Caffeine Helps to Use Fat Reserves for Energy

[motof]

There was an article that I read and am now trying to find about caffeine and weight loss. I think it was a college research paper about caffeine.

All I remember is about how caffeine can help tell your body to tap into your fat reserves for energy during your workout instead of some other sort of energy.

If someone can help me find this information, I remember it seeming like a golden tip for people looking to lose weight.

Are there implications with caffeine also being a diuretic though?

More food for thought
Motof

[gymBum]

Sup Motof

You brought up a good point, I found a similar article.

The main effect of caffeine is to burn fat rather than your body's limited carbohydrate reserves. On average, only about 19% of your energy comes from fat; less when you're really exerting yourself. With caffeine in your system, however, enough fat is burned to provide 40% of the needed energy.

While this is clearly music to the ears of weight-watchers, this is useful to those who are keeping their weight stable for two reasons. The first in that your body has fat reserves in tho ballpark of 70,000 calories, but carbohydrate reserves only of 2000-3000 calories. When you're burning 500-1000 or more calories each hour on a hard ride, you can preserve your vital carbohydrate energy supply with caffeine. Secondly, fat-rich foods have far more energy per weight or volume than do carbohydrate or protein foods. As a result, you can supply the thousands and thousands of calories required on each day of touring with a smaller weight and bulk of food by eating more high-fat foods, but use the fat quickly enough to supply the energy for hard exertion.

About Caffeine being a diuretic..

A diuretic, of course, is a substance which reduces the amount of water your kidneys reclaim while cleaning your blood, moving water from your blood (and muscles) to your bladder. Since having a water shortage of a mere 2% of your body weight (or 1 litre per 110 lbs of body weight) can impair performance, I had stayed away from anything with caffeine or alcohol, which I know to be diuretics. However, staying away from caffeine is not necessarily a good idea.

One important point to note is that while exercising, the dehydrating effects of caffeine are almost unnoticeable. While at rest the story is much different, but an article published in Mountain Biker magazine said that something about exercise, without going into detail, largely prevents the diuretic effect.

http://www.bicyclesource.com/body/nu...n/coffee.shtml

Was a great read, caffeine is a very interesting nutritional tool.

Peace
John

[mvp]

Very useful information.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention bro.