White tea

White tea is the first tea that is harvested every spring, from the best tea plants. It is hand picked during just a few days in very early spring, when the buds are still covered with the fine, white down that gives the tea its name. It can be a wonderful and pleasant aid if you're trying to lose weight. It will prevent the body from storing fat, it will make it easier to follow a diet, it will make you healthier, it will burn calories for you, and it may even boost your mental strength.

In fact, let's take a deeper look at some of the reasons white tea can help you lose weight.

White tea prevents the cells in the body from storing fat. Recent research* shows that white tea "inhibits adipogenesis and stimulates lipolysis-activity". In plainer terms, this means that white tea stops the development of fat cells. Making fat cells is how the body stores fat - if it can't make the cells, the fat can't stay. This is a very exciting result, and may lead to a significantly new understanding of how white tea may help us lose weight.

White tea burns calories. White tea contains caffeine, which speeds up the metabolism. That means that the body burns energy faster, and since the tea contains no calories itself, it is sometimes called a calorie-negative drink. This is the most important way white tea boosts weight loss. Other teas have the same property, not to mention coffee, which contains much more caffeine. So why drink white tea for weight loss, specifically? It's because:

White tea contains the least caffeine of all teas. If you drink too much black tea or coffee, you will experience some of the negative effects of caffeine, like trembling, anxiety, headaches, and so on. Getting too much caffeine is also an excellent way to make sure you will not be able to sleep at night. White tea contains just the right amount of caffeine – enough to burn calories at maximum efficiency, but not so much that you will feel any of the ill effects, even if you drink white tea throughout the whole day. That way, you can drink white tea all day, keeping the caffeine level in your body right where it burns calories without experiencing any ill effects. If you try that with coffee or black tea, you'll soon get the jitters. And sipping white tea to lose weight all day is easy! The reason is simply that:

White tea tastes good. It has a fresh, flowery smell and a mild, delicate, and subtle taste with a hint of jasmine. Its natural sweetness eliminates the need to sweeten it with sugar, artificial sweeteners or milk. You will probably really enjoy drinking white tea, and miss it when you don't have a full cup in your hand. This is one diet aid you'll actually enjoy. And after all:

When you're drinking white tea, you're not eating or drinking something unhealthy. The very simple act of drinking white tea instead of unhealthy stuff like sugared sodas, coffee drinks full of milk and sugar, and energy drinks can do wonders for the waistline. The trick is switching unhealthy stuff (including snacks that aren't liquid) for white tea, in essence going from unhealthy calories to healthy negative calories. The effect is actually stronger than you'd think, because:

White tea is a natural appetite suppressant. When we fall through on a diet, it's often because we have a moment of weakness, an instant where the yearning for a snack gets the better of us. White tea will dull those hunger pangs and make us less likely to submit to the impulse of grabbing an unhealthy snack.

White tea doesn't stain the teeth. Drinkers of oolong or black tea often find that the tea will stain their teeth. The staining is a result of the tannic acid in the teas. White tea contains much less acid than other teas, and because it is a pale drink, it also has very little coloring agents. On the other hand, it contains fluoride in small amounts, which will help protect the teeth from bacteria and increase the general oral health.

You will want to be healthy. Drinking white tea helps keep your body healthy, and it's helping you lose weight. Wouldn't it be silly to squander those benefits? White tea gives us another reason to stay on the straight and narrow, and that may be just the psychological edge we need to stick to a diet.

Not everyone knows about it. While most people have heard of green tea, white tea is still unknown to many. Start to drink white tea now, before everyone is doing it, and you'll be ahead of the rush and can teach your friends how to actually enjoy their diets with white tea. Weight loss isn't always a fun process, but when we feel like we're pioneering a new approach for dieting, it may boost the mental strength we need to keep losing that excess fat.

Here's a bonus advantage if you're new to white tea: The habit of drinking white tea will help you stay with your diet, because the new and delicious taste will remind you of your new commitment. It's a good way of mixing the necessary with the enjoyable – and how often can you say that about dieting?

But the most important thing, and a great reason why even people who are not trying to lose weight should enjoy white tea is this:

White tea is the healthiest tea in the world. You have probably heard of green tea and its marvellous health benefits. Well, white tea has the same properties, just three times stronger. The reason teas in general are healthy is because they contain antioxidants, natural substances that protect the cells in the body from decaying. White tea contains the most antioxidants of all teas. That is because the leaves are harvested early in the spring, when the plant still has full stores of the antioxidants it needs to protect it from the sunrays during the summer. In essence, the leaves of white tea contain the same amount of fine nutrients that they had when they were still fresh on the bush.

So how do I get the best weight loss effect from white tea?

No research has yet been carried out to determine how we can best use white tea for weight loss. But it seems reasonable that we have to drink it consistently and for a long period of time, like with most nutritional aids. Generally speaking, to get the most out of white tea, it's a good idea to drink it consistently through the day. Most authorities say that four to six cups per day is ideal to get all the health benefits from the antioxidants in the tea. Of course, a lot depends on how you brew the tea, so it's hard to recommend a magic number or amount, but drinking about five medium-sized cups a day should be possible for most people. And you should do it every day.

So where do I go from here?

The first thing to do is to get first hand experience with white tea. Order a sampler pack of several different types of white tea to try, or just stock up on the best tea you will ever have. Many online vendors offer white tea, but we recommend Adagio Teas for their selection, quality, low prices, and speed of delivery.
Click here to see what they can offer.

* The scientific article can be found here.