How Does Caffeine in Your Diet Affect Weight Loss?

How Does Caffeine in Your Diet Affect Weight Loss?

Caffeine in your diet has many effects, benefits and drawbacks. If you’re prone to headaches, caffeine can help thin your blood, making your pain reliever of choice work better. However, if you’re trying to lose weight, you might want to cut back or completely cut out the caffeine in your diet.

Effects of Caffeine on Your Body

Almost everyone has a cup of coffee in the morning to help them wake up. While it’s true that the caffeine will help you open eyes your eyes in the morning, it doesn’t really have much in the way of dietary benefit when trying to lose weight. Caffeine gives you a small energy burst shortly after consuming it because it’s a mild stimulant and it hits your brain quite quickly, but that energy falls of very rapidly.

Also, caffeine will make you thirsty, thus you’ll drink more of your drink of choice. If this happens to be a non-diet, caffeinated drink, you’ll be adding liquid weight as well as extra calories. Lastly, caffeine has been shown to stimulate your appetite, especially for sweets and non-nutritious foods.

Adverse Dietary Effects of Caffeine in Your Diet

As stated above, caffeine stimulates your appetite for sweets and fatty foods, the exact types of foods you’re trying to avoid as you embark on a weight loss plan. This causes your blood sugar levels, which are directly tied to energy levels, to rise and fall rapidly. You’ll have tremendous bursts of energy for a few minutes, followed by drastic drop offs in the amount of energy you have available for exercise.

The stimulant properties of caffeine can also trigger your body to produce hormones which cause stress. This is bad for those of you on diets, because one way many people fight stress is by snacking on sweets and fatty foods. This is caused by artificial hypoglycemia being induced by the intake of caffeine. Hypoglycemia is a condition resulting in low blood sugar.

Caffeine has been shown to interfere with your body’s ability to process a chemical known as Gamma aminobutyric acid, or GABA. GABA is a neurotransmitter that has calming effects on the human body, and caffeine’s effect here is that is interferes with the transmitter-receptor bonding process, thus causing elevated stress levels.

Coffee Drinking and Weight Loss

You know that coffee contains caffeine. You now know that caffeine intake from your morning coffee can cause stress and cravings for sweets and fatty foods from increases in stress hormones and adrenaline in the body. Coffee also contains a chemical known as cortisol. Cortisol is known to be increase your appetite, again something you don’t want when trying to lose weight.

Cortisol also causes your body to deposit fat in the abdominal region. Most people add creamers and sweeteners to the coffee they drink. Creamers are basically milk fats. Fat consumption is contrary to weight loss. Sweeteners, except dietetic sweeteners, are also contrary to weight loss due to caloric content.