The Slimming Results Are In: Green Tea and Pyruvate

By Team Beachbody

Every now and then research unlocks an amazing fitness solution with natural ingredients that have always been available. Here we analyze two completely natural supplements that, when taken together, are known to be very potent for regulating the metabolism, increasing energy, and promoting fat loss while maintaining muscle mass. While both supplements are readily available at health food stores and online, only lately have we really learned most of their benefits.

And what's even more exciting is; a recent study at the Beachbody.com fitness lab showed that when combined with a proper diet and exercise, a supplement consisting of Green tea and Sodium Pyruvate can accelerate the body's weight loss by almost 29%!

Here is a brief rundown of what we learned about these two ingredients:

Green Tea: According to tea expert Dr. John Weisburger, tea in any form is probably the number one thing that you can add to your diet to ward off illness. While this is certain to ruffle some feathers in the health field, so many studies have come out showing tremendous benefits from tea that it's impossible to say his statement isn't at least arguable.

A growing body of evidence suggests that regular consumption of green tea can reduce the incidence of a variety of cancers. Green tea might also help prevent heart disease and liver disease. Both black and green tea are made from the same plant, but more of the original substances endure in the less-processed green form. Green tea contains high levels of substances called polyphenols, known to possess strong antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, antitumorigenic, and even antibiotic properties.

Green Tea appears to speed up calorie burning, including those calories stored in the body as fat. Researchers have studied the effects of Green Tea on subjects to find the number of calories used was measurably higher for participants taking Green Tea extract than for those taking simple caffeine or nothing. The research also has found evidence that people taking Green Tea extract used more fat calories than those taking a placebo. This ingredient has been the subject of many clinical trials. In these trials and on a daily basis, Green Tea is one of the safest and most validated ingredients in the supplement arena. Green Tea has been demonstrated to safely increase human metabolism, as well as provide excellent antioxidant activity. Both of these properties make it an indispensable part of a weight management and exercise program.

Note: Even though there is caffeine present in Green Tea, it still can act as a "calming agent". In fact, many people drink Green Tea before bed for that very reason!

Here follows some research summaries from more recent publications:

University of Iowa researchers found that tea may be a powerful cancer fighter, according to a study published in the July 1996 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study of more than 35,000 postmenopausal women showed that those who drank at least two cups of tea a day were 40% less likely to develop urinary tract cancer and 68% less likely to develop cancer in the digestive tract than women who did not drink tea.

Other scientists have found that the powerful antioxidants in tea also may help reduce the risk of heart disease. In one study, researchers found that women age 55 or older, who drank as little as a cup or two of tea a day, were 54% less likely to have severe atherosclerosis, which can lead to heart attack or stroke, than those who did not. The more tea they drank, the less their risk, according to a study published in the Oct. 11, 1999, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. That could be because the antioxidants work by preventing "bad" (LDL, low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol from promoting the plaque buildup that clogs arteries. And by preventing atherosclerosis, tea antioxidants can help the arteries supply nourishing blood to the heart and the rest of the body.

Pyruvate: Pyruvate occurs naturally in the body and is an end product of the metabolism of sugar or starch. Although pyruvate is also found in a variety of foods, most of them contain less than 25 mg per serving. Foods high in pyruvate include certain fruits and vegetables - most notably, red apples contain 450 mg - certain cheeses, dark beer (80 mg per 12 ounces) and red wine (75 mg per 6 ounces).

A surprising discovery was made with pyruvate by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. They showed that dietary supplementation with pyruvate increased fat loss by up to 48% and minimized the associated loss of body protein! This is unusual because fat loss during dietary restriction virtually always occurs with a corresponding and substantial loss of muscle (body protein).

Pyruvate has also been shown to increase endurance (by up to 20%) in some studies, making it even more attractive for athletes. Anyone who has gone on a diet knows that it's hard to maintain the stamina necessary to get super-intense workouts once you cut back on calories.

Two human studies conducted by premier pyruvate researcher Ronald Stanko, MD, from the Gastroenterology and Clinical Nutrition Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, found that supplementation with pyruvate along with another three-carbon molecule, dihydroxyacetone (DHA), for seven days significantly increased muscular endurance in both the arms and legs by 20%. Stanko's results on fat loss are even more phenomenal. Two well-controlled studies found that pyruvate had a significant impact not only on weight loss but, more important, on fat loss. The most recent study found that when obese female subjects were given pyruvate for three weeks, they lost 37% more weight (13 pounds vs. 9.5 pounds) and 48% more fat (8.8 pounds vs. 5.9 pounds). In practical terms, this 48% increase in fat loss translated into a loss of nearly an extra pound of body fat a week!

Additionally, Dr. Frank Greenway, an endocrinologist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, focused a study on the effects of nutrition in obesity. Greenway states pyruvate is "a normal constituent of human metabolism, so its safety should be high." He added that "pyruvate decreases cholesterol in a high-fat diet, has important antioxidant activity and seems to improve cardiac function."

At Beachbody.com, we don't advocate any supplement alone to promote weight loss. So we did a study to see what the effectiveness of these two ingredients would be in a group that was exercising regularly. The results confirmed our suspicions: While both groups lost significant pounds and inches, the group that took the combination of Green tea and Sodium Pyruvate lost nearly 29% more weight in the six week study than the group that took no supplements.