Tea is a favorite beverage that many people enjoy all around the world. People make it by pouring hot water onto tea leaves and allowing it to steep for many minutes. This tasty beverage gets made from Camellia sinensis leaves, which is a type of shrub found in Asia. Drinking tea has many health benefits, such as reducing the risk of heart disease and protecting cells from unnecessary damage. On the keto diet it’s an asset as it is calorie free, can aid in weight loss, and if it’s properly made it’s tasty too! To learn more about the keto diet check out the Body Reboot book. The book goes into great detail on how the ketogenic diet can help you burn fat, lose weight, and the list goes on.

So why does tea come highly recommended on the keto diet? We already mentioned a few reasons, but there’s still plenty more! Not only does tea taste great, but it also has many added benefits. It may help you lose weight and help you feel better. It also has plenty of antioxidants! Let’s see what else Perfect Keto has to say about tea:

Tea contains zero carbohydrates and has been connected to various health benefits for centuries, making it an excellent beverage choice on keto. Next to water, tea (both hot and iced tea) is a beverage you can consume in abundance on keto. Studies have shown black and green tea have anti-aging and metabolic benefits and can help prevent cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Black teas: Black tea includes Earl Grey, masala chai, English breakfast, assam black tea, Ceylon teas, Nilgiri black teas, and fruit teas such as rose black and lichee black tea.
Green teas: Greens teas include gyokuro, sencha, bancha, matcha, houjicha, kukicha, genmaicha, gunpowder, long jing, pi lo chun and other varieties. All of these come from the tea plant Camellia sinensis.

Herbal teas: Herbal tea is made from the flowers, leaves, roots and petals of plants. Varieties include anise, chamomile, peppermint, thyme, valerian root, dandelion, kava root, ginger root and turmeric.

Try adding heavy cream and a keto-friendly sweetener, such as stevia, to any coffees or teas for an extra treat.

A study completed by Curr Pharm Des. in 2013 reveals that both green and black tea have many benefits: slowing down aging, preventing diabetes, and preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world, next only to water. There is often a misconception, essentially a marketing gimmick, that herbal tea is also tea. However, herbal tea is not made from the plant Camellia sinensis. Due to the popularity of tea, generally on a common trip to the grocery store, at least in US markets, one can find many types of tea preparations sold which are supplemented with various extracts of mango, strawberry, pomegranate, lemon, etc. These marketing strategies have boosted the sale of tea products to a non-tea drinking population. Similarly, tea constituents supplemented cosmetics and other products are sold to consumers.

It is increasingly appreciated that tea contains polyphenols and other components that may reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis and diabetes. More recently, the beneficial properties associated with daily consumption of green tea are getting better recognized. Particularly interesting are the studies which report that green tea reduces the risk of cancer, which is the major cause of mortality throughout the world. It has become increasingly clear that tea acts as a chemopreventive agent against a wide range of cancers. To evaluate the efficacy of tea against cancer, clinical trials are being conducted. Encouraging data from many trials are available and from many ongoing trials are awaited. However, results from human studies are not always positive, may be, due to the fact that the higher doses of tea are used in animal studies than those consumed by humans and in animal studies, the experimental conditions are generally optimized for the evaluation of a protective effect. Large scale well-controlled human clinical trials are necessary to establish the health promoting effects of tea consumption. Only based on these findings, recommendations to human population could be made.

One of the most popular teas is green tea, which has many health benefits. Healthline explains how it can aid in weight loss, which is a nice perk while you’re dieting. They also mention a few studies that have been done on drinking tea and weight loss. According to a study by Physiol Behav. in 2008, people who drank green tea for 12 weeks lost 7.3 more pounds than the other group. Another study in 2007 by Obesity (Silver Spring) also supported that green does indeed help aid weight loss. Healthline also mentions a few other studies below.

Green tea is one of the most well-known types of tea, and is linked with many health benefits.

It's also one of the most effective teas for weight loss. There is substantial evidence linking green tea to decreases in both weight and body fat.

In one 2008 study, 60 obese people followed a standardized diet for 12 weeks while regularly drinking either green tea or a placebo.

Over the course of the study, those who drank green tea lost 7.3 pounds (3.3 kg) more weight than the placebo group. (Physiol Behav. 2008)

Another study found that people who consumed green tea extract for 12 weeks experienced significant decreases in body weight, body fat and waist circumference, compared to a control group. (Obesity (Silver Spring). 2007)

This may be because green tea extract is especially high in catechins, naturally occurring antioxidants that may boost your metabolism and increase fat burning. (Physiol Behav. 2010)

This same effect also applies to matcha, a highly concentrated type of powdered green tea that contains the same beneficial ingredients as regular green tea.

As we mentioned above, one of the reasons green tea aids in weight loss is because it has catechins, which are natural antioxidants. Antioxidants in green tea can help a body burn more fat, and for many on the keto diet, losing weight is the goal. Here’s the abstract explaining how green tea may help manage obesity, according to a study by Physiol Behav. in 2010.

The global prevalence of obesity has increased considerably in the last decade. Tools for obesity management including caffeine, and green tea have been proposed as strategies for weight loss and weight maintenance. These ingredients may increase energy expenditure and have been proposed to counteract the decrease in metabolic rate that is present during weight loss. Positive effects on body-weight management have been shown using green tea mixtures. Green tea, by containing both tea catechins and caffeine, may act through inhibition of catechol O-methyl-transferase, and inhibition of phosphodiesterase. Here the mechanisms may also operate synergistically. A green tea-caffeine mixture improves weight maintenance, through thermogenesis, fat oxidation, and sparing fat free mass. The sympathetic nervous system is involved in the regulation of lipolysis, and the sympathetic innervation of white adipose tissue may play an important role in the regulation of total body fat in general. Taken together, these functional ingredients have the potential to produce significant effects on metabolic targets such as thermogenesis, and fat oxidation. An ethnic or genetic effect, and habitual caffeine or green tea catechin intake may act as confounders; this remains to be revealed.

WebMD reminds us that even though tea may help you lose weight, it’s not a cure-all. Losing weight takes a lot of hard work, but combined with the keto diet it may help losing the weight and dieting a lot easier.

If you like a cup of tea with your morning toast or afternoon snack or on its own, enjoy it. It’s safe to drink as long as the caffeine doesn't make you jumpy. And it may even help protect against cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

A few cups of daily tea might even give you a slight push toward your weight-loss goals. Just don't expect miracles to come in a teacup. Real weight loss requires a whole lifestyle approach that includes diet changes and activity.

At the time of writing this post, we're currently giving away free copies of the Body Reboot book because it's our mission to increase awareness and to help people lose weight and get healthy! If you help us cover the cost of shipping, we’ll send a copy to your door FREE. Go over to this page to see if there are any copies left. At the time of writing this post, we're currently giving away free copies of the Body Reboot book because it's our mission to increase awareness and to help people lose weight and get healthy! If you help us cover the cost of shipping, we’ll send a copy to your door FREE. Go over to this page to see if there are any copies left.

Sources: Healthline, NCBI: Physiol Behav. 2008, NCBI: Obesity (Silver Spring). 2007, NCBI: Physiol Behav. 2010, NCBI: Curr Pharm Des. 2013, Perfect Keto, WebMD