The Foods That Fight Fat
The fact is, no matter how fit you are, you’ll never have abs you can see or rippling muscles unless you eat right. Today, I’ll teach you exactly how.
Ben Greenfield
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The Foods That Fight Fat
I used to be that active athlete and fitness enthusiast you’d find diving into hamburger, french fries, and energy drinks— after all, if you’re exercising hard you can stuff anything into your mouth and subsequently burn it off, right? But over the past several years, I’ve realized there’s just a smarter way to do things, and there are three crucial concepts that come to play when choosing the way you’re going to eat. The fact is, no matter how fit you are, you’ll never have abs you can see or rippling muscles unless you eat right.
3 Crucial Food and Fat Loss Concepts
Let’s begin with three crucial food and fat loss concepts.
Crucial Concept 1: Certain types of foods can cause inflammation. The inflammation can cause insulin insensitivity, among a host of other chronic diseases. And one particularly annoying byproduct of this inflammation is fat deposition, chronic fatigue, poor performance, and weight gain.
Crucial Concept 2: Almost every person on the planet has a food allergy, intolerance, or sensitivity. If these are not taken into consideration, the result is a compromised immune system, missed training days, bloating and gas, and once again, resistance to fat loss and a propensity for weight gain.
Crucial Concept 3: Your body can only handle a finite amount of preservatives, genetically modified foods, artificial sweeteners, toxins, and foreign objects before it develops a toxin overload, which sometimes manifests itself as sickness, sometimes as hardened arteries and sometimes as cancer.
Let’s delve a bit deeper into the first of these crucial concepts, and develop a practical solution to tackle it.
You’ll recall that Crucial Concept 1 indicated certain types of foods can cause inflammation. These include foods that cause a “hyperglycemic” response, or a quick release of blood sugar. Included among the most notorious inflammation-producers are muffins, cookies, juices, scones, biscotti, pasta, bread, baked goods…you get the idea.
Any sugar that is refined or processed and is low in fiber falls into the inflammation camp. This is not a science manual, and simply a practical guide to holistic nutrition, but in a nutshell, the inflammatory response is a response of your body’s eicosanoids and cytokines, and production of arachidonic acid, all of which are triggered by high blood sugar and high insulin levels.
The result of constantly high circulating blood sugar levels is a resistance to insulin, one of your body’s most important hormones, and the hormone that is responsible for delivering sugars into the muscles to be stored as energy. As your body becomes less sensitive to (resistant to) insulin, you’re less likely to take up storage sugars for use during exercise and more likely to leave those sugars circulating in the bloodstream, where they’re eventually dumped off into the liver and converted into fats.
The conversion of the sugar into fat can cause high blood triglycerides and high levels of something called “small oxidized cholesterol,” the most dangerous of cholesterols, especially for anyone concerned about cardiovascular health.
Another result of this “hyperglycemia” is something called leptin resistance. Leptin is your primary appetite-regulating hormone, and you become insensitive to your body’s cries to “stop eating” or “feel full.” The result is carbohydrate cravings and weight gain.
Your immune system becomes activated into a hyperalert status due to the chronic state of inflammation from hyperglycemia and high circulating insulin levels. This means you get sicker much easier when you’re exposed to germs. Do you know Ironman triathletes (ironically considered by many to be an uber-healthy portion of the population) get sick around once a month, miss 4-5 quality days of training that month, and miss up to 60 days of quality training during a year? That is the result of a hyperalert immune system.
Finally, when the extremely high blood sugar levels are “controlled” by an over-production of insulin, there is typically a subsequent sharp drop in blood sugar levels. The result is chronic fatigue and a large slump in energy.
So let’s review:
Refined sugars that are low in fiber cause hyperglycemia
Hyperglycemia causes a chronic inflammatory state
Inflammation cases an unstable appetite, low energy storage levels, frequent episodes of sickness, cardiovascular disease and weight gain
As if that weren’t enough, these foods can result in the creation of tiny electrons that wreak havoc on normal cellular metabolism. These little guys actually are highly inflammatory as well.
So are you worried that your body might be in a chronic inflammatory state? Are you concerned that a traditional carbohydrate intensive might be actually doing you more harm than energy-fulfilling good?
What Is the Solution?
The solution is actually two-fold. Let’s dive in, shall we?
When consumed in moderation these types of carbohydrates provide stable energy sources that contain more than enough nutrient density for the needs of an endurance athlete.
Solution #1: Emphasize low-glycemic index carbohydrates.
Low-glycemic index carbohydrates will cause a far less pronounced increase in blood sugar, and typically result in a slower and steadier insulin release, thus reducing potential for a chronic inflammatory state. When consumed in moderation these types of carbohydrates provide stable energy sources that contain more than enough nutrient density for the needs of an endurance athlete.
For a comprehensive list of the type of carbohydrates that are lowest on the glycemic index, you can go to a website such as www.glycemicindex.com.
