Can You Lose Weight with Green Coffee Extract?
What if I told you that there is a new idea, with science behind it, to losing weight?
Since there are millions of us struggling every day to find a way to lose weight and stop being counted among the statistics of the overweight, I’m willing to bet that you do want to hear more.
Green coffee. No, not something you drink, but an extract made from the green coffee bean. A green coffee bean is just a regular coffee bean that is not roasted.
Exciting new research shows that consuming green coffee 30 minutes before you eat, 3 times a day, can help you drop up to 10% of your body weight without changing anything else you are doing.
The Study
In a small but very controlled study, a group of people whose initial BMI ranged between 25-30 consumed ground green coffee (3 capsules a day) and saw a 10% drop in their body weight over a course of 22 weeks. BMI stands for Body Mass Index, and is a formula designed to assess how thin or fat you are based on your height and weight. Having a BMI up to 24.9 is normal, starting at 25 you are classified as overweight, and at 30+ you are obese.
Regarding the length of the study, during these 22 weeks the participants were not always taking the full amount of green coffee extract. The first 6 weeks they took a placebo (the capsules without the green coffee inside), the following 6 weeks they took a low dose and the last two weeks they took a high dose of the substance. So, you can theorize that the weight loss might have been even more impressive if they had been on the high dose for the whole duration of the experiment.
Why the Green Coffee Effect is not a Scam
The reason the study’s results are very believable, is that each person became its own control by going through the 3 phases of the experiment taking either the full 1050 mg daily dose, the 700 mg dose, or 0 mg (placebo) without ever knowing what phase they were in. They never knew what they were taking (placebo or test) or when, explains Dr. Vinson in his presentation. They were just given 3 capsules to take each day during the study.
That is how we know the results are not just a fluke. We can see that each person lost weight when taking green coffee compared to its own self when taking the empty capsule. Other studies that use two groups of people to test a weight loss substance, with one group taking the placebo and the other one taking the real substance, can never tell if the individual who took the testing substance would have lost weight anyway if it had been administered the placebo.
But in Dr. Vinson’s highly controlled study, each individual was tested for both the placebo and the green coffee effect. If a person was just taking the highest dose and they lost weight, it could be argued they might have lost the same weight on the mid-range dose as well, or maybe they would have lost weight anyway taking nothing at all. So in the controlled study, every person was in all 3 stages so that no individual flukes could shift the results. That means the green coffee weight loss effect, in theory, works for anyone.
Because of the overwhelmingly positive results, a larger study with more participants is being planned.
And just in case you are wondering if maybe the participants were tied to a treadmill going 7 mph and not fed anything but water (in order to swallow the green coffee capsules) which would explain the weight loss, let me tell you that the average calorie intake for all participants was 2,400 calories each day. And no real exercise—I am not saying that this is “healthy” but it is just for study control purposes—except for the general physical movement that amounted to burning about 400 calories each day.
Dietitians say that you need to have a deficit of 3,600 calories in order to lose a pound of fat. This is why commercial diets (i.e Atkins, eDiets, Weight Watchers, etc) encourage you to eat less and exercise more. They want to help you create this caloric deficit. This study did not rely on that theory. Participants lost weight using nothing else but the green coffee extract. Isn’t this exciting?
How Does Green Coffee Make You Lose Weight?
So what makes this stuff work?
Dr. Joe Vinson, who led the study, explains that green coffee beans contain a polyphenol called chlorogenic acid. This substance is contained in the unroasted bean, but unfortunately it is destroyed once exposed to heat. So, roasted coffee beans or brewed coffee have no weight loss effect simply because they have been heated.
The biochemical reaction in the body that mediates the green-coffee weight loss effect takes place mainly in the digestive system, where food are absorbed, according to Dr Vinson’s speculations. The chlorogenic acid decreases our guts ability to absorb sugar and fat, letting these nutrients just leave our body instead of getting absorbed and potentially stored as fat.
Another impressive thing about green coffee’s properties is that it appears that it elicits no unwanted biological reactions in the human body. No side effects. And that includes the gastric distress that other diet drugs can cause.
If you are worried about caffeine content of green beans, don’t be. Dr. Vinson says the three capsules—the recommended daily dose—are equivalent to about a half a cup of regular coffee in terms of caffeine.
Do I Need A Prescription?
You do not need a prescription for green coffee extract, and it is available now, on the Internet through various channels and most health supplement stores. The supplement is made by a company in Austin, Texas, called Applied Foods, and sold to the public by 2 other companies under their labels. Current cost is around $20 for a one-month supply.