Fat Burning Drinks: 3 Simple Drinks That Increase Your Metablolism

Meet your weight loss goals by maximizing your daily calorie burn. These three fat burning drinks will burn extra calories and shed a few pounds for free by boosting your metabolism. Here’s what to drink and why.


Whether you are trying to shed unwanted pounds or keep your already fit body, you need to burn as many calories as possible. While metabolism boosters are only one part of a complete weight loss strategy, they are an easy way to lose a few pounds for “free.”

You can’t make any real weight loss progress without also cutting calories and getting regular exercise. But by being smart about what you eat and drink, you can increase the rate at which you burn body fat.

Here are three simple drink choices and a few weight loss tips that will help you out.

How To Boost Metabolism

Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories. Much of this process is dependent on factors outside your control, such as your gender (men tend to have higher metabolisms than women), your age (after age 40, your metabolism decreases about 5% each decade), and your current ratio of body muscle to fat (muscle burns more calories than fat, even when you are at rest).

Luckily, there are some things that you can control. The very best way to boost your metabolism is exercise. Fat burning aerobic exercise burns calories immediately and provides an increase in metabolism for a few hours. Muscle building exercises burn fewer calories during your workout, but they help increase your overall metabolism so that you burn more calories overall, even while your body is at rest.

Making smart choices about what you eat (like fat burning foods) can also help boost your metabolism. Let’s take a look at some smart drink choices that you can make that will help increase your metabolism and enhance your fat burning workouts.

Stay Hydrated: Drink Lots of Water

You’ve heard lots about the health benefits of drinking water. Well, here is another reason to refill your water glass. Whether your body is turning food into fuel or working away at your fat reserves, it needs water to efficiently burn calories. If you are not fully hydrated, your metabolism will slow down and you won’t be burning calories as efficiently as you can. Need some proof? University of Utah researchers found that adults who drink 8 or more glasses of water each day burned significantly more calories than those who drank 4 or less.

How much water should you drink? The study considered a glass of water to be 8 ounces — that’ only two thirds the size of a can of soda. So drink up and give your metabolism a little boost. If that’s still too much, recent studies have found that you can get your 8 glasses of water a day in other ways too: all beverages count (but see our tip below about avoiding liquid calories), and so do fresh fruits, vegetables, and other fluid-rich foods.

Feel Better About Your Coffee Addiction — But Drink it Black

Do you need your morning coffee to get the day started right? Do like the energy boost and increased concentration that it can give you? Well, here’s another reason to stick with your daily coffee routine: coffee will boost your metabolism. A study published in the Journal of Physiology and Behavior looked at people who drank caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee. Guess what? The caffeinated coffee drinkers had a 16% increase in metabolism over the decaffeinated group! And another study found that a person drinking 2 cups of coffee burned 50 calories during the next few hours.

But, of course, there is a catch. You need to drink it black. Adding sugar, cream, or other flavorings will add calories and zap the fat burning foods benefit. And you go crazy with a fancy Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts concoction, you’ll definitely do more harm than good.

Try Some Green Tea — You’ll Lose Weight and Boost Your Health!

You’ve probably heard that green tea contains antioxidants that can help fight disease and help keep you healthy. But here’s another reason to drink it:

Green tea can help you lose weight! You won’t get skinny on green tea alone. But studies have shown that green tea boosts your metabolism so you’ll burn more calories. How many more? Enough to lose about one pound per month.

That doesn’t sound like too much spread out over a year, but it adds up to 12 pounds! When combined with diet and exercise, green tea will give your weight loss plan a good boost.

Related Weight Loss Tip #1: Drink It Cold

Some nutritionists have suggested that you can burn a few extra calories by drinking your beverages cold. The Weight Management Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center suggests that your body likely works a little harder to raise the temperature of cold drinks to your 98.6 degree core body temperature. And in the process, you may burn a few extra calories.

Be sure to drink your green tea hot to get the maximum benefit. But feel free to load everything else with ice. And yes, as the ice cubes melt (and you drink them), they count towards your eight glasses of water!
drink it cold

Related Weight Loss Tip #2: Avoid Costly Liquid Calories

When you are making choices about what you drink, do it wisely. Many drinks are sweetened with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or fruit juices. These are empty calories that don’t fill you up and don’t provide any nutritional value. Stick with the basics like water, coffee and tea, and avoid calories in your drinks. Save your calories for meals and snacks that fill you up, curb your appetite, and fuel your body in a healthy way.

Will You Meet Your Weight Loss Goals With Fat Burning Foods?

You should note that you won’t meet your weight loss goals with fat burning foods alone. On their own, they don’t burn enough calories, so they should be only one part of your weight loss or weight maintenance program. But by altering your habits, you can get some easy calorie burning for free. The slight increases in metabolism won’t get you instant weight loss success, but it certainly adds up. Over the course of a year, it may add up to 5 or even 10 pounds worth of calories. That’s either 5 extra pounds of calories you can eat while still maintaining your current weight, or 5 extra pounds you’ll lose. And who wouldn’t want to lose 5 pounds without really trying?