Here are some of the top-ranking low-glycemic index carbohydrates that should be your high priority picks for maintaining your body’s storage carbohydrate levels (aka muscle glycogen) without risking inflammation:
- Apples (preferably green)
- Applesauce (unsweetened, add cinnamon for even greater blood sugar control)
- Cherries
- Peaches
- Plums
- Pears
- Nectarines
- Grapefruit
- Blueberries
- Chick peas (AKA garbanzo beans/ hummus)
- Lentils
- Milk (organic, rice, coconut, almond or goat’s mlik)
- Yogurt (plain yogurt is the only low-glycemic index version)
- Nuts and nut butters (except peanuts, which are not a nut)
- Eggplant
- Mushrooms
- Onions,
- Tomatoes
- Nearly any vegetable
Not low-glycemic, but also much less potential for chronic inflammation and more energy dense than several of the sources listed above:
- Sweet potatoes
- Parsnips
- Carrots
- Yams
- Beets
- Quinoa
- Amaranth
- Millet
- Squash
- Pumpkin
Solution #2: Consume an “anti-inflammatory” diet.
To shut down inflammation, inclusion of the characteristics of a classic Anti-Inflammatory Diet is highly important. My fellow Quick And Dirty Tips podcast “The Nutrition Diva” has a great website devoted to this, but here are a couple of quick and dirty steps that teach you how to do it:
- Consume Omega-3’s
Here’s why omega-3’s are important. Basically, one hundred years ago, the process of removing oils from vegetables and seeds changed. It changed to something called “screw-nut expelling,” and while this allowed a more industrialized, mass extraction of the oils in corn, sunflower, safflower and peanuts, it also destroyed much of the valuable omega 3 fatty acid content, and concentrated the omega 6 fatty acid content.
It also destroyed much of the valuable omega 3 fatty acid content, and concentrated the omega 6 fatty acid content.
And that’s a bad thing, as I’ll explain shortly.
In addition, farming practices have gradually evolved to give animals diets and mass-produced feed that is high in omega 6 fatty acids, but low in omega 3’s. Even fish raised on fish farms is relatively low in omega 3’s, since farm feed does not provide the omega 3 rich phytoplankton that wild fish can eat.
As if that weren’t enough, food manufacturers have figured out that omega 3 fatty acids reduce shelf life of a food product, so many packaged and processed foods have had their omega 3’s purposefully removed! And the process of fat hydrogenation for making convenient foods like margarine and cream cheese instantly destroys omega 3’s! And any packaged food needs hydrogenated fats to actually last long enough to make it into your cupboard.
So why are these bad things?
- In clinical studiesopens PDF file , a direct correlation has been observed between omega 3 fatty acid deficiencies, increased consumption of omega 6 fatty acids, and rise in Western degenerative diseases and illnesses (over 50 of them, in fact).
- Omega 6 fatty acids promote inflammation in the body, which can result in cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and arthritis. Omega 3, on the other hand, is anti-inflammatory and supports healthy heart, brain, nerve and eye function.. Unfortunately, the current ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 in the typical American diet is about 10:1 to 20:1. Go ahead and check out the nutrition label of most foods, and you’ll find omega 6 rich sources like sunflower, safflower, peanut and corns oils.
- For those of you not worried about chronic disease, consider that in just a 3 week period of time, omega 3 fatty acids have been observed to cause a 2lb increase in completely fat-free lean muscle, with no other dietary changes!
So now that you know about the elimination of omega 3 in most foods, I should tell you that the only exception is the very small amounts of omega 3’s found in vegetables, seaweed and some nuts and seeds, and, perhaps more conveniently the highly concentrated omega 3 sources found in grass fed beef and wild-caught cold water fish.
2.) Optimize Fiber
Fiber helps fight inflammation, and the nutrients such as anthocyanins and polyphenols in dark vegetables and fruits do too. So eat your vegetables and berries, and choose the most colorful vegetables and fruits possible, including:
Blue/Purple: The blue/purple hues in foods are due primarily to their anthocyanin content. Examples: Eggplant, blueberries, blackberries, prunes, plums, pomegranates
Green: The natural plant pigment chlorophyll is great for metabolism and colors green fruits and vegetables. Examples: Broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, Brussels sprouts
Red: Lycopene is the predominant pigment in reddish fruits and veggies, and is a powerful antioxidant. Examples: Tomatoes and tomato products, watermelon, pink grapefruit, guava, cranberries
Yellow/Orange: Orange/yellow foods are high in beta-cryptoxanthin, vitamin C and beta-carotene, which are particularly good antioxidants. Examples: Carrots, mangos, cantaloupe, winter squash, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, apricots
Summary
So let’s review these simple concepts you’ve just learned.
Inflammation makes you fat.
Your first strategy to fight inflammation is to consume foods that are low in the glycemic index, especially choosing low glycemic when you are consuming carbohydrates. Eating anti-inflammatory foods in the form of omega-3 fatty acids and darkly colored fruits and vegetables is the second most effective strategy. Simply put these two strategies together and watch the fat melt off your body!
If you have more questions, comments or feedback about these foods that fight fat, then you can join the conversation at Facebook.com/getfitguy.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.