Can You Drink Coffee While Fasting?

One of the most common questions people ask when they start intermittent fasting, is whether or not they can drink coffee (or other drinks) during a fasted state. The short answer is yes, but it is a little more complex than that.

What You Can Drink While Fasting

First, let’s talk about what you can drink and/or eat during a fasted state. The simple answer is that you can have anything with zero calories or extremely low calories. While fasting, you really should not have any calories, so the basics are drinking water, tea, and coffee black. Of course, there are some different variations on this depending on your preferences and comfort levels, which you will learn about in later sections.

Drinking Coffee During Your Fast

Many people will rely on drinking coffee during their fast for several reasons. For one thing, if you are fasting for several hours in the morning, not having food or drinks can be hard on your body. It is difficult to get enough energy for work or exercising in the morning without that caffeine in your body. So, you can definitely have coffee while fasting, but drinking it black is preferred. You can also drink tea if you want something flavored, but without caffeine, or very low amounts of caffeine.

Adding Cream or Sugar to Your Coffee or Tea

This is often where people make some common mistakes with intermittent fasting and drinking coffee. Coffee itself has nothing in it but coffee beans and water, so naturally this is fine during a fast. The point is to be at zero calories or as low as you can be during the fasted state. Therefore, you are advised not to have sugar, creamer, or even natural additions like honey to your coffee. However, some people believe it doesn’t make much of a difference with just a splash of creamer in their coffee. If you think you can stick to intermittent fasting by just having a tablespoon or so of creamer, by all means add it. This is much different than eating a full meal for breakfast and breaking the fast that way.

Bulletproof Coffee and Intermittent Fasting

This is when things change a little bit. If you decide to have Bulletproof or keto coffee during your fast, then you are not actually doing intermittent fasting. What you are doing is often referred to as Bulletproof Fasting. This is when you go a prolonged period with no food, but you still have the fat and calories from your Bulletproof coffee. Generally, you won’t still be fasting if you are adding butter and coconut oil to your coffee.

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