Weight Loss Drinks

The most helpful weight loss drinks are those that have no food additives, no sugar, salt, pepper or other spices and are not subjected to heating, as thermal treatments destroy many nutrients. Drinking 2 liters of such liquids every day helps your digestion, boosts your metabolism and unlocks the water deposits in your body.

The best 5 weight loss drinks

1. Ice-cold water

It is extremely good for losing weight and it helps you burn between 200 and 500 calories every day, as your body will consume energy reserves in order to heat the cold beverage up to your normal body temperature. The calories you get rid of this way do sum up in time: in just three days, you will already notice that you lost up to 5 pounds just by drinking ice-cold water.

2. Green tea

Green tea has three types of benefits for weight loss:

• First, it increases the temperature of your body and as such increases the pace at which your body burns fat in a process called thermogenesis.
• Secondly, it helps control your appetite. The nutrients in green tea send signals to your brain and your stomach, decreasing your appetite and the quantity of food your body requires.
• Finally, this beverage stimulates your energy by balancing and synchronizing the processes in your body.

3. Mint tea

Like green tea, mint tea is anther delicious drink with zero calories. Even though many of you already drink mint tea for its chilling effect, this beverage also has benefits in weight loss as it helps to suppress your appetite.

Mint tea is a proven natural remedy: it eases stomach cramps (it is a natural antispasmodic remedy) and helps digestion (preventing indigestion and bloating).

4. Skimmed milk

Besides that this dairy product prevents osteoporosis due to its calcium and vitamin D content (the latter helps with calcium assimilation), skimmed milk prevents the hunger sensation and has very few calories as well (100 ml of skimmed milk has less than 50 calories.)

Unlike the other drinks mentioned above, skimmed milk contains proteins, which is great for people who are exercising to build muscles. If you don’t like the taste of skimmed milk, 100 ml of full milk contains only 60 calories and an equal amount of proteins.

5. Vegetable juice

Serving a glass of vegetable juice 30 minutes before meals, helps decrease your appetite. In addition, vegetable juices contain vitamins and minerals, and have plenty of benefits for your health, which of course depends on the type of vegetable you use to make the juice. Take for instance spinach and tomatoes:

• Spinach juice contains lots of iron and is therefore especially recommended for anemia, convalescence, scurvy (due to vitamin C deficiency), rickets (caused by vitamin D deficiency), nervous and physical fatigue (no wonder the cartoon Popeye eats spinach to strengthen!) and burns. It is also very good for cleansing the entire digestive tract.
• Also rich in iron, tomato juice is highly nutritive, highly energising and a great tonic for people who are under a lot of stress or suffer from nervousness and insomnia. Further on tomatoes help eliminating uric acid and as such are beneficial for people who are on a gout diet. Add to that detoxifying qualities that help with skin problems like acne and abscesses. Tomatoes are very tasty when juiced with celery, apple or carrot juice

How to make tasteful, healthy drinks

For better taste, when preparing tea, use dried leaves instead of tea bags. The tea will have a stronger, more refreshing flavor.

Avoid buying vegetable juice from supermarkets; it will most likely have plenty of food additives, which contain chemicals. If you want a natural drink, prepare the vegetable juice yourself, at home, from fresh vegetables.