Can Green Tea Help With Weight Loss?

Green tea, arguably the most popular Asian elixir in the whole world, is the second most widely consumed beverage next to water, and for good reasons. The medicinal value of this favorite past-time drink became well known way back in the ancient times. The health-giving and cleansing benefits of green tea were discovered more than 4,700 years ago by famed Chinese emperor Shen Nung. Green tea has been incorporated since then into the traditional Chinese medicine as a potent brew that can treat and prevent a wide spectrum of diseases and health imbalances.

Seventeenth-century Chinese pharmacist Wang Ang was the first to notice that long-time drinkers of green tea tended to lose weight. This purported benefit remained anecdotal for 3 centuries until green tea underwent thorough clinical testing in 1995. Only then did green tea become truly recognized as an anti-obesity drink.

Interest in proving green tea’s health benefits has grown in the past 15 years. Modern western medicine was finally able to confirm that traditional Chinese medicine was right on the money when it came to its claim that the humble drink was indeed a powerful panacea, with new observations that it can even prevent epidemics like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

Obesity is one very costly public health concern, with annual nationwide medical expenses shooting beyond the $100 billion mark. This is due to the distressing rise of the disease, and obesity being a risk factor for other deadly degenerative diseases. Obesity is caused by excessive store of calories, which happens when a person consumes way too much energy compared to the amount that he actually burns. To lose weight you have to create an energy deficit, either by limiting your calorie intake or by increasing physical activity.

How Can Green Tea Make You Slimmer?
Green tea contains bioactive substances called polyphenols. Catechins are a group of polyphenols abundantly found in green tea. Studies have shown that catechins can prevent weight gain in humans, particularly the accumulation of visceral fat.

Researchers found out in one epidemiological study involving 1103 Taiwanese adults that habitual tea drinkers, who sipped green tea at least once a week for more than a decade, lost 20% body fat and 2% abdominal fat compared to those who just drank tea occasionally. A similar 14-year study, concerning 4,280 Netherland tea drinkers, observed an inverse relationship between the amount of catechins consumed and body mass index (BMI).

A growing body of research has investigated the effects of green tea substances on weight loss. In documented experiments, test subjects who drank catechin-rich green tea over a 12-week period reaped weight-loss and BMI-related benefits such as lower body weight and fat mass, trimmer waist and hipline, and less LDL cholesterol.

Data also suggest that green tea catechins can help prevent lifestyle diseases such as obesity. It is very important to note that the participants in these experiments did not modify their caloric intake or physical activities save that of adding green tea to their diet.

Green Tea Consumption Leads to Lower Fat Deposits
The number and size of your adipocytes, known as fat cells, will both determine how much fat your body gets to store. The number of fat cells is controlled by the process of adipogenesis—the formation of fat cells by precursor cells called pre-adipocytes. If you don’t have a lot of adipocytes then your body just won’t have the capacity to store extra fat.

After adipocytes are generated by pre-adipocytes, they multiply to form bigger fat tissue, giving you a bigger vault for fat storage. The formation of fat tissue via adipogenesis is a normal function. The body makes sure that dead adipocytes are replaced by new fat cells.

In vitro and in vivo studies demonstrate that green tea prevents fat cells from multiplying, as well as being produced by pre-adipocytes. Evidence from these studies suggests that green tea lovers have fewer fat cells and therefore cannot store much fat compared to non-tea drinkers.

It Helps You Burn More Calories
Resting energy expenditure (REE), also commonly known as basal metabolic rate (BMR), is the total number of calories you burn in one day doing nothing, like when you completely rest or sleep. One way our body uses up calories is through thermogenesis, wherein your body produces heat to keep its temperature on an even keel. Some foods have a thermogenic effect, that is, they increase your body’s heat production. These foods therefore raise the energy expenditure of your body.

One French trial was carried out to determine whether daily intake of green tea capsules would ramp up thermogenesis and thereby cause an REE increase in humans. Ten healthy male subjects ingested either encapsulated green tea extract or placebo with their three main meals. Treatment with green tea capsules caused a 4% increase in their REE compared to the days when they were given placebo.

