Does caffeine make you gain weight？
A good question, and on the face of it the answer would seem to be obvious: no it doesn’t. How could it? Caffeine contains zero calories. Coffee itself, one of the most popular ways to consume caffeine, has minimal calories (that is, before any sugar, cream or anything else is added).
I have mentioned elsewhere how good green tea is for you and I stand by that assertion, but I want to take this opportunity to address the issue of the caffeine content of green tea and of potential weight gain problems related to caffeine in general. In an 8 ounce cup of green tea you are going to consume somewhere in the region of 24-40 mg of caffeine. A generic, instant coffee will give you 30-170 mg while a brewed mug will give you more. A 12 ounce coke is 30-35 mg with about the same for Coca Cola Zero. A 250 ml can of Red Bull is 75-80 mg of caffeine.
Obviously coffee is the big culprit for filling us with caffeine but it is also not the only popular drink that carries it. As you can see, green tea may have more caffeine in it than a coke. But if caffeine is calorie free, then what do we have to worry about?
Well, there are a couple of potential problems of caffeine consumption (in any form).
The first is that caffeine raises your level of cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone and when its level rises, two things happen. The first is that your heart rate and blood pressure will rise helping to stimulate your appetite. This can lead to emotional eating and sweet foods in particular are desirable at such times. In turn an excess of insulin will shut down the body from burning fat. The second is that your body will go into an energy saving mode with higher cortisol levels, thereby making it harder for you to burn fat.
Higher cortisol can leave you anxious, fearful and frustrated. From a dietary point of view it can also contribute to generating fat around the belly.
A second point is that caffeine may also interfere with your insulin resistance. In such cases your insulin and glucose build up in the blood and this can affect every cell in the body. There are innumerable problems with this but with regard to diet and fat loss, you should know that a high level of insulin can cause your body to store food as fat instead of using it for fuel. Such a condition will also see your protein intake converted into sugar and fat (which is then stored by the body) thereby robbing you of muscle gains if you are also working out.
Does caffeine make you gain weight?
So to answer the question does caffeine make you gain weight, we can see that yes, it does if it is not taken in moderation (and what is moderate is going to vary from person to person). Not because of its caloric figure but because caffeine adversely affects our levels of cortisol and insulin. Higher levels here can lead to weight gain and cause difficulties in losing weight once you have put it on.
For short term energy and alertness try herbal teas, ginseng or gingko. Otherwise monitor your level of caffeine consumption and pay attention to any changes in your mood or body.
