Caffeine And Weight Loss
Caffeine can slightly boost weight loss or help to prevent weight gain, but there’s no obvious evidence that increasing caffeine consumption results in significant or permanent weight loss.
Caffeine is found in many beverages, including coffee, tea, energy drinks and colas; in products containing cocoa or chocolate; and in a variety of medications and dietary supplements, including supplements aimed at weight loss.
Coffee only has 9 calories per cup, but before sip that hot, steamy brew it’s important to know the relationship between caffeine and weight gain. Drinking that coffee or other caffeinated beverages can sabotage your efforts to lose weight.
Although research about the connection between caffeine and weight isn’t definitive, there are several theories about how caffeine might affect weight, including:
Appetite suppression. Caffeine can reduce your desire to eat for a brief time, but there’s not enough evidence to see that long-term consumption aids weight loss.
Calorie burning. Caffeine can stimulate thermogenesis — one way your body generates heat and energy from digesting food. But this probably isn’t enough to produce significant weight loss.
Water loss. For some people, caffeine can act as a diuretic, which means it increases the amount of urine you excrete. This increase in urine output, mostly water loss, may temporarily decrease your body weight, but it doesn’t result in the loss of body fat.
Some studies looking at caffeine and weight were poor quality or done on animals, making the results questionable or hard to generalize to humans. In addition, some studies found that even decaffeinated coffee may contribute to modest weight loss, suggesting that substances or factors besides caffeine may play a role in weight loss.
There’s another point of view! If you drink caffeinated beverages throughout the day you may actually be causing yourself to eat more. That’s right. If you’re struggling to lose weight, it may help you to kick the caffeine habit.
Caffeine affects cravings for food because it raises the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol raises heart rate, blood pressure and tells your body to increase its energy stores. This results in the body craving sweets. So if you’re wondering why you snacked on cookies in the afternoon, it could have something to do with that coffee you drank with breakfast.
Moreover drinking caffeine can trigger hypoglycemia. The body’s reaction is an increased appetite and cravings for higher calorie foods. The more caffeine consumed, the more your body urges you to eat.
One must also know that caffeine is known to make people feel jittery, but its affects go beyond that. Caffeine-induced stress can actually interfere with how you feel about yourself and trigger emotional eating or a need for comfort food. This correlation between caffeine and weight gain is another good reason to consider weaning yourself from caffeine to reduce stress hormones that result in emotional eating.
Studies show that caffeine also contributes to insulin resistance. When this happens glucose and insulin builds up in the blood. It’s common knowledge that drinking coffee can also cause insomnia and sleep deprivation. Both of these conditions are related to insulin resistance and insulin is a metabolism hormone. It affects every cell in the body.