3 easy ways to lose more fat….

Today's Post: Friday, 6-19-2009

Yesterday we posted about how many vegetables are not only great for fat loss and why, with many of them, you also get cancer protection, particularly if you buy and eat organic vegetables.

And, in case you missed it, we included one of the 3 easy ways to lose more fat.:

1. Yesterday, Thurs, 6-18-2009, “…Dr Dharma Singh Khalsa’s health email had a reminder that recent research found that drinking only one glass of low-sodium vegetable juice a day helps you lose weight.

In one study, adults who drank at least 8 ounces of low sodium vegetable juice a day lost 4 pounds more than people who ate the same way but didn't drink the juice.

He also had a reminder that Research has found that people whose diets are highest in phytonutrients from plants have the lowest incidence of cancer.

His specialty is treating and preventing Alzheimer's disease; and he also noted that people who drink juice more than 3 times a week are 76% less likely to develop Alzheimer's.

He suggests you go with organic vegetables you juice yourself.

Organic vegetables will prevent cancer better. And by doing it yourself you can juice broccoli, broccoli sprouts, carrots, or kale to get a really healthful drink with no salt added.

(Vitamix makes the best juicer; but any good juicer works.)

But if you eat a very low salt diet otherwise, V8 or regular tomato juice works too for fat loss. They aren’t organic and do have added salt. But you may not have time every day to use and clean a juicer. Those juices will give you the fat loss benefit. And, they can be really easy to add to your diet. (I like the SNAPeTom juice that has the added hot spices.)

You can even get a Bloody Mary or Virgin Mary drink at a bar that has tomato juice. (That would work best for fat loss if you stuck with only one Bloody Mary or ordered a Virgin Mary.)”

So, no matter what else you do, if you simply add one glass of vegetable juice a day, you’ll be about 4 pounds lighter & less fat.

And, yesterday, Thurs, 6-18-2009, the NewsMax email had 5 stories 2 of which were the next two ways to lose more fat that are relatively easy to do.

2. Their second story was about research that found that when people went on a fatloss program, the people who tested at the beginning as having blood levels of vitamin D that were in the high normal and desirable range, they lost several pounds more than people who were quite deficient. In fact, the relationship was almost one to one. Every point of less vitamin D in the blood predicted less fat lost. (Vitamin D is measured in the blood using the measure, ng/mL.)

This means one of two things. Either there is something about the actions of vitamin D in the body that enhances fat loss. Or people who spend more time outside (where they get vitamin D from the sun) tend to lose more fat, possibly because they tend to get more exercise.

I suspect both things are true. And, one of the reasons the level of vitamin D may work directly is because when the level is low, when our ancestors lived outside, that meant less sun and colder weather for which our body fat acted as an internal coat. So holding on to it meant you would be a bit less likely to freeze or get hypothermia.

Walking regularly, whether it’s done inside on a treadmill or outside, does help lose fat. But some people may have very little time for it or no safe place to walk. And there are other exercises people can do inside or in less time that work to remove fat, such as skipping a rope.

But I believe that this finding also means that simply taking the vitamin D3 you should be taking, that we now know for optimum health, for strong bones, and for cancer protection of a total of 2,000 to 4,000 iu a day – or 10,000 a day for a couple of weeks first if your blood levels test low at first, WILL enable you to lose several pounds more fat than you otherwise would have lost. It’s not only easy to do, it’s quite inexpensive. Compared to most supplements, vitamin D3 is cheap. And, given the many health benefits of getting enough vitamin D3, you very likely will save much more on future medical bills than it costs.

3. Their fifth story had information showing that taking in some vinegar (or the acetic acid in it) every day tends to lower high blood sugar and can result in up to either 10 % of your whole bodyweight in less fat gained or 10 % of your whole bodyweight in more fat lost.

The research was done in mice. But the metabolic changes the researchers found strongly suggests it works in people too. And their story starts with the information that vinegar has long been a folk remedy associated with good health.

I think the way vinegar works in people comes from two reasons.

First, it tends to be used in salad dressings or in pickling both of which are done with vegetables and give them a more interesting taste. As we posted about yesterday, the more vegetables you eat the less fat you are. So a way to spice them up that itself has no calories is a good way to go. You can also get flavored vinegars such as Balsamic vinegar. Some Balsamic vinegars have really obnoxious flavors; but some are delicious. And some vinegars from apples, grapes or wine are red in color while Balsamic vinegars are brown. So you can add color to salads with them.

Second, and perhaps the factor in the research with mice, vinegar or acetic acid in some way slows stomach emptying. That benefits fat loss in two ways. Since that means you get the calories more slowly, the resulting glycemic index of what you ate and the amount of insulin your body needs to use to process it goes down. That results in less fat being deposited. And, it means it takes a bit longer before you get hungry again so you eat less as a result of that.

So, if you use vinegar with salads once or twice a day, you eat more vegetables; you deposit less fat from what you eat; and you eat less.

So, my guess is that vinegar works with people to help them lose more fat or not gain it in the first place, just like it did with the mice.

This clearly works less well with a salad dressing that has poor quality oils or mayonnaise and which contains sugar, extra salt, MSG, and/or high fructose corn syrup than it would using the vinegar by itself or with some extra virgin olive oil -- perhaps extra virgin olive oil and vinegar flavored with tomato paste, spices like oregano, and/or crushed or minced fresh garlic.