Are green tea calories bad? The answer to that question depends on your definition of ‘bad’ and on your weight loss efforts. In general, yes green tea can be harmful to your weight loss efforts. But then again, it is one of those healthy habits you should get into because of its numerous health benefits. Caffeine, one of the antioxidants in green tea, has been proven to fight off diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
Now, let us look at some other facts about green tea calories. The average American consumes nearly four pounds of caffeine every day, which comes to a total of more than six hundred million cups of tea consumed every year. In addition, this caffeine intake can lead to other unwanted problems such as anxiety and a heightened heart rate. Thus, the benefits of green tea should be weighed against the possible side effects.
An Overview
One way of examining the impact of green tea calories per cup is to calculate how many calories you would need to burn off in order to lose a pound in weight. Obviously, you will want to use fresh tea leaves, not the powdered version sold in most supermarkets. If you substitute the powdered form for the fresh tea leaves, you may end up reducing the amount of calories you burn but you will probably be replacing some of the nutrients in the tea with those from the powdered version.
However, if you consume more than the recommended amount of tea daily, you may find that your overall consumption of calories is actually higher than what is necessary to meet your weight loss efforts. This is because many people drink several cups of tea throughout the day. In addition, some people only drink green tea, which is much lower in caffeine than the other types of tea. In addition, these people may substitute lower calorie beverages for green tea, which may lead to even greater consumption of calories. Thus, it can be tricky to know whether or not your daily intake of tea leads to greater consumption of calories.
Green Tea Calorie Facts
One way to be sure that you are not consuming too many calories is to choose the variety of tea that you drink carefully. Some types of green tea are high in caffeine, while others are not. You may need to do some research to determine the right combination for your weight loss efforts. It is also important to keep in mind that you should make your tea cold when you are brewing it, as cold tea has a better taste and contains a lesser amount of caffeine. If you are going to drink several cups of tea throughout the day, especially in the morning, it is not a good idea to make it cold.
As an alternative to the number of calories per cup, you may also want to consider the number of calories per serving. A two-ounce serving of this type of tea contains about 65 calories. This is still lower than the caloric content of one ounce of coffee, although not as low as the nearly two hundred calories per serving that the diet and fitness drinks contain. Drinking tea is a convenient way to get the daily dose of antioxidants, but there is no need to count how many cups you drink each day. Since you will probably drink your green tea with water, it is not likely that you will consume too many calories from beverages. However, since the antioxidant content of these teas is not very high, they can actually be beneficial to your health if you are trying to shed pounds.
The number of green tea calories that you consume may also depend on how much exercise or activity you perform during your day. If you are not active, the amount of calories that you take in may be more than what you burn off through exercise. Since you burn off more calories than you consume, it is important to make sure that you are not taking in a lot of extra calories. If you do not have a lot of time to prepare this type of tea in a pitcher or other container, you can always drink it in its regular form. You may choose to add milk or other beverages to make it more palatable. There are also green tea drinks that are already prepared, so all you need to do is add it to your water to make it much easier for you to drink.
Bottom Line
There are a few things that you can do to lower the amount of green tea calories that you take in. You can make sure that you are eating healthy foods when you are shopping for the tea so that you do not consume too many calories when you make a purchase. You can also increase the amount of time that you spend working out, which will help you burn more calories. When you are exercising, you are burning calories, even while you are sleeping. Taking a brisk walk after dinner or every other day will also help you achieve the results that you are looking for, so do not forget about green tea calories when you are working towards weight loss!
