What do you think?
Rate this book
The Ultimate Tea Diet: How Tea Can Boost Your Metabolism, Shrink Your Appetite, and Kick-Start Remarkable Weight Loss
It's proven! Tea can be a powerful tool for fast and lasting weight loss.The Ultimate Tea Diet harnesses tea's incredible weight-loss potential in a straightforward plan for losing weight in a safe and healthy way. Tea's ability to encourage weight loss comes from the synergy of its three main caffeine to stimulate, L-theanine to neutralize the harmful side effects of caffeine and act as an appetite suppressant, and EGCG, which causes you to burn fat faster and more efficiently. In other words, tea reduces your appetite and stimulates your metabolism.
Don't worry-you won't go hungry on the Ultimate Tea Diet. The food plan includes tea-based meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as tempting choices for midday snacks and sweet treats. All are made with tea so not only is your food incredibly flavorful, but you're also getting the weight-loss benefits in every single bite you enjoy.
Drinking tea-and maintaining a conscientious focus on good health-can easily become a way of life. Slim down to a leaner, more energetic, and healthier you with the Ultimate Tea Diet.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published December 26, 2007
4 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Mark Ukra
11 books8 followersWhen he was 6, co-author Mark Ukra and his 5-year-old sister Tara huddled at the back of a tiny hallway closet and created a make-believe world based on the love they shared with their amazing grandmother, dog, and stuffed animal friends. In those endless hours in that closet, the siblings' adventures and dreams came to life and their fears disappeared. Now, decades later, the HarperCollins author, together with his sister Tara Mesalik MacMahon, a James Hearst Poetry Prize winning poet, again brings to life the "Closet of Dreams," this time on the page and shared with young readers.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
January 15, 2008
Tea is good. Find a tea you like and drink tea all day.
There, I've saved you $22 and a week of reading. I accept paypal.
There, I've saved you $22 and a week of reading. I accept paypal.
July 8, 2008
Favorite book of the summer!!! I was already obsessed w/ tea drinking, and this book further fueled my passion!! Lots of great health tips and reasons to incorporate tea into daily rituals. Love, love, love this book!!!!!
October 12, 2016
Although this book was a bit sensationalized, I really did like it! While this book may not be for everyone, it was actually the perfect book about tea for me to read at this time. Dr. Tea was a coffee drinker (we're talking 10+ cups a day) and he discovered how much better it was to drink tea. I never did drink that much coffee every day but when I was attending college, I would sometimes drink four or five 12 oz mugs a day and up until a month ago I was drinking two to three 12 oz mugs. I firmly believe that coffee is not something that is inherently harmful. However, I really think that I am personally better off replacing it with tea.
I learned that coffee keeps your blood sugar high (promoting fat storage) and that tea has pretty much the opposite effect along with SO many amazing benefits. The ECGC, Caffeine, and L-theanine are three components of tea that have wonderful effects on the body.
I loved that there was a variety of information in this book:
-Information about the chemical makeup of tea
-Discussions of studies about the effects of tea on the human body
-Discussions about how coffee and caffeine addiction effect the human body
- Recipes incorporating tea leaves
-An explanation of the different types of tea (white, green, black, oolong, and non-tisane teas)
- Chapters to help with personal growth, exercise, and weight loss
- A brief history of tea around the world
The main message of this book is "Find a tea you like and drink it all day long." I have been doing that and I can tell you right now that I actually do NOT miss coffee :-)
I REALLY appreciated the chapter on how to steep tea leaves because this is something I have never done. I always used tea bags (which is perfectly fine) BUT since the caffeine comes out in the first steep, I can drink the same tea leaves all day long and not have to worry about my caffeine intake as it gets closer to bedtime. I bought a nice teapot and I have been having a lot of fun picking out different kinds of tea leaves from Amazon!
My favorite kind of tea is green tea! :-)
I learned that coffee keeps your blood sugar high (promoting fat storage) and that tea has pretty much the opposite effect along with SO many amazing benefits. The ECGC, Caffeine, and L-theanine are three components of tea that have wonderful effects on the body.
I loved that there was a variety of information in this book:
-Information about the chemical makeup of tea
-Discussions of studies about the effects of tea on the human body
-Discussions about how coffee and caffeine addiction effect the human body
- Recipes incorporating tea leaves
-An explanation of the different types of tea (white, green, black, oolong, and non-tisane teas)
- Chapters to help with personal growth, exercise, and weight loss
- A brief history of tea around the world
The main message of this book is "Find a tea you like and drink it all day long." I have been doing that and I can tell you right now that I actually do NOT miss coffee :-)
I REALLY appreciated the chapter on how to steep tea leaves because this is something I have never done. I always used tea bags (which is perfectly fine) BUT since the caffeine comes out in the first steep, I can drink the same tea leaves all day long and not have to worry about my caffeine intake as it gets closer to bedtime. I bought a nice teapot and I have been having a lot of fun picking out different kinds of tea leaves from Amazon!
