February 19, 2009

Should You Use Green Tea To Lose Weight?

There's no doubt that green tea is a popular herbal product these days. And the secret is out - you can use green tea to lose weight. There’s been a lot of talk about reasons to use green tea to help improve your health, but green tea can help you burn calories as well. Before you decide to stop your diet and quit exercising, you must realize that green tea is merely an aid for weight loss.

Green tea is a weight loss aid, which means it will help you lose some weight but it’s not going to do all the work for you. So how can green tea help you lose weight? It’s pretty simple; green tea contains caffeine. As a stimulant, caffeine naturally helps you burn extra calories. The thing is, most drinks that contain caffeine are full of calories of their own, too.

Coffee, soda, and energy drinks are never going to help you lose weight, becausethey’re filling your body up with fat and calories along with the caffeine content. Again, it’s key to remember that green tea is just a little boost, in the neighborhood of an extra 70 to 80 calories burned per day. That number is much lower than the amount of calories in a single serving of soda or coffee.

One thing that gives green tea weight loss an advantage is the compound called epigallocatechin gallate, commonly known as ECCG. The ECCG in green tea increases the effectiveness of the caffeine, leading to a greater amount of calories burned. Along with the fewer calories contained in a serving of green tea, this means the caffeine in green tea can help you lose weight where it would not ifyou got it from soda or coffee.

It can’t be stressed enough that green tea is just a small part of your weight loss regimen. If you were to lose 80 extra calories per day, that only adds up to about 8 pounds lost in a year, assuming you made no other dietary or exercise changes. If you want to shed pounds quickly, green tea can help, but it’s not the whole answer.

The good news is drinking green tea does more than just help you lose weight. As an antioxidant, green tea provides a number of benefits to your cardiovascular health – this means green tea can help reduce the risk of heart problems. Green tea can also help improve your metabolism and control your cholesterol level, and some claim that it can help your mental focus, as well.

Replacing your daily coffee with green tea can be a great way to help lose weight and improve general health. You’re replacing all the calories and chemicals found in coffee with pure herbal tea. This change can help make you feel healthier and you could lose weight with green tea at the same time.

Calorie Count To Lose Weight Quickly

While it may seem old-fashioned, counting calories still works as a way to lose weight. In order for this to work for you, you need to find out the calorie count in your food and keep a careful count of all the calories you consume. This is so you can make sure you don't take in more calories than you burn off.

To lose weight and keep it off both for the short term and the long term, it is important to exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet that is low in saturated fat. Add calorie counting to the mix and you've got a winner.

The best part about calorie counting is that it can be done by anyone. It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female, where you live, or whether or not you wish to lose weight quickly or have plenty of time to devote to losing it.

The concept behind calorie counting is that you can eat whatever you choose, but you have to make sure that you exercise sufficiently to get rid of those calories. Your energy output must be greater than your food input. You are not allowed to have any extra calories hanging around
that can easily turn to fat! It stands to reason then that calorie counting must be accompanied by consistent exercise.

Calorie counting forces you to take a closer look at the foods you consume on a daily basis. You also will become acquainted with the quantity of calories each food contains. This is something that might be very surprising for you. It can be a real eye opener but will lead to you
becoming more conscientious. Another important consideration when it comes to the idea of how to lose weight quickly is you need to learn how many calories you need in order to function at your best.

How do you begin to calorie count your way to a slimmer, and more toned physique? To start, you first need to figure out how many calories you require to maintain a stable and healthy weight. For both sexes there is a general guideline to go by. For example, females require approximately 2000 calories on a daily basis while males require more (an estimated 2500 calories per day). Keep in mind that other important considerations are your build, your height, and how much muscle you have on your body when you first start the calorie counting plan. Once you have this figured out, you can then devise a plan that is appropriate for you.

Let's look at a concrete example of this:
If you remove 500 calories a day from your diet, then your weight loss will be roughly one pound a week. Or, if you maintain your usual calorie count, and increase your exercise to burn off 500 calories per day, then your will also lose one pound a week.


So to recap, if you want to lose weight quickly then you want to consume fewer calories or increase your exercise. Count your calories to find out where you are and you'll probably be surprised where you can cut calories here and there and not even miss them.