Today I want to address a new weight loss fad that I’ve seen come around recently – green tea weight loss. This popular diet plan promotes green tea as a miracle weight loss supplement. Right after they tell you how great green tea is, they usually try to sell you their green tea weight loss pills or some other green tea weight loss supplement. Now, to me that seems a a little fishy. I don’t trust someone’s opinion on something when it’s obvious that they’re trying to sell you something. Today, I’m not selling you anything. I just want to dig into the question “Does green tea weight loss really work?”

Let me give you a simple answer first – green tea by itself isn’t going to do much to make your pants fit better. Following the Lipton green tea weight loss program isn’t going to turn you into a swimsuit model. Now, should you drink green tea as a part of diet plan? Yes! Green tea (when it’s not loaded with sugar) contains all sorts of things that are great for you. Green tea can help with arthritis, infections, cardiovascular disease and can help to reduce cholesterol.

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Arguments For Green Tea Weight Loss

Green tea is loaded with a powerful catechin called Epigallocatechin gallate, more commonly known as EGCG. EGCG is one of the most powerful antioxidants and has been linked to the inhibition of an enzyme called fatty acid synthase.

A number of studies have been performed to test catechins effect on weight loss. One particular study gave one group a solution containing catechins and one was given a placebo. Both groups were instructed to follow a moderate exercise routine. This study found that the group that consumed the catechins lost more weight than the control group.

One hypothesis is that the EGCG helps to stop the body from storing excess calories as fat. There haven’t been adequate human studies to conclusively prove anything; however the results of these limited studies seem to indicate that there may be a grain of truth to green tea weight loss stories.

There have been a few other studies that looked at green tea’s metabolism boosting properties. This study had more measurable results than some others as measuring a person’s metabolic rate is more precise than just tracking weight loss or body fat percentage. This particular study found that 270mg of green tea extract taken three times per day caused the participants’ metabolism to burn an extra 79 calories per day. That’s the equivalent of walking about half a mile. It’s not huge, but it is something. One caveat to this study is that the effects were not studied long-term.

Arguments For Green Tea Weight Loss

Most critics of the green tea weight loss diet cite the fact that limited research has been done to prove that a substance in green tea causes weight loss. They also cite that many of the studies that have been performed were performed using animals. The results of animal studies don’t always line up with the results experienced by humans.

The skepticism of green tea’s effects has been further fueled by scammers stating that green tea will make you lose 20 pounds in your sleep and cure all of your ailments. Even if some products are able to provide backup for their audacious claims, the backup is based on skewed research or extremely untypical results. Many natural remedies have gotten a negative stigma for this very reason.

Like diets for quick weight loss, drinking green tea for weight loss isn’t a magic pill. The mixed results of studies that have been performed show that it may have some positive effect on weight loss. But if you are not disciplined enough to stick to a reasonable diet and exercise plan, green tea isn’t going to help you lose any significant amount of weight.

Someday down the road, science may be able to prove that green tea does aid in weight loss. But, for now, the results are inconclusive. That being said, I think everyone should include green tea in their diet. It is loaded with antioxidants (moreso that almost any other food). There have also been thousands of studies showing all kinds of health benefits outside of weight loss. Does green tea weight loss really work? There is enough evidence to indicate that it does provide some benefit and even if it doesn’t there are enough other positive benefits that everyone should include green tea in their diet.

Diets for quick weight loss have always been popular. Maybe your New Year’s resolution is to lose 20 pounds, maybe you need to get ready for swimsuit season, maybe its for a work party or graduation or a family reunion. No matter what it is for, the goal is the same – you want to look better, right? And of course you want to do it as quick as possible. I mean, if I were to ask you, “Do you want to lose 10 pounds in 4 months or 4 weeks?” You would pick 4 weeks. No one wants to drag their diet out.

Now, before we go any farther,we need to address something that seems simple, but is very important. Do you want to lose weight or do you want to look thinner? It may seem like the same thing, but it’s not. When we’re talking about diets for quick weight loss, you will probably need to choose one or the other. Over time, you can achieve both. But we don’t have time here! We need quick results!

Let me break it down a little more. Do you want the number on the scale to go down or do to want your clothes to fit better? You need to know the answer to that question before you can find out what you need to do. Got it? Good, let’s dig into it. First, let’s look at what you need to do to drop pounds quickly.

