Links Between Green Tea and Losing Weight

Going back thousands of years, green tea has been enjoyed in both Japan and China, both as a wonderful tea to drink and for all its herbal healing properties. In recent times, green tea has also caught on in the West for the same reasons. Many scientific studies have been done to determine whether its therapeutic use is justified, and to learn just why green tea is so effective. Much has been learned, and one of the most exciting discoveries has been the link between green tea and losing weight.

Why is Green Tea and Losing Weight So Effective?

Green tea has been proven to have several connections in the area of weight loss. It helps to speed up up the metabolism causing the body to use up more calories, it helps to keep the body from storing calories as fat, and can help suppress the appetite. Green tea and losing weight is also made easier by the fact that green tea is naturally calorie-free itself.

Burn More Calories, Lose More Fat

Research done in Switzerland in the 1990s showed that overweight subjects taking a green tea supplement while eating a normal diet became able to burn more calories than those who were not taking the green tea pill. Green tea works to accomplish this by increasing the rate of metabolism in the body, which is called thermogenesis. As well, when using green tea and losing weight, one tends to lose more fat than you would if you were not drinking green tea. This leads to a much healthier body in the end.

Eat Less!

The most obvious thing you need to do when drinking green tea and losing weight is to eat less food, like with any diet plan. Unlike most other plans, green tea will help you with this, as it acts as a natural control on your appetite, telling your brain that you are full after you have eaten food instead of leaving you wanting to overeat.

Replace Other Drinks with Green Tea and Lose Weight Faster

An obvious benefit of this plan is that you can just replace the drinks you normally consume with green tea and losing weight will be easy! The average coffee shop drink contains many more calories and gram of fat than you should be drinking just to get the benefit of the caffeine in it. Green tea also contains caffeine, although not in as large a quantity as coffee – this is another reason that makes green tea healthier. But it does contain enough to give you a little boost of energy to get you through your days. Unsweetened, green tea has no caffeine, and like all teas does not contain fat.

Can Green Tea Help Me Lose Weight?

If you want to lose weight, you will find that drinking green tea can help. In fact, the beverage is fast becoming an alternative for dieters who prefer weight loss programs that help them lead a healthier way of life. Here are a variety of reasons why consuming green tea periodically can help you reduce your weight.

Cutting down on calories is one way to lose weight. Drinking tea in place of coffee and cream, a combination that's abundant in calories, will greatly help in your quest for weight reduction. Aside from cutting back on your weight, green tea consumption is also good for your health since the brew comes with beneficial antioxidants like polyphenols and flavonoids.

Most weight loss programs commonly include green tea in their plans because of the beverage's properties that cause suppression of appetite, which then causes a person to control his food intake. Green tea contains caffeine, a substance that's effective in inhibiting food craving, making it an effective appetite-suppressant.

Green tea can also help you lose weight by repressing the effects of insulin, which is responsible for the conversion of glucose into energy that's then stored into fat. The delay in the insulin action causes sugar to be moved directly to the muscles for immediate use. This reaction caused by green tea is essential for the body to lose weight.

Incorporating green tea in weight loss programs can also assist in the promotion of thermogenesis, a process essential for the body to lose weight. The thermogenesis process entails the burning of body fat and the release of calories. This vital process is a result of the interaction between the caffeine content and the catechin polyphenols found in green tea. This is one reason that weight loss plans based on green tea are successful in speeding up the body's metabolic rates, which eventually helps the body lose weight.

In one study, various groups of people were administered with caffeine to determine how that compared to green tea in thermogenesis. The results showed that people who consumed green tea had higher thermogenesis compared to those taking the equivalent amount of caffeine without green tea catechins.

Since losing weight is also associated with exercise, a new study might be of help to exercise buffs who are fond of drinking green tea. A recent study was conducted to test the effect of regular intake of green tea extract. It was found that taking green tea extract regularly boosted a person's endurance in performing exercises by up to 24 percent.

Study findings have indicated that a certain compound found in green tea might be instrumental in helping people to lose weight. These compounds are called flavonoids, which are thought to modify the way the body utilizes norepinephrine, a hormone that monitors the burning of calories. When flavonoids react with the other ingredients of green tea, more calories are burned, a process that assists people in losing weight.

One other ingredient in green tea that helps people lose weight is the compound catechin polyphenols, which also interact with other green tea ingredients. This reaction helps lose weight through the burning of fat and through the process of thermogenesis.