You may have heard that green tea is good for weight loss, but may be wondering if it is true, or how it works. Several researches conducted in recent years have found that the green tea works well for weight loss, but how does it work?
Before talking about the benefit of the green tea, let me explain about the mechanism of losing weight
Losing weight is many people’s desire. We start some exercise at gym or at home, hoping some weight can be shed. However in reality, it is not so easy to lose weight. For this reason, a number of people give up their exercise after trying for a short period. Then they go back to their old shell, an unhappy person with the excessive weight. Have you experienced this before? Why is it so hard to lose weight?
There is a mechanism of losing weight. When you do exercise, your body consumes not just your body fat but also glycogen which is accumulated in the muscles. In fact, glycogen is used for the first 30 minutes after you started your exercise. The use of the body fat comes only after the glycogen has been consumed. At this point, you may think “ah ok, then I can extend my exercise longer than 30 minutes”
However, continuing your exercise longer than 30 minutes is not easy, whether that is weight training at gym or jogging or swimming. In fact, most people stop their exercise even earlier than 30 minutes. At that time your fat has not been used yet. As a result, your weight is not reduced. But there is good news. Having drinks rich in caffeine 30 minutes prior to your exercise helps break down the body fat and the broken fat can be burned during the exercise. The green tea is one of the drinks that contain a high amount of caffeine. Besides, the green tea does not contain any sugar, and also you can drink the tea quite easily without adding sugar because of the aroma, so the green tea drink is already good for weight loss.
As mentioned above, caffeine works well to help reduce your body fat, but it should be avoided to drink green tea during your exercise. This is because the caffeine contained in the green tea stimulates your bladder, which will make you need to release urine more often and distract your workouts. Just take a cup of green tea 30 minutes prior to your exercise.
Another important natural element of green tea for weight loss is catechin. Catechin is only present in green tea, while caffeine is contained in all of green tea, black tea and coffee. When fatty foods are taken into your body, the enzyme called lipase discomposes the fat, and then the fat is absorbed into your body. This is how your body gains weight. However, if green tea is taken, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) which occupies half of the catechin impairs the absorption of fat.
This fact has been proven through some experiments where 2 groups of 40 people drank the same amount of green tea for 12 weeks. Group 1 drank strong green tea while Group 2 drank standard commercial green tea. The results show that the people of Group 1 lost more body fat than the people of Group 2. Therefore, if you drink green tea during the meals of fatty foods, it may be useful to reduce your body fat and that contributes to weight loss.
Reference:
Reduction of Abdominal fat in Humans by Long-term Ingestion of Tea Catechins with a Galloyl Moiety
http://www.pieronline.jp/content/article/0386-3603/37060/521