First the bad news. . .

. . .if you want to lose weight, you will need to burn more calories than you consume. This means making permanent lifestyle changes, namely eating fewer calories and increasing physical activity (i.e. exercise).

Now the good news. . .

...this book will introduce you to a tool that can help you make these changes. Not only that, but this tool is delicious, energizing, healthy, inexpensive, and easy to obtain and prepare. The tool, of course, is tea. The book's author, Mark "Dr. Tea" Ukra, comes from a family of tea specialists, and is the proud owner of the Tea Garden in Hollywood. Don't worry, he is not trying to sell you some sort of "secret formula" of tea that will "melt off the pounds". Nor is he trying to put you on an dangerous fad diet. Instead, he shows you how you can use tea, in combination with healthy eating and exercise, to accelerate weight loss and improve your health.

The core of the diet is the consumption of 6-8 cups of tea, which contains compounds (i.e. theanine, caffiene, and EGCG) that can faciliate weight loss, per day. He also explains how you can use flavored teas to curb food cravings. In fact, one doesn't even have to drink tea to get its benefits: The book features numerous food recipes that include tea as an ingredient! While the book does include a meal plan, the essence of the diet is the consumption of tea. As Ukra points out, his system can both stand on its own or be used as an adjunct to any diet program.

Tea vs Tisane

An aspect of the program that can be confusing is the requirement that one drink true tea, camellia sinensis, as opposed to herbal "teas" (also known as tisanes). Unfortunately, because of the way that teas are labeled and sold by shops and restaurants, it is easy to confuse an herbal "tea" for true tea. Ukra takes the time in his book to explain how you can be sure that you are drinking true tea, namely by checking that what you are drinking is either black tea, green tea, oolong tea, or white tea (incidentally, all of these teas come from the same plant, the type of tea depends on its degree of oxidation ). The tea can certainly be flavored with other herbs, spices, and fruits, but it must be a true tea to provide the health and weight loss benefits promoted by the book.

One exception that Ukra makes to this rule is his recommendation of rooibos "tea" (not a true tea) to help curb cravings. Rooibos (also known as red tea) is a slightly sweet herb that has health benefits of its own, and is the basis of many delicious, naturally sweet tisanes that are readily available at grocery stores and tea shops. ("Dr. Tea" himself blends several varieties of what he calls "cravings teas" using rooibos.) It is important to note, however, that while using the rooibos is a great way to satisfy a sweet tooth, it does not replace the 6-8 cups of true tea that one needs to drink per day.

My Own Experience and Tips

While I had been working on losing weight for awhile, I was at a plateau and needed some help in getting my diet and exercise program back in gear. My sister had a copy of The Ultimate Tea Diet on her bookshelf, so I borrowed it one afternoon, and after reading several chapters I realized that "I can do this!". As such, I added the drinking of tea and the substitution of flavored tea for sweets to the program of portion control and exercise that I was already following. The result has been a significant weight loss and, more importantly, dropping several dress sizes in the two-and-a-half months. In addition, my skin has improved and my energy level is through the roof!

While everyone is different, I can say that this program works for me because of three main factors:

1. I appreciate and enjoy good food. While I have eliminated several "triggers" (foods that seem to fuel my desire to overeat) from my diet, I prefer to reduce portion sizes rather than blacklisting whole categories of food. The tea drinking actually reduces my appetite which makes portion control much easier.

2. One major pitfall in the battle of the bulge is the tendency to drink one's calories in the form of soda, wine, beer and juices. (I myself am a wine aficionado.) Tea, however, can be a very complex beverage with flavor nuances similar to that of wine. I can appreciate and enjoy tea in the same way that I do wine, except that there are no calories in tea!

3. The use of flavored teas has been great for reducing cravings and replacing snacks. For example, I would often begin the day with a "sweet" breakfast (a doughnut, sweet roll, french toast, etc). When I started the diet, I substituted a sweet flavored tea (vanilla/caramel black tea) for the sugar laden foodstuff. In the afternoon, I would again crave something sweet, but a fruit flavored tea took care of that nicely.

I'd also like to pass on a couple of suggestions for making the plan workable and keeping it interesting:

1. Drink different types of tea, the more varieties the better. Tea is (for the most part) not expensive (especially when compared to other beverages such as soda), so it is easy to accumulate a variety of teas to meet your cravings and to keep from getting bored.

2. If you have a desk job, sipping hot tea all day works well. However, if you don't have a desk job, you might find it hard to drink your daily 8 cups, particularly since hot beverages require careful handling. Drink iced tea if this is a problem for you.

Note: I have found that hot tea does a better job than iced at making me feel "full": If I want to stave off hunger pangs, I drink hot tea, while the iced tea is great for quenching thirst during the day.

3. If you have a serious sweet tooth, you have a couple of options with your teas. One is to add a sweetener to the tea (be careful, sweeteners can add calories), the other is to choose a tea that is flavored with something that is already sweet such as mint, cinnamon, or hibiscus.

4. If you are worried about caffeine interfering with your sleep, you can drink white or green tea in the afternoons and evenings, as both have less caffeine than black tea. The other option is to steep your tea for a minute, throw out the first batch, and the reuse the tea leaves. This process, according to Ukra, removes 95% of the caffeine.

5. Lots of people claim to not like green tea because it has a "bitter" or "grassy" taste. Green tea should NOT be brewed with boiling water (as you would do with black tea) but with water that has been cooled to about 180 degrees. Boiling water extracts bitter flavors from green tea.

Conclusion and Recommendation

In addition to making the case for tea as a weight loss tool, the book contains a lot of fascinating information about tea and its history. This alone makes the book worth buying. But I do think that Mark Ukra has done a great service in showing people how to use a common beverage to regulate their appetite and body weight. It is working for me, and I am grateful.