When you start trying to
lose weight, you inevitably wind up spending your first few weeks fighting to
lose a few pounds only to watch them come back in the next couple of days.
Weeks of this can go by, and you might be doing nearly everything right. You
could be exercising properly, dieting appropriately, watching your calories...
but the switch hasn't been flipped yet.
Then, one day, you see
the scale drop for the second day in a row. Then a week goes by and you've lost
a few pounds, and it happens again the next week. You haven't changed anything,
but something definitely happened.
Your metabolism likely
changed. Your metabolism is the key component in getting your body to lose or
gain any reasonable amount of weight, and sometimes even when you are doing
nearly everything right, it takes a while for your body to change the way it
intakes and processes energy.
So when you're trying to
lose weight, you're mostly trying to change the way your body processes food.
If you can't change your metabolism, it's almost inevitable that your body will
fall back to its natural resting point at some point.
The good news is that we
know more and more about how to boost our metabolism all the time, through the
miracle of large scale studies and SCIENCE!
And I'm about to share
with you one of the best ways to lose weight: eating. Eating the right foods,
specifically.
You see just like how
carbohydrates can encourage your body to store weight, other foods can
encourage your body to burn calories or fat. We scoured the depths of the
internet looking for the most potent metabolism-boosting foods, and have
dredged up five of our favorites to help you on your journey to lasting weight
loss.
Let's do this:
SALMON
Oh I know you remember salmon. Those Omega-3's
we've talk about? The fatty acids? Well apparently having a low intake of
Omega-3's has been linked to being overweight or obese, which is not groovy. In particular, low
Omega-3's are linked to higher incidence of belly fat, which is a greater
predictor of poor health in the long run.
Moreover, Salmon has the
proteins your body needs to construct muscle, so that the exercise you've been
doing has an easier time paying off.
NUTS
Healthy nuts (ditch the spicy peanuts) make you feel full with
plenty of protein and fiber, while also offering a variety of
added benefits.
Nuts are another great
source of healthy fats as well. Yup, just like Salmon, nuts can offer the fatty
acids that you need in your diet that you can't otherwise get from your body or
effectively from supplementation.
Almonds are also a great
source of vitamin E and calcium. Vitamin E is an antioxidant that can help keep
your body free of those pesky liberated radicals that damage your cells and
make it harder to keep active.
SPINACH
Spinach is nutrient dense
and super low calorie, meaning you can have giant salads and still not feel too
guilty if you did the rest of the toppings right.
Spinach is also high in
iron, vitamin C, and potassium. Potassium is crucial in mental performance,
which also makes it crucial in boosting your metabolism. If your brain is
foggy, odds are you're not going to be getting up and getting active.
It's also another food
with helpful antioxidants which can help repair damaged tissues, getting you
healthier faster.
AVOCADO
You might be getting sick
of hearing about healthy fats by now, but have you heard about the healthy fats
in avocados?
Alright let's pause for a
minute. I might not have made it clear enough earlier, but there's a good
reason to intake a lot of fats in your diet. You see, if you want your body to
burn fat, it needs to be used to burning it for fuel, and become good at it.
Getting your body to run
on fats instead of carbohydrates is called entering a state of ketosis,
and it's becoming more and more commonly used as a weight loss and health
strategy.
The benefits of avocados
are greater than just being high in healthy fats though, avocados also help
your body intake fat soluble vitamins like D & E, so eating avocados
alongside vitamin rich meals makes them even better for your body.
If you like your eyes,
avocados also contain lutein. Lutein helps protect your eyes from damage as
well as repair damage done by the sun.
EGGS
For men, eggs increase
testosterone, which will definitely increase your body's ability to use fuel.
For everyone however,
eggs are again a great source of Omega-3's, as well as protein.
Eggs also contain
vitamins D, B6, and B12, alongside selenium, zinc, iron, and copper. They also
raise good cholesterol, and for those who worry, you can ignore the cholesterol
in eggs. There is no correlation between the amount of cholesterol that you
intake in your diet and the amount present in your blood.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Now admittedly no single
food is going to kick your metabolism into gear, or we all would have heard
about it by now. However, if you use this list to start focusing your diet
around nutritionally dense foods that help your body's overall health, and
avoid foods that harm your metabolism, you will eventually hit a point where
your body becomes more efficient and starts burning your fuel instead of
storing it.
In the meantime, if you
need a low-calorie snack to hold you over, there's always NeuroGum Nootropic Energy Gum ;). Neurogum
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