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How to Lose Water Weight

If you only have a week or less, the only thing you’re really going to be able to lose is water weight. Water makes up 50% to 70% of our bodies. Your body will adjust the level of water it is holding based on a number of things. By making an adjustment to a few of those things, your body will release some of that water that it is retaining. Depending on how much water your body is retaining, you can lose anywhere from a few pounds to 20+.

The first thing you can do you lose water weight is to drink more water! No, I’m not kidding. Your body needs water for almost every function. Without water your body can’t function. If you went without food and water, you would die from dehydration long before starvation. When you aren’t getting enough water, your body starts to retain it. It does everything it can to hold on the the one thing it needs most. When you start drinking more water, you body will switch out of starvation mode and only hold on to the water it needs. 8 to 10 glasses of water a day is what you should be shooting for.

Another thing you can do to lose water weight is to avoid fast food and processed foods. Specifically, the problem is all of the sodium that these foods contain. The preservatives and other artificial chemicals don’t help either. The more sodium you consume, the more water your body has to retain to maintain a proper electrolyte balance.

You can also look into taking a diuretic. Diuretics essentially cause your body to excrete sodium. As sodium is urinated, water goes along with it. It would probably be a good idea to talk to your doctor about this one though.

All of these items will cause you to lose water weight. This is one of the best diets for quick weight loss. That is, if you are only looking to lose weight and not actually lose inches. This will cause the scale to drop, but will not likely make a difference in the way you look.

If you are more concerned about your clothes fitting better and looking thinner and more fit, then there are a number of other things you can do.

Ways to Look Thinner

If you go this route, the goal is to actually make parts of your body smaller. The problem is, even the most extreme quick weight loss diet won’t cause you to lose excess fat. (We’re talking short time-frames here). So, how can you look thinner if you don’t have time to lose fat? The trick is to tighten up key muscles. Tight, lean muscles pull everything in and make you look thinner.

The muscles that you really need to focus on are your abs, your legs, your butt and your arms. If you can tighten those up, you can look like you dropped 10 pounds in less than a week! You can tighten these muscles by doing specific focused exercises. You need to do these exercises with little to no weight and you will need to do a lot of reps. The goal here isn’t to build muscle, but to make the muscle that you have long and lean.

For your legs and butt, there are two great exercises that you can do. The first exercise is a lunge. Start by standing up with your feet together. Without bending your left knee, step your right foot out so that your right leg is at a 90 degree angle. Next, stand back up by bringing your left foot up to your right foot. Repeat on the other side. This is one repetition. Do as many of them as you can while keeping good form.

The other exercise you can do are squats. With your feet shoulder width apart, squat down, keeping your knees over your heels. Do as many of these as you can while keeping good form.

For your arms, do curls to work the front of your arms and arm extensions for the back of your arms. For curls, start with your arms at your sides, palms facing forward. Without moving your elbows, bring your hands up until they touch the top of your shoulders. Bring your hands back down and repeat. For arm extensions, start with your arms straight up above your head, palms facing back. Without moving your shoulders or elbows, let your hands come back until your elbows are at 90 degree angles. Extend your arms again and repeat. You can use a towel or very light weights. Do as many of each exercise as you can while keeping good form. You should be able to do at least 25.

For your abs, good old crunches and sit-ups work fine.  You don’t need to do anything fancy here.

Another great exercise for looking thinner is jogging. Jogging works every muscle from your abs down. The repeated motion works really well for tightening up your muscles and making you look leaner. I know when I first started jogging, I lost 4 inches around my waist.

Other Tips for Quick Weight Loss

A lot of quick weight loss programs advocate starvation. They put you into a huge calorie deficit. The problem with this is, your body goes into starvation mode. You may actually gain weight this way! On top of this, you don’t have any energy to exercise and you are much more likely to go on a fast food or sugar binge. Extreme low calorie diets are one of the worst ways to lose weight.

Try to eat a lot of fresh vegetables. They are filling and very low calorie. They also contain all kinds of nutrients that help your body to operate at its full potential. A body operating at its full potential will burn more calories with less effort.

You should also eat more often. Right after you eat, you get a little metabolism boost as you digest your food. The more often you eat, the more often your metabolism will be working to digest something. This means that you will burn more calories just by eating. Now, that doesn’t mean you should pig-out 6 times a day. You should take your normal calorie budget and split it over 6 meals.

