Green tea is proving to be a genuine superfood. It’s health benefits include lowering cholesterol and protecting the body from many forms of cancer. The latest research on green tea reveal that it’s also very helpful for weight loss! You can consume this as a tea or take green tea leaf extract. Either way it will make you healthier and help you to lose weight.
Green Tea: A Gentle Stimulant
Most diet products contain caffeine or a stimulant of some kind. Coffee and black tea are both stimulants that can be helpful as part of a weight loss program. Green tea, however, is best of all. It contains caffeine, but less than black tea and less than half the amount of coffee. So green tea gives you a lift –and helps you burn calories– without making you nervous or keeping you up at night. If you are extremely sensitive to caffeine, however, you can either consume green tea earlier in the day or get a decaffeinated type, as it’s not simply the caffeine in green tea that makes it an effective weight loss food.
Green Tea and Thermogenesis
Thermogenesis is the generation of body heat that helps you to burn fat. There is evidence that green tea increases this natural fat-burning process in your body. Studies have shown that green tea does this more effectively than caffeine, which is evidence that green tea’s effectiveness as a weight loss tool is not simply the small amount of caffeine it contains.
EGCG -A Powerful Antioxidant
EGCG is the antioxidant found in green tea that helps the body fight many types of cancer, helps to lower cholesterol and also encourages the body to burn off fat more efficiently. Since obesity is linked with many diseases, it makes sense that something that would help you to lose weight naturally and safely would also protect you from illness.
How Much Green Tea?
Since green tea is an all around healthy food, you can safely consume quite a bit of it. Drinking as little as one or two cups per day can provide you with health and diet benefits. Some studies have shown even greater benefits of drinking up to six cups per day. You can experiment with the dosage. One thing you might want to keep in mind is that adding milk to green tea inhibits many of its health-giving properties. It also adds calories!