Yerba mate tea is showing promising results with fighting obesity. Mate’s high antioxidant activity and reduce harmful LDL cholesterol; mate has also been known to safely increase your metabolism, which may help with weight management.

What Exactly Is Obesity?

No matter where you are in the world, you’ve probably heard the term ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’ tossed around in a conversation. It’s not hard to understand why, living in a world with over 2 billion people classified as overweight. That’s right, nearly 30% of the global population is either obese or overweight.

Being obese has become a global pandemic, especially in places like the United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to name a few. But what classifies someone as obese or overweight — is there a difference? How does someone figure out if they’re obese or overweight?

Body Mass Index and Obesity

The way people in the medical field (i.e doctors) decide, is what’s known as Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is a weight-to-height ratio, where a persons weight in kilograms is divided by the square of their height in centimeters:

This simple equation is able to tell you a variety of different answers, which can be interpreted as someone being underweight all the way to extremely obese, and everything in-between (as shown in chart below).

If you’ve done the above calculation, or have gone to a medical professional and have been told you’re overweight or obese, do not fret! Unless you have a medical disorder such as Hypothyroidism or Cushing’s syndrome, you can work towards lowering your BMI and body weight through a number of ways. One of these ways being a major factor in weight loss, and that is conscious eating.

Starting Your Journey Of Conscious Eating

Conscious eating, living a healthy lifestyle, or any sort of jargon you wish to call it, may sound intimidating at first, but don’t worry, you don’t have to go out and purchase a bundle of kale at the grocery store just yet.

You can start your path down conscious eating by simply drinking yerba mate. A recent study done by Alessandra Gambero and Marcelo L. Ribeiro at the Sao Francisco University Medical School shows the positive impacts of yerba mate on obesity and obesity-related inflammation.

Yerba mate has been reported to have a variety of biological activities which stem from its high polyphenol content (flavonoids, phenolic acids, etc.)¹. Some of the 11 yerba mate polyphenols are antioxidants, which are known to prevent free radicals from forming in vivo.

Learn how yerba mate reduces harmful effects of a bad diet >>

Benefits of Yerba Mate and Weight Loss

The antioxidants in yerba mate inhibit LDL, otherwise known as low-density lipoproteins. To make things simple, LDL is bad cholesterol, and when oxidized by free radicals, can cause inflammation in your arteries which can ultimately lead to a stroke or even a heart attack. Yerba mate is one way to begin to raise the antioxidant levels in your body, lower your free radical count, and can in turn cause anti-inflammatory properties to occur in your body.

Another one of these biological activities yerba mate has is the ability to decrease the differentiation of pre-adipocytes and reduce the accumulation of lipids in adipocytes². Adipocytes are connective tissue cells that specialize in the synthesis and storage of fat; these cells play a significant role in gaining and maintaining fat in our body. This is another way our good friend yerba mate can help restore our bodies.

Learn about mate’s ability to help the body adapt to stress >>

Yerba Mate is Anti-Obesity

A 2012 study conducted by Kang Y.R. and company, showed that yerba mate extract has powerful anti-obesity activity. The experiment treated five-week-old male mice for a total of 4 weeks with several different dependent variables; the mice received either 0.5, 1, or 2 g/kg instant yerba mate/kg body weight. Yerba mate was administered once per day for 4 weeks with there body weight measured once a week during the mice feeding time.

After the 4 weeks, the body weight of the high-fat diet group increased, but was significantly less in yerba mate treated high-fat diet groups, even blood glucose was observed to be lower after yerba mate treatment. This just goes to show how powerful consuming yerba mate can be!

Your Journey Will Never Be Lonely

If you’re overweight or obese, and are thinking about changing over to a healthy lifestyle but don’t know where to start, yerba mate is a great place to begin your journey. As you’ve read, yerba mate has so many wonderful properties that can help you along your path to weight loss.

Not only does yerba mate have a wide variety of different flavonoids, textures, and tones to the beverage, its also a beverage that you can sit with all day and enjoy. You’ll be with a companion your entire journey, so you never have to worry about being lonely.

Sources

1. Gambero A, Ribeiro ML. The Positive Effects of Yerba Maté (Ilex paraguariensis) in Obesity. Department of metabolism and nutrition, institute of food science, technology and nutrition (ICTAN-CSIC), Spanish national research council, Madrid, Spain. Nutrients 2015, 7(2), 730-750; doi:10.3390/nu7020730
2. Kang Y.R., Lee H.Y., Kim J.H., Moon D.I., Seo M.Y., Park S.H., Choi K.H., Kim C.R., Kim S.H., Oh J.H., et al. Anti-obesity and anti-diabetic effects of yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) in C57BL/6 J mice fed a high-fat diet. Lab. Anim. Res. 2012;28:23–29. doi: 10.5625/lar. 2012.28.1.23.