My favorite kind of tea is green tea! :-)
March 15, 2011
I got all excited about this - I haven't drunk caffeine drinks in many years, and this book made it sound like you could get rid of the caffeine, and get tremendous health benefits. So I went wild buying and drinking tea, couldn't sleep for days, and nothing else happened.
January 14, 2018
Loved this book. Rented it from the library and loved it so much I had to pick up a copy for myself. wish his website was still a thing because I'd really love to try some of his teas. but the ideas included are still practical and the background information on tea was great!
November 19, 2008
I got caught up in this
for awhile
You are better off
reading Science Daily articles
about the health benefits of tea
and making it part
of a more effective diet
for awhile
You are better off
reading Science Daily articles
about the health benefits of tea
and making it part
of a more effective diet
July 31, 2019
Hmmm. Not so sure about the miracle of tea and weightloss connection but as a tea drinker I do like the clear explaination of the different teas and the argument that tea is a healthy drink. Even the distinction between products derived from Camellia sinesis and "all the others" which are then relegated to the category "tisane". And as for the flavouring and recipes for food with tea as an ingredient - not for me. Very American in attitude. I will stick to my aged puerh and my Upton's tea catalogue.
January 10, 2025
As a tea drinker, this book reinforced a lot of my beliefs regarding ECGC, L-Theanine and Caffeine. I don't know how valuable the "diet" section is. The recipes are interesting.
December 26, 2014
Same diet scam, different flavor
Don’t believe the hype, even if you really like tea.
"The Ultimate Tea Diet" (William Morrow; 2007) by Mark "Dr. Tea" Ukra is beautifully packaged and hooks you with the subtitle "How Tea Can Boost Your Metabolism, Shrink Your Appetite and Kick-Start Remarkable Weight Loss". As a devoted tea drinker for decades and someone who needed to loose a few pounds, I eagerly checked out my local library's copy.
Does the title of the book sound too good to be true? Yes. That should give you a clue as to how reliable the information is. The book is merely a 320-page advertisement for the author's tea shop, The Tea Garden & Herbal Emporium in West Hollywood. There is a lot of hype and a lot of false statements with dodgy science to try and prop it up.
About "Dr. Tea"
The cover of "The Ultimate Tea Diet" has an interesting way of presenting the author's name. "Mark" and "Ukra" are in harder to read, thinner script, while "Dr. Tea" is in thicker and larger print. This gives the false impression that Mark Ukra is a doctor or somebody working in the medical industry. He's not. He's a tea seller who just happens to now have a book out. You don’t find out this crucial bit of information until a few pages into the book.
Ukra claims that his ancestors have been in tea merchants for over 400 years. Perhaps he's the only one of the lot to have a book out. He's certainly the only one to claim that drinking and eating tea will help people to loose weight. If drinking tea could help you loose weight, I'd be skinnier than Kate Moss.
The Claims
Ukra claims that all types of tea contain three magic ingredients to help make your body burn calories faster than if you didn’t drink tea. These are caffeine, L-theanine and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). He also claims that L-theanine "reduces the harmful effects of caffeine". Ukra then expalains that you can drink all the tea you want and not have to worry about being overly-caffeinated. Really? This writer Googled the claim and could find no clinical study to back it up. And just how does Dr. Tea know how much caffeine is in tea, anyway?
No one does, according to "The World of Caffeine: The Culture Behind the World's Most Popular Drug" (Bennett Alan Weinberg & Bonnie K. Bealor; Routledge; 2002). This also hammered home in “The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide”, written by tea merchants and connoisseurs Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss. This is because each batch of tea varies widely in each batch of tea. Caffeine content can fluctuate depending on the soil that the plants were grown in, how the tea was processed and how long the tea is brewed.
Other Problems
As a book, "The Ultimate Tea Diet" starts out promising, but ends up a yawner. It's basically the same sentence over and over again - "I promise that if you drink tea, you'll be thin." There are many testimonials in the book by people who claim to have lost weight on the tea diet but, oddly enough, all of those different people wrote exactly alike. There is also no way for the reader to verify if these people existed or if they were just made up out of thin air.
In conclusion, “The Ultimate Tea Diet” should, in future editions, be filed under “fiction.”
Don’t believe the hype, even if you really like tea.
"The Ultimate Tea Diet" (William Morrow; 2007) by Mark "Dr. Tea" Ukra is beautifully packaged and hooks you with the subtitle "How Tea Can Boost Your Metabolism, Shrink Your Appetite and Kick-Start Remarkable Weight Loss". As a devoted tea drinker for decades and someone who needed to loose a few pounds, I eagerly checked out my local library's copy.
