If you're planning to start keto or are already following this diet, teas are one of the essential parts of your diet regimen. They help you boost your energy levels and diet results and enhance lean body mass. However, you can't consume all kinds of teas because some of them contain carbs and might get you out of ketosis.
In this guide, you'll find herbal teas that are good for keto and the ones you need to avoid completely.
How Keto Works
Before talking about keto-friendly teas, let's look at how this diet works and how many carbs you can take to avoid any high-carb tea.
For the past couple of years, every fitness enthusiast has been raving about keto and how it helps them achieve their ideal body weight. This diet helps your body enter a ketosis state where the stored fat acts as a fuel for the body instead of carbs and sugars. Therefore, a person starting a keto diet stops eating carbs and reaches ketosis after 2–4 days.
The diet includes high fats, low carbs, and sugars, making it tricky because carbs are found in most processed and unprocessed foods. You can only take 20–50 grams of carbs per day, and if you pass this threshold, you'll have to start all over again. So when it comes to tea, it's essential to take zero-carb drinks because you might be eating other things with some carbs present in them.
It's important to note that this diet may not be suitable for everyone, so make sure you've consulted your physician before starting it.
Tea & Keto
Tea lovers' first concern while doing this diet is whether they can have their tea. Yes, you can, but not the ones you usually take. If you drink flavored teas with milk or sugar, they have a high carb and sugar content which is a big NO for keto. Here are some teas that you should avoid to be safe:
- Milk teas such as bubble tea, chai tea, teh Tarik, etc.
- Canned iced teas
- Ready-to-drink tea
- Flavored teas
- Instant teas
- Teas with fruit
- Dessert teas
- Any tea with milk and sugar.
Keto-friendly Teas & How to Take Them
A plain tea without any milk and sugars has only 2 grams of calories and no carbs. It helps you balance water levels in your body because, with no carb intake, your body loses its water weight and can cause dehydration.
If you don't like teas without milk and sugar, you can use unsweetened almond milk and stevia as a replacement. Stevia is a zero-carb sweetener that you can add to any tea to give it a sweet taste. Make sure you're adding pure almond milk with no flavoring or other ingredients to keep everything keto-friendly.
Here are some teas that can help you during keto:
Herbal Green Tea
Keto or no keto, people love consuming green tea because it's one of the healthiest beverages. Green tea leaves are calorie-free and contain catechins that help in increasing your metabolism and fat-burning process. Pure green tea also has caffeine, which improves physical activities and facilitates the weight loss process.
One major benefit that green tea offers to people during keto is providing essential antioxidants to the body. These antioxidants offer energy, ensure that there's no damage to your health during keto, and prevent muscle loss.
Read more: Herbal tea and its benefits
Matcha Green Tea
Matcha is powdered green tea, which is one of Japan's specialties. It's pretty helpful during keto when you feel sluggish, fatigued, and have low energy levels due to no carb intake. You can add matcha to your low-carb smoothies to get the caffeine fix.
Most people like matcha as a pre-workout drink because it helps in boosting physical performance, fat burning, and strength.
Bulletproof Tea
Bulletproof is a method explicitly invented for keto diets to give your body an instant dose of energy every morning. This method can be used for coffee and tea, and due to the high-fat content, it's also high in calories, which is fine as long as there are no carbs.
Bulletproof tea uses coconut milk, coconut oil (or MCT oil), cinnamon, water, and strong tea leaves (preferably black or green). It's a great alternative if you drink strong milk tea or chai teas.
Other Keto-Friendly Teas:
You can take any pure herbal tea such as chamomile, lavender, oolong, spearmint, ABM tea, etc., as long as you don't add milk, sugar, or honey.
ABM tea is made from Agaricus mushroom extracts and offers many health benefits. It helps people with diabetes manage their sugar levels and insulin resistance and aids in weight management. This tea also keeps your stress levels down and promotes overall well-being.
If you've never tried it before, get it now to enjoy its health benefits. We are the leading suppliers of Agaricus Blazei Murill Tea made from pure mushroom extracts. You can buy it online from our website or call us for details.