The Fat Burning Health Benefits of Green Tea

As a physician I'm often asked about the health benefits of green tea. One of the most common questions I'm asked it, "Will it help me lose weight?" The answer is an enthusiastic "maybe".

There is no miracle food, drink, or pill that's guaranteed to take off excess weight. Drinking green tea will not be an effective substitute for a healthy diet and exercise plan although it can HELP. When combined with a healthy life style, it can be a great addition to a well thought out, practical weight loss plan.

Recent studies have preliminarily shown that green tea can aid in weight loss efforts. It appears that many of the health benefits of green tea lies in its ability to stimulate thermogenesis which is your body's way of eliminating excess calories so they won't be stored as fat. So, yes, green tea has a stimulatory effect on thermogenesis which can promote weight loss. The drawback is you may need to drink 6 to 10 glasses of green tea a day to see this weight loss effect. Because green tea contains caffeine, this may pose a problem for some people who can't tolerate the associated stimulatory effects. Decaffeinated green tea is available but may not be as effective in promoting weight loss as the caffeinated version, although it does appear to have some stimulatory effects on weight loss despite the absence of caffeine.

For this reason, you may want to consider adding a green tea supplement to your daily vitamin regimen. Besides being a convenient way to get your green tea, the supplement provides you with a concentrated source of weight loss promoting catechins which reduces the need for you to consume an ungodly number of green tea servings to get the health benefits of green tea.

You might ask, "just how does green tea promote weight loss?"Again, the answer lies in it's thermogenic properties which helps to boost metabolism and energy expenditure while preventing excess calories from being store as fat. This is a direct result of the catechins that are so abundant in green tea which likely has a synergistic effect with the associated caffeine. This means the combination of the catechins with the caffeine may result in an even greater effect on thermogenesis than when either chemical is present alone. This makes green tea an ideal agent for promoting weight loss. The health benefits of this simple drink are simply remarkable!

How does the use of a green tea supplement work in real life? Of the patients I've recommended a green tea supplement to, I would estimate that around 75% of them have had some weight loss. These were patients who were unwilling to commit to a strict diet or exercise program so the results were likely related to the use of the green tea supplement. What about the 25% who failed to achieve an effect? Everyone will respond differently to a supplement so it's not necessarily the answer for everyone.

The health benefits of green tea are being more apparent as time goes on and it's gratifying to know it can have a positive effect on weight loss. But, don't forget, good old fashioned healthy eating and exercise should be the backbone of any weight loss program.