Intermittent fasting has recently become a popular eating plan to help with weight loss and other health benefits.
This eating plan focuses mainly on when to eat rather than what to eat, creating a cycle of eating and fasting periods.
But if you are a beverage lover, you might be wondering, “can I drink tea while intermittent fasting”?
It is wonderful to have tea while intermittent fasting and not break your fast, as long as the tea does not have any added calories such as sweeteners, creamers, honey, sugar, or milk.
Even if you DO add sweeteners, you are unlikely to break your fast as long as you don’t exceed 50 calories.
But I recommend just drinking TEA BLACK and you’ll be fine on your FAST.
I find it satisfies hunger cravings too.
With the main point of intermittent fasting being to achieve a negative energy balance, it is important to ensure that your caloric intake is kept to a minimum while ensuring that you are close to being calorie-free during your fasting period.
With these restrictions, you can achieve a metabolic switch which would lead to achieving faster intermittent fasting results.
This happens because the switch makes the body consume energy from its fat stores, which then reduces the general body fat at the end of the day.
Does Drinking Tea Mess Up Intermittent Fasting?
The idea of intermittent fasting is that you consume little to no calories during your fasting period.
If your tea is unsweetened, drinking it is perfectly fine.
However, if you choose to add sweeteners like sugar, milk, or honey, you cannot exceed 50 calories, or you will mess up your fast.
Drinking tea has been known to help with improving the results of your intermittent fasting efforts.
Some of the benefits include the following;
Reducing hunger – Drinking non-caloric tea can help soothe your hunger pangs during the fasting cycle, especially at the beginning of your intermittent fasting journey.
The antioxidants in tea can reduce the levels of hunger hormones responsible for the sensation of hunger.
Better weight loss results – Tea can be a suitable replacement for soft high-calorie drinks that contribute to weight gain since it is calorie-free or close to it.
Introducing tea into the diet can help you ease into a healthier diet while managing the craving for unhealthy drinks like alcohol or sugary carbonated drinks.
Facilitating detox – Tea contains polyphenols which help facilitate the body’s natural detoxification process.
This is achieved when the polyphenols promote enzyme activity in the liver, making the detoxification more efficient.
Enhancing relaxation – The simple act of drinking tea can be soothing to the brain.
This can put your body into a state of rest, reducing stress hormones and promoting better brain health.
Can You Drink Tea While Water Fasting?
Water fasting is a type of diet that focuses on the consumption of only non-caloric liquids.
These non-caloric liquids include water and plain tea.
You can drink unsweetened tea while water fasting, or if you choose to use sweeteners, the drink must contain less than 50 calories or you’ll knock your body out of the fasting state.
Including plain tea in your water-fast program can be a good idea.
An even better idea can be to include a variety of plain tea flavors to have options to choose from.
Having options for the drinks available can help reduce monotony and potentially increase the chance of your adherence to the diet.
Some of these plain tea options include;
When consumed without additives, all these tea options have little to no caloric or insulin consequence and are therefore appropriate for being part of water fast.
Can You Drink Tea During A 16 Hour Fast?
The 16/8 intermittent fasting routine limits the eating window to 8 hours and fasting for 16.
During the 16 hour fasting period, the goal is to maintain little to no calorie intake, so drinking plain unsweetened tea is fine.
However, if you choose to sweeten your tea, ensure that your beverage is less than 50 calories.
Most people tend to concentrate the fasting hours on time between late in the evening and morning hours, leaving the day as the eating window.
With this eating pattern, most people find this type of intermittent fasting to be a bit more bearable since most of the fasting hours are spent sleeping at night.
Even though this fasting routine does not have dietary restrictions on amounts and types of food consumed, it is essential to maintain clean healthy choices for better results.
This also applies to the type of tea choices during the 16-hour fast.
How Much Tea Can You Drink While Intermittent Fasting?
Even with the zero-calorie drink allowance while intermittent fasting, it is important to ensure they are consumed within the correct limits. 3 to 4 cups of tea is the recommended daily amount.
In addition to satiety, daily tea consumption is also beneficial for hydration.
Having a moderate amount of tea daily also leaves room for other essential fluids such as clear water whose recommended daily allowance also has to be met.
The tea contributes to the daily fluid intake, which helps with hydration and other important processes such as detoxification.
The antioxidant properties of tea, especially green tea, help reduce cell damage as a result of free radicals.
While consuming tea during intermittent fasting has many health benefits, it also has a couple of drawbacks.
Tea naturally contains caffeine and its over-consumption can cause anxiety and restlessness.
This can manifest through poor sleep, headaches, nausea, and heartburn.
Lemon in tea can only break a fast if it is in enough quantities to trigger an insulin response.
Generally, food or beverage has to be over 50 calories to break a fast.
Being a fruit, lemon has fructose in its juice, but since it is in meager quantities, it is unlikely to break a fast.
Approximately 3 ounces of lemon juice is what it would take to trigger an insulin response.
This quantity would make any drink very tart and difficult to consume.
In this case, adding just a few drops of natural lemon juice to your tea for extra zing would not break a fast.
Commercially-produced lemon substitutes like lemonade can, however, most definitely break a fast.
This is because of the added sugars that can increase caloric content.
Water- This includes pure drinking water, sparkling water, and spring water.
All these types of water do not contain any nutrients that require to be broken down and digested.
They can therefore be considered safe to drink while intermittent fasting without breaking your fast.
Lemon-infused water- Adding just a few drops of lemon juice to water is enough to achieve a difference in taste without affecting any metabolic functions of the body, thereby not breaking your fast.
The lemon can also help boost vitamin C availability while also enhancing hydration.
Black tea- Plain black tea that contains no additives, contains zero calories and can not break a fast.
Consuming tea while fasting has many benefits that contribute to better results while maintaining your fast.
Black coffee- Plain black coffee does not contain calories and is, therefore, suitable for maintaining your fast.
Coffee does, however, contain caffeine which when consumed in large quantities over time may cause effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure.
It is, therefore, important to consume coffee in moderation.
Conclusion
Even as time-restricted eating through intermittent fasting grows in popularity, it is important to remain focused on the main objective for beginning this dietary journey.
With the numerous beneficial aspects of drinking tea while intermittent fasting, it would be better to continue drinking your favorite zero-calorie tea as you expect better results.
I’m Chris Watson & the Founder of EatForLonger.com. I’m a food and wellbeing enthusiast researching and sharing foodstuffs and simple food-based concepts, such as fasting and clean eating.
I hope it inspires you to make tiny changes to what you eat and when you eat while optimizing your healthspan and all-around well-being.
Read more About Me here.