It was a question. so, no, I don’t have a cite.
My mother told me that drinking warm milk at night because it’s difficult to digest and the resulting extra work tires me out quickly.
or something.
r_k thanks for explaining fidget to DrLiver .
DrLiver, fidget is in the dictionary. The reference was to a paper - go to the library and read the paper if you like.
Hot liquid does not burn calories. It takes calories to raise the temperature of the liquid. Drinking something cold would thus require expending calories to bring it to body temperature. However, hot drinks may make you sweat more leading to an increase in evaporative cooling.
Why does warm milk make you sleepy?
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mwarmmilk.html
WRT drinking hot liquids burning calories, it would make more sense if you thought that drinking cold liquids burned more calories – since a “calorie” is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of liquid by one degree. You’d still be wrong, but it’d be easier to understand where you came by the idea.
As far as coffee slimming you, I imagine that its laxative properties might help a little bit in that regard. (Just speculative, but it seems to me that the effect would be greater than that of the the amount of “exercise” you get from caffeine jitters.)
Sorry antechinus, didn’t see your post-- been repeatedly pressing the “submit” button for the last half an hour while dicking around elsewhere… Cussed timeouts.
(Wonder how many more posts will turn up before this one goes through?)
While not really relevant to this thread, this article which comes out two days from now (!) in The Lancet (a respected medical journal), purports to show two things:
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Heavy coffee drinkers, on average, weigh more than people who drink less coffee
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Heavy coffee drinking is associated with a lowered risk of developing type II diabetes
These are interesting findings. If nothing else, the risk of type II diabetes usually increases as you gain weight. If these results, and the conclusion drawn from them, are valid it suggests that there’s something about coffee that lessens the chance of developing type II diabetes despite the fact that heavy coffee drinkers tend to be heavier than light drinkers.
Coffee frees fatty acids: makes them available as a source of energy. So if you drink a cup of coffee before running, your body will have access to those fats and spare your carbs. You will expend the same quantity of Calories, but you will save using up your carbs, which is important in endurance events.
On average, I drink 3 12 cup pots of coffee by myself each day at work while sitting in front of a computer. When I’m thirsty, I drink coffee. I rarely drink water, even at home. I eat a very light breakfast, no lunch, and generally a decent dinner. I used to eat lunch but I gained 20 pounds within three months of starting this job.
If coffee made you lose weight, I’d be a walking skeleton, or at least still have my six pack instead of bubblewrap above my hips.
Caffiene will help you lose weight in combination with other things, but not just by itself. Well, temporarily it might, just in water weight since it is a diuretic, or if you aren’t used to caffiene and suddenly decide to become a coffee achiever.
So for those of us who are trying to become leaner, would it be worthwhile to drink a cup of coffee before hitting the treadmill?
As I said, it has no effect on calories expended. It spares the carbs that you may need in an endurance event.
Turbo Dog raised an interesting point here. Speaking as a coffee addict who nonetheless manages to maintain ample excess weight, my WAG is that those of us who are drinking coffee are likely to be sitting on our butts all morning while doing so. This could explain why we’d be heavier than those who drink less coffee; they’re more likely to be moving around than we are.
Yeah, but if you’re using fat as fuel rather than carbs, wouldn’t that at least have a minor effect? After all, the percentage of your energy you’re getting from fat can be at least as important as the number of calories you expend, depending on your goals.
Not desparately seeking a magic bullet, just curious.
I don’t see your point. 1 gram of fat contains 9 Calories. 1 gram of carbs has 4 Calories. If you expend 900 Calories for an hour or so of running, that would be 100 grams of fat or 250 grams of carbs. So you would lose more if you use carbs as your energy source. However, you don’t use one in exclusion to the other. Carbs is your main energy source. Although not as efficient as fat for the above reason, it is the more efficient for the body to use. Coffee will enable your body to more readily use some free fatty acids. It ain’t much, but it may make a difference.
