The fact is, the green tea diet is not a fad diet. People have been drinking green tea to control their weight for many years. For that matter, green tea can often be found as an ingredient in products designed to fight aging as well as those that are for weight loss.

How the green tea diet works

The green tea diet is not some kind of fad diet, where you have to drink tea morning and noon and night. The way it works to help you lose weight is by speeding up your metabolism. Drinking green tea is sort of like eating a hot pepper. When you drink it, your body goes through what's known as a thermogenic reaction -- heat is released and your body gets a "jumpstart."

Drinking green tea also reduces your appetite. Your blood sugar remains stable when you drink it on a regular basis. Also, green tea helps you feel full longer so that you are not hungry so much of the time.

Carbohydrates and fat

When your body does not use carbohydrates for energy, it stores it is fat. Unfortunately, this happens every day. One theory is that green tea helps you control weight by blocking the storage of carbohydrates as fat, at least for a short time. The theory is that when you drink green tea, your body creates a bigger "window" for carbohydrates to be stored as fuel and not as fat. While it is not certain how long this "window of time" lasts, anything that helps keep your body from creating fats has to be beneficial.

Help for those addicted to caffiene.

Believe it or not, caffeine addicts can also benefit from drinking green tea. This is because green tea also has caffeine. So, coffee drinkers can get their caffeine fix without having to add the milk and sugar that contain more calories. If you need your tea sweetened, one good alternative is called Splenda?. It tastes like sugar, but has no calories. And although it may not seem like eliminating milk or cream and sugar will help you lose much weight, you might be surprised at how many of these empty calories you consume every day just by drinking lots of coffee.

A cup with every meal

All you need to do on the green tea diet is have a cup of green tea or two with every meal. If drinking hot tea doesn't suite you, there are other ways that you can get green tea for weight control. For example, there are now a number of cold tea drinks available in most grocery stoes, and green tea can be found in some supplements.

For that matter, green tea can also used in addition to any diet plan that you are now using - to get its benefits as well as the benefits of your diet plan.