As many know, caffeine speeds up your metabolism, enabling our bodies to digest food faster. Once the caffeine is absorbed into the bloodstream through the gut, it can travel to the brain where it stimulates an increase in the production of the hormone adrenalin. Adrenalin stimulates our sympathetic nervous system pushing it into ‘fight or flight mode’, speeding up our heart rates, gut movement, enlarging the pupils, and increasing the breakdown of fat tissue to be used as energy. This can cause symptoms such as shakiness, GI upset and/or nausea, especially if you’re not a huge caffeine consumer or maybe your naturally more caffeine sensitive!
However apart from these side effects, caffeine seems ideal for weightloss right?
Not so fast…
Dr Libby Weaver states that the production of adrenalin can ‘elevate blood sugars. [So] if you’re sitting around, those unused blood sugars can end up stored as body fat.’ Tip: If you’ve got extra energy from your cuppa coffee, make the most of it! Exercise your brain or do some physical activity. This will burn the elevated blood sugars and prevent them from being stored as fat, so you can enjoy your caffeine without a worry of retaining fat!
Forms of caffeine: coffee, tea, energy drinks, drugs such as nodoz.
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