Meeting friends out for dinner brings us great joy. It also leads to eating great amounts of food. When you wake up stuffed and bloated it feels awful. That internal inflammation you sense is directly linked to insulin resistance and weight gain. Eek! Luckily there’s a hot drink that can help.
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If you start the day with an anti-inflammatory hot drink, it can offload the inflammation, stop weight gain and make your belly feel so much less icky. Grab your favorite mug and put a kettle on the stove. “Including a cup of green tea in the morning with your breakfast and not on an empty stomach can possibly help with weight loss,” says Dr. Jennifer Stagg, naturopathic physician.
A clinical study of more than 100 women with excess belly fat who drank green tea for 12 weeks had significant reductions in waist circumference. Sweet! An aside from the positive body effects it’s incredibly soothing to sip on green tea when your belly feels like a gas-filled balloon.
Experts believe the tea has a positive effect on hormones related to fat metabolism including ghrelin and adiponectin. Ghrelin is the hormone responsible for increasing appetite. Adiponectin is involved in regulating glucose levels and breaking down fatty acids in the body.
So why do you need to have hot green tea in the a.m.? “It appears green tea should be consumed during the light phase – the morning - of our 24 hour circadian rhythm because that timeframe greatly impacts fat metabolism,” says Dr. Stagg.
