– Coffee contains a lot of caffeine, the world’s most commonly consumed stimulant and caffeine is the main ingredient in most commercial fat-burning supplements. So coffee should help with weight loss, right? But perhaps everything is not quite as it appears. Now coffee isn’t just delicious, warm, black water. Substances from the coffee beans do actually make it into the drink.
In fact coffee contains several biologically active substances that can affect metabolism. There’s caffeine which is a central nervous system stimulant. Theobromine and Theophylline, substances related to caffeine that can also have a stimulant effect, and Chlorogenic Acid which is a biologically active compound that may influence glucose metabolism. The most important of these for weight loss is caffeine which has been studied thoroughly. Let’s have a look at some of the ways it can help.
Coffee can help to metabolize fat from fat tissue. Caffeine stimulates our nervous system which sends direct signals to the fat cells to break down fat. Caffeine also increases our blood levels of the hormone Epinephrine, also know as Adrenaline. Epinephrine sends signals to break down fats and release them into the blood. This is how caffeine helps to mobilize fat from the fat tissues, making it available for energy use as free fatty acids in the blood.
It’s one of the reasons caffeine improves exercise performance. Coffee can also increase metabolic rate. Calories we burn at rest is called resting metabolic rate. Now the higher the rate, the easier it is for us to lose weight and the more we can allow ourselves to eat without gaining. Studies show that caffeine can immediately increase metabolic rate by between three to 11% with larger doses having an even bigger effect.
And interestingly, most of the increase in metabolism is caused by an increase in the burning of fat. Unfortunately the effect is less pronounced in those who are obese and as we grow older. Okay, so we know that caffeine helps mobilize fat from fat cells and that it can increase metabolic rate slightly. But does all this actually help with weight loss long-term? The answer is no.
The main problem here is that humans become tolerant to the effects of caffeine. So in the short-term it sets everything up, but after a while it stops having an effect. Now some argue that cycling caffeine intake can help for fat loss, but this applies more to those taking fat-burning supplements with a high dose of caffeine, not to drinking a latte twice per day. Now don’t get me wrong, I love coffee, and there are plenty of other great reasons to drink it, but just for weight loss is not one of them. Thanks for tuning in.
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