I’m surprised this hasn’t be covered on the Dope before but my searches turned up nothing.
Google searches have been unhelpful as there is so much contradiction from site to site, some claiming caffeine is a wonder drug that mobilises fat and helps it burn once mobilised whereas other sites claim it adversely effects your metabolism.
I’m trying to lose weight at the moment but things have plateaued somewhat. I know there is no magic bullet for weight loss and people differ but I figure every little helps. I don’t consume any caffeine at present, no coffee/tea/energy drinks/colas etc. I pretty much stick to water, fruit juice and the odd beer.
So, what’s the straight dope here, would having some caffeine help with weight loss, if so what time of day is best to ‘take’ it? For the purposes of this question I would like to ignore the cravings people associate with caffeine as in influential factor.
Don’t know whether tea or coffee help with weight loss, but they are good deal lighter in calories than fruit juice or beer, so if you could switch from the latter to the former it should help.
Per the Mayo Clinic it may be a minor help but if you don’t consume caffeine now the side effects are likely to overshadow any weight loss assistance.
However I will second the recommendation to stop drinking fruit juice. It’s basically sugar in a glass. Natural sugar, but sugar none the less. Eat a piece of fruit and the fibre helps your body deal with the natural sugars - drink a glass of juice and it’s straight to your hips.
This is a guess, but based on what I’ve read the amount of caffeine needed to really affect your weight is more than you want to consume. Water is probably the best weight loss drink; it helps fill you up and water is needed to burn fat. Most folks are mildly dehydrated anyway.
To be explicit, tea and coffee have zero calories, though obviously if you add milk or sugar, that changes.
Oddly, I find tea works as a mild appetite suppressant and coffee actually makes me want to go eat something (if for no other reason then it keeps me up, and I eat more when awake then asleep). But I lost a decent amount of weight by just making some tea when I felt the urge to go chow down on something. Not sure if thats just the way my brain works, or if its also true for other people though.
Couple of reasons for that, I think: if the desire to chow down is just to put something flavorful in your mouth, tea will take care of that desire. Also, sometimes people mistake dehydration for hunger, and tea or water will sate it rather than food.
Anecdotally, many people say that sleep is important to weight loss, and if you take in a lot of caffeine, it can affect your sleep.
Personally, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight without modifying my caffeine intake at all, and coffee really helps with regularity–which is sometimes a problem on diets. I do drink a lot of sugar free drink mix, and hardly any straight water. I really don’t think my body has any problem pulling out the water from the red food coloring.
I love me some Crystal Light, but there’s some good evidence that artificial sweeteners can cause weight gain and hinder weight loss. It’s hypothesized that our brains “know” how many calories should come from sweet tasting foods, and if it doesn’t get it from them, it increases your hunger signals until it gets what it’s expecting. It’s also possible that insulin is released when you taste sweet, sugar or not, and insulin causes other hormones to start storing fat. If it works for you, it works for you, of course, but the science for the general population is mixed, to say the least.
And that’s really my answer to the OP, as well. Caffeine in moderation can help some people lose weight, but it’s not a tool that works for everyone. Scientific studies, while absolutely valuable, should not replace your personal experience and what works for you.
While I’ve heard that, and I am open to the idea that it’s true for some people, I also think there is a real sentiment out there that weight loss can only be achieved through denial and suffering–that being fat is a sin, and you atone for it by denying yourself pleasure. There seems to be a sentiment out there that anything pleasurable has to be assumed to be unhealthy until proven otherwise.
For me, artificial sweeteners do NOT cause an insulin spike. I am IR and I know what an insulin spike feels like, and I know what crashing blood sugar hunger feels like. Artificial sweeteners of any type have never caused that in me.
To tie this to the OP: If you’ve been stalled more than 3 weeks, I’d try the caffeine. Journal how much you consume, how you feel, how you sleep. If you start to lose weight again, it may be the cause–though there are so many variables, it’s hard to say.
For me, the Diet Wisdom that you have to eat breakfast and many small meals are better than one big one is dead wrong. Been there, done that, bought that XXL T-shirt. If I skip breakfast and eat my main large meal in the early afternoon and a small dinner, I’m not hungry, I lose weight, my BP and cholesterol go down and I’m far more alert and fit.
If you’re a doctor trying to help many people lose weight, then large sample sizes and generalizations are good. If you’re you, trying to lose your weight, it’s far more important to figure out what works for you, even if you’re one of those people who would be an outlier in the study.
To help your weight loss, I would more advise you to give up fruit juice than worry about caffeine. Orange juice, for instance, contains MORE calories than Coca-Cola in equivalent volume (112 cals v. 98 cals in 8 oz) and doesn’t have any vitamins that are missing in the average not-very-great American diet.
If you must drink juice thin it with fizzy water. Even then you should consider it “special occasion food” and not an every day thing. Fruit juice is really empty calories, but for some reason people have this idea its really healthy.
For weight loss, I’ve always seen caffeine used as part of an ECA stack, rather than being used by itself. There seems to be some evidence that it improved the weight-loss activities of the ephedrine.