Want to lose fat, help prevent disease, and save money all at the same time? Its easy!!! Lets face it, many people are addicted to their coffee but if you break your addiction, there is a much healthier and less expensive morning beverage!!
Fat Loss Benefits of Green Tea
- From WebMD, one of the most trusted sources of medical information on the web: “Green tea can help increase and even change your metabolism, so you burn more calories from fat. Studies show that green tea can also help you keep weight off once you’ve lost it.“.
- The second way that green tea helps with fat loss is the elimination of hidden calories. Many people take their coffee with “just a little” sugar and “just a splash” of cream. Well, for people who have three or four cups a day that can easily add up to 200 calories. 200 calories a day doesnt seem like much, but if you cut it out you would lose 20 pounds a year. The beauty of green tea is that it tastes fine without cream or sugar, in fact, it tastes better without. “No fair” you say, I could just have my coffee black. Well yes, but once people establish their coffee drinking habits they are nearly impossible to change. Its much easier for many people to switch to a new beverage like green tea than it is to learn to like their coffee without cream and sugar. And dont be fooled by those “zero calorie” whiteners, if you examine the labels carefully you will see that they are 100% fat and the only reason they show up as low calorie is that they make the portion size ridiculously small so that many people use up to 10 “servings” in a single cup. Artificial sweeteners have zero calories but that brings up the subject of health …
Health Benefits of Green Tea
Many of the health benefits that coffee likes to claim are actually benefits of the caffeine and not the coffee. Reports like this one that people like to cling to as justification for consuming massive amounts of coffee are just wishful thinking. So lets talk about why green tea is so awesome for your health, its because of powerful antioxidants called polyphenols present in the form of catechins. These catechins can neutralize free radicals which are responsible for causing diseases like cancer and heart disease. Lets look at the list of things the high catechins content of green tea can help with:
- Atherosclerosis
- High cholesterol
- Colorectal cancer
- Lung cancer
- Bladder cancer
- Breast cancer
- Ovarian cancer
- Esophageal cancer
- Pancreatic cancer
- Prostate cancer
- Stomach cancer
- Skin cancer
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- Diabetes
- Liver disease
How To Prepare Green Tea
Most people who claim they do not like the flavor of green tea are boiling it to death. Not only does the high temperature release the unsavory off flavors but it destroys the healthy catechins as well. The optimal green tea brewing temperature is 80C or 176F. To get this precise temperature is actually easy, follow these steps:
- Fill a mug full of water and place in the microwave and bring to full rolling boil
- Take out of microwave and sit on the counter to cool for 6 minutes (for a normal sized 8 ounce mug) or for 7 minutes (for a large 16 ounce mug).
- Steep tea bag for 30 seconds
- Enjoy!
What about black tea?
Black tea like is consumed in places with British influence is NOT the same as green tea. Black tea comes from fermented tea leaves whereas green tea comes from unfermented tea leaves. The fermentation process of black tea destroys the catechins.
What about green tea supplements
Can I just take green tea extract pills? PILLOW-SCREAM!!! Why, why, why does everyone want to take pills???? No, they are NOT as good. The more you process it, the more mistakes that can be made, and the more you destroy it. Remember that that the catechins are destroyed by temperatures above 80C so its easy for the health benefits of the green tea to be destroyed in the high temperature manufacturing process. When you brew green tea, you know the temperature it was brewed at and you get a fresh product which tastes like green tea. When you pop a green tea extract pill, how exactly do you know what is really in the pills? Vegetable oil is a lot cheaper than green tea extract and “mistakes” get made all the time in factories. There is no oversight or testing of supplements what so ever so when you take a pill, you really have no idea at all whats in it.
Summary
Its not often that the cheapest product is often the best but this is the case here. Many people spend $3 to $5 for specialty coffees when a cup of green tea costs just 17 cents (Costco, box of 100 tea bags $17). If you cant conceive of living without your coffee, consider doing “The Caffeine Challenge” to break your addiction and replace it with the far healthier ritual of drinking green tea.
