I drink green tea all day and as I don’t drink coffee or regular tea, green tea is my hot drink of choice. In the last few months, however, I have decided to try some detox / weight loss teas. Years ago I got caught up in the hype of pu-erh tea when it wasn’t easily available in supermarkets and paid ridiculous amounts of money for it in health food shops. I quite liked the taste of the tea and it did help with digestion but I wasn’t instantly transformed into a supermodel by consuming it. Almost ten years later, however, I decided to give the world of the miracle teatox another go. I wanted to start my healthier regime with a tea boost and I had seen all of the impressive images online. I suppose I was taken in by them. I tried both Bootea and more recently Fabuloss.
Bootea
I had read plenty of amazing reviews of Bootea. Advocates stated that they lost 7 pounds within a week and felt great as a result of its detox properties. Although the tea was pricey I decided to try it. I ordered it from Holland and Barrett but it can also be bought directly from Bootea’s website. The tea comes in both a day and night version and can be bought for 14 or 28 days. I decided to start with the 14 day option which cost €26. The day version is a Chinese oolong tea and is to be consumed first thing in the morning on a daily basis and the night one is consumed before bed every second evening. The day tea contains maté leaves, ginger root, fennel seeds, lemongrass, dandelion leaf, ginseng root, gotu kola leaves and nettle leaves. The night one is packed with lots of lovely ingredients to ensure a cleansing of the bowels. In other words, it will make you poop! It contains senna leaves, peppermint leaves, fenugreek seeds, liquorice root, burdock root, hawthorn leaves, valerian root and psyllium seeds. The tea tasted like other herbal detoxes I had tried before. I’m not overly fond of it but I can manage it. The night one is a bit stronger than the day one and has a liquorice taste to it.
The website lists a sample food plan to accompany the tea and although I did not follow every piece of the plan due to my own personal tastes and food allergies, I did stick to healthy eating. So did Bootea work? Quite simply no. I didn’t feel or look any different and I didn’t even find the night version very cleansing. For me it was a waste of money.
Fabuloss
Whilst at the Irish Beauty Show in the RDS on the 8th of March, I was introduced to Fabuloss tea. Again this comes in a day and night version. Both packs were on offer for €15 so I decided to give it a go. Fabuloss states it will increase the body’s ability to burn fat and increase energy. The day tea contains natural herbs, nettle, fennel and hawthorn. The night tea contains senna leaves and lemon grass. The taste of the tea is a lot stronger than Bootea but the idea is the same, one cup in the morning of the day version and a cup of the night tea every second evening. After two days of trying the tea I started to feel a bit sick. I thought maybe it was all the internal badness in me coming out and kept consuming the tea to further detox! The night tea is the strongest thing on earth, sorry for being graphic but I was practically living in the toilet. The sick feeling continued to get worse and it was at the point where I was quite sure an alien was going to burst out of my stomach. The tea did reduce my appetite but only because I felt too ill to eat. After 8 or 9 days I stopped drinking the tea to see if I felt better and I did. A few days later I had another cup just to make sure I wasn’t unfairly labelling the tea as the cause of my sickness. Within an hour or two I had the same stomach pains again. For whatever reason it just didn’t agree with me and I haven’t finished it.
I don’t think these types of tea are for me and instead I will continue to drink green tea as much as I possibly can. The only thing that was visibly detoxed after these teas was my bank account! For me the best detox I have tried is hot water and lemon each morning and green tea throughout the day. Both cost considerably less than a packet of Bootea or Fabuloss and I don’t feel sick as a result. I’d love to hear your opinion on these teas. Have you tried them and loved them or do you feel they are a bit of a gimmick?
