Will Green Tea Help You Lose Weight?

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Lately, it seems like a lot of celebrities are promoting various types of teas that helped them lose weight. You may be wondering about whether it’s worth trying? If it worked for a celebrity, maybe it will work for you too? There aren’t medical studies evaluating every type of tea out there, but there are a number of small studies looking at green tea and weight loss.

Green Tea and Weight Loss

Some studies show drinking green tea every day does help you lose weight. There are other studies showing that although it helps with weight loss, the weight loss is not statistically significant.

Part of the reason the results are varied from study to study is that there are a lot of different types of green tea. Different types of green tea have different amounts of caffeine and different amounts of catechins (antioxidants). One proposed method of how green tea could help you lose weight is the caffeine and catechins, and this might be why there are different results from study to study regarding weight loss.

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How Does Green Tea Help You Lose Weight?

Really there’s not a clear answer of how green tea could help you lose weight. Medical research isn’t clear partly because of the differences in green teas and different amounts of caffeine and catechins.

This paper suggests it may be secondary to your gut microbes (bacteria) and the way your gut absorbs green tea. Possibly different people are absorbing green tea in different ways, and that’s why it helps some people lose weight but doesn’t help other people lose weight.

Should You Try Green Tea?

Based on the data so far I wouldn’t recommend you start drinking green tea for the purpose of weight loss. The data is not clear that it would work for weight loss or how it would work. However if you already drink tea every day, you could try switching to green tea and test if does help you with weight loss. This would be green tea without any added milk, sugar, or sweeteners.

On a side note, green tea extract is different than green tea as a beverage. Green tea extract has also been studied for weight loss, but it also has potentially more side effects. Green tea as a beverage is the safest way to take in green tea.

P.S. Wondering what your goal heart rate should be when you work out? Check out my video here.

2 thoughts on “Will Green Tea Help You Lose Weight?”

  1. Thanks for sharing this helpful information. I’m sure most people can take notes from this article. Well, this post gives us some good ideas for green tea health benefit.

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