Overweight
Weight loss is one of the most popular benefits of drinking green tea. It is its composition that helps you lose weight.
This property is making it more popular in the West and around the globe. Studies have shown that if you drink green tea regularly, you will lose weight faster.
Metabolism is a string of processes that allows the body to convert food and drink into usable energy. Green tea may help you lose weight by giving your metabolic process a boost and by making it more efficient. For its process, metabolism needs calories. A more efficient metabolism burns more calories, which translates into more loss of weight.
Besides, it also has a positive action on the absorption and utilization of fats in the body, which ultimately also helps you get rid of those extra pounds.
How does green tea help in weight loss?
Catechins, caffeine, and theanine, which are present in green tea, promote fat loss and weight loss by:
- Inhibiting gastric and pancreatic lipase, which are responsible for the digestion of triglycerides. Through this, thereby, green tea minimizes the absorption of fats.
- Inhibiting fatty acid synthetase, which synthesizes fatty acids into fats that are deposited in our body fat cells and cause weight gain and obesity. This, therefore, minimizes fat deposits in the body.
- The catechins in green tea stimulate metabolism by almost 4% over a 24-hour period. This helps to intensify the oxidation of fats and thermogenesis (the rate at which the body burns calories).
- Green tea slows down the absorption of glucose from the intestines thereby preventing sudden high blood sugar levels. This helps to prevent the conversion of excess blood glucose into fats.
How much green tea should I drink every day to lose weight?
According to today.com, drinking 5 cups of green tea daily will help burn 70 to 80 calories per day. This specifically promotes the loss of visceral fat, which is responsible for major illnesses associated with obesity, such as diabetes type 2 and metabolic syndrome.
However, the correct amount will vary, depending on how much caffeine the person consumes and the nature of his metabolism.
Calories in green tea
One mug of green tea contains 2 calories without any additives such as milk or sugar. These calories contain
- Fats – 0% = 0 g
- Proteins – 0% = 0 g
- Carbohydrates – 0% =0.47 g
The best and worst time to drink green tea
Drinking your green tea at the right time helps you achieve the best benefits from it including the weight loss benefits.
The best time to drink green tea is in the morning on an empty stomach and before your workout. An empty stomach helps in proper absorption and taking it before your exercises peps you up for your workout and helps speed up your metabolism and the fat-burning process.
Drinking green tea after your meals and at night before going to bed are the worst times. Having it after food will prevent the absorption of certain vital minerals such as iron, copper, and chromium depriving you of these vital minerals.
Drinking it before bed is not a good idea. The caffeine in the tea will make it difficult for you to fall asleep.
To summarize green tea benefits on weight loss
Green tea thus helps you to lose weight by
- inhibiting digestion and thereby absorption of triglycerides in the GI tract,
- inhibition of the conversion of fatty acids into fat deposits in the fat or adipose tissue,
- increasing metabolic rate and thermogenesis and
- slowing down the absorption of glucose.
Drinking green tea, therefore, gives you that additional helpful edge in your weight loss program.
It is an established fact that obesity is a major risk factor for developing diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some cancers, and pulmonary and metabolic diseases.
In recent years, an increasing number of clinical trials have reaffirmed that green tea has a beneficial effect on helping you lose obesity.
Green tea helps you lose abdominal or belly fat. Weight loss is not substantial but modest. Some studies have shown that people who consumed green tea extract rich in EGCG or catechins lost a modest amount of weight (about 3 pounds over 3 months).
Green tea extract is a concentrated variety, with just one capsule containing the same amount of active ingredients as an average cup of green tea. It is a great source of antioxidants.
To get the same amount of EGCG, you’d need to drink about six to seven cups of green tea every day.
Emerging fact
Even though green tea extract or EGCG supplements promote metabolism and the burning of fat, its benefits for weight loss can be described as modest.
However, it acts as an additional strategy when you combine it with your other effective weight loss approaches such as adopting a weight loss diet and doing regular weight loss exercises.
Besides, drinking green tea every day can benefit you long-term in many other ways as well.