Drinking green tea each day is a great way to diet with four or more glasses of green tea each day to jump-start your metabolism and eat less. The green tea diet may help you lose weight by blocking absorption of carbohydrates and helping burn fat stores in the body. As a powerful antioxidant, a green tea diet may also help protect you from disease. Along with a moderate exercise regimen, you will see the pounds begin to disappear.

How to Follow the Green Tea Diet

Green tea is readily available in most grocery stores or any other store that sells tea! The green tea diet is an easy way to start a weight loss program. As with any diet, be sure to talk to your healthcare provider before you start this diet. Once you are ready to begin, simply follow these simple steps that involve drinking four glasses of green tea each day.

1. Begin Each Day with Green Tea

Hot or cold, green tea is a great way to wake up in the morning. Start the morning with a full 8 ounces of green tea and you will begin the day with a fat- burning kick start – and a glass full of antioxidants to boost your immune system. There is some evidence to support the thought that drinking the tea cold may help burn more calories since your body must use some energy to warm up the cool drink.

2. Drink Before Breakfast

Before you eat breakfast, drink another 8 ounce glass of green tea. In addition to the benefits inherent in green tea, drinking two glasses of the tea before eating will help you feel full. The result is that you will eat less at breakfast and during the rest of the day. Be sure you do not skip breakfast since that is the meal that helps increase your metabolism.

3. Drink Before Lunch

Your third glass of green tea is before lunch. Again, you will get the fat-burning properties of green tea AND the extra liquid before you eat will make you feel fuller and allow you to eat less at lunch.

4. Drink Before Dinner

Finally, you should drink your last 8 ounce glass of tea before you eat dinner in the evening. You will note the same benefits as the other meals. Does this mean you should drink only four glasses of green tea each day? Absolutely not! One of the best ways to increase weight loss is to increase the amount of fluids you drink each day. If you find yourself getting hungry during the day, try drinking another glass of green tea instead of eating a snack.

Tips

• Green tea is a natural diuretic and can lead to dehydration if it is your only beverage during the day. Balance your intake of green tea with an equal amount of plain water. For healthy adults, most nutritionists recommend that you drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of fluid each day.
• Be sure part of your daily intake of fluids is plain water. Even though green tea is good for your health, plain water is necessary, too.
• Try cold green tea to increase the calories burned. Remember that your body must use some energy (and burn calories) just to get the cold liquid warmed up.
• Be aware that green tea does contain some caffeine so you may want to limit your intake before bedtime. Caffeine and L-theanine (an amino acid in green tea) will work together to keep you alert during the day, but this same combination may keep you awake at night.
• The antioxidants in green tea are critical for neutralizing free radicals in your body. Research indicates that these antioxidants may help to protect drinkers of green tea from various cancers.

How does the Green Tea Diet Work?

There is controversy over how the green tea diet actually works to produce weight loss. Some experts think it is the caffeine in the tea that actually produces the results. A much larger school of thought is that it is the active ingredient, Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCg) that actually produces the weight loss. EGCg is an antioxidant that neutralizes free radicals, increases metabolism and lowers the body’s level of “bad” cholesterol. There may also be a part of the EGCg that helps to control the level of glucose in the body by helping to control the body’s absorption of carbohydrates. This action may serve to help control your appetite – resulting in weight loss!

Precautions

• Green tea may or may not work for you in a weight loss plan. There have not been enough studies to provide evidence based recommendations. Whether or not it works as a weight loss agent, drinking green tea may have other health benefits.
• There is disagreement about whether or not green tea works for weight loss. Even those who think green tea may help in weight loss disagree as to the actual mechanism of action. Some believe that it is the EGCG that causes the weight loss and others believe it is the caffeine. Again, more controlled studies will need to be done to provide a definitive answer to this question.
• The Food and Drug Administration does not control what substance and how much of a substance is actually in a supplement. Be aware that over-the-counter pills containing green tea may or may not be providing the quality green tea that you would expect.