Green Tea for Fat Loss, Really? Let’s Debunk this

In this blog, I will explain about whether Green Tea helps you in Losing Fat or Not.

Green tea is a very healthy drink and is very famous and respected drink worldwide. It’s eminence is due to health benefits it provide that comes from the antioxidants abundantly found in it.

A particular benefit that made green tea more famous lately is it’s popular role in weight loss. Green tea can indirectly aid in your weight loss but to a very small or negligible extent.

In this blog, I won’t discuss about other health benefits of green tea because internet is already lousy with it. There is lot of positive evidence that green tea serves benefits to almost every organ system in body. You can read this article

But when it comes to fat loss, which is the major selling point of green tea, we have to take more deeper look into it.

What is in Green Tea which Aids in Fat Loss?

Green tea has plethora of antioxidants or polyphenols called as catechins.

memorize the catechin EGCG, i am going to use it in my rest of the blog

These antioxidants serve profuse health benefits because of their ability to reduce free radical damage within the body. These antioxidants are the main reason behind 90% of the green tea benefits.

The most efficacious catechin is EGCG. It is the key player behind fat loss benefits of green tea. To burn fat, stored fat must first be released from fat cells into blood stream to be used as energy, this is called as lipolysis or fat breakdown, a process EGCG can indirectly assist with.

EGCG inhibit COMT(catechol-o-methyl transferase), an enzyme that degrades nor-adrenaline, again helping in fat breakdown by inhibiting COMT because nor adrenaline is one of the key hormones that regulate fat breakdown.

The other most efficacious ingredient present in green tea is caffeine. caffeine is a scientifically proven stimulant which can increase your energy expenditure by making you more active and exuberant. caffeine also directly increases the production of nor-adrenaline, but keep in mind that the caffeine dosage to give any meaningful effects on metabolism is 300-500mg to burn extra 50 calories and a cup of green tea has only about 40-55mg of caffeine.

So now you know that EGCG and caffeine present in green tea can assist in fat loss but here are three things you need to know about green tea’s benefits for fat loss.

1. It will only work if you’re not a habitual caffeine consumer

Habitual tea or caffeine consumers have developed a tolerance to caffeine over the years.

For instance, let’s suppose today you start consuming 300 mg caffeine on daily basis. after some period of time (2-3 months), you’ll become tolerant to 300 mg dosage means to get that same benefits you were getting from 300 mg dosage of caffeine, now you have to increase the dosage to 400-500 mg.

2. Drinking green tea alone can’t provide ample EGCG

the dose of EGCG needed to see any noticeable effects on fat loss is pretty high. Conspicuous fat loss benefits require an EGCG dosage of around 400-500 mg per day and a cup of green tea has only 50-55 mg of EGCG.

Now you may be thinking that no problem i will consume 7-8 cups of green tea but along with EGCG, 7-8 cups of green tea will also have you consuming 320-560 mg of caffeine which is high enough to disrupt your sleep.

The solution to this is using green tea extract in supplement form which will give you enough EGCG without any caffeine interference.

3. Green tea burns way less calories than you’re thinking

Now you satisfy all the above conditions, you’re a good responder to EGCG caffeine combination. How much additional fat loss boost can you expect from EGCG supplementation?

From the current research for good responders, EGCG-caffeine combination would aid you in burning 80-100 extra calories per day only if you’re a good responder, if you’re not a good responder, then the amount of calories burned would be way less for you.

That being said, the results can vary from an individual to individual depends on how they respond, if you’re not a good responder to EGCG-caffeine combination, you won’t get any fat loss benefits at all.

TAKEAWAYS

Green tea is undoubtedly one of the most healthiest beverage but in context of fat loss, it won’t work for everyone. Also, as in my blog i explained that calories deficit is the only method which leads to fat loss, even if you’re drinking 10 cups of green tea per day, yet your calorie intake is high, you won’t shed fat.

I personally drink 1-2 cups of green tea everyday. Even if it can’t deliver any fat loss benefits, it has plethora of other health benefits and it is a zero calorie drink.

So that’s all about today’s blog, I've explained you whether you should or shouldn't consider green tea for fat loss.

See you all in my next blog. Till then, stay fit, keep exercising and most importantly be benevolent towards others.