Does the title of the book sound too good to be true? Yes. That should give you a clue as to how reliable the information is. The book is merely a 320-page advertisement for the author's tea shop, The Tea Garden & Herbal Emporium in West Hollywood. There is a lot of hype and a lot of false statements with dodgy science to try and prop it up.
About "Dr. Tea"
The cover of "The Ultimate Tea Diet" has an interesting way of presenting the author's name. "Mark" and "Ukra" are in harder to read, thinner script, while "Dr. Tea" is in thicker and larger print. This gives the false impression that Mark Ukra is a doctor or somebody working in the medical industry. He's not. He's a tea seller who just happens to now have a book out. You don’t find out this crucial bit of information until a few pages into the book.
Ukra claims that his ancestors have been in tea merchants for over 400 years. Perhaps he's the only one of the lot to have a book out. He's certainly the only one to claim that drinking and eating tea will help people to loose weight. If drinking tea could help you loose weight, I'd be skinnier than Kate Moss.
The Claims
Ukra claims that all types of tea contain three magic ingredients to help make your body burn calories faster than if you didn’t drink tea. These are caffeine, L-theanine and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). He also claims that L-theanine "reduces the harmful effects of caffeine". Ukra then expalains that you can drink all the tea you want and not have to worry about being overly-caffeinated. Really? This writer Googled the claim and could find no clinical study to back it up. And just how does Dr. Tea know how much caffeine is in tea, anyway?
No one does, according to "The World of Caffeine: The Culture Behind the World's Most Popular Drug" (Bennett Alan Weinberg & Bonnie K. Bealor; Routledge; 2002). This also hammered home in “The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide”, written by tea merchants and connoisseurs Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss. This is because each batch of tea varies widely in each batch of tea. Caffeine content can fluctuate depending on the soil that the plants were grown in, how the tea was processed and how long the tea is brewed.
Other Problems
As a book, "The Ultimate Tea Diet" starts out promising, but ends up a yawner. It's basically the same sentence over and over again - "I promise that if you drink tea, you'll be thin." There are many testimonials in the book by people who claim to have lost weight on the tea diet but, oddly enough, all of those different people wrote exactly alike. There is also no way for the reader to verify if these people existed or if they were just made up out of thin air.
In conclusion, “The Ultimate Tea Diet” should, in future editions, be filed under “fiction.”
December 24, 2015
I started reading this book a while ago and never completely finished it. There is a lot of good information about tea, and some interesting recipes using different kinds of tea. Unfortunately, the tea shop run by "Dr. Tea" is no longer in business, so you can't order any of the specialty teas he mentions in his book.
I think the diet plan would definitely work if someone were to follow it. The recipes use healthy ingredients and appear to be low calorie. I might try a few of the recipes since they look interesting.
I already drink a lot of tea throughout the day. There are plenty of studies that show that tea is healthy for you and that green tea helps control appetite. I also read recently in Prevention magazine that drinking tea when you are not really hungry but have a snack craving will help you feel satisfied without eating that snack.
Tea does have caffeine, but less caffeine than coffee. The book mentions that tea is still healthy when it is decaffeinated, and gives some pointers on that. You can drink a mixture of caffeinated and decaffeinated teas so you don't get too wired with caffeine.
I think this book offers good advice on dieting. Eating healthy foods and exercising is the key. This book just brings up the health benefits of tea and how drinking tea can be a part of a healthy lifestyle. If you don't like tea, the book suggests there may be a tea out there you might like because there are thousands of favors of tea available.
I am not sure I would give up coffee if I were a coffee drinker and switch to tea just to do this diet plan though. My husband only drinks coffee and has lost weight by eliminating as much sugar from his diet as possible. He drinks coffee in the morning only, and has it with low-fat half-n-half and no sugar.
So, there are many ways to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. This book offers a method that worked for the author and may work for others.
I think the diet plan would definitely work if someone were to follow it. The recipes use healthy ingredients and appear to be low calorie. I might try a few of the recipes since they look interesting.
I already drink a lot of tea throughout the day. There are plenty of studies that show that tea is healthy for you and that green tea helps control appetite. I also read recently in Prevention magazine that drinking tea when you are not really hungry but have a snack craving will help you feel satisfied without eating that snack.
Tea does have caffeine, but less caffeine than coffee. The book mentions that tea is still healthy when it is decaffeinated, and gives some pointers on that. You can drink a mixture of caffeinated and decaffeinated teas so you don't get too wired with caffeine.
