Does Wu Long Tea
or Oolong Tea
Help You Lose
Weight?
You’ve probably seen
the advertisements:
“Drink wu long tea and
lose a jeans size every 7 days!”…
“Burn 20 lbs of fat in 30
days with wu long tea!” …
Maybe you even watched Oprah
a few years ago when Dr. Perricone said that switching your
coffee for green tea would help you take off the
pounds.
You may have also read or
watched countless news stories which say how healthy it is to
drink green tea.
The odds are good that if
you’re interested in improving your health and losing fat, you
probably either drink tea, take a green tea supplement or
you’ve at least thought about it.
But what if I told you that
most of the fat reducing claims for green tea were absolute,
total BS, based on
misinterpretation or deliberate misreporting of the
research?
Unfortunately, it’s true. If
you’ve bought green tea based on the claim that it causes
large reductions in body fat, then you have been
scammed.
Here are the
facts:
Green tea DOES stimulate your
metabolism.
However, the research is very
unclear about what kind of impact this small, short term
increase in metabolism will have on your bodyweight in the long
term.
In the most often quoted
study (Dulloo, 1999), A swiss research team found that 270 mg
of green tea extract 3X a day increased metabolic rate by the
equivalent of about 79 calories on average and increased the
oxidation of fat as the fuel source.
If you do the math, it
appears that 79 kcal a day would add up to an extra pound of
fat lost every 44 days. Not much, but you’ll take it, right?
Hypothetically, that would add up to an extra 8 pounds lost per
year.
What advertisements quoting
this study don’t tell you is that this and other similar
studies did not even measure long term change in body fat
percentage or bodyweight. They only measured a 24- hour
increase in energy expenditure.
One study which is used as
marketing ammunition to claim that wu long tea burns 2.5 times
more fat than green tea was based only on a 120-minute increase
in energy expenditure! (reminds me of that Mark Twain quote:
“There are lies, damned lies, and then there are
statistics.”)
Numerous follow up studies
have confirmed the short term increase in metabolism, but the
studies are mixed on whether green tea improves weight
reduction or maintenance in the long term.
The research IS compelling,
but not conclusive.
As for ad claims that say
you’ll lose a lot of weight just from drinking green tea…
absolute BS! Hopefully the Federal Trade Commission will catch
up with these scammers
sooner rather than later, as the marketing messages on the
Internet are getting louder and bolder every
day.
As for health benefits - green
tea is certainly a champ. It’s high in antioxidants and
there are more than 2,000 research citations about
potential health benefits of green tea (not to mention a
5,000 year history of use in China and the far
east).
Even if you’re a skeptic, green tea
is hard not to like and it’s hard to dispute that it’s a
good idea to add green tea to your nutrition program as one
part of a well-balanced fitness lifestyle.
But when it comes to claims
for large and rapid losses in bodyweight and bodyfat,
(especially the wu long tea ads that are currently all over the
internet), buyer beware.
The science we do have says
that the thermogenic effect of green tea - while very real - is
also very small.
Train hard and expect success
always,
Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT,
CSCS
Fat Loss Coach
Click here =>
Burn the Fat Feed the
Muscle
About the
Author:
Tom Venuto is a
natural bodybuilder and author of the #1
best selling e-book, "BURN THE FAT, FEED
THE MUSCLE.” which teaches you how to burn
fat without drugs or supplements using the
little-known secrets of the world's best
bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how
to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge
your metabolism by visiting:
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FAT. To get Tom's
free fitness newsletter, visit:
www.tomvenuto.com
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