A green tea weight loss system that includes a balanced diet and exercise can be a healthy way to reach your goals. For best results, you should brew your own tea from fresh leaves or organic tea bags. And if you follow a calorie-restricted diet that includes "edible amphetamines" --- foods and spices known to boost metabolism --- you can further rev up your pound-shedding program.
Balanced Diet
If you begin your weight loss system with a balanced diet, you can lose a pound or so a week without depriving yourself of nutrition or slowing your metabolism, which fast-loss fad diets tend to do. For women, a diet of about 1,500 calories a day would produce healthy weight loss and, for men, an 1,800-calorie-a-day diet would work. The Mayo Clinic and U.S. Department of Agriculture offer similar pyramid plans that include a lot of fruits and vegetables, somewhat restricted carbohydrates, protein and dairy and considerable cutbacks in fats and sweets.
Weight Loss Benefits of Green Tea
Drinking green tea may help you lose an additional pound a month, based on the results of a scientific study by Kevin Maki and other U.S. researchers. In Maki's study, published in 2009 in the "Journal of Clinical Nutrition," men who drank the equivalent of six cups of green tea lost 5.4 lbs. in 12 weeks . Men in the study reduced their food and beverage intake by 500 calories, so the weight loss bonus derived from drinking green tea amounted to about a quarter pound per week.
Amount of Green Tea Needed to Affect Weight Loss
Green tea contains antioxidants called catechins, which are associated with increasing metabolism and burning belly fat. The effectiveness of green tea in your dieting efforts depends on the number of catechins your choice of tea contains. In Maki's study, for instance, the men consumed 660 mg of catechins daily. You could get this amount of catechins by drinking five to seven cups of home brewed tea from loose leaves or organic tea. You could have to drink more than 30 cups of tea derived from some commercial brands of tea bags and 55 cups of bottled green tea, according to the USDA.
Foods That Boost Metabolism
Many registered dietitians say some foods, spices and beverages give you an extra edge in dieting. Fortunately, the "edible amphetamines" cited by Australian nutritionist Laura Sutherland and others are also compatible with a calorie-reduced diet. Metabolism-boosting protein choices include lean meat, salmon almonds, chickpeas and kidney beans. Broccoli, kale, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries and blackberries are good choices from the fruit and vegetable category. Calcium in low-fat dairy products has fat-burning powers. And, including spices such as cinnamon, ginger, garlic, chili peppers and capsaicin also helps, says Sutherland.
Exercise and Weight Loss
Daily exercise can help you burn calories and increase your lean muscle mass. Aerobic exercise can instantly burn calories and contribute a half pound or more a week to weight loss. Although activities such as running and swimming are noted for their high intensity calorie-burning, you can achieve results with bowling, gardening and walking. Depending on your weight and pace, walking could help you lose a pound every seven to 10 days. Lifting weights or performing resistance exercises such as push-ups builds lean muscle. Lean muscle burns more calories than fat, so weight-training exercises could be another important part of your weight loss system.
References
- "Sunday Telegraph"; Top 10 Fat-Fighting Foods; Christina Larmer; Aug. 13 2001
- Mayo Clinic: Healthy Weight Pyramid
- Guardian: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
- "Biotech Business Week"; New Obesity Study Findings Have Been Reported by K.D. Maki and Colleagues; March 2 2009
- USDA: Brewing Up the Latest Tea Research
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