I think this book offers good advice on dieting. Eating healthy foods and exercising is the key. This book just brings up the health benefits of tea and how drinking tea can be a part of a healthy lifestyle. If you don't like tea, the book suggests there may be a tea out there you might like because there are thousands of favors of tea available.
I am not sure I would give up coffee if I were a coffee drinker and switch to tea just to do this diet plan though. My husband only drinks coffee and has lost weight by eliminating as much sugar from his diet as possible. He drinks coffee in the morning only, and has it with low-fat half-n-half and no sugar.
So, there are many ways to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. This book offers a method that worked for the author and may work for others.
September 7, 2008
Ok, I can drink all that tea each day. Moderate exercise? Check. Cutting down on binge eating and eating less at meals, but making sure that what I eat is healthier than what I have been eating? I'm on day 3 of that plan, at least with the binge eating (still hard, but it gets easier with tea). The recipes in the back of the book that include tea in each? All interesting, but I don't think I could readily follow the 14-day plan Mark Ukra sets out for the reader. Not that it's not a good plan. But, waffles and all the rest? I'm not sure if I'd follow it. Perhaps a few dishes, but not all of them and not that religiously. Still, though, a good plan and one that I will follow at least with everything else, since I prefer tea instead of coffee.
January 7, 2011
What do I think about "Dr. Tea" and his book The Ultimate Tea Diet? Well, it was an interesting read, but I'm definitely not going to drink dozens of cups of tea in a day. Caffeine is something I take in moderation only. However, there are some healthy and appetizing recipes included in the back. Also, there is something luxurious about reading about tea. I am already a fan, so I didn't find anything particuarly enlightening (particularly since I do not drink coffee, at all). I think it's comforting to know that I'm headed on the right track.
March 5, 2016
I had high hopes for this -- I love tea. However, it's mostly recipes for strange sounding things and affirmations from believers. Ultimately, it reinforces that you have to cut calories and exercise -- just like most diet books. I have trouble believing that tea cuts your appetite, but if so -- yay!
April 28, 2012
This book really motivated me to get off coffee and commit to tea. I love coffee and tea both, so I go through periods of mostly tea drinking and periods of coffee drinking. There was much info. On the health benefits and some combinations of ingredients that I wouldn't have thought of. It is definitely worth a read if you like tea.
December 6, 2014
I love tea, so I picked up this book thinking it might give me some more information about individual types of teas. This was mostly a diet book (which I'm not interested in), and honestly wasn't all that great. Most people cannot drink tons and tons of tea each day, and that's mostly the advice given. Just continue buying the tea you like, and don't bother with this book.
June 3, 2010
I picked this up as an Advance Reader's Copy a while back, but didn't get around to reading it until now. I love tea! This book has sold me on the idea of incorporating a LOT more tea into my diet in various ways . . .
September 28, 2011
I like tea!!! Do u??
Its all about tea .. tea ... and tea. And you know what ... i dont know tht tea can be use to cook. Find the recipe also in this book :). There also Indonesian version of this book wwwwwaaaahhh just love tea
Its all about tea .. tea ... and tea. And you know what ... i dont know tht tea can be use to cook. Find the recipe also in this book :). There also Indonesian version of this book wwwwwaaaahhh just love tea
August 14, 2016
More interested in the tea aspect of it, explains best ways to prepare variety of teas, has tea recipes - have not tried any of them but could see trying adding tea leaves to rubs and to dressings, interesting idea. The history of tea at the back was of interest.
Read
March 13, 2009A diet that say you should drink more tea? Ok, I'm interested...
March 15, 2008
not a fad diet, but a way to add tea and boost metabolism. Fascinating background of the origins and benefits of drinking true teas.
May 8, 2010
a lot. I'm reading the recipes section now.
October 27, 2008
I purchased this book in May 2008. I'm still reading the book. Will update with a review when done.
Read
May 5, 2009It's not as stupid as the title would lead you to believe. There's a lot of interesting things about tea.
January 25, 2009
MCL. Replace high-calorie drinks with tea, eat healthily, & exercise and you'll lose weight -- remarkable! It does have quite a bit of tea-lore that is interesting.
January 3, 2010
If you love tea, pick this up. Its got a lot of great information even if you're not planning on dieting.
January 31, 2011
See my opinion on this book at my blog:
http://mandynlaw.blogspot.com/2011/01...
http://mandynlaw.blogspot.com/2011/01...
February 13, 2011
Interesting. Simple diet . Good description of the historybof tea. Learned a lot and I am a tea drinker. Made us go out and buy tea and taught us to know what we are buying....
March 6, 2013
IDEA: METABOLIC BENEFITS OF TEA.
October 1, 2014
This book was so fun. I liked how he included personal stories of people who found help with their health/weight loss by visiting his tea shop. I found the book interesting and inspiring.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews