Tea and Weight loss, Three Reasons For and Against

I am sure anyone that has been around the block in the tea world a few times has heard all sorts of wonderful health claims, including the magical claim that tea can help you lose weight!  Well, to go a little into my personal life again, sorry I seem to be doing this a lot lately, I have in the past year lost roughly 40 pounds, and who knows how much muscle I gained in the processes.  Well lets think about this, we've had about 5 years of The Sip Tip, and in the processes in the last year I have probably had less tea on average than each of the previous 4 years which had a slow and steady weight gain.  So what gives?

Why tea might not actually help you lose weight:

1. While caffeine is an appetite suppressant, I've found tea tends to do just the opposite.  In fact after drinking enough strong tea on a less than full stomach I often find myself craving some fatty and oily snack.  (Read as: high in Calories).
2. It can be easy to have the mindset that doing good, can counter doing bad.  By that I mean I've known people (and have been one myself) that use moderate exercise (burning 100-300 Calories), as an excuse to over eat way in excess of what they burnt off.  Viewing tea as something good that you have done, can lead to thinking along the lines of an extra cookie is okay.
3. Tea can help keep you awake.  While this can be good, it has been surprising how many things I have read that actually show how beneficial a proper nights rest is in managing and attaining a healthy weight, in addition to properly allow you to recover from workouts allowing you to more quickly go out and do one again, maybe harder or longer next time.

But to talk out of both sides of my mouth, where are people coming from when they say tea can help you lose weight?  Actually there are good reasons why it can as well, but keep in mind when reading them the full implications of each one, and why you may or may not fall into that category.

Why tea might help you lose weight:

1.  You use tea as a replacement for a highly Caloric beverage.  Quite a few of the successful tea and weight loss stories I have heard involving tea, the real reason is actually not tea, in fact the same results would have likely happened with water, coffee, or pretty much any near zero Calorie beverage.  These stories all involve the person finding tea, and liking it so much that they decide to have it in place of a Soda, flavored Latte, Alcoholic beverages, or pretty much any other high Calorie drink.  Weight loss is ultimately a numbers game, if total intake is less than total expenditure, then the body much find that additional energy elsewhere in fat and muscle mass.
2. Tea actually has been shown to boost metabolism. Now before you jump up and down and celebrate, the increase is so small it might as well be considered non existent.  By that I mean an extra chocolate chip cookie, or brownie a year would amount to more Calories than  those burnt from the boost in Metabolism.
3. To really speak out of both sides of my mouth on this one to go with number 3 above: tea has caffeine.  Though this applies to when you are having it early enough in the day that it does not noticeably interfere with sleep.  The caffeine when used in moderation can help give people the energy to be more active throughout the day, thus improving the number of Calories burned.

This post felt a little weird to write, but I have gotten some comments lately about how I must be losing all of this weight and improving my health due to my tea drinking.  I want to honestly say, it is not the tea, it is the activity!