If you’ve ever wanted to loose weight, then you are surely aware of the plethora of products and gimmicky “diets” which are all designed with helping you lose one thing—money. There is one diet however, that will cost you very little, if you have some discipline, and that’s the, eat less, get a little exercise, drink 5 glasses of green tea a day diet. Admittedly, it doesn’t roll off the tongue so let’s just call it the green tea diet.

If you look up green tea in Wikipedia, you’ll read:

Green tea has also been claimed as useful for “weight loss management” — a claim with no scientific support according to medical databases such as Pubmed.

Well that’s not exactly true because if you go to Pubmed, you’ll find literally hundreds of articles about green tea and weight loss and most of the research centers on a component of green tea called, epigallocatechin-3-gallate or EGCG. One study, for example, by the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, found that fat oxidation, a measure of how the body “burns” fat increase by 12% after the consumption of 122mg of EGCG. 122mg of EGCG is equivalent to drinking five, 100ml servings of green tea. Another study by the University of Geneva observed, by drinking five cups of green tea a day, one would burn an extra 70-80 calories, through thermogenesis, with no additional activity.

Now granted, 70 or 80 extra calories isn’t going to “melt the pounds away,” as infomercials would have you believe but consider this, many nutritionists recommend a weekly weight loss goal of one or two pounds. If a pound of fat contains 3500 calories, then over the course of seven days, you would either need to restrict your diet, or increase your activity in order to have a deficit of the 3500 calories needed to lose that pound of fat. If you’re drinking green tea however, over those same seven days, you’d loose an additional 525 calories (75 per day average) which means perhaps a little less time in the gym. So by simple eating less, getting a bit of exercise everyday and drinking green tea, you can easily lose one or two pounds a week and without the enormous lifestyle changes that cause so many to fail with other diets.

To sum up, diet, plus exercise (at least 30 minutes a day), is the most sure way for losing weight and with the addition of five cups of green tea, per day, to your diet, you’ll have an extra safety net if your boss brings donuts to work one morning. This diet doesn’t have to be expensive either; walking at a brisk pace is free and you won’t need any special tea either. Regular grocery store green tea will do just fine although, don’t add milk to your tea as it can cause it to lose some of its health benefits (European Heart Journal, Jan 9th, 2007). So make good on your New Year’s resolution with green tea, or join me in my own green tea weight loss challenge. Here’s to your health!

Related posts:

1. Green Tea Weight Loss Facts
2. Green Tea and Weight Loss The Truth
3. Lean & Green Recipes for the Medifast Diet