Green Tea Weight Loss Info.

Can drinking 5 cups of green tea a day help you lose weight?

Darren and Veronica Haynes

Welcome! My name is Darren Haynes. I’ve recently decided to start a bit of a science experiment on green tea weight loss. With so much information out there about the amazing weight loss benefits of green tea, one can get swept away pretty easily in all the hype. For me, I just have to see it to believe it. Does green tea really help you lose weight? If you’d like to find out, like me, lets get started. First, I did my research. A wide range of studies do show the overwhelming evidence that green tea can help us lose weight. (Check out some of the other posts on this blog for more details).

To be 100% convinced, I am undergoing the green tea weight loss experiment first hand. So, to start, I will drink 5 cups a day of green tea. Why 5 cups a day you may ask? Well, to keep it short, from all the studies I have read it appears that a good amount of tea needs to be consumed for green tea weight loss. It is suggested that 5 cups per day can help you burn an extra 70 to 80 calories a day. So lets see how it goes.

Recording the Progress
Starting yesterday I began drinking the suggested 5 cups of green tea per day. I will do this everyday for 30 days. My starting weight is 177 lbs. I am not especially over weight, but I do have more belly fat than I should. I am going to use green tea bags, and stick with the same brand to keep things consistent. I will use Safeway’s Organics brand of green tea bags for the whole 30 days. I will use boiling water and steep the tea bags for at least 5 minutes as this extracts more of the EGCG and caffeine form the tea. It is the EGCG and caffeine are the fat burning components for green tea weight loss.

It is also important to point out, I am not making any changes to my regular eating habits or physical activity levels. I am just going on with normal daily life.

I started the experiment yesterday – Thursday Oct the 1st 2009 and am recording the process each day. So keep checking in for the results.

Day 1) Starting weight 177Lbs.

Day 2) No change yet.

Day 3) Wow I have lost 0.8Lbs. The scales now reads 176.2 Lbs. Still too early for conclusive results, but this is promising.

Day 4) Today I gained weight. Went up 0.6 pounds to 176.8 Lbs, but I am still a little lighter than day one.

Day 5) Oops! I ate way too much yesterday. Set me back a little, I am now at 177.2 Lbs

Day 6) Sorry folks, I forgot to weigh before breakfast, so can’t give you an accurate reading today. Come back tomorrow and I will have the results for the first week…

Day 7) Great news today for the end of the first week, I am actually a whole 1Lb lighter than the start day. I am now at 176Lb.

Day 8 ) Things are still looking good at 176Lbs.

Day 9 – Day 17) I have evened out at 176Lbs for these 8 days, which is cool. That is still 1Lb lighter than when I started.

Day 18) I was beginning to think there wasn’t going to be another shift, but today it came! I am now weighing in at 175.2Lbs. That is 1.8Lbs of weight loss since I started this experiment.

Day 19 – 25) Evened out at 175.2Lbs for these days.

Conclusion
I cut the experiment a little short, due to relocating to the other end of the USA from AZ to MD. I actually completed 25 days instead of 30, but the results were still good! In 25 days I lost 1.8Lbs.

Although, I would add that drinking 5 cups of tea a day is a lot! If you do that everyday for 25 days, you really have to focus to keep the intake up.
So for the next experiment my wife Veronica is going to start taking green tea extract and see if that has any weight loss benefits for her. So watch out for that new post that will be coming in a few months .

If you have had any personal experiences with green tea weight loss or have any other comments to add, then please post them here. I would love to hear about them.

In health
Darren

Green Tea Weight Loss

Drink tea, lose weight. Sounds too good to be true! Apparently green tea does help you lose weight. It is not going to burn off 10 pounds a week all by itself, but many research studies have shown that it does genuinely burn up calories.

So how much does it burn? Studies suggest, you can burn 70 to 80 calories per day if you drink 5 cups a day. So green tea weight loss combined with healthy eating and exercise can be a great combination to accelerate weight loss. Additionally, if your aim is just to lose a few pounds, then simply drinking 5 cups of green tea a day might just do the job. You might find this will work without changing your usual diet or physical activity levels. Alternatively, if that is too much tea for you, you can buy green tea in a supplement called “green tea extract”. Give it a try!

So how does green tea induce weight loss? There are two components in tea, EGCG and caffeine, which stimulate thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is a process in which the body generates heat, or energy, by increasing its basal metabolic rate above normal. Your basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy (calories) your body uses for its basic functions such as breathing and pumping blood throughout your body. They are basically calories you burn even if you don’t move. So green tea weight loss works by increasing the amount of calories your body burns per day. As stated above, this could be as much as 70 to 80 calories per day.

CAFFEINE: This component of tea and coffee has been used for a long time as a weight loss aid. You will find it as an ingredient in many weight loss products because it stimulates thermogenesis. However, green tea appears to have something extra in its ability to burn fat. It contains EGCG.

EGCG: EGCG is the abbreviation for an antioxidant in green tea called epigallocatechin gallate. Research has shown that EGCG alone helps you to lose weight by inducing thermogenesis and like caffeine has become a very popular ingredient in fat burning products. Furthermore, another study suggests that EGCG may inhibit the digestion of carbohydrates by up to 25%. It is also great news that EGCG has a myriad of other health benefits due to its powerful antioxidant abilities. These include preventing the development of heart disease and cancer.

