Green Tea Weight Loss

You probably noticed that many popular diet pills use “green tea” or “green tea extract” as one of the ingredients in their diet and weight loss formulas.

Even though diet pills are sometimes dangerous and contain other unhealthy ingredients, there’s a reason they use green tea. Green tea helps you lose weight. Green tea has been scientifically proven to burn calories and block fat absorption.

Green Tea Burns Fat

Food, including sugar and fat is synthesized into a substance called “triglyceride” in the liver and small intestine. It's then carried into the bloodstream to other tissues in the body.

Triglyceride is used as source of energy for life support and physical activities, and is very necessary. The problem comes, when there are excess amounts of triglyceride, because then it’s turned into fat, which subsequently causes obesity.

That’s where green tea comes in. It contains high amounts of polyphenols which activate the enzyme that is responsible for dissolving excess triglyceride. In the long run, this means that green tea effectively aids in burning fat.
Green Tea Stimulates the Metabolism & Accelerates Weight Loss

Green tea contains powerful antioxidants called catechin polyphenols that are responsible for many of the health benefits of green tea. One of them in particular, epigallocatechin gallate (or EGCG for short), has been found to stimulate the metabolism and accelerate weight loss.

EGCG, along with the caffeine in green tea, stimulates the central nervous system and causes fat to be released into the blood stream for the body to use as fuel. This process of fat being used for energy is called “thermogenesis”. It provides extra energy, sheds excess water, and also helps to burn body fat.

Although caffeine alone can stimulate the metabolism this way, it’s important to note that researchers found that the combined ingredients of green tea were much more effective at this process than just caffeine by itself.

Green Tea Helps You Exercise Longer

Everyone knows how important exercise is to losing weight. It burns calories, increases your energy, and builds muscle which in turn boosts your metabolism even higher. The catechin polyphenols in green tea appear to stimulate the use of fatty acids by liver and muscle cells. This subsequently reduces the rate that carbohydrates are used and allows for more endurance and longer exercise times. In fact, a study using green tea extract on lab rats increased the amount of time the animals could swim before becoming exhausted by as much as 24%.

More endurance means more exercise, which means more calories burned, and it all adds up to more pounds lost for you.

Is there any scientific proof? YES, there are scientific and medical studies done on tea and weight loss. Let’s look at a few of the more important ones.

Weight Loss and Tea : Animal Studies

The majority of scientific studies are done on animals before proceeding to human tests. Of course one of the major drawbacks of animal testing (besides the pain caused to the animal) is that results vary between animals and humans. Still, animal studies are a good indicator of human results and remain an unfortunate part of science.

Animal Study #1
Lab mice of approximate age/weight were divided into five groups and fed a high-fat diet. One of the groups received green tea extract, another group received green tea extract and exercise, and the rest of the groups received varying levels of exercise with no green tea extract.

After 15 weeks of experimentation, researchers found that simply taking green tea extract alone caused a 47% reduction in body weight gain. The effect was greatly multiplied with exercise with a stunning 89% reduction in weight gain.

Study Conclusion: Green tea burns fat and is especially effective when combined with exercise.

Animal Study #2
To test the anti-obesity properties of green tea, a group of lab rats were given green tea instead of drinking water for three weeks. Scientists noted that green tea reduced the weight of the animals' fat tissue without any change in food or water intake. Tea also significantly reduced cholesterol and fatty acid levels.

Green tea promotes fat burning and reduces cholesterol

Animal Study #3
Lab rats and mice were put on high-fat diets, with some given the most abundant green tea catechin, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), in a pure form. The study showed for the first time that supplementation with EGCG, “influenced fat tissue” and abolished diet-induced obesity.”

Study Conclusion: “EGCG should be considered as a valuable natural treatment option for obesity.”

Weight Loss and Tea : Human Studies

Although there aren’t any long term studies about tea and weight loss, the studies that have been done are extremely promising.

Human Study #1
Thirty-eight healthy Japanese men were divided into two groups and fed the same diet. One group consumed a bottle of tea containing 690 mg catechin antioxidants per day. After 12 weeks, body weight, BMI, waist circumference, body fat mass, and subcutaneous fat area were significantly lower in the green tea extract group than in the control group.

Study Conclusion: Catechin antioxidants in green tea reduce body fat and help control obesity.

Human Study #2
Ten healthy Japanese men were randomly assigned to receive a dose of green tea extract plus caffeine, just caffeine, or a placebo. On the days the men received the dose of green tea extract plus caffeine, they expended significantly more energy and burned more calories than on the days they received just caffeine or placebo.

Study Conclusion: Green tea contains ingredients (besides caffeine) that stimulate thermogenesis and burn fat.