If you are interested in methods that help you lose weight then green tea weight loss is something you may have already heard about. Green tea is made from the leaves of the camellia sinensis bush and oolong and black tea are made with the same leaves too. The difference is that black tea is highly processed and green tea is the least processed with oolong sitting somewhere in the middle.
So far, all the research involving green tea has shown us that green tea is very rich in antioxidants that help us drop the pounds and burn off some fat. These antioxidants are also extremely beneficial to many aspects of our health and well-being. It is surprising what a cup of tea can do for you!
When the first studies were performed to find out about green tea weight loss, it was discovered that there was more to the weight loss effects of this drink than just the caffeine it contained, this extra something is the antioxidants in green tea called catechins. Although green tea contains a lot less caffeine than coffee, caffeine does speed up the metabolism enough to burn a few extra calories. However, the weight loss effect of green tea have a lot more to do with catechins than with caffeine.
These catechins, which are also commonly referred to as EGCG, induce a strong stimulatory effect within our nervous system, which has the knock on effect of speeding up the metabolism. The beauty of green tea and its EGCG content is that there no negative side effects, where as too much caffeine/coffee can give you the ‘shakes’. EGCG boosts the metabolism without aggravating or inflaming any of the bodily systems.
A boosted metabolism will burn up more calories without you needing to do a thing, except of course to drink green tea! Normal unconscious bodily processes such as breathing, digesting food, pumping blood around the body and moving nutrients into our cells will now need more calories just to do so. This is great because stored fat might be used to supply this calorie need and help us reduce some body fat.
Green tea also has more to offer in terms of weight loss. Triglycerides are a type of fat that the body will turn excess calories in our system into. However, triglycerides are not stored in the body as fat immediately, they spend a little time in our blood stream first. Amazingly, scientists discovered that EGCG also helps to break down these triglycerides in the blood before they have a chance to become stored as fat!
For us to get the maximum results of green tea weight loss we would need to drink a serious amount of tea each day – about 12 cups! Of course that is not very realistic! So instead of drinking green tea we can take a green tea supplement called green tea extract.
Green tea extract is a supplement that extracts the EGCG from green tea into a concentrated form. By taking green tea extract every day at a dosage of about 900mg we can burn about an extra 70-80 calories each and every day! And remember this is all solid science
Green tea is a scientifically proven way to lose weight. To read more about green tea studies in laymans terms and to see just how effective green tea is at losing weight visit lose weight with tea research and green tea supplements.