Melt The Pounds Away With The Green Tea Diet

The green tea diet is not really a diet at all but just consists of adding green tea to your diet in the form of regular brewed tea or green tea extract pills. It is suggested that if you are trying to loose weight you should also eat at a deficit and add an exercise program into the mix. Green tea may assist with weight loss but it will not make you loose weight without taking any action.

At the moment there are a handful of scientific studies that have shown mixed results in the effectiveness of green tea weight loss. The studies that do show promise usually use a highly potent green tea extract. The consumption required to simulate results would be in excess of 10 cups per day.

Despite the lack of scientific many people swear by its effectiveness and it has been used for centuries to treat different sickness and ailments.

Green tea works to control diet in a few different ways. First it works as an appetite suppressant. The antioxidant Epigallocatechin (EGCG) actually makes people feel like they are full. As you can imagine this can be highly effective in people that suffer from lack of self control, binge eating or craving. Green tea can be consumed before a meal to reduce your appetite and make you eat significantly less.

Next, green tea has been shown to actually raise the metabolism by as much as 30%. Keep in mind that these results are from a Swiss study that used a highly potent form of green tea extract. None the less even raising the metabolism by a small amount over a long period of time can have drastic results.

Last, it is theorized that green tea promotes the burning of fat. This may not seem significant but if you consider that people normally burn a combination of carbs and fat to produce energy, with the majority of energy coming from carbs. If you can increase the amount of fat being burned you will loose inches. This is also significant because training the body to burn fat is not only challenging but hard on your energy level. Fat does not burn as effectively as carbs, this is why people may bonk during long endurance activities once they have burned through their store of carbs.

One more point to consider. Green tea has also been shown to block the absorption of fat into the body. Meaning that fat being consumed will automatically be burned for energy purposes. Combine all of these factors and you have an effective tool that can have a significant impact on your weight.

Having spouted the fabulous benefits I think it is only fair to also examine the other side of the story. Studies at Mayo Clinic and a handful of other clinical trials have been conducted to test the effectiveness of green tea extract capsules. Many of the findings are inconclusive or have mixed results.

As is often true with scientific research and anything related to statistics the findings are mixed and there are good arguments coming from both sides. Other studies show positive findings regarding the appetite suppressant possibilities, antioxidant benefits, and other related issues.

My suggestions for a green tea diet are as follows

Start small, lots of people find the taste of green tea to be harsh. The shorter the time you leave a tea bag in water the less harsh the flavor but you also receive less health benefits. So start low and increase the intensity of the tea. Try replacing coffee with tea and not using any type of sweetener or other additive. Drink a cup of green tea before each meal or when you feel cravings or expect that cravings could become an issue, like late afternoon.

If you do not already incorporate cardio into your fitness regime add in light cardio at least 3 times per week. When I say light I mean exercising at 60%-70% of maximum capacity based on your heart rate or perceived exertion. Do not overdo it and don’t go harder than necessary. Excessive intensity is hard on the body and takes you out of the fat burning zone and into an anaerobic state which leads to exhaustion.

Start a weight program based on full body movements which includes lots of leg exercises. Exercising the large muscles of the lower body burns far more calories than the relatively smaller muscles up top. Adding full body exercises will further increase your metabolic expenditure and lead to more lean muscle mass which will burn more calories.

Combining the following lifestyle changes with regular green tea consumption can have pronounced effects over the long term. Do not expect fast results and do not expect reward without effort. Thegreen tea diet is an excellent way to increase your health but you have to put in the work too.