What You Should and Should Not Be Putting in Your Morning Joe

Long time no see! I have been so busy planning the perfect article (my computer was broken). During my time away from writing (one week), I have had plenty of time to get some of my shit together. This includes gut health. My interest was peaked in this because I am someone who deals with constant bloating, fatigue, and honestly issues with how I see my body in the mirror sometime. When this began to take more of a toll on how I felt putting on most of my clothes, I knew I had to make a change. So, here in this article we will be discussing what you should be drinking with your morning coffee (or matcha), and what isn’t worth it. We’ll also discuss the world of oat. almond, soy, and coconut milk (and why maybe not adding any of them is your best choice). I hope you enjoy! Love.

As someone who grew up drinking almond and soy milk because apparently drinking real milk made me cranky (according to my mother), when it came to coffee I found one drink that never made me bloated. Black coffee. As I drank it more I began to actually like the taste of it, but I won’t beat around the bush, most people don’t. And to be frank, it’s boring. Before we go into how to spice this plain drink up, I want to go over the benefits of black coffee. Black coffee is full of antioxidants, this can help reduce your risk of diseases, it protects your body from oxidative stress. Oxidative stress means that your unstable molecules are imbalanced with your antioxidants in your body. Black coffee helps balance all of that bad stuff out. It also helps with your mental alertness and cognitive functions. Black coffee also has a very low calorie count and if you combine that with the caffeine it can boost your metabolism, which can boost weight loss and lessen your bloating throughout the day. Lastly, this boring drink can help with a proper digestive system. This just means it can help you go to the bathroom, it stimulates muscles in the intestine, which helps with digestion. Enough of that talk, how can we make this drink better. I personally avoid all alternative milks, but I do add MCT oil into my morning joe! If you are unsure of what MCT oil is, it stands for Medium-Chain Triglyceride. It is a certain kind of fat that is derived from a coconut. Don’t be worried about the word fat in that last sentence, since it is a medium and not a long-chain triglyceride, it is much easier for your body to digest. This not only has amazing benefits, but it does make your drink creamier without worrying about seed oils, sugars, other things that fall into that category. So, what are the benefits of MCT oil? It gets quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and can give you an easy energy boost. There are also studies showing that MCT oil can give you a feeling of being full, which if you are into fasting, it can help you last longer through your metabolic state, or it can help you stay in a caloric deficit. Lastly, MCT oil improves your gut health. This is because it has antimicrobial properties which balance out the bad bacteria stuck in your gut. So, MCT oil makes your coffee creamier without overthinking about how it could potentially make you bloated or it’s bad for you. That is not the only thing I add in my black coffee though, I also take a little hot water and mix collagen and cinnamon in with it. My issue with collagen is that it always had a weird scent to it, and slightly an odd taste, but when I add cinnamon into it as well, both the taste and scent are completely masked (while still getting those benefits)! I am sure we have all heard of collagen, but if you are still confused about it, here it is. Collagen is something that is already running through your body, but the older you get, the less your body naturally produces it, but when you add it into your daily routine you are getting a consistent amount of it. This can help you with getting beautiful and tightened skin, longer hair and nails, better feeling joints, prettier teeth, and your gut health. I feel like prior to doing my research I had no clue that collagen helps reduce inflammation, but cinnamon does that too (and makes it tastier). To sum this section up, black coffee is good for you and it can be made delicious without adding in any sort of milk. Perfect, thank you, next.

So, after all of this talk about how to make your coffee tastier without any milks, why do I avoid alternative milks? Obviously, this is completely based off of my own goals I want to reach with my body, if you like adding a little oat milk in your coffee, no judgement here! I just want to share some things I’ve learned. Okay, oat, soy, and almond milk all contain seed oils. If you are like I and have been confused about why this is bad for you, I’ve done some research for the both of us. Seed oils are high in this thing called Omega-6 Fatty Acids. These fatty acids are already in so many of the foods that we eat in western cultured diets, so why would you want to add more in your coffee? They can cause you to be more inflamed. That’s the first thing, next is that a lot of the time the alternative milks you are getting from a coffee shop have added sugar, on top of whatever sugar you’re already adding to your drink. Those are the two reasons I decided to start avoiding added creamers of any kind, just makes it easier (and cheaper) for me when ordering a coffee. Like I said in the beginning though, alternative milks are not going to ruin your life, it is all dependent on what your health goals are.

Now, I don’t want you to be out wasting your money on supplements that aren’t going to help you get where you want to be. So, what’s worth it and what’s not? If you can’t already tell, I am a huge advocate for collagen and MCT oil, and I also don’t think that you need to be adding in every supplement into your coffee, so I am going to finish this article with one more combination that can help make a huge difference in your morning coffee routine. This combo contains L-Theanine, Maca, and Ashwagandha. This is going to help your mental more than your physical, but hey! You can’t get healthy externally if you’re not healthy internally, right? So, what is L-Theanine? This additive can help reduce stress and those coffee jitters. If you are someone who hits the afternoon slump often, but is easily affected by caffeine, L-Theanine can help reduce both of those things. Not only does it do that, but it also is great for your gut health. It is full of antioxidants, which is a huge plus (as always). Next thing I mentioned was Maca Root. Maca root is a root vegetable, mostly found in Peru. It’s rich in nutrition, which already sounds good. The one thing that may scare people is it does contain carbohydrates, but it also contains fiber, vitamins, protein, and antioxidants. Other benefits in Maca root are going to be sustained energy, cognitive functions, and once again, your fucking gut. Okay, that’s the last time I bring up something that helps your digestive system, because I’m tired of saying it. Last thing I’m going to talk about is Ashwagandha. I never wanted to use ashwagandha just because it never appealed to me, and a lot of the time I don’t really trust something if it’s everywhere on social media because that means people are being paid to promote it and I worry about the genuine benefits. Despite my own weird worries, I dug up some dirt and found the truth. Ashwagandha does have some great benefits. These benefits include better sleep, a better stamina (longer workouts), it contains anti-aging properties, and helps with hormonal balance. If you combine all three of these supplements, I guarantee within the next month you will feel less stressed, less bloated, and better about yourself and your body.

I hope this helped someone, and please somebody try my collagen, MCT, cinnamon, black coffee combo to tell me I’m not crazy! Anyways, go get your gut healthy! Go for a run! Get snatched for summer and start living a healthier life. Love. Bye!