In today’s society people seem to be constantly obsessing over their weight and the way they look. They continue to look for and try all sorts of radical methods to help them lose as much weight in as little time as possible. We’re living in an age in which faddy diets, crash diets, and celebrity endorsed supplements and programs are almost literally shoved in our faces by advertising companies, promising extreme weight loss in short periods of time. 9 times out of 10 these programs, supplements, and diets are not effective, and if they do result in people losing weight, they’re not considered healthy or viable.
In order to lose weight in a safe, healthy, and controlled fashion, we need to ensure that we’re consuming plenty of healthy, nutritionally balanced, natural foods and drinks, which are used in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle. Green tea for instance, is considered one of the healthiest beverages on the face of the earth, for a number of reasons, one of which being the fact that it helps us to lose weight. Here’s a look at how green tea and weight loss are related:
Green tea helps to mobilize fat from our fat cells
One of the things that makes green tea so effective for weight loss purposes is the fact that it actually helps to mobilize fat in our bodies from our fat cells. Green tea contains caffeine and antioxidants. It is both of these substances that can increase fat burning processes in your body as shown in a study here.In order for body fat to be burned off, it must first be broken down in our fat cells where it is then transported into our bloodstreams. Studies have shown that caffeine assists in this fat burning process. It triggers lipolysis where it breaks down fat into fatty acids and releases them into the blood stream.
Antioxidants in green tea (namely EGCG) causes an increases the amount of the hormone norepinephrine which is used to send signals to the fat cells to burn and break down more fat, making fat burning hormones in our bodies that little bit more effective.
Not only does green tea help increase the fat burning process but it also helps reduce weight gain by stopping sugar getting into your fat cells, resulting in a reduction in body fat.
Green tea helps us to burn more fat during exercise
Obviously we all know that in order to burn fat we need to get plenty of physical exercise and activity. Well, if you were to take a look at some of these fat-burner supplements available on the market today, and you were to examine their ingredients, you would find that almost all of them contain some form of tea, or tea extract in there. Green tea has been found to be one of the most effective teas when it comes to burning fat during exercise. In one particular study, men who consumed green tea before exercising were found to burn 17% more body fat than those who didn’t consume any. Another study recently revealed that green tea can also increase the metabolism, meaning that not only do you burn more calories during exercise, but you also burn more when resting too.
Green Tea boosts metabolism
The rate in which the food we eat or drink is converted into energy is what we refer to as metabolism. Even when we sleep our body is constantly working and burning the calories in our food into energy. Our metabolic rate is just slower during rest and increases during exercise. Several studies have shown that green tea and weight loss occur as a result of the green tea containing compounds and enzymes that help boost metabolism, and therefore helping you burn more calories off your body.
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In a recent study from ncbi.com 60 obese subjects took green tea extracts and lost 7.3 pounds and burned 183 calories more per day.
Green tea naturally suppresses the appetite
Another key benefit of green tea and weight loss is the fact that it has been found to naturally suppress a person’s appetite. Studies have shown that green tea lowers a person’s blood sugar level, thus reducing cravings for foods. Obviously if we’re less hungry we will consume less food, and if we consume less food we will ingest fewer calories as a result. Not only does green tea suppress the appetite, it has also been found to help reduce hunger pains and cravings as well, meaning we’ll be less likely to cheat on our diets by craving unhealthy junk foods.
Green tea is a diuretic
Diuretics is the term given to drugs that help promote and increase the production of urine. Green tea is known to be a diuretic and removes unwanted and excess water from your body. This process helps you lose more water weight and makes your body feel less bloated.
Overall, there have been studies suggesting that green tea and weight loss are heavily related. However, the results are only mild and green tea alone should not be the only factor to consider when wanting to lose weight. Nevertheless, green tea also does have other health benefits and is a great substitute for drinks especially if you are on a low calorie diet or intermittent fasting diet. Just make sure to keep the full benefits of the green tea by refraining yourself from adding sugar or too much flavor to your tea.