Fat-free salad dressings, low-fat yogurts, and other boring diet foods, they can actually make it harder for you to lose weight. They are not the healthy foods you think they are. Now here's the good news. You don't have to shrink your diet to shrink your waistline. You can actually add before you take away. And I'm going to share nine foods that you're want to incorporate into your meals that'll help you reach your body composition goals.
1. Apple Cider Vinegar
So the first one is apple cider vinegar, and gosh, it does so many cool things. First of all, it contains acetic acid and acetic acid can help regulate the genes that help your body store less fat and burn more fat.
The next cool thing it can do, and this is why I want you to take it before your meals, it can help lower the blood sugar response to the meal. It actually slows the rate at which carbs are broken down and absorbed into the bloodstream.
So what does that mean to you? Less stored fat, better blood sugar control, and big one, less cravings.
Those weight loss supplements that we've been hearing about like, azimbic, monjaro, one of the things that they do is slow down stomach emptying. Guess what? Apple cider vinegar does it too. It helps food stay in the stomach longer, which means you're going to feel fuller longer and that means you'll eat less. Now here's just one caveat about this. Don't just chug it from the container.
I know you wouldn't do that anyway, but that would trash your tooth and animal. So as long as you dilute it, you're totally cool. One of my favorite ways to have it, which we're going to talk about this one in a bit, is with green tea.
2. Lemon Juice
The next one, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar is great for blood sugar, and so is lemon juice. And what I love about lemon juice is you can get a lot of flavor without a big sugar hit and a bunch of calories. It's got a low glycemic load, it's low in the sugar impact diet. It's going to help with digestion.
It can actually help you absorb nutrients better and reduce bloating. Plus, of course, it's rich in vitamin C. And vitamin C is super important because it's an antioxidant that helps make carnitine. And carnitine can help break down fatty acids so that you can use them as fuel rather than keep them stored as fat.
So you've got to have enough carnitine so that your body can use fat better, which can help you lose fat better. Now, one other thing with lemon juice are these polyphenols that can slow the digestion or absorption of carbs. Again, very similar to apple cider vinegar, and that's going to help you not have those blood sugar spikes and elevated blood sugar, which then can lead to more fat storage.
So apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, number three, should come as no surprise if you've been reading my posts, and it is protein. And when I think of great protein sources, I'm thinking wild fish, especially wild salmon, grass-fed and grass-finished beef, lamb, collagen, bone broth protein.
There's so many cool things that protein does. First of all, it helps you not be hungry, it increases satiety. You know, all bets are off if you're hungry, it's impossible to stay on your healthy eating plan if you're hungry, let's be real. So that's the first one, it can dramatically improve satiety.
The second one is that it's more thermic. So we've got three macronutrients, right? We've got protein, we've got carbs, we've got fat. Protein has a 20 to 30 percent higher thermic effect than carbs or fat. Carbs are like around 10 percent fat. It doesn't really take much for your body to use fat, right? But protein, your body has to do a lot of work for.
That's fantastic, in fact, what we know is that even if all you did in your diet, same, it's isochloric, same calorie load, if you took your protein up, say from 10 to 12 percent, which is the standard awful diet, right? Up to more of the 20 to 25 percent, replacing out, kicking out some of the fats or carbs, you would lose weight.
Now, the other things, and I think of this as that trifecta of satiety, thermic effect, and blood sugar control. I'm talking a lot about blood sugar control, but gosh, that is so mission critical for great sustained energy, and of course, to help you not get insulin resistant. Speaking of insulin resistance, protein, of course, is necessary for you supporting good muscle protein synthesis, right? And we've got to have that for good insulin sensitivity.
We want you doing resistance training and then feeding your body what it needs in terms of those amino acids through protein so you can rebuild. And if you're doing that, all that muscle protein synthesis is going to burn more calories at rest. We know muscle is more metabolically active than your fat tissue, of course.
Now, one other thing, protein has been found to increase fat burning. You know, fat oxidation is the process of using stored body fat as a fuel source. I don't know about you, but I would much rather be burning off stored body fat, right? And we know, again, if you have that higher protein intake, it's going to help you use fat for energy better and help support fat loss.
3. Green tea
Green tea is something that I put into my diet every single day. In fact, one of the things I like to do is do a big 32-ouncer of it when I'm going to the gym, because green tea does so many cool things. First of all, it's been found to help increase fat oxidation, which we just talked about with protein intake.
That's how you can use stored body fat as fuel. It also can help impact your hunger-regulating hormones, ghrelin and leptin. So your brain hears the message of, like, I'm good, I'm full, right? And again, you got to work on satiety, because if you're hungry, like, how are you going to be rational? Then it's got this catechin called epigalactocatechin-3-galate, EGCG.
I was always taught to go, it's an egg with a C in the middle, EGCG. And EGCG can boost thermogenesis. It can help raise your metabolic rate. It also can reduce inflammation.
Now, here's the big bad thing about inflammation. I mean, obviously, you know, inflammation is a bad thing. It's its own risk factor for obesity, because it basically locks the doors on your fat cells. So your body cannot access that stored fat for energy. Also, chronic inflammation puts the brakes on muscle protein synthesis, increases your risk of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
And of course, it's not good for your heart or brain. So big thing there. So green tea and the EGCG in it have these anti-inflammatory effects, because they suppress inflammation-causing enzymes and molecules.
Then the other one is what it's doing to your gut microbiome. And I learned this from Dr. Gaturo Rump. Green tea can influence the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut and it can also stop the development of the bad kind. So it can help you create that balance that you want in your microbiome.
What we're just really seeing with microbiome is that the balance of your bacteria in your microbiome can ultimately make, I mean, it impacts your immune system, your mood, but it also hugely impacts your weight. Depending on the types of bacteria you have in your gut, it can make the difference between you storing more calories from the food you eat as fat or burning more calories off. I know which one I want to have.
There's also prebiotics in green tea that can also help your gut bacteria and there's one more thing that I got to do a shout out in green tea, and it's the L-theanine in there. Now, L-theanine is basically the precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA.
GABA is that calming neurotransmitter, what you'll find is very different than coffee. If you're drinking green tea, yes, it has some caffeine, but the theanine is like calming. So it's this great calming buzz. But speaking of buzzing, coffee is also getting the shout out.
4. Coffee
Coffee is the other thing and I literally will tell you, I go to the gym with a coffee and a green tea. That's what I go double fisted in every single day. They stopped making jokes about it because it's just like my normal.
But why is caffeine so important? Well, we know caffeine can increase metabolic rate and help you burn more calories. It boosts metabolism. It temporarily will increase your body temperature and it will stimulate thermogenesis and improve fat burning.
While it's doing that, it's also suppressing your appetite because it influences the hormones that regulate hunger and fullness. And of course, along with that, it can curb cravings, it's something called an ergogenic aid.
In fact, you know, it's monitored with professional athletes because of what it can do for exercise performance. It makes you more alert, more focused. It reduces that whole perceived exertion of how hard workouts are, and which is why I always have some when I'm going into my workout so I can work out harder.
So here's a little hack for you with your coffee, you can take your coffee in the morning, then you can throw in some of my collagen.
You can throw in some of my bone broth protein. Or if you want to make like the killer mocha, take some of my collagen and take this Living Ratio Cacao Calm with some mushroom extracts. Amazing. It's a great thing that you can do to really get a great workout deliciously.
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