The Wu Yi Tea Diet is potentially healthy, but so vague on details you'd be better off creating your own diet plan around the chief component of the diet: oolong tea. You could gain rather than lose weight on the Wu Yi Tea Diet, but oolong tea is a slimming beverage rich in metabolism-boosting antioxidants.
Five Rules
The Wu Yi Tea Diet involves drinking oolong tea grown in the Wuyi mountains of China, and following five rules: Eat three meals -- no snacks -- every day; drink at least 8 cups of water a day; exercise for 10 minutes or more daily; limit your intake of fat and include calcium in your diet. The diet provides scant information about what to eat, but recommends eating low-fat yogurt for lunch and getting your calcium from such foods as oranges, soybeans, tofu, sunflower seeds, broccoli and papaya. You are also advised to eat breakfast no later than an hour after you get up in the morning and dinner no less than 3 hours before you go to bed at night.
Achieving Balance on Wu Yi Tea Diet
It would be possible to form a balanced diet around the Wu Yi Tea Diet, although the lunch restriction could leave many dieters hungry long before dinner. The calcium choices are sound, but dairy products provide greater amounts per serving than citrus fruits, green vegetables and tofu products. The calcium amounts recommended in the Wu Yi Tea Diet -- 425 mg per day for men and 450 mg per day for women -- are significantly lower than the amounts recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA says all adults between the ages of 18 and 50 should consume 1,000 mg of calcium daily and those older and younger should include 1,200 mg daily.
Antioxidants in Wu Yi Tea
Wu Yi and other oolong teas contain powerful antioxidants with proven weight loss benefits. Antioxidants in oolong tea, nearly as plentiful as those in green tea, boost metabolism and burn fat. Participants in 15 scientific studies lost weight when they included more than 300 mg -- about 3 cups of Wu Yi tea -- of tea antioxidants in their diets, according to a review by Craig Coleman, associate professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut
Weight Loss Possibilities
Drinking 4 to 5 cups of Wu Yi tea daily could help you lose more than ½ lb. per week, based on the results of study led by Arpita Basu, assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Oklahoma State University. Participants who included 460 mg of tea antioxidants in their daily diets lost 4.9 lb. in eight weeks, according to the study published in the August 2010 issue of the "Journal of the American College of Nutrition."
Alternative Diet
You could combine the benefits of oolong tea, which may also protect you from heart disease, with a nutritionally balanced diet such as the one recommended by the USDA. You could lose 1 lb. per week following a diet that included three servings of vegetables, three servings of fruits, two to three servings of dairy, six servings of grains and 5 oz. of protein. If you choose low-fat sources of dairy, lean protein such as legumes and skinless chicken breasts and make half of your grain choices from brown rice, multi-grain bread and oatmeal, you could lose weight healthily on your own version of the Wu Yi Tea Diet.
References
- Official Wu Yi Tea: Wu Yi Tea Diet
- Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Calcium
- "The Washington Post"; Give Green Tea a Try, but Get a Handle on the Perfect Brew for You; Robert L. Wolke; April 25 2007
- "Los Angeles Times"; Slim Chance Green Tea Can Burn Fat Off; Chris Woolston; Aug. 16, 2010
- USDA: Flavonoid Composition of Tea
- "Journal of the American College of Nutrition"; Green Tea Supplementation Affects Body Weight, Lipids, and Lipid Peroxidation in Obese Subjects with Metabolic Syndrome; Arpita Basu etal; 2010
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