Green tea can be an excellent beverage to kickstart your day or your diet. It contains beneficial nutrients and offers a number of health advantages over the kinds of beverages most people drink.
If you are going to make green tea a regular part of your routine and your diet, what kind of foods should you pair with it? That depends on what your health and fitness goals are.
I am going to look at some great pairings for green tea that cover areas like diet, energy, and simply getting a good start to the day.
What to Eat with Green Tea Maximize Weight Loss
Many people drink green tea to try to lose weight. This beverage is known for its weight loss benefits, after all.
One of the ways it does that is that green tea will boost your metabolism thanks to its caffeine content.
It can help your body start to burn energy and hopefully burn some fat before you even start to exercise for the day.
If you pair that beneficial effect with the right food, you can start to see some weight loss progress.
Green tea also boosts fat burning during exercise, so you may want to use it before you work out for the best results.
What to eat with green tea if you are hoping to lose weight with this drink? Obviously, you want to eat foods that are low in sugar, fat, and carbohydrates. Those are the biggest fat gainers in your diet, so eliminating them as much as possible is key to keeping your weight down and losing the excess weight that you have.
Focus on high fiber foods like nuts, grains, beans, and seeds. These help to clear out your digestive tract of unwanted material so that you lose even more weight, and they improve gut health and your metabolism and energy levels for powerful weight loss effects.
What to Eat with Green Tea for Breakfast
The foods you should pair with green tea for your breakfast will vary depending on what you are hoping to accomplish during breakfast and throughout the day.
You can make breakfast an opportunity to start fat burning and give your metabolism a jump start. If that is your goal, then eat foods that are high in energy, like breads or any complex carbohydrates.
Avoid sugars as much as possible, since they will give you only short-term energy. If you don’t use up that energy, it will turn to fat.
High-fiber foods are good to eat with green tea because they will give you that boost of energy that will last for hours. They won’t make you feel bloated and slow but will instead help to speed you up and energize you for the day ahead.
Too many of us start off the day feeling sluggish, and that is primarily because of what we are eating for breakfast. Keep that first meal healthy and light so that you don’t feel weighed down and you don’t have any regrets later on.
What can you eat with green tea in the morning for the best breakfast? Try pairing it with some fruit, some grain cereal or some muesli.
You might be tempted to eat a lean meat (turkey or chicken, for example) or eggs for the protein that will help develop muscles and give you energy, but they don’t pair well with green tea. I will talk about that more in a moment.
Avoid heavy, sugary foods like donuts, pastries, and potatoes for breakfast if you want to maximize your energy output and metabolic boost when you have green tea with your meal.
Should You Eat Protein with Green Tea?
You may not be aware that green tea has some negative effects as well.
For all of its advantages, green tea has some downsides as well. It contains components known as tannins that effectively block iron and protein absorption when you drink it.
That means that if you are eating foods that are rich in protein or iron, like eggs or meat, for example, and you drink green tea, then you are preventing your body from benefiting from the key nutrients in these foods. It is almost like you are wasting that food and its nutritional benefits.
So, if you are looking for what not to eat with green tea, those foods rich in iron and protein should be at the top of the list. You will absorb some of the less desirable components of the food and not benefit from the more desirable ones.
Snacks to Eat with Green Tea
There are some foods that simply taste better when you drink green tea with them. I have a few suggestions for you that mostly include healthy foods you won’t feel guilty about.
Try some of the following next time you want a light snack to pair with green tea:
- Brown rice
- Roasted chick peas
- Grain chips
- Kale chips
- Fruit salad
- Scones
- A light sandwich
- Rice cake with peanut butter
Green tea makes a great snack-time beverage, and of course, it is perfect for teatime. I recommend it as your snack beverage because it is such a healthy replacement for soda as well as drinks that tend to be somewhat high in sugar like juice and coffee, depending on how they are made.
You should try to have your green tea without sugar so that it is healthier. It already offers caffeine to give you energy, and you can get used to its unsweetened flavor after a while.
For any drink that you consume regularly, you should work to lower the sugar content, if possible, until you are drinking it without any sugar at all. If you want to use green tea as an energy booster, weight loss drink, or something to have with a healthy snack, then try to keep the sugar content low in that beverage or do without sugar entirely.
When pairing green tea with a snack, try to choose something that is not heavy and that will help you to have energy for the next few hours.
A heavy snack can slow you down and cause you to feel sluggish and lethargic. Avoid cake, heavy breads, and other foods that have a lot of carbs when you are having green tea for a snack.
Green tea offers plenty of benefits, but knowing what foods to pair it with will help you in your dieting efforts and enable you to stay healthy and fit.
I hope this information assists you in making the most of your green tea and ensures you can maximize its many wonderful benefits.
My name is Ellis Francis and I have been a personal fitness trainer, sports nutritionalist and health and fitness advisor for over 25 years. I am the lead health and fitness advisor at https://awellnessbody.com.
