Diet Tea vs Regular Tea

Hello again, lovers of the tea! Today’s topic is diet tea, which apparently is a thing. That’s right, some crazy people are so desperate to lose weight that they turn to tea in the hopes that it will magically do the exercise for them.

Sound ridiculous to you? I hope so or you’re really going to hate this article because I’m more than a little bit anti-diet tea. Sure, it’s a nice idea but when will people learn to drink their normal tea properly, which is perfectly healthy I might add, and then, I don’t know, go for a walk? Ah well, let’s do this properly and start with what diet tea is and how it works.

Diet tea is exactly what it sounds like; specially-designed teas with all kinds of additives to aid weight loss. It sounds nice in theory and to be fair, they tend to use natural ingredients. But that isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially when they carry all kinds of fun side effects with them.

You're right, this is not a picture of diet tea, but you do realise drinking diet tea with your regular fry up won't help at all?

There are two ways you can lose weight with them:
Stimulants
Added stimulants like guarana and ma huang suppress your appetite and increase your metabolism.
Diuretics
Other teas contain diuretics like cascara and senna, which can have a laxative effect.

Call me cynical but neither of these methods sound like a particularly healthy way to lose weight. And as it turns out, I’m right! Of course I am or I wouldn’t write about it.

First of all, there are the side effects. Consumption, especially on a regular basis may cause you to suffer from the following:
• Cramps
• Frequent bowel movements (intentional, I guess)
• Nausea
• Loss of appetite (again, marketed as a good thing)
• Dehydration
• Abdominal pain
• Sweating
• Insomnia
• Headaches
• Anxiety
• Fainting
• Temperature fluctuations
• Difficulty breathing
• Heart palpitations
• Death

Yeah, you read that right. Death! How much weight are you trying to lose exactly? People have died from drinking diet tea. OK, so these are rare occurrences but the fact that it’s even an issue should be enough to put you off.
As for the weight that you might actually lose, well suppressing your appetite and speeding up your metabolism is a bad combination that will leave you malnourished. You need to eat a balanced diet and eating less might help you lose weight but ultimately won’t make you any healthier this way. And diuretic weight loss is useless. You’re only going to lose fluids that will need replacing anyway, and of course that carries with it the risk of dehydration.

Overall, diet teas barely help you, if at all, and sometimes offer little more than a placebo effect. Regular tea is perfectly healthy for you, especially green and other herbal teas. Relying on a diet drink of any kind is no way to lose weight, especially when tea in its regular form is good enough.

You want my advice? Well I’m going to give it to you anyway. Don’t rely on diet tea. Drink regular tea and enjoy it, eat a healthy balanced diet, treats included since you can enjoy them in moderation as part of a healthy lifestyle, and exercise once in a while!