9 Simple Green Tea Diet Tips To Get You Into Shape Fast!

Green Tea for Weight Loss

Have you heard that you can use green tea for weight loss?

This is the very first benefit of green tea that I came across a few years ago when I was trying to lose weight, but I got side-tracked and I never tried it out.

But since I started writing a few articles on the benefits of green tea for this blog (links below), it got me thinking if you really can use green tea as a successful weight loss tool.

I mean, you cannot just drink green tea and not eat anything, right?

Right!

Of course you need to follow a healthy, nutritious diet plan too.

After all; green tea is just, well, a cup of tea!

And so I started to dig into exactly how you can use green tea for weight loss, and I’m sharing what I found with you in this blog post.

So let’s go through how green tea can help you in your weight loss efforts and I’ll show you a plan to help you put together your own little, unique green tea diet.

Benefits of Green Tea for Weight Loss

So I started off on my green tea research expedition looking at the ingredients in green tea to see what was actually in the stuff in general for both health & skin care – and I was very impressed!

Related Reading:

• 21 Amazing Health Benefits of Green Tea That You Need To Know About
• 9 Exciting Benefits of Green Tea for Your Skin & Face

I then dug a bit deeper to look at the specific ingredients that could be beneficial for weight loss.

Luckily because of my anti aging qualification, where it went quite deep into antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, free radicals and physiology, I could take some understanding from how the green tea ingredients could actually aid a weight loss diet plan.

This is what I found.

Polyphenols: These make up for the largest proportion of the overall green tea ingredient as there over 500 polyphenol antioxidants; and each of these 500 antioxidants are pretty powerful in their own right.  So as a whole, polyphenols are a very important ingredient of green tea.

Here are how three of the most prominent active ingredients can help you when it comes to losing weight with green tea:

EGCG Antioxidant [Polyohenol]:

This super-antioxidant helps your boost metabolism and burn fat.  It does this by helping to promote fat break down in fatty cells.  This fat is then excreted into your blood stream to use as energy.

Catechins [Polyohenol]:

There has been a specific study by The Journal of Nutrition, where they found that catechins may enhance exercise-induced loss of belly fat and show an improvement of triglyceride levels [Source].

Caffeine:

Caffeine is wildly known as a stimulant.  Any stimulant helps increase metabolism, and in-turn, this burns unwanted fat.  But be aware that you may eventually become intolerant to the fat-burning effects of caffeine, so you can’t rely on it as the only source as a metabolism booster.

Combination of Antioxidants

The combination of ingredients such as caffeine, EGCG, cetachins and other polyphenols (such as flavonoids), together with the abundance of vitamins and minerals also found in the natural green tea plant all work together in many different ways to help make your cells healthier and less fatter which ultimately promotes fat-burning and weight loss.

Best Green Tea for Weight Loss

So now begs the question, is there a best green tea specifically for weight loss?

Well, there are some green tea fat burner soft gel tablets on the market, like the one in the image here.

This one in particular has 400mg concentrated EGCG in it.  And as we now know, the EGCG antioxidant plays a major part of weight loss because it breaks down fatty cells which boosts metabolism.

If you really don’t like green tea to drink, then you may as well gives these green tea fat burning tablets a go.

>> Go here for more information on the Green Tea Fat Burner gel tablets

However, simply by drinking natural green tea will give you the weight loss and energy boost you need; which I’ve talked about at the beginning of this post.

I suppose it comes down to the quality of the tea and which one you buy that makes any kind of difference.

For example:

Different types of green tea:

… etc.

Green Tea To Lose Weight Without Exercise?

Because of it’s fat burning capabilities, you don’t strictly have to exercise to lose weight.

After all, the ratio of eating and exercise to lose weight is around 80/20.  Meaning that your diet is 80% responsible for your weight loss and only 20% of exercise is responsible for weight loss.

For example, if you ate a standard sized burger & chips, it’s around abut 860 calories.  Now, how much exercise do you think you’ll need to do to burn off those 860 calories?

Watch this short video for your answer…
Note: They didn’t succeed in burning off the whole 860 calories!

So it makes sense to watch your calorie intake instead of relying on exercise to burn off all your bad food-habits.

This is what I have to do to lose weight – watch my calorie intake.

The only thing that works for me always, is watching my calories and having a calorie deficit in my daily diet.

I work it out like this:

2,000 calories per day x 7 days = 14,000 calories (over the 7 day week)

14,000 – 3,500  = 10,500 calories per week

10,500 calories per week = 1,500 calories per day

So to lose around 1lb per week, you should try and stick to 1,500 calories per day.

This is without exercise.

1Lb = 0.45 Kg

Move Your Body

Now having said all of that (you knew this was coming didn’t you :)), you still really need to ‘move’ to keep you agile, toned and burn an extra few calories.

Notice I say the word move?

You don’t have to do any kind of vigorous exercising to lose weight – if you don’t want to that is.

