Caffeine, Coffee, and Weight Loss
More health concerns
There’s a lot of mixed information on the internet about whether or not caffeine and coffee drinking can help you lose weight. Recent studies show that coffee and caffeine don’t have much impact on the metabolism and thus are not effective at causing your body to burn more calories. There are also mixed results for whether coffee or caffeine helps suppress the appetite. Since people drink coffee in so many different ways, the results can be variable. However, there are a few very good reasons as to why drinking a caffeinated beverage like coffee can thwart your weight loss goals.
Are you susceptible to stress eating?
Ever wonder why you get the urge to eat when you feel stressed out? You’re actually experiencing a blood sugar low as a result of a cascade of hormones stimulated by the elevated stress hormone, cortisol.
Stressful life moments, as well as physical stress from exercising, cause the adrenal glands to release cortisol. Drinking caffeinated beverages like coffee also stimulates elevated cortisol levels. If you drink coffee or a caffeinated beverage daily, you’re putting your body into a chronic state of stress.
Cortisol’s job is to get the body plenty of fuel to deal with any emergency. The liver first responds to cortisol’s signal by pumping out glucose that provides energy to escape danger. Most of the time though, you aren’t moving rapidly or exercising vigorously to use up all this increased blood sugar. Your pancreas then gets the signal to decrease the resulting high blood sugar. It produces insulin that surges into action and as a result, your blood sugar plummets. Low blood sugar causes you lose control of your appetite and reach for something to eat.
Stress thwarts appetite control
Stress makes you experience hunger, but not just any old hunger. When your body is stressed out due to elevated cortisol, it wants quick energy. It knows that sweet, sugary foods or fatty snacks will provide energy the fastest.
As your appetite swings into high gear due to your low blood sugar, you reach for the closest snack you can find. Sweet or fatty calorie-dense snacks are not what you want. , Nutrient-dense, fiber-rich foods that slowly release carbohydrates over time are the best foods for weight loss, but they are usually not available for a quick fix.
High cortisol levels increase insulin and leptin resistance
Leptin is the hormone that tells your body you’ve eaten enough and don’t need to store any more fat. Unfortunately, when your cells are bombarded by stress signals from cortisol, it is as if they become deaf; they just don’t respond like they should to the messages from insulin and leptin.
Cortisol also slows down your metabolism by decreasing the production of TSH, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. As a result, you can’t rely on your body at rest to burn as many calories as it should. Your appetite stays stuck on overdrive.
Cortisol makes you gain fat around the middle
With elevated cortisol levels, you gain weight, especially around your middle. You lose muscle mass as high cortisol signals the need for more energy which transforms your muscle tissue into glucose to create even more blood sugar. If you don’t move, the pancrease releases insulin to convert the blood sugar into fat. Now, you have less muscle to burn up energy, and more fat sitting around your belly!
The body is smart. It knows that if it stores fat around the abdomen, it will be easy to convert it into available energy. Cortisol affects the distribution of fat to keep it close to the heart and major organs for emergencies. If you have chronically elevated cortisol, your body thinks you’re always in a state of emergency.
Aging increases our cortisol levels
Unfortunately, while our adrenals are preoccupied with producing cortisol, they are not producing DHEA. DHEA is the mother hormone for testosterone – the sex hormone that helps us build muscle. DHEA is also called the youth hormone. It is plays an important role in the repair and rebuild function of your cells.
As we age, especially after we hit our 40’s, DHEA production naturally decreases as cortisol rises. No wonder we get fatter the older we get! It’s also the reason why people have less ability to tolerate caffeine the older they get. Anxiety increases with increased cortisol levels as we age which is why so many seniors become much more anxious as they age.
But it was only one cup of coffee...
200 mg of caffeine, which you can get in one 12 oz cup of coffee at Starbucks, can elevate your cortisol by 30% within an hour. If you are drinking coffee all day long, you’re keeping yourself in a constant state of stress. Loss of appetite control is just one of the many effects that chronic stress has on your body.
If you still enjoy your morning coffee, we recommend only drinking a cup in the morning when cortisol levels are naturally higher. Then drink Teeccino Herbal Coffee the rest of the day to maintain stable blood sugar and feel energized. A cup of Teeccino is satisfying and filling, making it a great snack when you need a break. With 65mg of potassium in every cup to replenish your cellular metabolism, Teeccino provides a natural energy boost. It won’t trigger the cascade of hormones that unbalance your blood sugar and make you lose control of your appetite.
To lower your cortisol levels and help your body achieve optimal health, read Teeccino’s Eight Tips to Reduce Cortisol.