That’s kinda what I figured.
Not quite. First of all, the mass of the energy source (carbohydrates or fat) is not the only consideration. After all, the human body also requires additional moisture when storing these quantities.
Second, excess carbohydrates are typically converted to fat before storage. (Note that I say “excess.” Some of the carbs will be stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver.) This conversion process requires energy; that is, the body will burn additional calories as it attempts to store the carbohydrates. As a result, someone who consumes 1000 excess fat calories will gain more weight than someone who consumes 1000 excess carbohydrate calories.
That is why, for effective weight loss, one must engage in exercises which tend to burn more fat than carbohydrates. The net amount of fat loss is greater that way.
Water contains no calories.
You say “excess,” but then say “some” will be stored in the muscles and liver. Only the excess will be converted into fat. So, if you don’t consume more than you expend, there will be no excess. In addition, the blood contains some glucose. And how much energy does it take for the conversion. You make it sound like quite a lot, which it really isn’t. Then from those faulty premises, you conclude (1) that one who consumes 1000 excess fat calories will gain more weight than someone who consumes 1000 excess carb calories. In the first place, 1000 excess calories is quite a lot, but never mind the amount, how much extra calories are spent in the conversion. (2) Then you say that for effective weight loss, burning fat is more effective. But this is a non sequitor. Regardless if it takes extra calories to store excess carbs as fats and regardless if one who consumes x amount of excess fat gains more weight than carbs, you have not stated any reason why for “effective weight loss” one must burn fat in preference to carbs. Your first statements pertain to calories gained, but then you state that burning fat is more efficient. This is a non sequitor. For the reasons I previously stated, burning carbs would seem to be more effective.
For effective fat loss, wouldn’t it make more sense to get as large as possible a proportion of fuel from fat? That’s my angle.
In the short run, but if you have excess glycogen stored, your body will eventually conver this into fat, and you will lose more glyogen for the same amount of calories as you would fat.
Yes, but it does have weight.
Which is PRECISELY why I drew attention to that fact. The point is that burning 100 calories of carbohydrates does not translate into losing more mass than 100 calories of fat.
I never said it was a lot. I said that there was a difference. This distinction is simple, intuitive and important.
Basic, not faulty.
**
1000 excess calories translates to less than 1/3 lbs of fat, so it’s not “quite a lot.”
But since you asked, the percentage of calories consumed is quite substantial. Dietary fat is stored with an efficiency ratio of 97%, whereas carbohydrates entail an efficiency ratio of 75%.
Yes, I have. You just haven’t been paying attention.
If you consume 1000 excess calories of fat, then 970 of those calories will be stored in the body. If you consume 1000 excess calories of carbohydrates, only 750 of those calories will be stored. The rest will be burned up in the process of converting the calories to fat.
This is PRECISELY why health professional emphasize the need for sustained aerobic activity for fat loss. Moderate intensity aerobic exercise tends to burn more fat than carbohydrates, whereas intense, short-duration exercise burns more carbohydrates than fat. Cecil himself emphasizes this fact. Read an exercise book, please.
Sorry, I provided the long link to the article where Cecil emphasized the need for fat-burning, rather than glucose- or glycogen burning. Here is the correct link.
Altho, as Cecil said, after 10-15 minutes into exercise, the body will begin to use fat as an energy source, it does not do so exclusively, and fat is still a small percentage of the energy source. The reason why the body does not use fat at the beginning is because fat requires sufficient oxygen for metabolizing. You can burn carbs without oxygen, but by doing so, you dramatically reduce the amount of ATP the body can re-synthesize. Actually, in the first few seconds (about 10) into sprint work, the body uses an entirely different mechanism, the creatine-phosphate pathway, for energy.
OK, you made that point, but I don’t see how that correlates to the burning of fat in exercise as being preferential. I fail to see the connection. All that says, as far as I can see, is that consumption of carbs is preferable to the consumption of fats.