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Drinking Black Tea and Weight Loss
If you are on a diet, you might be looking at how to use black tea or other tea types as a dieting aid. Tea is just one factor in comprehensive weight loss program. As most dieters know, what you put into your body is just part of the weight loss picture: a holistic weight loss program includes exercise and consideration of everything that goes into your day to day routine.
Black Tea: How it Works
For using black tea as part of a weight loss regimen, there are a few main ways
that black tea contributes to your weight loss. Most of these have to do with the main property of black tea, the element that distinguishes black tea from its green and white cousins.
When it comes to black tea, it's the caffeine that aids in some of the main weight loss strategies. Because of the way black tea is produced through a fermentation process, it has more caffeine than other tea types.
Caffeine and its Weight Loss uses
There are a number of ways caffeine helps the body lose weight.
Caffeine Boost - you know this about caffeinated beverages. They make some of us hyperactive, others jittery. But the effects of caffeine on the body are also holistic: caffeine boosts brain activity, gives the body energy, and generally increases the body's metabolic rate. What that means for dieters is that when a body's metabolism is functioning faster due to caffeine, the body burns more calories that would otherwise be made into fat. So the metabolic boost is the main way that caffeine in black tea and other dieting aids contributes.
Appetite Suppressant - caffeine also acts as an inhibitor to binging urges. Those who drink several cups of black tea over several hours may not feel as hungry as they would otherwise. Some dieters consider this to be one of the positive effects of black tea.
Diuretic - a simpler and sometimes deceiving way caffeine leads to weight loss is as a diuretic. Caffeine compels the body to dump more water out of its system, and so dieters may find that they drop a few extra pounds when drinking tea - those monitoring their weight often should take care not to confuse the immediate weight loss, which will be gained back, with long-term weight loss.
Antioxidants
Black tea, along with white and green tea types, has antioxidants that some experts identify as working along with caffeine to promote weight loss. The antioxidants in teas, called polyphenols, have a range of health benefits including heart health and cancer inhibiting effects.
