Coffee and black tea are among life’s little luxuries that many of us love to indulge in, myself including. When you have a few (1-3) per day, it’s not a huge deal. Anything more and it certainly takes it toll. In fact for some people, even 1 is too much! Although caffeine is a great stimulant, full of antioxidants, great metabolism boost, and simply enjoyable to consume, it can play a nasty role on your adrenal system and stress levels and ultimately your transformation goals.
First, let me briefly outline how stress effects the body. When the body is stressed, it moves into ‘fight or flight’ mode. It immediately secretes hormones and goes into a state where you need to run towards something to fight or run away from something trying to hurt you. Of course, today’s stress isn’t quite like that, but the body doesn’t know how to distinguish between ‘fight or flight’ and day to day stress like work, Covid, kids etc.
A bit of background on what happens in your body when you are stressed: Glucose is stored in the cells as glycogen as a form of energy. When you are stressed, the body releases the glucose into the blood stream as a quick burst of energy. It also secretes Cortisol, the stress hormones, to awaken your system and be alert. At the same time, it secretes adrenaline to give you the strength and power you need for ‘fight or flight’. Of course in every day life stress, these are not really required. So the body alerts the pancreas to secrete insulin to remove the glucose from the blood stream to avoid toxicity. The glucose can’t just go back into the cells, it needs to be converted back to glycogen. So it is transported to the liver for conversion. The liver recognises the cells are full again (because we consume an abundance of food and therefore continuously replenish glycogen stores), so the liver converts the glucose to fat and stores it around the abdomen and around the body.
In summary, high levels of stress increases your blood glucose levels, increases inflammation as a result of the above processes, increases fat storage and decreases your ability to achieve any success in your transformation.
When you consume too much caffeine, you are stressing the body. You are adding to these stress responses.
Moreover, if you are consuming caffeine after 12:00pm (lunchtime) you are reducing the quality of your sleep that evening (even if you think aren’t, you are, it has been scientifically proven), so you are increasing stress on your body due to lack of sleep. Lack of sleep increases sugar cravings, so if you consume more sugar, you are further adding stress to the body, not to mention the additional fat storage.
Furthermore, caffeine adds to stress on your adrenal system. This is the system that creates and secretes all your hormones. Stressed adrenals increase fatigue, can decrease your thyroid function (which makes you gain weight), reduces your sex hormones which then reduces your libido and negatively effects your menstrual cycle. Strained adrenal system also negatively effects your sleep so you create this vicious circle, awake all night, tired as hell all day.
In summary, caffeine increases stress on the body. The higher the stress the more problems that arise in the body and the less fat you burn, saying good-bye to your fat loss goals. Bottom line, keep caffeine intake to a minimum (1-3 per day) with the amount being dependent on the individual, and avoid any caffeine after 12:00pm lunchtime.
- Written by Coach Terri Batsakis