I can remember when I used to go to both Weight Watchers and Slimming World meetings (not at the same time – lol!) and the leaders would say the same thing, “You just need to move on a daily basis”.

Daily Chores

For me personally, the best form of exercise is just doing the house work – I get to kill two birds with one stone this way.

By the time you cleaned/dusted and then vacuumed, that is a workout in itself!

The same goes for gardening, cleaning the car, windows or any ‘around the house chores’.

Exercise at Home

I also sometimes like to go for a brisk walk, or if I’m feeling really energetic, I might do a home exercise video or just some exercises or dance-around-the-living-room to my Spotify playlist.

I also take advantage of the free YouTube exercise video’s for women – some of them are great!

What do you like doing for fun which moves your body on a daily basis?

Related Reading: 17 Easy Home Fitness Workouts That Will Whip You Into Shape Fast

Plan Out Your Daily ‘Movement’

Get out a piece of paper and write them down, no matter how small.  They all add up at the end of the day!

Write everything down that you do that doesn’t require you sitting on your sofa:

…. the list can go on.

The way I look at it is that if you do at least 20-30 minutes of any kind of ‘movement’ per day, then you shouldn’t be worrying about not joining up to the local gym or doing a one-hour vigorous Zumba class twice a week.

Strength Toning Exercises

If you can, you should really do some stretching each day and some toning exercises at least twice a week.

Toning, Resistance Training, Strength Training

…they all mean the same thing

Strength training for women is a multipurpose exercise that is starting to go mainstream and has many benefits:

And the main benefit (in our weight loss case) is that it’s a known fact that strength training burns fat after you’ve done the exercises.

So get yourself over to YouTube and search for some quick and simple strength training exercises and start toning up and burning more fat.

Related Reading: 9 Essential Tips To Compile a Home Exercise Program That Suits You!

Your Unique Green Tea Diet Plan

So now we’re on to the actual green tea diet part – and I’m not going to dictate to you exactly what you should eat.

What!  Why?

Because you know that you should be eating more fresh fruit and vegetables and cut down on unhealthy fatty foods.  And if I put all the healthy foods which you should be eating into a diet plan, you’re probably not going to stick to it for a long period of time.

You need to find a diet that is sustainable for you and make sure that you drink 2-4 cups of green tea each day.

If you read this article: How I lost 8 Stone Drinking Green Tea, you’ll see that this lady swapped milk & sugared tea for green tea and started eating porridge, chicken and vegetables instead of mars bars, buttery toast, cheese sandwiches and pizza.

Note: I think that this lady drank too many cups of green tea in a day.  It’s advised by experts to drink up to four cups of it per day.  Remember, it has caffeine in it, so you don’t want to drink too many cups and ideally you shouldn’t drink it past 7.00pm in the evening or you might have trouble relaxing and getting to sleep.

So she lost weight, but it was the green tea plus the combination of healthy eating which done it for her.

Decide what type of diet you want to do that suits you.

This is really important as there’s no point in following a Paleo diet or a no/low carb diet because it’s the latest trend and you’ve heard amazing results by successful dieters.

I’ll let you into a little secret… ALL DIETS WORK – IF YOU FOLLOW THEM 100%!

Well, maybe that’s not a secret.  But the real secret is to find and follow a diet that is suitable to you.

If you love toasted muffins with melted butter on, then find a diet that incorporates those (calorie counting for example).

If you’re intolerant to wheat (bread, pasta etc), then follow a Mediterranean style diet with lots of fruit and vegetables and brown rice.

And of course, there’s the very popular Weight Watchers and Slimming World diet clubs too.

Choose a one that suits you and your lifestyle – this is the most important thing as you need to stick to it for the long-haul.

Introduce Healthy Foods

The main reason, I believe, that most people don’t follow and stick to a healthy diet is because it’s too much of a big change in one go.

As I’m sure you’ve heard before; we should eat five portions of vegetables and fruit per day, but for some people it’s too much of a ‘shock’ to the system going from 0 to 5 each and everyday.

So, find a diet that suits you and a one you know that you’ll be able to stick to and make a conscious effort to build up your relationship with fresh fruit and vegetables.

Some diet plan examples:

The list can go on and on.

And don’t forget to drink your green tea!

Try swapping some of your cups of milky coffee (for example) for green tea instead for all the benefits as outlined above.

Fancy a Green Tea Detox?

If you’re very eager to lose weight and/or just want to be more healthy, then have you thought about doing a 5-7 day detox?

A detox is a great way to give you a healthy weight loss boost before starting a diet plan and you’ll be getting rid of those sluggish toxins in your body.

If you fancy giving a detox a go, then I highly recommend that you take a look at my blog post “How To Detox With Green Tea For a Healthier You“.  This shows you the benefits of doing a detox with the added benefits of incorporating green tea into a detox diet.

A Summary of 9 Green Tea Diet Tips

So there you have it, a truthful insight into green tea for weight loss and if a specific green tea diet actually exists for you to follow.

So to summarize it all up, here are the main ‘takeaway’ points for you: