The Best Tea for a Diet

While there is no tea that will magically shrink away the pounds there are several that, when combined with a healthy low-calorie diet and exercise, will help you lose weight and be healthy. However, there are also several herbal blends on the market that claim to be "diet tea" but contain ingredients that are questionable.

Tea for Stimulation

Some herbal diet teas use blends to stimulate you and to suppress your appetite. Common ingredients for stimulation are ephedra, ephedrine, ma huang, kola nut, and guarana, according to PrimusWeb.com. There is no medical proof that these teas help you to lose weight, but they do cause headaches, sleeplessness and anxiety.

Tea as a Laxative

Another approach to herbal diet tea is to use tea that acts as a diuretic or a laxative. While increasing your fiber intake will naturally cleanse your system and help you to lose weight, the additives in these diet teas will cause your intestinal muscles to break down and lose the ability to function on their own. Senna, locust plant, angustofolia, cassia angustofolia, cascara and buckthorn are the ingredients found in these diet teas, according to PrimusWeb.com. These teas can cause abdominal cramping, fainting, a fluctuation in body temperature, difficulty in breathing and death according to DietBites.com.

Other Herbals

Drinking herbal tea without adding any sweeteners to it is going to be beneficial in small ways to help you be healthy and lose weight. Herbal teas contain no caffeine, therefore they count towards the eight glasses of water a day suggested for being healthy. Staying hydrated has been shown to help you lose weight. When you are dehydrated, you may feel hungry and eat. If you stay hydrated, you will not feel hungry as often. Amid all the healthy herbal teas available, peppermint and ginger tea are two herbal teas that naturally aid digestion. Good digestion will assist in weight loss. Similarly, dandelion tea is a gentle diuretic and has many health benefits which aid weight loss.

Green Tea

Green tea has become very popular as a weight loss tea. Studies have shown that green tea (which does contain some caffeine) increases your metabolism causing you to burn more calories, according to WeightLossForStubborn.com. Green tea is rich in antioxidants and has a large number of other health benefits. BodyBuildingForYou.com lists some of green tea's benefits as preventing cancer, lowering bad cholesterol, reducing high blood pressure and lowering blood sugar. The flavor may take some getting used to, but the health benefits are worth it. However, if you are pregnant you should avoid drinking green tea as it can inhibit your body's absorption of folic acid, and folic acid is very important in the healthy development of your baby.