by DH Kiefer
I need coffee. I don’t know about you, but I can’t start my day—whether I’m going to work or not—without a big-ass cup of the stuff. Unlike most people, however, this isn’t because I’m impossible to deal with before I’ve had my fix. Instead, I recommend caffeine intake as adjunct nutrition for my Carb Back-Loading diet plan because the list of benefits we can derive from regular consumption is extremely impressive. In fact, I’d consider caffeine to be one of my must-have supplement recommendations. But does caffeine help you lose weight?
First off, it stimulates catecholamine efficiency and sensitivity in your body. When you eat carbs before your workouts, your body will stop burning everything else—including your stored glycogen and fat reserves, in favor of the carbs you’ve just eaten [1]. When you elevate your insulin levels and decrease your sensitivity to catecholamines, your body can’t burn anything but those recently ingested carbs [2]. Skip the carbs and consume some caffeine, however, and you’ll both stimulate your catecholamine sensitivity and increase fatty acid release from cells.
When you’re looking to build mass without adding fat with a Carb Back-Loading regimen, the idea is to avoid carbohydrates for the first half of your day in order to burn fat—or at least to prevent it from being added. What you probably don’t know, however, is that caffeine has been shown to increase the anabolic effect of Carb Back-Loading, partially because of its effect on the rise in cortisol in your body. Yes, you read that correctly: cortisol plays a major role.
Now, this obviously raises several big red flags for a lot of people, but believe it or not, a rise in cortisol isn’t always a bad thing.