So the combination of caffeine and EGCGare a great partnership and the basis of green tea weight loss. But don’t despair if you don’t react well to caffeine. The EGCG in decaf green tea and in caffeine-free green tea extract is still a great aid to losing weight. Good luck with your green tea weight loss!

What is green tea?

Green tea as well as oolong tea and black tea all come from the very same plant species – Camellia sinensis. What creates these different teas is a process called oxidization that changes green tea to black tea. Oolong takes the middle ground between green and black teas being only partly oxidized. The bad news with oxidation from a health perspective is that the health-promoting plant nutrients in green tea called catechins are mostly destroyed by the oxidation process.


History of Green Tea.

The first record of green tea being used for its health benefits is in ancient China and dates back to 2737 B.C. That’s close to 5000 years ago! This record states that the legendary figure Sheng Nong -a leader and healer-discovered green tea purely by accident while boiling some water under a tree. Some leaves fell off the tree into his boiling pot and that was the birth of green tea as a beverage. Back then it was an expensive drink and for the most part only available to the wealthy. Even back then it was considered a tonic for body and mind and revered for its health-promoting qualities. This was long before present day scientific research provided evidence for what the Chinese have known for so long. The Chinese have had a head start on the numerous health qualities of this amazing drink, and they are not alone! Japan as well as other Asian countries also have a long history with green tea.
Green tea weight loss dates back to approximately 1650 AD in China. Hungry workers noted that their body fat was being stripped down by this drink and made the change to black tea because they needed to retain their body fat. Black tea doesn’t have the same fat-burning properties as green tea because it contains significantly less catechins.


Health Benefits of Green tea.

Green tea is really one of natures health phenomenons. It is loaded with antioxidants, especially polyphenol antioxidants called catechins. Catechins have a broad range of benefits due to their powerful ability to stabilize free radicals. Free radicals attack our body’s cells and tissue if they are not countered by antioxidants. Researchers at Kansas State University discovered that green tea has 100 times the antioxidant power of vitamin C and 25 times the potency of vitamin E.
Health benefits include:

• Boosting the immune system
• Helping prevent cancer
• Reducing the risk of heart disease
• Lowering bad (LDL) cholesterol
• Increasing good (HDL) cholesterol
• Helping maintain a healthy mouth and teeth
• Weight loss – fat burning
• An aid to diabetes
• Lowers stress hormone levels
• Increased mental alertness
• Aiding digestion
• Thinning the blood
• Detoxifying abilities
• Controling inflammation

“Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one.” (Ancient Chinese Proverb)

Photo by Maryam S.

Green Tea Health Benefits:

The amazing health qualities of green tea are not by any means limited to weight loss. It is the antioxidants in green tea, catechins, that are responsible for a myriad of other health benefits.


Cardiovascular and heart health:

Men who take high levels of polyphenols like catechin have 75% less risk of a stroke. Green tea lowers the levels of “bad” cholesterol called LDL cholesterol and raises the “good” cholesterol levels called HDL. This creates a healthier balance between LDL and HDL in the blood. There is also evidence that green tea can help thin the blood and lower blood pressure.

If this was all the benefits of green tea, that would be impressive, but there is much more!


Anti-cancer Properties:

Researchers have concluded that damage to our DNA is one main cause of cancer. Our DNA strands come under attack from 1000′s of free radicals everyday. This is a normal process for us. The good news is that the body is able to repair itself. However, our DNA can fall victim to this onslaught and the DNA strands can become permanently damaged. The result of this is cancer! Broken DNA strands will produce mutated cells instead of the healthy cells it is designed to create. The good news is that the catechins found in green tea can intercept and disarm free radicals before those mutated cells can reach our DNA. This can help reduce our chances of developing cancer!

Ample research has also concluded that green tea reduces risk of prostate cancer, lung cancer, gastrointestinal tract cancer, skin cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer and bladder cancer!


Strengthens the Immune System:

Green tea catechins increase our levels of white blood cells. A strong white blood cell count is fundamental for a strong immune system. There are 2 types of white blood cells catechins intake can strengthen; B-cells and T-cells. B-cells produce antibodies to neutralize foreign agents and infectious microorganisms. T-cells tackle specific invading cells such as germs and cancers.


Supporting the Liver

When it comes to detoxification the liver is our biggest weapon. It absorbs poisons from our blood and with the aid of enzymes chemically alters these poisons into water soluble substances. The poisons can then be moved along to the feces for elimination. With the amount of pollution in our environment and in our food these days the liver comes under considerable stress! The good news is catechins can help! The catechins can actually protect the liver from some of these toxins by aiding the enzymes needed for detoxifing. In this process the liver is spared somewhat.


The Research Continues:

Only some of the health benefits of green tea was covered here in some detail. Other benefits include, aiding diabetes, lowering stress hormone levels, aiding digestion and even aiding dental health.Also, there is ongoing research into the benefits of drinking green tea and I am sure we are going to see more and more of the many benefits it has to offer.