The easy weight loss tea diet created for people who are very serious about weight loss and who want to lose a lot of weight and re-shape their bodies. It was not designed for the people who want to drop five or ten pounds. It’s a powerful system that’s designed to get results. The way that it does this is through appetite suppressing and energy boosting. That’s a powerful combination, because eating less and moving more are the two best ways to lose those unwanted pounds. If you do both of them together, of course you’re going to lose more weight than you otherwise would. Unfortunately, the tea itself won’t really make you lose weight.

That’s where people get into problems with diets of any kind, especially those where they drink a tea or take a supplement to lose weight. They assume — incorrectly — that the tea or the supplement is all that they need, and they will drop all kinds of pounds and have a perfect body. That isn’t the case, however, and you have to work to lose weight. You have to eat less. You have to move more. And you have to do these things consistently. Without doing them, and sticking with them, you won’t really lose the weight that you want to lose. So whether the tea actually works by itself to lose weight, the answer is generally no. As to whether the tea can help you to lose weight, that’s more likely. By giving you a lot of vitamins and other healthy additives, the tea can make you more alert and focused and it can give you more energy without giving you a lot of caffeine. That’s a great option for people who don’t want to drink energy drinks because they worry that those kinds of things aren’t good for them, but yet they still want the extra energy benefits.

If you start on an exercise routine and a sensible eating plan, and you couple that with ‘easy weight loss tea’ and the proper rest and nutrition, you’ll lose weight. However, everyone loses weight differently, and some lose it faster and more easily than others. You shouldn’t be discouraged when you don’t lose as quickly as you want to or as much as you think you should. Stick to your plans, make small adjustments where you need to, and you’ll reach your weight loss goals. The more impatient you get or the more that you try to starve yourself the more unhappy and upset with yourself you’ll be, which won’t lead to the success that you’re looking for.

Readers can get a free trial pack by clicking here »

Spring water is the ideal choice for brewing tea, followed by filtered water. Distilled water should never be used; the brew it produces will be flat since the minerals removed from it are essential to bringing out tea’s flavor.

To prepare the best loose tea, we recommend using a small food scale. Use three grams of tea to five ounces of water if brewing tea in a small teapot; four grams of tea to eight ounces of water for other methods.

As the size and shape of tea pots and cups varies considerably, it’s a good idea to fill a measuring cup with 8 ounces of water and pour it into your tea pot or cup to determine how much water it really holds.

In making loose tea, remember that a teaspoon of small, dense leaves will weigh substantially more than a teaspoon of larger leaves, and the resulting tea will reflect this. A teaspoon of small dense leaves may be sufficient to produce a satisfying strong cup, while several teaspoons of larger leaves would be needed for a comparable brew.

Although heartily boiling water is used to brew black and oolong teas, green tea needs much lower temperatures (160-170 degrees F; 79-85 degrees C) and should be brewed for less time.

Let the water barely reach the boiling point to liberate its oxygen, then allow it to cool slightly before pouring over your tea. Until you are familiar with your tea kettle and the time it takes and sounds it makes when the correct temperature (170-185 degrees) has been reached, it’s a good idea to check using a simple, inexpensive candy thermometer, available at any grocery store.

Brewing for 30 seconds to one minute is usually ideal; however, Nilgiri and Darjeeling greens can take several minutes, and Chinese Dragonwell teas are often best after 6-7 minutes of infusion.

Although good quality tea leaves will sink to the bottom after they have infused, it’s a good idea to pour the tea over a small strainer if one is not built in to your teapot.

Green tea not only promotes fat loss, but specifically, the loss of visceral fat-fat that accumulates in the tissues lining the abdominal cavity and surrounding the intestines (viscera) and internal organs. Unlike fat deposits on the hips and thighs (which result in the so-called “pear” body shape), visceral fat (which produces the “apple” body shape) is highly associated with increased risk for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

Green tea contains three major components that promote fat loss: catechins, caffeine and theanine. Studies suggest that green tea compounds promote fat loss by inhibiting both gastric and pancreatic lipase, the enzymes that digest triglycerides, and fatty acid synthetase, the enzyme responsible for synthesizing fatty acids into the form in which they can be stored in the body’s adipose (fat) cells.

In a study published in the January 2004 issue of In Vivo in which mice were fed diets containing 2% green tea powder for 16 weeks, visceral fat decreased by 76.8% in those receiving green tea compared to the control group. Green tea also decreased blood levels of triglycerides (the chemical form in which most fats exist in the body).

Make a green tea chai by brewing green tea in hot vanilla soy milk and topping with a dash each of cinnamon, black pepper, ginger and allspice.

Brew 1-2 teaspoons loose leaf green tea in 8 ounces cool water for 20-30 minutes to develop flavor without bitterness and add to stir-fries, marinades, dressings, soups and sauces.

Sprinkle gyokuro tea over a salad, stew or rice dish.

Add ½ teaspoon gyokuro tea to an almost set omelet or scrambled eggs.

Add crushed gunpowder tea and rice vinegar to sesame oil for a delicious vinaigrette.

Mix gyokuro tea with sesame seeds and sea salt and use to dredge shrimp or fish filets before lightly pan-frying them.

Cook Japanese udon noodles in green tea for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat and leave noodles in tea until cool. Drain and toss lightly with soy sauce and sesame oil. Add thinly sliced tofu, scallions, mushrooms, and chopped cilantro, and serve.

Poach Asian or Bosc pears in green tea with fresh thinly sliced gingerroot. Drizzle with honey and top with a sprig of fresh mint.

Combine cooled green tea half and half with a fruit juice, such as peach, pineapple or papaya. Sweeten with a teaspoon of honey per cup. Blend and pour over ice.

Green tea’s catechins appear to stimulate the use of fatty acids by liver and muscle cells. In muscle cells, the ability to burn more fat translates into a reduction in the rate at which glycogen, the form in which carbohydrates are stored for ready access in muscle, is used up, thus allowing for longer exercise times. Green tea’s effect on muscle cells’ ability to take in and burn fatty acids, speeding up fat breakdown, is also thought to be the reason why it helps weight loss.

The idea for the experiment came from the fact that skeletal muscles utilize carbohydrates, lipids (fats) and amino acids (protein) as energy sources, but the ratio in which they are used varies with the intensity and type of the exercise, and the level of the individual’s fitness. During endurance exercise, the use of too much carbohydrate is undesirable because it triggers insulin secretion, which, in turn, both inhibits the burning of fatty acids and stimulates lactic acid production. (Lactic acid buildup is what causes that sore achy feeling in your muscles when you exercise.) Conversely, enhanced availability and utilization of free fatty acids reduces carbohydrate utilization, which in turn spares glycogen (the form in which carbohydrates are stored in muscle for quick use) and suppresses lactic acid production, resulting in an increase in endurance.”

Drinking a single cup of green tea before exercise, however, will not be effective. One single, higher “dose” of green tea did nothing to improve lab rats’ performance. The animals had to receive green tea daily, and endurance increased gradually over the 10 weeks of the study.

To match the beneficial effect on test animals’ endurance capacity seen in the experiments, the researchers estimate a 165-pound athlete would need to drink about 4 cups of green tea daily.

Green tea contains three major components that promote fat loss: catechins, caffeine and theanine. Studies suggest that green tea compounds promote fat loss by inhibiting both gastric and pancreatic lipase, the enzymes that digest triglycerides, and fatty acid synthetase, the enzyme responsible for synthesizing fatty acids into the form in which they can be stored in the body’s adipose (fat) cells.

In a study published in the January 2004 issue of In Vivo in which mice were fed diets containing 2% green tea powder for 16 weeks, visceral fat decreased by 76.8% in those receiving green tea compared to the control group. Green tea also decreased blood levels of triglycerides (the chemical form in which most fats exist in the body).

A human study, published in the January 2005 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, confirms green tea’s ability to not only reduce body fat, but damage to LDL cholesterol as well. After 12 weeks of drinking just one bottle of green tea each day, 38 normal-to-overweight men in Tokyo had a significantly lower body weight, BMI, waist circumference, body fat mass and amount of subcutaneous fat compared to men given a bottle of oolong tea each day.

After a 2 week diet run-in period, the men were divided into two groups, one of which drank a bottle of green tea containing 690 mg of catechins, while the other group drank a bottle of oolong tea containing 22 mg catechins. Not only did the men drinking green tea lose weight and fat, but the amount of their LDL cholesterol damaged by free radicals also dropped significantly. Since atherosclerotic plaques develop when cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream is damaged or oxidized, green tea’s ability to prevent these oxidation reactions may explain some of its protective effects against cardiovascular diseases.

There is also a suggestion that it can increase endurance in exercise by improving fat metabolism.

A 2006 study published in the September 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded “Green tea consumption is associated with reduced mortality due to all causes and due to cardiovascular disease but not with reduced mortality due to cancer.” The study, conducted by the Tohoku University School of Public Policy in Japan, followed 40,530 Japanese adults, ages 40-79, with no history of stroke, coronary heart disease, or cancer at baseline beginning in 1994. The study followed all participants for up to 11 years for death from all causes and for up to 7 years for death from a specific cause. Participants who consumed 5 or more cups of tea per day had a 16 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality and a 26 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease than participants who consumed less than one cup of tea per day. The study also states, “If green tea does protect humans against CVD or cancer, it is expected that consumption of this beverage would substantially contribute to the prolonging of life expectancy, given that CVD and cancer are the two leading causes of death worldwide.”

A study in the February 2006 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded “A higher consumption of green tea is associated with a lower prevalence of cognitive impairment in humans.”

In May 2006, researchers at Yale University School of Medicine weighed in on the issue with a review article that looked at more than 100 studies on the health benefits of green tea. They pointed to what they called an “Asian paradox,” which refers to lower rates of heart disease and cancer in Asia despite high rates of cigarette smoking. They theorized that the 1.2 liters of green tea that is consumed by many Asians each day provides high levels of polyphenols and other antioxidants. These compounds may work in several ways to improve cardiovascular health, including preventing blood platelets from sticking together (This anticoagulant effect is the reason doctors warn surgical patients to avoid green tea prior to procedures that rely on a patient’s clotting ability) and improving cholesterol levels, said the researchers, whose study appeared in the May issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Specifically, green tea may prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol (the “bad” type), which, in turn, can reduce the buildup of plaque in arteries, the researchers wrote.

A study published in the August 22, 2006 edition of Biological Psychology looked at the modification of the stress response via L-Theanine, a chemical found in green tea. It “suggested that the oral intake of L-Theanine could cause anti-stress effects via the inhibition of cortical neuron excitation.”

In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial done by Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, 240 adults were given either theaflavin-enriched green tea extract in form of 375mg capsule daily or a placebo. After 12 weeks, patients in the tea extract group had significantly less low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and total cholesterol (16.4% and 11.3% lower than baseline, p<0.01) than the placebo group. The author concluded that theaflavin-enriched green tea extract can be used together with other dietary approaches to reduce LDL-C.

A study published in the January, 2005 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded “Daily consumption of tea containing 690 mg catechins for 12 wk reduced body fat, which suggests that the ingestion of catechins might be useful in the prevention and improvement of lifestyle-related diseases, mainly obesity.”

According to a Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine study published in the April 13 2005 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, antioxidants in green tea may prevent and reduce the severity of rheumatoid arthritis. The study examined the effects of green tea polyphenols on collagen-induced arthritis in mice, which is similar to rheumatoid arthritis in humans. In each of three different study groups, the mice given the green tea polyphenols were significantly less likely to develop arthritis. Of the 18 mice that received the green tea, only eight (44 percent) developed arthritis. Among the 18 mice that did not receive the green tea, all but one (94 percent) developed arthritis. In addition, researchers noted that the eight arthritic mice that received the green tea polyphenols developed less severe forms of arthritis.

A German study found that an extract of green tea and hot water (filtered), applied externally to the skin for 10 minutes, three times a day could help people with skin damaged from radiation therapy (after 16-22 days).

A study published in the December 1999 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that “Green tea has thermogenic properties and promotes fat oxidation beyond that explained by its caffeine content per se. The green tea extract may play a role in the control of body composition via sympathetic activation of thermogenesis, fat oxidation, or both.”

In lab tests, EGCG, found in green tea, was found to prevent HIV from attacking T-Cells. However, it is not yet known if this has any effect on humans.

A study in the August, 2003 issue of a new potential application of Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences found that “a new potential application of (–)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate [a component of green tea] in prevention or treatment of inflammatory processes is suggested”.

However, pharmacological and toxicological evidence does indicate that green tea polyphenols can in fact cause oxidative stress and liver toxicity in vivo at certain concentrations.  This would imply that consumers should exercise caution when consuming herbal products produced from concentrated green tea extract. Other evidence presented in the review cautions against the drinking of green tea by pregnant women.

Based on our recent results with TNF–deficient mice, TNF- is an endogenous tumor promoter. TNF- is also known to be a central mediator in chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. We therefore hypothesized that green tea might be a preventive agent for chronic inflammatory diseases. To test this hypothesis, TNF- transgenic mice, which overexpress TNF- only in the lungs, were examined. The TNF- transgenic mouse is an animal model of human idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis which also frequently develops lung cancer. Expressions of TNF- and IL-6 were inhibited in the lungs of these mice after treatment with green tea in drinking water for 4 months. In addition, judging from the results of a prospective cohort study in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, green tea helps to prevent cardiovascular disease. In this study, a decreased relative risk of death from cardiovascular disease was found for people consuming over 10 cups of green tea a day, and green tea also had life-prolonging effects on cumulative survival. These data suggest that green tea has preventive effects on both chronic inflammatory diseases and lifestyle-related diseases (including cardiovascular disease and cancer), resulting in prolongation of life span.

The team isolated the chemicals that make up green tea and found two that inhibit AH activity. The two substances, epigallocatechingallate (EGCG) and epigallocatechin (EGC), are close molecular cousins to other flavonoids found in broccoli, cabbage, grapes and red wine that are known to help prevent cancer.

While green tea has been much-ballyhooed for its anti-cancer effects as well as other purported abilities such as preventing rheumatoid arthritis and lowering cholesterol, just how the substance works has been a mystery. Scientists do know that green tea contains chemicals that are anti-oxidants and quench harmful molecules. But its effects on the AH receptor have not been thoroughly evaluated until now.

“It’s likely that the compounds in green tea act through many different pathways,” says Gasiewicz, professor and chair of Environmental Medicine and director of Rochester’s Environmental Health Science Center. “Green tea may work differently than we thought to exert its anti-cancer activity.”

Gasiewicz and Palermo showed that the chemicals shut down the AH receptor in cancerous mouse cells, and early results indicate the same is true in human cells as well.

In the laboratory the AH-inhibiting effects of green tea become evident when EGCG and EGC reach levels typical of those found in a cup of green tea. But the scientists say that how green tea is metabolized by the body is crucial to its effectiveness, and that results in the laboratory don’t necessarily translate directly to the dinner table.

“Right now we don’t know if drinking the amount of green tea that a person normally drinks would make a difference, but the work is giving us insight into how the proteins work,” says Palermo, who enjoys cold green tea herself. “There are a lot of differences between various kinds of green tea, so a lot more research is needed.”