How Drinking Tea Can Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolution

The New Year is here, and January is now in full swing. We all know what that means; attempting to stay on track with our New Year resolutions!

During January and February, millions of people around the world resolve to overcome a bad habit, form a positive new habit, or make a general change in their lives for the better.

More often than not, resolutions are based around our health and wellness - like goals to lose weight, quit smoking, improve digestive health, or work on improving personal failings. Unfortunately, no matter how many good intentions we hold toward achieving our resolutions, many of us fall off the wagon before we even get into February. 

Research has found that about 45 percent of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, but ONLY 8 percent achieve success with those goals, and 80 percent of all people who make New Year's resolutions ditch those resolutions by the first week of February.

So, sadly for many of us, every year it's the same old thing. You set your resolutions on January 1st, throw your motivation into the first week or two of January, and you’re your energy and the spirit of the New Year lags and you begin to slack. Eventually, your resolutions begin to fade away and you stop employing your goals altogether.

With the New Year now well underway, you’re probably beginning to feel your enthusiasm disappear along with the promises that you made to yourself.

This is exactly the reason why so many of us make the same resolutions year after year.

However, resolutions shouldn’t have to be a struggle or fall away until next year. There is something special about a symbolic oath taken as a resolution on January 1.

The New Year allows us to take a moment for introspection and reflection – we can truthfully view what we need to improve and change without judgment. Whether you make your resolutions silently or privately, a resolution is both possible and magical.

Whether your goal is to lose a few pounds, help your body recover from poor holiday decisions, or live a more natural lifestyle, you’re not going to fall off the wagon this year. We’re going to share our secret to healthy New Year success... it may sound unusual, but TEA could be the key!

Yep, regularly drinking tea isn’t just divine for our tastebuds, but our favorite beverage can also help you in your quest to achieve your New Year’s resolutions and make them last.

We’re going to discover how tea can help you attain these common health and wellness-related New Year’s resolutions. Let’s go!

If you resolve to live more sustainably:

Choosing to drink loose leaf tea is significantly better for the environment than using plastic tea bags, k-cups, store-bought sweetened teas, or your Starbucks habit.

By definition, loose leaf tea is tea herbs that don’t come prepackaged, unlike bagged teas. Loose-leaf tea is brewed by placing the tea leaves in hot water using a tea ball or strainer. This type of tea is generally packaged in tins, tea chests, paper bags, and glass jars.

Opting to drink tea brewed from loose-leaf tea decreases your carbon footprint considerably seeing as it cuts out the production of individual product packaging. Loose leaf tea also eliminates the need for string, staples, inks, and adhesives. As an extra perk, a loose leaf tea is fresher and more flavorful.

Another great sustainable option that tea can offer is tea herbs and blends in biodegradable tea bags. On average, most biodegradable plastics take three to six months to decompose. That is much faster than their regular synthetic counterparts that use plastics like polypropylene that can take over several hundred years to fully degrade.

This means if you’re currently buying a soda or cup of Starbucks coffee daily, and instead start drinking tea as your go-to beverage, you’ll be reducing aluminum, paper, glass, and even better, plastic waste.

Trust us, what seems like an innocent everyday beverage really starts adding up to a lot of waste. If you drink one bottle of soda a day, that’s already 365 plastic bottles in one year. By swapping to loose-leaf tea or biodegradable tea brands, you’ll be preventing a lot of trash and helping yourself take a more achievable step toward your goal to live more sustainably.

Here at Wise Ape tea, we offer incredible sustainable loose-leaf and biodegradable tea-bagged teas that are packed full of organic, all-natural herbs and adaptogens.

If you resolve to lose weight and/or hit the gym:

Not only is tea and clean beverage choice - full of antioxidants, containing no calories, with a balanced caffeine content, and super hydrating - but green tea could also be the closest thing we have to a weight-loss elixir and other particular teas might be able to increase exercise enhancement.

While drinking a cup of tea every day is probably not going to single-handedly get you to drop a pant size, research suggests tea especially green tea may boost your weight loss (when paired with a sensible diet and physical activity, of course) and gym results.

Green tea has been shown to rev up your metabolism, regulate blood sugar, and increase fat loss. 

“Drinking tea can also fuel your workouts and act as an all-natural alternative to pre-workout, that’ll boost your hydration and prevent your muscles from tiring, as well as being tons healthier for your heart and nervous system.

Individuals who drink tea before their workouts have reported increased endurance, elevated mental focus, and had reduced aches and pains after exercise. To get the most out of your pre-workout tea, try drinking 1 - 2 cups 30 - 45 minutes before you hit the gym.” (1)

Take a deeper look at why tea makes an awesome pre-workout drink. Click here to read: Why Tea Is The Best All Natural Pre-Workout Drink.

If you resolve to stop eating junk foods:

Aside from tea tasting delicious enough to leave you feeling satisfied, drinking tea has sugar and junk food craving fighting powers that we think we all need after trying to recover from the season of indulgence.

Firstly, if you’re the type of person who drinks and eats junk food for energy when you’re feeling sluggish and lethargic? Well, specific teas, including black and green particularly, contain a combination of caffeine and l-theanine. L-theanine is a unique antioxidant amino acid that stimulates your brain and when consumed along with caffeine (just like in tea) it can help you promote focus while providing you with a boost of long-lasting energy to make the most of the day.

Secondly, some teas, especially green tea and yerba mate, contain EGCG, which is an antioxidant that has been shown to be able to reduce food intake by influencing appetite hormones including CCK, and boosting metabolism.

Plus, tea is a great flavored drink substitute as it's usually calorie-free or low-calorie unlike soda, soft drinks, and well, most coffee drinks from your nearest coffee house. Yes, while coffee is healthy, there are many ultra-fattening additions to store and cafe-bought coffees.

If your resolution is to reduce your stress levels:

The past two years have been very stressful for the whole world. So, it is very understandable if this year you’re sick and tired of feeling overworked, overwhelmed, and stressed, and want to make it your goal this year to find your zen and happiness again.

Fortunately, tea might just help boost your mood and help you find your calm again.

More research needs to be done to find out exactly why this is, but researchers have found that drinking tea lowers levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. And because green tea contains folate, regular tea drinking might lower the risk of developing depression.

Furthermore, the process of drinking tea may also contribute to an increase in calmness and happiness after consumption. For many, drinking tea is like a ritual that goes further than simply throwing together a cup of tea every morning. Many people find the steps of brewing and drinking tea to be like a meditative time to collect their thoughts, find a sense of calm, and focus their senses on uncovering joy.

Have an amazingly healthy and happy year!

New Year’s resolutions can be tiring and lead us to lose motivation to make positive changes each year. However, it doesn’t need to be like this. The new year is a magical time of year, where everything should feel possible because it is. Every day is a chance to take the right steps toward your happiness and health, especially when you hold a cup of wisdom in your hand… aka tea!

“As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning." ― Criss Jami

This year let’s all make a splash with our goals by adding a splash of tea to make our New Year’s resolutions stronger and more attainable.

Now, what're you waiting for? All this tea talk has got us craving a hot tea. Why don't you join us in enjoying a health-promoting and flavorful cup of tea? Here at Wise Ape Tea, we combine premium tea with adaptogenic herbs, crafted to create bright, flavorful organic wellness-driven tea combos. This is the evolution of tea.

This informative article is written, by Sophia McKenzie. Sophia is head content creator and writer, for several premium websites, where her expertise lie in health, nutrition, and wellness. Her content is heavily focused on providing and sharing doable solutions to help people truly thrive, and live their happiest, healthiest, fulfilled life.