This topic was suggested by reader Hollie, who commented at http://RunningAFEVER.com/189:
“Hi, I аm thinking аbоut lооsing weight. I dоn’t knоw whаt рrоgrаm I shоuld fоllоw. Whаt dо yоu think аbоut red teа рrоgrаm?”
So, first I want to discuss red tea itself, then we’ll get into what Hollie calls the “red tea program”.
Red tea comes from a plant called rooibos (ROY boss), which is in the family Fabaceae, which you may remember from my episode on beans. Another word for Fabaceae plants is Legumes. Rooibos is African in origin. It’s leaves are often consumed as tea. It is red in color, and the word rooibos means “red bush”. For those of you in the UK you may know it is “redbush tea”. But despite its name, there is also a green variety of rooibos. There are a number of health benefits to red tea, here are some from an article on Livestrong.com.
1. Low in calories – well, almost all tea is low in calories, so no surprise there, but it has 2 calories per 8-oz serving.
2. Naturally sweet – it has a sweet taste, so if you like your tea sweet, you won’t have to add as much sweetener.
3. Regulates blood sugar – This, we have discovered, is very important in the prevention of diabetes and kidney disease, and obesity. Finding food and ways to eat that reduce spikes in blood glucose has become a core concept in the diet department. However, this is only found in the green variety of rooibos.
Now, I’m pretty confident that this kind of tea is generally good for you. However, this isn’t really what Hollie is asking. There is a popular diet called Red Tea Detox. Everything I have found on it indicates that it is yet another fad diet. It’s promoters feed on the frustration of people who have tried different diets to lose weight, so they’ll try this one. Here are some claims from the web site:
“Melt away up to 1 pound of fat every 72 hours!”
“erasing excess fat in the blink of an eye”
“all you need to do is drink this delicious red tea and a few other things to shrink your fat cells!”
“Eat more, weigh less.”
“You will never feel hungry”
It just goes on an on for pages and pages.
My guess is that this program also recommends plenty of exercise and a low-calorie diet, but that’s not what they are selling, because that’s not what people want. People want something easy and fast, and folks it just doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, I wish it was different.
There is a lot that goes into achieving and maintaining a healthy body composition, but the basics are diet and exercise. That’s how I lost 80 pounds last year and how I have been able to keep most of that off this year as well. This is a long game. There is no easy way. Drinking tea is not going to melt your fat, erase excess fat, or shrink your fat cells.
Red tea has some good qualities, some health benefits. So do many of the foods we have discussed on running a fever, like oatmeal and beans, and coconut oil. All these foods, and others, make up a good diet. People want something simple, so the folks selling a fad diet give them what they want: a single item that will solve all their problems. It sounds too good to be true, and it is.
So that’s my take on the red tea program. Hollie, I hope this answers your question. And if you want to know how I did it, it’s all here in the podcast, and believe it or not, my program is absolutely free. You don’t even have to listen to ads! So catch the fever.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos
https://www.livestrong.com/article/283556-african-red-tea-for-weight-loss/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3967803/
https://www.redteadetox.com/