When you do eat, look for high-protein and high-fiber foods. These types of foods help you feel full and you are less likely to over-eat. Also, avoid empty calories like soda, Starbucks and sugar-loaded desserts.

Quick weight loss diets really do work. They can also be healthy if done right. Avoid diets for quick weight loss that promote starvation or dehydration. These are incredibly unhealthy and can cause serious health issues including organ failure and death. Now, go and get after it and meet your weight loss goal!

China is well known for producing several kinds of teas and is highly responsible for bring them to the Western World. There’re several types of teas in the market today and too much commercialism has lead some manufacturers to produce substandard teas to the detriment of some of its users.

If you really want to get the benefits from real tea, buy tea bags (rather than pre-made tea) and buy only from trusted sites and stores. Tea drinking has never been so popular compared to the recent times due to its slimming effect, although not all teas have slimming properties. The most popular Chinese slimming tea is green tea.

Green tea has been in Chinese diets for over 5 thousand years! Though, it was never thought of as slimming tea before but is used to treat several illnesses like fever and melancholy. And recently, there are studies linking green tea with preventing some types of cancers from occurring and have shown significant action in the possibility of treating certain forms of cancer.

The main interest for the moment, however, is its reducing properties. The problem is, most green teas on the market are nothing but thirst quenchers at best.

Photo by markhillaryGreen tea with its original taste won’t appeal to most dieters, that’s why sweeteners were added to it, to make it more palatable to the consumers. But most of the products have too little green tea content to qualify for being called a health drink. Instead, they’ve become the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to be.

If you look at the labels of some of these slimming teas, there are so many filler ingredients and they don’t even show how much the amount of the real green tea is in every bottle.

Chinese slimming tea really works. How does Chinese slimming tea work, you might ask? It has a thermogenic effect. Your body metabolism increases and you can feel your body growing hot and you perspire. These are the slimming properties of the tea. It increases body heat to burn fat cells within the body and the consumer will experience weight loss.

Drinking the tea with warm water will give you more desirable effects since the warm water will act as a good catalyst for increasing your body temperature faster. Chinese drink several cups of tea every day, and they drink it as much as they drink ordinary water.

A lot of people want to know how to lose weight effectively. Well this is one of the many ways. On its own, Chinese slimming tea probably won’t do much. But, it can be helpful as part of the balanced diet coupled with exercise.

These are wonderful tips about fitness and on how to lose weight fast. These will not work right away, so you have to be patient and exercise complete discipline on your body and on what you eat. When done consistently, you will notice results after a few weeks and be on the way to a fit and toned body.

Take smaller meals as the day progresses.

It is always better to take smaller meals because your body can only take a certain amount of calories and nutrients and then the rest is stored as excess fats. Two hundred to five hundred calorie meals are ideal. The amount of calories per meal will depend on your current body weight and composition. This is not an easy step because we usually eat disproportionate meals everyday but this is one way how to lose weight fast and easy.

Lean protein and complex carbohydrates for every meal.

They are the two most important nutrients for many reasons. They are the nutrients and essential amino acids that are necessary in keeping up your energy and maintaining lean muscle mass. It is important that you maintain your muscles when losing fat or else you will lose your muscle tone and normal body shape. How to lose weight fast and safe is easy if you will follow this simple guideline.

Remove white flour and refined sugar from your diet.

White flour and refined sugar does nothing good for your body. It is only stored as fat and also slows down your metabolism. Both of these spike your blood sugar levels which causes hypoglycemia. Stay away from white flour and refined sugar as much as you can. Replace refined sugar with fruits, yogurt and other sugar free products. It will be tedious to watch what you eat but this is how to lose weight fast without pills.

Minimize your intake of dairy products and increase consumption of lean proteins.

Dairy is more thermic dense, this means that less calories will burn when digested if compared to protein. Aside from that, there is less fat in protein than dairy.

You can also eat vegetables instead of fruits.

Vegetables are similar in protein when it comes to their thermic effect. They speed up your metabolism and it is also fewer calories dense and higher in nutrients when compared to other kinds of carbohydrates. You can replace your fruits with complex carbohydrates such as grains and whole wheat products.

This is how to lose weight fast at home and I hope that you will incorporate all these easy steps into your daily life and start to eat healthy always.