Losing Weight and Feeling Great

Archive for the ‘Green Tea’ Category

Face it — eating plans these days don’t normally include beverages like green tea and coffee. However, with just a little planning and a fair amount of discipline, your food plan and weight loss regime can include your  cups of green tea.

Let’s take a look at a few diet plans that allow green tea.

The Zone

The Zone plant was developed by Barry Sears, a former biotechnology researcher at M.I.T.  This eating plan is based on the maintenance of insulin levels in the body. Taking decaffeinated coffee and green tea is all right as long as these beverages don’t spike up your insulin. The  Zone Diet plan has you using artificial sweetener in your green tea.

South Beach Diet Plan

This is a diet designed by Dr. Agatston, and it isn’t low-carb, nor low-fat.  Instead, the South Beach Diet plan teaches you to rely on the right carbs and the right fats.

This South Beach diet has three phases – Banishing your Cravings, Reintroducing Carbs, and A Diet for Life. Using artificial sweetener in your green tea during all three phases lets you lose weight while still enjoying your tea.

The Atkins Diet

Another low-carb diet, the Atkins Diet plan works best with caffeine-free green tea. For best results, artificial sweetener in your green tea is used to keep your carbs down.  Or, get brave and try stevia instead.

The Sugar Busters Diet

The name says it all.  If you choose this diet plan, you are warned against sugars.  Green teas are perfectly fine but only use artificial sweeteners.

Paleolithic Diet Plan

You might have heard this called the  Stone Age Diet plan, this diet is based on eating simple, unprocessed foods that caveman would have eaten. This one is perfect for green tea drinkers. Green tea is simply natural steamed dried leaves from the Camellia sinensis plant. Sugars in green tea is still a big no-no.  However, stevia is an option, since it’s a natural sweetener based on a plant.

Blood Type Diet Plan

This weight loss regimen is where the foods you eat are based on your blood type. (hence the name).

The food of the Blood Type Diet plan is more restricted compared to the popular  South Beach, Zone and the Atkins plans. Luckily, green tea is acceptable for any of the blood types. However, you’ll need to go cold turkey as far as sweeteners with this weight loss plans.

Green Tea and Diet Plans

So you’ve seen how green tea can fit into any of the above diets.  However, before you select any weight loss plan, please do your due diligence to make sure it’s right for you and your health.

Are you struggling with how to lose weight successfully?  Do you try to be good each day, only to turn to snacks at night…and the diet goes out the window?  Or even more frustrating…you do everything you’re supposed to and the weight stays the same on the scales?

Lose Weight Successfully (Keep it Off)

Losing weight is partly in the mind — you have to be committed to your new eating plan.  And by the way, “diet” should perhaps be banned from the vocabulary.  Why?

Because when you finish losing the weight, you “go off the diet”.  But unless you’ve changed your eating habits in the meanwhile, you’ll likely go back to bad habits.  I’ll bet you’re familiar with what happens next — you gain the weight back and then some!

But if you’ve exchanged your old bad habits for nwe good ones, you are far more likely to keep the weight off.  And incidentally, that’s one reason for a slow weight loss — it gives you the time to develop new habits.

Supplements or Pills?

How to lose weight successfully — can it include supplements?  It’s a mixed answer.

Some supplementation is probably appropriate if you’re taking it for health benefits more than weight loss (even if it has somewhat of a weight loss component).  An example is a green tea extract; good for its antioxidant properties, and with a mild thermogenic effect.

On the other hand, other weight loss supplements…the answer isn’t conclusive.  Some people are helped by the supplements, others aren’t.  However one thing is universally true — no supplement will work all by itself, without following a sensible eating program.  (And exercise as well.)

A Healthy Diet to Lose Weight

Yes, you can lose weight with a fad diet.  But the question of the day is…will you keep that weight off?  Or will you need the latest fad again in a few weeks or months?

A healthy diet to lose weight is one that you can follow for life.  One that has the amounts of proteins, fats and carbohydrates for your body metabolism.

How to lose weight successfully — how to keep the weight off — depends on your commitment to change.  If you keep following your old habits, the weight will just come back.

I was most amused by my first encounter with loose leaf green tea.  The only tea I had ever made was in a teabag, so when I opened my order of the "real thing" I eyed it with uncertainty.

OK, so I have the loose leaf tea and I have a tea ball.  I stuffed the tea ball full, boiled up some water, poured it in a cup and dunked the ball.  (Sounds like some sort of weird NBA game, doesn’t it?)

Now I should have known that the tea leaves would unfurl and expand when put into the hot water, but did I take that into consideration when I stuffed that tea ball full of the leaf?  (If you guessed, "no", you guessed right.)

So, one tea ball ready to explode and some very strong green tea were awaiting me.  I sipped with trepidation, then smiled.  I like!

Since that first venture, I’ve made many other cups using loose lead green tea, and fortunately I’ve gotten better at it.  I have to say that it is better than the tea bags (although some bags are quite good), with a subtle taste and aroma not in the grocery-store offerings.

If you’d like to try some excellent-quality loose leaf green tea from China, check out www.amazing-green-tea.com — Julian will take good care of you, and the teas are wonderful.  This is where I get my own loose leaf.  (Tell Julian that Gail says "hi!".)

Or, you can just check my website and learn more about green tea and losing weight.