Tea and winter weight loss

I've lost about 26 pounds so far this winter season. I mean, I have quite literally worked my butt off. I also follow my own advice about drinking tea. Shocker, I know. I've posted about oolong and green tea and weight loss, and white tea and fat cells. But there is another tea that helps.

Ginger tea.

Yes, ginger tea is technically an herbal tea and not a "real" tea, but are you really going to quibble? Ginger is known for helping with a queasy stomach, but did you know that sipping three cups a day burns nearly 150 calories? It seems to be a metabolism booster. Ginger is a diuretic that helps to relieve swelling, bloating, and water retention. This can help make you appear thinner, while you actually work on getting thinner!

Off to sip some ginger tea!

Green Tea and Your Heart

Well, since I'm on a roll about tea and weight loss, I'll just continue this with a post about heart health. It is January, after all, and typically this is the month more people decide to make changes regarding their health. True, most don't even last the month, but this is tea!

A study in China discovered that giving consuming more green tea extract lowered cholesterol and triglycerides. Now, again, this is green tea extract and not the actual tea, so please don't run out and buy pills. Remember how I said a couple of days ago that researchers believe it is the polyphenols, and not the caffeine, that affects metabolism. This usually means, and many doctors suggest as much, that the best way to get the benefits from plants is to consume them as food, not pills.

Everyone knows high cholesterol and high triglycerides can damage the heart. So researchers have also begun to study how tea may improve heart health. A study in Boston found that drinking one cup a day (or more) may reduce the risk of heart attack by 44%. Another study, this one done in the Netherlands, found that people who drank four cups of tea a day had significantly less plaque buildup in their arteries than those that drank two or fewer cups a day. Many population based studies have also indicated that people who drink black tea have lower total cholesterol, lower ldl and higher hdl cholesterol. Some doctors suggest folks should drink at least three cups of tea a day.

Now, please, please, please, I am NOT a doctor, or even a medical professional. I am just a lover of tea. I post these studies as something for you to think about and maybe share with your doctor, but in NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, do I believe you should forgo seeing your health professional to discuss your state of health.

I am ONLY suggesting that you drink more tea because it is delicious. If there really are health benefits associated with this very pleasant pastime, all the better.

In that vein, my daily mug and tea:

Constant Comment. Because it is divine.

Green Tea and Your Appetite

Continuing from yesterday about weight loss, a study conducted at the University of Chicago found that mice given green tea polyphenols consumed 50-60% less food than mice who didn't get them. Now, I'm not a fan, AT ALL, of animal testing, and animal testing doesn't necessarily translate to the same results in humans, but when it comes to tea, I'm more willing to bet the results will be quite similar.

So today, my mug and tea are:

Green tea with ginger and pear

Drink Up and Slim Down

I drink tea for the pleasure of it. However, there always seems to be research into the health benefits of it, and I just see that as a plus. Notice I did not say cream on the top. On tea, that would just be gross.

Last year, in my post, Tea and the Exercise Connection, I mentioned two such health bits:

"...a study done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that people drinking five cups of oolong tea each day burned an average of 87 additional calories. Not just while they were drinking their tea, but throughout the day."

Today I came across something in the Journal of Nutrition about a study that followed people who drank five 10 ounce servings of oolong tea for three days. They increased their metabolism by 3% more than people who drank water. This translates to 67 calories per day, or 6-1/2 pounds weight loss in one year.

And this, again, from the same post:

"Researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences determined that mice on a high-fat diet that consumed decaffeinated green tea extract and exercised regularly experienced sharp reductions in final body weight and significant improvements in health. After 16 weeks, high-fat-fed mice that exercised regularly and ingested green tea extract showed an average body mass reduction of 27.1 percent and an average abdominal fat mass reduction of 36.6 percent."

Today, again, about another study, this time in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, that researchers found a 4% increased energy expenditure when they gave people green tea extract, instead of caffeine or a placebo. What they believe is that it is the polyphenols in tea, and not the caffeine, that may stimulate metabolism.

This differs slightly from another earlier post, Green Tea and Your Metabolism, that suggested, "...while green tea has about one-third the caffeine as coffee, other metabolically active substances, called catechins, compound the actions of the caffeine. "Caffeine activates metabolic pathways that release stored body fat from your fat cells into your bloodstream," says Paul Arciero, PhD. 

A 2005 study, entitled,  "Ingestion of a tea rich in catechins leads to a reduction in body fat and malondialdehyde-modified LDL in men" concluded that "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."

Polyphenols, btw, are a type of phytochemical found in plant compounds, like vegetables, fruit, and red wine.  A professor of nutrition at Tufts University, Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg. was quoted as saying that, "Two cups of tea provide as many phytochemicals as one serving of vegetables." Both black and green tea are excellent sources of dietary polyphenols.

Catechins are a type of antioxidant found in the greatest abundance in the leaves of the tea plant Camellia sinensis. 

So, today, for my daily mug and tea:

I'm sipping an oolong and green with jasmine!