A similar experiment yielded the same results, with a 4-8% REE spike among 31 male and female test subjects who were given a quotidian of 3 cups of green tea a day. This percentage is tantamount to an extra BMR of 100 calories a day. The study further suggested that regular intake of green tea accelerates weight loss especially if combined with a healthy diet and exercise program.

It Makes Weight Maintenance Easier
The positive metabolic effect of green tea cannot be further emphasized for people who want to release weight and keep the weight loss. The higher your REE the more calories you burn at rest. But as you lose weight your metabolism hits a slump since human metabolic rate also depends on body weight.

This metabolic dip eventually caused by weight loss creates a weight loss rut commonly experienced by dieters. A lower BMR is also responsible for difficulties in weight loss maintenance. Drinking green tea or taking green tea capsules would therefore keep your REE on the up and up, helping you keep the pounds off. This has been proven by research showing that regular green tea consumers were able to maintain their lower weight after losing weight.

It Causes a Lot of Fats from Your Food to Simply Go Down the Drain
Food fat cannot be absorbed in the gut without undergoing two vital processes first:

• Fat emulsification by bile salts: Lipids cannot be absorbed in the intestines unless they are converted into water-soluble nutrients first. This is accomplished with the help of the bile salts. Lipids remain non-water-soluble until bile salts change them into micelles, which are water-soluble particles. This process is known as emulsification of lipids and aims at increasing the intestinal bioavailability of fats.
• Enzymatic lipid breakdown: Lipase enzymes produced by the stomach and small intestines metabolize food lipids, enabling fats to be absorbed by the body.

Catechins and other green tea substances have been shown to inhibit fat absorption in the intestines. One type of powerful green tea catechin called EGCG keeps micelles from forming and inhibits gastric and pancreatic lipase function. Lipase enzymes are important catalysts that enable your body to break down fats from food. Intestinal fat absorption then becomes limited. Proof that this really takes place is the higher amount of fecal fat measured in those who consume green tea.

Green Tea Prevents Fat Production
Classical nutrition will teach you that food is comprised of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, three main macronutrients that have to be broken into smaller molecules prior to intestinal absorption. Carbohydrates are broken into glucose, proteins into their building blocks amino acids, and fats into fatty acids. These simplified forms are utilized for different life-sustaining processes after they get absorbed in the GI tract. The body takes what it needs and the excess micronutrients are sent to fat cells for storage.

Adipocytes can store energy only in the form of fat. Therefore, non-metabolized macronutrients are automatically transformed into fat for storage. This means that extra carbohydrates and protein that you did not burn through exercise will be converted to fat and get stored in fat cells. This process is called lipogenesis, wherein lipogenic enzymes create new fat from unused macronutrients. Green tea has been demonstrated to interfere with lipogenic process, preventing lipogenesis and therefore limiting the capacity of your body to create and store fat.

Final Considerations
Human testing has consistently shown that green tea does have anti-obesity and weight loss benefits. The promising anti-obesogenic effects of this natural beverage can be more understood in the following calculations.

The estimated weight gain of the average American is about 2.2 lb per year, since Americans approximately eat 25 calories more than they expend in one day. Theoretically, if you are a habitual green drinker, your REE is higher and you burn 100 calories more a day than the average non-tea drinker. That means that, not only do you not have a 25-calorie surplus in your daily diet, you actually have a 75-calorie deficit. Chronic green tea consumption can therefore keep weight gain at bay in most of the American population.

The natural weight loss benefits of green tea should not be ignored since it makes management of obesity easier and less distasteful for the regular American. Guzzling green tea or popping green tea capsules would therefore be a convenient strategy in battling obesity and maintaining weight loss.

About The Author
Matthew Denos, PhD is a biologist and natural health advocate who loves to dive into mounds of technical studies on weight loss and natural obesity treatments, and transforms them into easy to understand information for the average person. He believes that nature’s herbs can be the most potent weight loss medicines around. His blog presents information about weight loss programs, a Medifast 50 coupon and Nutrisystem promo codes, two thoroughly researched meal replacement programs in North America.

Source of Photo: alaasafei, PaulMT and Photoxpress.com