Weight gain is one of the biggest problems facing Americans today, with a significant portion of the population suffering from obesity. While the term "obesity" is frequently thrown around for anyone with a little extra weight, there are distinct types of weight that require different tools to eliminate.
While the most common fat is generated by consuming carbohydrates or other foods to build and store energy, water is also weight. Water weight, while not exactly appealing, is not the same beast as regular fat and is not shed in the same way as regular fat. Understanding how these different fats work is critical to managing them.
When it comes to water weight, there are a few tools available to help keep your water weight levels nominal. One of the tools that supposedly has the potential to shed excess water weight is coffee.
Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world, with America being no exception to the coffee craze. The persistent love of coffee shared amongst the human race has led to the beverage's traits being reassessed for potential health benefits. As strange as it might sound, your morning cup of coffee could be doing more for your health than simply waking you up in the morning. This begs the question of whether coffee can help manage water weight.
What is Water Weight?
When dealing with weight gain, it is not as cut-and-dry as most beauty magazines and tabloid articles would have you believe. There are different categories of weight, with some types only forming after eating certain foods. Other forms of weight gain are a little more complicated and usually stem from an underlying issue that causes certain human body factors to skew our actual weight.
One of the most notorious subtypes of weight is water weight, which has to do with the fluid levels in the body. Water weight is, quite simply, your body retaining more fluid because it believes you need it.
Water weight is not usually a major issue, and your body compensates for a perceived lack of hydration. This retained water weight usually adds between 2 to 4 pounds on the scale because the retained fluid is still rather fresh. Water weight, also known as edema, can be uncomfortable when the fluid levels get too high.
With enough water weight, you start to feel bloated and uncomfortable in your own body. In a typical human body, the fluid levels should only account for 50% to 60% of the body's composition. Anything beyond those percentages is a sign of edema.
There are causes of edema and fluid retention that are worth worrying about, such as underlying diseases. However, most cases of edema are harmless and will eventually fade on their own with time. Other cases require intervention to resolve, but these are few and far between and are unlikely to be the cause of your water weight.
Other common causes for fluid retention include dehydration or diets heavy in sodium. Your body only retains excess fluids when it believes there is not enough present to keep you alive. Not drinking enough water or eating salty foods can dehydrate you and force your body into a survival mode where it stores more essential substances than it uses. In the latter case, the edema tends to go down without treatment.
While fluid retention is not necessarily life-threatening or painful, you might still be interested in lowering the levels. Fortunately, there are some methods you can use to enhance your body's natural disposal of excess fluids. It all revolves around the use of diuretics.
What is a Diuretic?
You might not have ever heard of a diuretic if you have never had fluid retention issues in the past, probably because diuretics are almost exclusively reserved for those dealing with high blood pressure. Diuretics, also called "water pills," are designed to purge certain compounds from your body that might adversely affect your body's water levels and blood pressure. While blood pressure is a serious issue, diuretics are extremely effective at reducing water weight. Diuretics can change how your body expels certain toxins and substances through your natural bodily functions.
The primary purpose of a diuretic is to expel sodium and water from the body. Given sodium's role in excess fluid retention, it makes sense for a diuretic to purge sodium as one of the main causes of high blood pressure. A diuretic does this by going through the kidneys, which are already responsible for toxin expulsion from the body. Diuretics cause your kidney to expel more sodium and water, including any water in your veins that might affect the pressure. However, it also causes your kidneys to purge more water by inducing urination.
The effects of a diuretic are not instant, but when they do take hold, it causes you to urinate more frequently. In doing so, your body eliminates more water than it would naturally and reduces any associated weight you might have gained. It also has the added benefit of helping you keep your blood pressure level. Diuretics are also not lacking in variety as there are three different kinds of diuretic classes. These different classes change how diuretics work and which brands are available. These diuretic types are:
- Thiazide Diuretics: Thiazide diuretics are the most common of the 3 and directly promote diuresis. Diuresis promotes urine flow, which thiazide diuretics enhance by inhibiting the body's cotransporter for sodium and chloride, also known as salt.
- Loop Diuretics: Loop diuretics, like thiazide diuretics, interact with a cotransporter in the body. Loop diuretics, unlike thiazide diuretics, increase the amount of calcium expelled by the body.
- Potassium Sparing Diuretics: The final type of diuretic, potassium-sparing diuretics, do what the name implies. These diuretics allow you to retain more potassium despite the effect of the diuretics, while the others cause you to lose a fair amount. But potassium-sparing diuretics are also the weakest of the set.
Different diuretics might function differently, but their effect is ultimately the same across types. They all expel certain substances known for causing the body to retain liquids and induce urination. Unfortunately, most diuretics are chemical pharmaceuticals that you might not be willing or able to use for your water weight needs. Fortunately, natural diuretics are available that you can use to induce similar effects without relying on artificial chemicals. Among the natural diuretics available for public consumption is the beloved beverage coffee.
How Can Coffee Help With Water Weight?
Now we arrive at the question that led you to this article. Can coffee effectively resolve the water weight issue? The answer is a tentative yes. Coffee, the beverage, as useful and beloved as it is, is not directly responsible for the effects needed to resolve water weight issues. Rather, it is host to another substance that provides a diuretic effect. This same substance is also responsible for several other benefits commonly associated with coffee, including its ability to wake us in the morning.
This substance is caffeine. Anyone who has ever had a cup of coffee knows what caffeine is in theory but might not be fully aware of the science behind the compound.
Caffeine is a powerful, albeit functionally limited, stimulant that gives coffee its kick. Caffeine can stimulate the central nervous system, which is responsible for signaling the rest of the body to perform certain functions. Without our central nervous systems, we would be unable to function effectively.
Caffeine is used to increase alertness or attentional performance but has other important effects that have turned it into a staple of human consumption. Caffeine's stimulating effects are not the only reason it is so popular with the average consumer.
One of caffeine's lesser-known qualities is that it is a diuretic that can be enjoyed naturally through a few cups of coffee. Caffeine's diuretic properties have led a few people to believe that consuming coffee can cause dehydration, though researchers promptly put those rumors to rest via scientific research. The evidence surrounding caffeine's diuretic properties is not readily available to the average coffee drinker. Fortunately, this does not mean studies confirming these properties do not exist.
Current literature exists that lists caffeine consumption in large amounts can induce diuresis. The current information collection indicates that caffeine consumption needs to be acute in a certain quantity. Typically, you must consume between 250-300 mg of caffeine for the diuretic effects to take hold. To get that much caffeine from coffee, you would need to consume at least 2 or 3 cups in a short period to stimulate the urinary process of the body. This same literature also confirms that caffeine consumption does not lead to fluid loss exceeding what was ingested. So, your natural fluid levels remain safe while the fluid introduced in your diet is expelled.
Acquiring the necessary caffeine from other beverages such as tea or soda is possible. However, you would need to drink considerably more to get anywhere near the same amount of caffeine coffee has. Coffee remains the most effective and popular source of caffeine for anyone who hopes to take advantage of the diuretic effects of the stimulant. As beneficial as caffeine is, it is not without its risks and issues that make chronic consumption a poor decision.
Issues With Coffee Consumption
Coffee is not a beverage going away anytime soon; the more we learn of caffeine's benefits, the more consumption will increase. Unfortunately, as with so many products, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Caffeine's effects are best used in the short-term and only after you have gone without it for some time. The reason is that caffeine is a stimulant, and the human body is extremely adaptive, to the point where stimulants lose effectiveness over time. This is why chronic coffee drinkers seldom experience the effects associated with caffeine.
The longer you drink coffee, the more resistant your body is to its effects. Eventually, caffeine's diuretic effects will fade, and you cannot use it to purge water weight. The best course of action is to suspend all caffeine consumption from any source for a minimum of 2 weeks. After which, you should introduce a sudden caffeine intake as per the dosage mentioned before. Even if you were unwilling to sacrifice your daily cup of coffee for its diuretic impact, you should also consider its effect on your physical health.
Stimulants like caffeine are extremely stressful on the cardiovascular system, making excessive consumption dangerous. Drinking too much coffee can lead to major heart health issues, including fatal heart attacks if you are not careful. Taking a break from your daily coffee consumption could be in your best interest if you want to remain healthy. Hopefully, this information has proven helpful in figuring out how to use coffee to shed water weight.
Keep it All Natural
Water weight is not the most pleasant issue despite being relatively harmless in most situations. While coffee cannot handle the effects of edema caused by major diseases, it can help regulate standard fluid retention. The diuretic effects of coffee are sufficient for purging water weight by promoting urination.
However, the effects are not long-term and must be used conservatively to ensure you do not cause the effects to fade or result in even worse health issues than a little water weight. If you are willing to go through a caffeine cleanse before using coffee as a diuretic, you should experience great success with your efforts to purge water weight. That said, you can use coffee for many other dietary benefits if you know what coffee to drink.
We at Bella All Natural are here to offer a solution to your coffee needs that will not only provide the diuretic effects of caffeine but also address standard weight loss. We believe the best way to tackle any issue is to use the most natural tools available. Natural ingredients ensure you can enjoy the effects of substances like caffeine without compromising your general health. So, if you are interested in using coffee to help with water weight, consider checking our website for our Skinny Iced Coffee. No matter what you choose to do, remember always to keep it All Natural!
