefits a delicious cup of joe provides. The beverage is rich in body-defending antioxidants and may even improve brain function. Now, keto coffee offers another avenue of health benefits.
Keto coffee follows the principles of the ketogenic diet by combining coffee and fats such as butter and coconut oil. This mixture includes does not include carbohydrates, but is heavy in medium-chain triglycerides which can promote ketosis and fat burning.
What Does Coffee Have to Do with Weight Loss?
In conjunction with the ketogenic diet, keto coffee can help you lose weight and improve overall health. Even during intermittent fasting, keto coffee is enjoyed by dieters as a quick boost in energy and alertness that doesn’t affect their ketosis.
In a fasting state, the body enters ketosis and burns fat for energy. Eating protein or carbohydrates can pull your body out of ketosis, causing it to look for food to feed its energy needs, and creating hunger signals. Keto coffee allows you to stay in a fasted state longer by providing ketone-increasing fats while still allowing you to enjoy the benefits of your morning coffee.
Understanding Ketosis and the Keto Diet
Within the last few years, the popularity of the ketogenic diet has grown tremendously as a way to lose weight and lower risk factors for certain diseases. Its basis is founded in the body’s response to different kinds of food. Protein, carbs, and fat are all treated differently, creating different reactions for burning and storing fat. The keto diet changes the way the body converts food into energy and resets hunger and fullness hormones.
Once eaten, carbohydrates are broken down by the body into glucose, a main source of energy. Any surplus of glucose is stored as fat. With the keto diet, the body is no longer receiving large amounts of glucose-creating carbohydrates, and the body enters ketosis. During ketosis, the body breaks down fatty acids into ketone bodies. These energy molecules are a more efficient fuel for the body than glucose, and as ketones are digested differently than glucose, they can’t be stored as fat.
With a lack of glucose, the body burns the quality fat from your diet and waist-expanding, stored fat instead. Not needing to count calories or track food, weight loss can still occur while feeling satisfied.
Adding Keto Coffee to Your Daily Routine
One benefit of keto coffee is that you can make it easily at home. All you need is a blender and some keto-friendly ingredients:
- One cup of coffee
- One tablespoon of unsalted, grass-fed butter
- One tablespoon of virgin coconut oil
Brew regular coffee using your preferred method then pour the coffee, butter, and coconut oil in the blender. As oil and water do not mix well, blend at high speed until smooth and frothy.
Adding ingredients can add an extra boost of energy to your basic recipe. Options include egg yolks, collagen powder, and fresh avocado. To add flavor without breaking the keto diet, you can add cinnamon, vanilla bean, or coconut milk.
Associated Risks
Any major diet change can have potential risks. You should discuss any concerns regarding keto coffee, a ketogenic diet, or other dietary concerns with your healthcare provider.
Some concerns associated with drinking keto coffee include:
- Less Nutrient Intake- Keto coffee can be enjoyed at any time of the day but is most often touted as a replacement for breakfast as a part of intermittent fasting. While providing plenty of fat, other important nutrients found in more traditional breakfast options are not present. This could add up to about one-third less dietary nutrient intake.
- High Saturated Fat Levels- Most dietary guidelines recommend reducing the amount of saturated fat as a part of healthy eating patterns. Those with higher cholesterol levels or concerns about saturated fat may consider limiting keto coffee drinking.
All Things Considered, Is Keto Coffee Healthy or Not?
Is keto coffee a miracle product for weight loss? No, no such thing exists. However, if implemented along with a ketogenic diet, the habit of drinking keto coffee might just give you the boost you need. So, is keto coffee healthy? The question has no single right answer: how it affects your body depends on whether or not you make other lifestyle and dietary changes.
