Teas for Weight Loss

When it comes to weight loss, tea is slowly becoming the drink of choice to help the metabolic process. With new information coming forth about different teas such as green and oolong tea, more people are including tea in their diets to help boost their metabolic rates, but most dieters don't know just which teas are the best and what exactly they do.

Green Tea

• Green tea is a metabolic stimulant and can help the body burn calories more efficiently. Just drinking five cups of tea a day, or a cup with each meal and snack, can help the body burn more calories than just drinking water alone. Since green tea is at its most effective when nothing is added to it, green tea makes a good substitute for diet drinks, which contain sweeteners and empty calories. A cup of green tea only has 4 calories as compared to a diet soda, which can have up to 40 times that amount. If nothing else, drinking green tea means you are cutting massive calories by eliminating sodas and other sweetened drinks.

Oolong Tea

• Oolong tea is a flowery cousin to green tea and is considered to be an oxidized tea. Oolong is much like green tea in that it stimulates the metabolism to help the body burn calories more efficiently and effectively. It also encourages proper digestion, which can help in your weight loss. Proper digestion can mean that the important nutrients you are ingesting get absorbed, while the unnecessary ones are expelled from the body. Oolong is also a great energy booster, which many dieters can find useful, particularly in the first few weeks of dieting, when their body is adjusting to the new diet. Oolong can provide a healthy alternative for revitalizing the body, instead of the usual cup of coffee or diet soda, which can derail a weight loss program. Four to 10 cups of oolong tea a day can help the body become a more efficient fat-burning machine and restore energy quickly.

Pu-erh Tea

• Pu-erh tea was considered a medicinal tea in ancient China, and is now being used in weight loss, to help boost the metabolism and burn fat more effectively than most other teas, including green and oolong. While green tea has polyphenol levels which can burn fat, pu-erh tea has more polyphenols, which means it can help engage the metabolism more than green tea can. It is also filled with antioxidants, which help neutralize free radicals in the body and reduce inflammation. To receive maximum benefit, it is recommended to drink a cup of pu-erh tea with each meal and snack.

  Each of these teas can boost your metabolism, but deciding on which one to use simply comes down to taste. Green teas have a light, refreshing taste, while oolong can be flowery and sweet, and pu-erh can be robust and hearty, much to the delight of serious coffee drinkers. No matter what, drinking green, oolong or pu-erh tea can help you lose more weight and keep it off for good.