How Does Green Tea Help You Lose Weight
Ever since green tea made its way into the headlines, it’s been linked with an ever growing list of health benefits, one of which is weight loss. In fact, it’s become so popular as a weight loss aid, that many popular weight loss supplements now include green tea extract as an ingredient. But is green tea really that effective at helping you lose weight? In this article I take a deeper look at green tea and examine its weight loss properties.
How Green Tea Helps You Lose Weight
Despite all the interest in green tea and weight loss, there is only one conclusive study on the subject. This study was published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2009 and concluded that the polyphenols in green tea did have fat burning and thermogenic properties. The study also suggested that green tea extract can increase your metabolic rate by as much as 4% over a 24 hour period.
Based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet, this means drinking green tea every day has the potential to burn an extra 80 calories per day. This is probably a lot less than you were expecting and the reason for this is because the weight loss effects of green tea have been greatly exaggerated by the media.
However, 80 calories a day (or whatever 4% of your current daily caloric intake adds up to) is still 2,400 calories per month or 124,800 calories a year. If you lead a healthy lifestyle and take advantage of the fat burning properties of green tea, this small calorie saving can have a massive impact on your overall weight loss efforts.
How To Maximize Your Weight Loss With Green Tea
Although you can’t change the number of calories green tea burns each day, there are a few tricks you can employ to enhance the effectiveness of your weight loss efforts with green tea. In the list below I discuss these tricks, so that you can maximize the amount of fat you burn with green tea:
1) Use Fresh, High Quality Green Tea Leaves:- In the study referenced above, green tea extract was used to stimulate the 4% increase in metabolism. Green tea extract is more concentrated than brewed green tea, so to get the maximum fat burning benefit from your cups of green tea, you need to make sure you are using the highest quality ingredients. If you use cheap, bagged green tea you’re not going to get as many polyphenols in your cup and the fat burning effect will be reduced. There are plenty of low priced, high quality green teas available on the Internet, so find one you like and stock up.
2) Don’t Add Sugar To Your Green Tea:- You might think that a single teaspoon of sugar isn’t going to have much of an impact on your weight loss efforts. However, just one heaped teaspoon contains 25 calories. If you have three cups of green tea with sugar per day, that’s an extra 75 calories which almost negates the 80 calories you’ve burned by drinking the green tea in the first place. To avoid this problem, try a flavored green tea which doesn’t add any calories but appeals to your taste buds.
3) Use Green Tea As A Substitute:- One clever trick for enhancing the effectiveness of green tea as a weight loss tool is to substitute it for high calorie drinks. If you normally drink a mug of hot chocolate or a glass of red wine in the evening, swap it for a cup of green tea instead. This will cut down your daily caloric intake by over 150 calories and when combined with the metabolic boost of the green tea, it adds up to over 200 calories per day.
Summary
As you can see, green tea is most definitely not a magic bullet when it comes losing weight. If you’re expecting green tea to compensate for a day of binging or a missed workout, you’re going to be disappointed. However, if you use it wisely, green tea can help you cut a few extra calories and optimize your weight loss efforts.
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