There have been a few studies over the years to see if there is any connection between caffeine and weight loss but there is no real evidence to confirm whether or not caffeine can really help you shed those extra pounds.
While most of the studies that were done were of poor quality, some were even done on animals so you couldn't really use the results from these to say if it would be the same for humans.
On the other hand, there have been some studies that have shown that decaffeinated coffee could aid in helping you loose weight which has some thinking that there may be something else besides the caffeine that is in coffee that may contribute to loosing weight. Decaffeinated Green Tea has long been thought to help in loosing weight.
Although there isn't a direct connection that can be made between caffeine and weight loss, some researchers feel that the caffeine can contribute to weight loss indirectly by suppressing your appetite causing you to eat less.
Caffeine may also help stimulate thermo-genesis which is a process where your body generates heat by digesting food causing modest weight loss.
Caffeine will also act as a diuretic which is a type of drug that increases the rate of which you urinate which in turn will cause you to loose water weight for short periods of time.
One thing that was found is that caffeine does increase a person's metabolism by about 10%. A persons metabolic rate will stay at it's highest point for about the first 3 hours after first taking in the caffeine.
An average person can drink about 5 - 6 cups of coffee (about 10 grams of caffeine) a day before they start to experience side effects. Some of the side effects include loss of sleep, stomach problems and nervousness.
If a person drinks an excess of coffee on and empty stomach they can also experience ulcers and acid reflux.
The most important thing here is that it's the raising of ones metabolic rate that helps the body to burn off fat for generating energy.
Remember the Atkins Diet?
The Atkins Diet took caffeine and weight loss a step further and used the intake of high protean / low carb foods to set your metabolic rate at just the right level that your body would consistently burn the body's fat for energy causing a consistent loss of weight while one remained on the diet.
I was able to drop over 30 pounds using the Atkins Diet but it wasn't easy not being able to eat my favorite foods, many of which were high in carbs.
While there are many people that say that a high protean / low carb diet is bad for your health, it is a diet that works good or bad.
