For the Love of Tea

I was walking by a closed bookstore and a title caught my eye:  The Ultimate TEA Diet; Boost your Metabolism, shrink your appetite and kick-start remarkable weight loss.  This seemed like a dream come true to me.  You see Tea, and when I say Tea, I mean Iced Tea, said with the most reverence possible, is my vice of choice.

I have a complete love affair with tea.  Russ brings it to me in bed every morning because he is a really smart man, if you know what I mean.

I make a two-quart pitcher of my own special recipe almost everyday.  I run the hot water tap until it gets as hot as it ever does into my blue plastic pitcher and put in eleven regular Lipton tea bags, the small ones, never the big giant ones nor the Iced Tea blend.

I let those bags steep for 20 minutes, but sometimes I forget about the pitcher and it sits on the counter for three hours.  It does not seem to matter how long I let it steep.  It is always perfect.  When I ask friends who are visiting if they would like something to drink, they often say, “I’d love some of your Tea.”  See, it is my tea.  Somehow it is better than regular Tea.  Why is that?

It could be that the temperature of my hot from the tap, never boiled water is just right to elicit those delicate flavors out of cheep-ass-bought-at-Costco-tea bags.  Maybe it is the eleven-bags ratio to two quarts of water.  Who knows, but it is the stuff I crave.  Well, the Tea with fresh lime juice and Sweet’n Low.

My Sweet’n Low addiction in Tea is serious.  I know there have been a lot of newcomers to the artificial sweetener world.  Those claiming to taste more like sugar, or be less carcinogenic, but I grew up in the 70’s, era of great chemical tastes, like Tang and Tab.  I crave that artificial-pink-packet flavor in my Tea.  I even carry it in my purse because so many new-age hip eateries do not espouse those non-organic sweeteners in favor of natural stuff like Stevia.  No match, in my Tea world.

So understanding how much I love Tea and how serious my addiction is, you would think that a book called the TEA Diet would be perfect for me… Hold your horses.  If drinking tea really did do all the things that this book titled promised how the hell did I get so fat to begin with?

Without actually reading the book this is what I think about it.  Eating less is about the only way to lose weight.  Eating less sugar, white flour and fat helps you lose it faster.  Exercise helps, it helps a lot, but Tea is not the answer.

Tea, being my last surviving addiction (as long as I stay off sugar) may not actually be bad for me, but I still consider it an addiction.  I’m just glad that I don’t need to go to Tea drinkers anonymous.