Does Green Tea Help You Lose Weight?

             Green tea is all the rage these days, but does it really do anything? Can it be harmful for you? After all, as I mentioned in my seminar, Healthy Foods That Poison: Why You’re Getting Sicker and Fatter Despite Eating Healthier, one man’s food is another man’s poison

You see, foods and supplements have something called an “active ingredient.” That is what biochemists believe to be the most beneficial compound for a specific purpose (either losing fat or improving cholesterol or any number of other health goals). Most foods have more than one active ingredient. The research on green tea focused on one antioxidant called “catechin” (pronounced “ka-teh-kin”).

To really figure out if green tea truly helps you lose weight, I decided to skip the hype, and consult the “bible” of nutritional supplements, which objectively looks at the scientific evidence for or against any supplement.

Original Source: Here.

            So in one study, the researchers gave the participants in the study different amounts of green tea, and observed what happened to their body fat. What they found was that each one of the participants lost 30 pounds in 30 days. So go out right now and get some. Oh wait. No, that didn’t happen.

What they found was that the group drinking the highest amount of green tea lost ON AVERAGE just over 3 pounds in 3 months. Whoop-dee-doo. By the way “on average” means that some people lost more, and some people didn’t lose anything.

And that group drinking the highest amount of green tea, we don’t really know how much tea they were drinking. The study explains it in terms of milligrams of catechins, which isn’t really helpful in a “real world” scenario.

But there was another flaw. Green tea has caffeine in it. So the group that drank 886mg of catechins also drank 198 mg of caffeine. So is the fat loss effect due to the catechins or the caffeine or both or neither? We don’t really know.

Nonetheless, let’s assume that green tea does indeed help us lose body fat. 3 pounds in 90 days is a bit disappointing, wouldn’t you agree?

That certainly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have green tea. It has great benefits (and some drawbacks, which I’ll talk about in the next paragraph), but I wouldn’t make it your primary strategy if your goal is to lose body fat.

One effect of green tea is that it does strengthen the immune system. Great! You want a strong immune system, don’t you? Well, the problem happens when you already have an autoimmune condition. This is when your immune system attacks your own body cells. Examples of this are Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and others. Why does your immune system attack your own body? Because your immune system is too strong, and drinking green tea can make it stronger. That will actually worsen your health.

As the saying goes, “one man’s food is another man’s poison“.

 

Quick Summary

  • Green tea does indeed help you lose weight (although the results aren’t conclusive), but the amount of weight lost is negligible.
  • Green tea can actually be bad for you if you have an autoimmune condition.