Can Drinking Caffeinated Coffee Help You Lose Weight?

Who doesn’t enjoy a trip to Starbucks? If you are trying to lose weight, hopefully you choose a cup of brewed coffee rather than a dessert coffee drink with 500 plus calories and more sugar than a doughnut! Assuming you choose well, could that cup of caffeinated coffee help you lose weight? Let’s looks at what science says about caffeinated coffee and its impact on weight. Can Drinking Caffeinated Coffee Help You Lose Weight?

Caffeine is a Stimulant

Caffeine has some of the same properties as a drug: it stimulates the central nervous system. After you drink a cup of coffee or other caffeinated beverage, you get a short-term boost in resting metabolic rate – the rate at which your body burns calories. However, the metabolism-boosting benefits of caffeinated coffee are modest. If you consume 100 milligrams of caffeine daily, you might burn an additional 100 calories per day. That’s not shabby, but, over time, research shows that people who consume caffeine on a regular basis gain weight rather than lose it.

If caffeine is a stimulant and coffee drinkers gain weight, you might wonder why. People adapt to the stimulating effects of caffeine and that blunts the metabolic advantage. In other words, you no longer get the same metabolic boost when you drink coffee. Plus, drinking caffeinated coffee, especially in large quantities, may increase the stress hormone cortisol. One of the undesirable effects of boosting cortisol is an increase in appetite, especially for sugary foods. In addition, if caffeine keeps you awake at night, the impact of not sleeping can increase appetite and contribute to weight gain. Studies show that a key appetite hormone called ghrelin goes up when people don’t sleep enough.

Does Caffeine Increase the Desire to Eat Sugar?

A more recent study from researchers at Cornell University finds that drinking caffeinated coffee may change the perception of sweet tastes. In the study, subjects who drank either decaf or caffeinated coffee with added sweetener perceived the caffeinated coffee to be less sweet than the decaf.

What does this mean? If you’re enjoying something sweet and high in calories with the coffee, such as a doughnut, you may not appreciate the sweetness as much, and crave more. The reason this happens has to do with how coffee affects receptors in the brain called adenosine receptors. Caffeinated coffee blocks these receptors, and that causes you to feel more alert and energetic. However, receptors for adenosine also affect how we perceive sweetness. Block those receptors and you don’t perceive sweetness as strongly, and that cookie you’re munching on with your coffee satisfies your sweet cravings less.

What about decaf? For suppressing appetite, one study found that decaffeinated coffee was more effective for suppressing appetite than caffeinated. The decaf coffee caused a sharper rise in a hormone called PYY, which suppresses appetite. However, you may not get the same degree of resting metabolic boost with decaffeinated coffee.

The Bottom Line

So, Can Drinking Caffeinated Coffee Help You Lose Weight? YES. Enjoy a cup or two of coffee in the morning, but don’t count on it to it to help you lose weight. The way caffeine interacts with your body is too complex to predict its impact on body weight. Whether you lose weight depends on how it affects your desire to eat sweet things, whether it causes you to sleep less, whether you’re a regular coffee drinker, and how much you drink. Plus, people metabolize caffeine at differing rates due to genetic variations in enzymes that break it down. If you’re a slow metabolizer, caffeine stays in your system longer and the risk of side effects is higher too.

Your best bet is still to eat a healthy diet, consume the food you eat mindfully, and move your body more. Make sure you have strategies to manage stress too. On the plus side, there’s growing evidence that enjoying a few cups of coffee each day could lower your risk of chronic health problems such as type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and gallbladder disease. So, enjoy in moderation!

References:
New York Times Health. “Sorting Out Caffeine’s Contradictions”
Web Md. “Say It’s So, Joe: The Potential Health Benefits – and Drawbacks of Coffee.”
Fitness Prescription. March 2010. page 20.
Chicago Tribute. “How your morning coffee affects your afternoon sugar craving”
Web Md. “Say It’s So, Joe: The Potential Health Benefits – and Drawbacks of Coffee.”
Medical News Today. “Does Coffee Reduce Appetite?”