Can Green Tea Actually Help You Lose Weight?

Nutrition & Weight LossSeptember 22, 2021

While most of us would like to think we could eat a certain kind of food, drink a beverage or just wish the fat away. There’s no magic pill to help you lose weight quickly. Shedding fat needs careful planning of including certain foods, exercise, reducing stress, and getting adequate sleep to lose the extra pounds. So, when you hear about a magical tea to help to lose the extra pounds, you have a sense of hope that maybe there is a magical tea after all that will give you a leg up in your journey.

That magical tea is green tea. Yes, it can rev up your metabolism, regulate blood sugar levels, and also do away with the extra belly fat. It is not that you drink green tea and the fat magically goes away unless of course, you go up the hill to pick the green tea leaves yourself. However, there are things about green tea that can do a great many good things to your health.

It Can Activate Good Fat

Your body contains two types of fat – white fat, and brown fat. While white fat is the bad type of fat that can make you gain weight, brown fat, on the other hand, can help you lose weight. There are lesser quantities of brown fat in the body and it can metabolically make you active and help burn calories. The brown stuff can even make the white fat get out of the body and help you get better insulin levels.

You need more brown fat in your body. Green tea contains caffeine, and it can increase the brown fat content in your body, so the more you have in your body, the better it is for you.

It Helps Get Rid of Belly Fat

The catechin content in green tea is EGCG which has great weight loss properties. Since it can rev up your metabolism, it also helps break down the fat and the EGCG can stop the formation of new fat cells. One study found that men who drank more green tea contain about 136 milligrams of EGCG and lost more weight than the placebo group in the following months. Of course, the EGCG content in green tea varies, the average EGCG content of each serving turns out to be around 25 to 86 mg per serving. Matcha tea contains even more EGCG, at least 137 times more than regular green tea.

Helps in Blood Sugar Regulation

An increase in blood sugar can make you put on weight and help you store more glucose as fat. It can also make you crave unhealthy foods and you may experience a drop in energy. Green tea can help in better blood sugar regulation. As per Japanese and Mexican researchers, the antioxidants present in green tea can help limit the total amount of carbs that the body absorbs after a meal and it can help in better sugar metabolism.

Exercise and Green Tea Work as a Great Combination

Exercise and the right food intake can aid in weight loss. However, if you want to give it something extra, you may get to experience better weight-loss benefits such as burning calories, retaining lean muscle, and increasing metabolism when you pair it with green tea. It can aid in fighting fat. It is said that participants who drank at least four to five cups of green tea each day, along with exercise, were able to lose a lot of belly fat and increase their lean muscle mass as compared to others who do not drink tea. So, move on, coffee – you may have some competition in green tea!

It Can Lower Bad Cholesterol Levels

If you have high cholesterol levels, you may consider drinking more green tea. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’s meta-analysis made conclusions from 14 studies and found that green tea can lower fasting serum total and the bad cholesterol – LDL cholesterol – in adults.

There you go, this tea is more powerful than we give it credit for, you may not get similar results if you drink copious amounts of green tea and continue to eat junk. However, with a good exercise routine and diet, you may finally be able to lose weight and get healthier.