SERIOUS STUFF.... Does coffee hamper your efforts on a diet?

I drink it everyday! but just 1 cup and I use splenda, not sugar. I've had no ill effects nor has it ever hindered my weight loss efforts.

I recently learned about this through my awesome nutrition coach.

"Caffeine is a plant alkaloid found in coffee, tea, chocolate, soft drinks, over-the-counter medicine and energy drinks. A stimulant, caffeine exerts effects on the central nervous system (CNS) as well as on both skeletal and smooth muscle. Among caffeine's many effects:

increases force and rate of heart
stimulates the release of epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol
enhances lipolysis (fat breakdown)
analgesic (enhances the effect of over the counter pain medication)
improves focus and concentration
A quick glance at this list reveals many desirable traits. However, with any stimulant there are potential for negative side effects. The effects include:
irritability
nervousness
gastrointestinal distress
nausea
irregular heart beat
Like so many things in life, the answer to whether to include caffeine in your diet or not will be a cost/benefit question. But before we can address that question, let's see what foods contain caffeine.

Where caffeine is found

Below is where we find caffeine in our diet
caffeine tablet: 200 mg
250 ml cup of coffee: 140 mg*
Red Bull: 80 mg
black tea: 45 mg
can of diet Coke: 45 mg
can of Coke: 35 mg
green tea: 15 mg
*Some designer coffees can contain much, much more. A Venti brewed coffee from Starbucks provides a whopping 415 mg of caffeine!

When it comes to legal supplements that improve performance, caffeine ranks near the top of the list. Although countless products line supplement shelves and make all kinds of outlandish claims, caffeine is one of the few to actually hold strong research support for its effectiveness.

Above all else, caffeine appears to improve performance in events requiring muscular and cardiovascular endurance. Imagine having to run 10 km run or more, this would be the area where caffeine truly shines.

Many people have theorized how caffeine might improve work capacity: enhanced heart rate and stroke volume (therefore better blood delivery), stronger muscle contractions, improved concentration, enhanced fat burning, decreased sensations of pain, etc.

In reality, caffeine contributes to all these outcomes therefore it's likely a combination of several factors. But to get these effects, you need to take the right dose.

Based on research, we see that caffeine ingestion in the area of 3-6 mg/kg of body weight is the optimal dose, with the higher dose producing more benefit. This mean if you weight 80 kg (176 lbs), you would need between 240 - 480 mg of caffeine pre-competition.

The reason there is so much confusion on whether coffee is healthy or harmful tends to do with a specific liver gene (CYP1A2) that is responsible for caffeine metabolism.

Researchers at The University of Toronto discovered that in people who have fast metabolizing version of the CYP1A2 gene show no increased risk of heart incidents after drinking coffee. By extension, individuals who have the slow metabolizing version of the CYP1A2 gene are at heightened risk for a cardiovascular incidence after drinking coffee.

So the confusion in the literature probably has more to do with whether researchers unwittingly recruited more fast or slow metabolizers in their subject pool!

But what is the significance of being a fast metabolizer? Well it seems that caffeine of any type is a cardiac stressor. Remember we saw that caffeine increase both the rate and pumping power of the heart. While this might be good during exercise, you can imagine that chronically causing our heart to beat faster and harder than normal is not really a good thing.

However, there are certain compounds in coffee, notably caffeic acid and chlorogenic acid that function as antioxidant, which protect the heart.

Therefore, if you are someone who rapidly breaks down the caffeine, your body gets rid of the stressful stuff and derives the benefits of the antioxidants --> making coffee a healthy beverage for you. If, however, you are a slow metabolizer, your body will be subjected to the more harmful effects of longer exposure to caffeine, increasing your risk of a heart attack. This makes caffeinated beverages a poor choice for slow metabolizers."

No. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant. And next to water, coffee is one of the best things you can be drinking. Its all the crap people put in it that makes it bad. So coffee, as in grounds and water, is fine. Starbucks, creamers, sugars, etc, that is what makes coffee bad.
It is also a diuretic though, so make sure, if you are drinking coffee, you are replacing with equal amounts of water. And it can become addictive, which leads to a whole nother different set of non diet related issues.

And obviously, please use moderation. Even the best things for you turn bad when used in excess.

No. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant. And next to water, coffee is one of the best things you can be drinking. Its all the crap people put in it that makes it bad. So coffee, as in grounds and water, is fine. Starbucks, creamers, sugars, etc, that is what makes coffee bad.
It is also a diuretic though, so make sure, if you are drinking coffee, you are replacing with equal amounts of water. And it can become addictive, which leads to a whole nother different set of non diet related issues.

And obviously, please use moderation. Even the best things for you turn bad when used in excess.

Here are more than a couple of solutions:

1) use skim milk if you want something creamy in your coffee;
2) get some Stevia packets. This is an all natural sweetener, better than sugar or the artificial ones. The Truvia brand is available in most grocery stores.
3) If you love coffee but have difficulty with the caffeine, drink decaf. That's all I drink at Starbuck's. I walk in and they say "decaf pour over, tall" and we both laugh.

I also "doctor" my coffee with a little nutmeg and cinnamon, adds flavor but no calories.

I should add that I take EGCG (green tea) supplement everyday. Research has shown that groups taking green tea over caffeine lost 5.2% of their body mass while the group taking the caffeine lost 3.5%. But more importantly, the group taking the green tea lost way more abdominal fat!

hi i decided to stop drinking caffine when i stared on here since last week i have had none and i feel great- no head aches, can sleep but im waking up at 7.14 every mornin feeling wide wake where as b4 i couldnt get up till past 9.

my coffees had no sugar and a tiny amount of semi skimmed milk so i think it depends on the person drinking it!

I hope not, because I get wicked headaches without it...