You’ve read enough literature to convince yourself to lose weight. Everything is set; you have the mindset, the motivation, and two ways ahead. One way suggests you go to a doctor to get weight loss medications prescribed.
The other relatively natural way of adhering to a lifestyle involves herbal remedies. Have you ever heard of coffee and lemon for weight loss? They are two edibles sparking discussion in the weight loss realm these days.
Now that people use a mixture of two or both separately, you wonder which method has the most benefits. The same was the case at my end. This guide comes loaded with authentic backing sources for you to reach a conclusion. We’ll start with the benefits of drinking coffee and lemons separately. And critically analyze if a mixture of both can work for weight loss.
What’s Inside Your Cup of Coffee?
The dark chocolatey drink you have every time you sit on the table for important work has something that keeps you alert. One of its vital constituents, caffeine, makes you stay energetic. Mind you, research says caffeine does more than that. It additionally fastens the consumer’s metabolism and brings down your appetite. So, what does that mean? Well, you could shed a few pounds with coffee.
A breakdown of Processes
Now we know caffeine-induced metabolism and appetite reduction may have something to do with weight loss. However, the extent to which these two processes are proportional to weight loss remains to be explored.
Faster Metabolism
When metabolism speeds up, your digestive system processes food faster, making energy readily available. As that happens, the calories you consume aren’t stored in your body as fats. So, it explains why coffee instantly alerts you and reduces weight simultaneously.
Dr. Bob Arnot, an M.D. turned journalist, studied the life of healthy elderly individuals residing on the small Greek island of Ikaria. Based on the resulting findings, he claimed that a certain amount of coffee consumed daily could support the idea of a metabolic boost. His argument can be thoroughly analyzed from his book, “The Coffee Lover’s Diet.”
Reduced Appetite
The caffeine in coffee affects appetite. But, that is based on when the coffee is consumed, i.e., how long coffee was taken before meal time.
Research published in PubMed (officially conducted by the NLM) showed that coffee consumed 0.5-4 hours before food intake reduced appetite more than when consumed 3-4.5 hours ago.
Precautions When Using Coffee
The National Library of Medicine is an unmatched source of biomedical information for people across the globe. It also encourages researchers to conduct research that could add more value to their encyclopedia.
For coffee consumers, they’ve come up with preventive measures. The NLM doesn’t suggest daily coffee consumption to exceed 400 milligrams.
What’s Inside Your Yellow Citrus?
From a theoretical point of view, lemons aid in weight loss with two chemical compounds found in them. One is Ascorbic acid, which is typically known as Vitamin C. The other is primarily based on plant-based diets and is a larger family of organic compounds known as Polyphenols.
Vitamin C in lemon is said to reduce the levels of Cortisol hormone in our blood, an adrenal hormone that stimulates appetite and encourages fat storage within the body. Polyphenols work like Cortisol hormone since they have been attributed to inhibiting fat accumulation.
Bonus Tip: The mentioned benefits of lemon can be reaped when lemon juice is added to lukewarm water, hence making lemon water.
A Breakdown of Processes
Just as we came across the effectiveness of coffee’s constituents in managing weight, let’s see how practical lemon consumption can be. However, what is to follow concerns lemon ingestion minus other herbal remedies (i.e., the absence of other typical ingredients like ginger or honey added to the drink).
Cortisol Reduction
Our bodies have a natural way of dealing with stress. So, when life turns dark, our Adrenal glands release cortisol hormone into our bloodstream. It further allows us to get ready for a flight or fight response so that we make our way out. However, an increased cortisol level can aid in weight gain for people who remain stressed out longer than usual.
Research suggests that Vitamin C can’t only ward off symptoms of cancer and cold but also help alleviate stress’s psychological and physiological effects. Therefore, if you think your weight gain is relevant to stress, try taking lemons to increase the probability of cortisol reduction.
Inhibition of Fat Accumulation
For researchers who explore certain effects of ingestibles, the usual subjects are animals. The same is the case with this study on lemon-based polyphenols and their efficiency in inhibiting fat accumulation. Rats were fed with a fat-rich diet in combination with lemon polyphenols.
Wonders happened. And the results did show a drastic reduction in fat accumulation, an obesity-related factor. You can find a detailed overview of this study in the Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition.
Precautions When Using Lemons
Lemon juice is acidic in nature. So, people who’re already experiencing acid reflux should avoid having it in accessive amounts. Likewise, too much consumption of lemon juice can cause damage to your teeth’s enamel. Remember that this precaution comes for people who drink lemon juice immersed in water. That already makes it dilute.
Should Citruses and Caffeine be Paired?
A trend has been circulating on TikTok where weight loss was attributed to using lemon and coffee together. But again, mere hypotheses carry little or no weight in front of scientific evaluations.
Research does suggest coffee and lemons control obesity-causing factors when used separately. However, until any evidence supports consuming lemon and coffee in one serving, they shouldn’t be mixed for safety reasons. On the contrary, there is evidence to prove that combining both ingredients could cause problems for people with reflux issues. The possible reason could be that both foods are already acidic.
Final Words
It would be unfair to say that coffee and lemons can’t help somebody with excessive weight. The extent to which they remain effective seems questionable. It appears that for this purpose, daily dietary doses shall be followed. However, the case with a coffee and lemon infusion is relatively different. More research is required to say that a mixture of coffee and lemon for weight loss works efficiently.
