Boost your metabolism to lose fat, part 4.....

Today's post:  Thursday, 2-23-2017

In some ways there are two basics for permanent fat loss.

1.  Stop routinely ingesting the things that reliably fatten you.

Then you stop making the problem worse!

2.  Boost your metabolism so you burn more calories twenty-four hours a day.

Over time that will remove your excess fat.

People who succeed at anything we now know take consistent action and keep doing it;

-- and they use what Reverend Bob Schuler called “experimental persistence”: They not only keep at things until they get the results they want, they take action and test things; they scrap the things that fail but learn from what happens, they look for new things to try and try them, they put in the time as a priority increasing their abilities and trying again. 

A new book describing this is called “Grit.” 

Use that on these two actions and you can lose fat and keep it off!

2.  Boost your metabolism so you burn more calories twenty-four hours a day.

Over time that will remove your excess fat.

There are four ways to do that:

a) Increase your muscle mass and healthy bone mass. AND, do the things that prevent losing them.  (Part 2 last week had those methods.) 

b) Make sure your thyroid levels which control your metabolism are high enough to give you energy and burn fat and NOT low enough to do the reverse. 

AND, make sure your mitochondria that are the power centers for each of your cells that supply their energy remain plentiful and healthy. This ALSO slows aging; and the way that MSG & its cousins reliably fatten apparently is to do the reverse!

c)  Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!  (There ARE some; and eating them is a key to losing fat you keep off because you can do it without excess hunger.)

d) Ensure that the bacteria in your gut aren’t making sure you gain and store fat. 

(Research shows that if you import otherwise healthy gut bacteria to cure the dangerous C. Difficile infection but do so from a fat person, these gut bacteria then make YOU fat.

And, more recent research has found that when you lose fat even without triggering the low energy plus increase in hunger of the famine response by using calorie cut backs only some days each week or by properly done fasting, a separate genetic program causes those same bacteria to increase unless it’s blocked.)

Last time we ended on ways to keep your thyroid at a level that burns calories and gives you a feeling of energy and ways to keep the power centers of each of your cells, the mitochondria plentiful and healthy – part b) above.

Before we resume and cover part c), Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!, here’s one more way to keep your metabolism high:

Somehow I saw this recently from a study written up by Women's Health initially:

"....new research sheds some light on how exactly anxiety may lead to weight gain: Women burn fewer calories in the 24 hours following stressful events, according to a new study from the journal Biological Psychiatry. 

For the study, researchers from Ohio State University interviewed 58 healthy women about the stressors they'd experienced in the previous 24 hours, then served them a high-fat meal that included eggs, turkey sausage, biscuits, and gravy (the meal came to 930 calories and 60 grams of fat).

Afterward, researchers tested the women's metabolic responses -- how quickly they burned calories and fat -- for the next seven hours.

Although all of the women simply rested after eating, those who struggled with stressors the previous day expended significantly less metabolic energy than those who reported no stress; on average, they burned 104 fewer calories.

At this rate, they could gain 11 extra pounds per year without changing any other diet and exercise habits.

Why? In addition to slower post-meal energy expenditure, women who reported more stressors also experienced lower fat oxidation and higher insulin production. The less fat your body oxidizes, the more fat you store and the higher your risk is for obesity; high insulin levels also enhance fat storage."

Insulin has two effects: with high protein and low carbohydrates and low blood sugar, as it does with grass fed dairy foods, particularly for those who strength train, it acts as a growth hormone to rebuild and repair lean muscle and bone.  It even tends to remove fat a bit!

However, when that kind of exercise is low and carbohydrates and blood sugar are high, insulin acts to fatten and lock down fat stores!

Hydrogenated oils are likely to add to that effect.  Note that in this experiment, gravy has refined grain, hybrid wheat and biscuits also do and in most fast food places and premixes also have hydrogenated oils.

So, clearly when these stressed women ate those foods and stress boosted their insulin, it reduced their metabolism and fattened them.

It’s long been known that not over-stressing over minor problems, solving many of them easily, and being able to recover to a low stress state quickly after that tends to prevent this kind of metabolism drop.  That’s a big subject by itself! 

But, by doing those 3 things the best you can and avoiding foods like refined grain hybrid wheat that slam up blood sugar, you can reduce this effect.

Next, in part 4 this week we cover:

c)  Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!  (There ARE some; and eating them is a key to losing fat you keep off because you can do it without excess hunger.)   

There are three kinds of such foods:

*Foods high in the omega 9 monosaturated oils.

*Protein foods from animal sources that only eat unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so.

*Organic, nonstarchy vegetables of several kinds.

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*Foods high in the omega 9 monosaturated oils.

For those who are not allergic to them and can buy them readily, raw and unsalted and shelled tree nuts such as almonds, pecans, and walnuts – and Brazil nuts-- are the best of these.

The effect is striking.  People who eat a moderate amount of such nuts most days of every week burn MORE calories than people who do not do so; they consume more calories each day than people who do not; AND they are LESS fat and weight LESS.

That bears repeating.  People who eat raw nuts take in MORE calories and become less hungry but are LESS fat and weigh less than people who do not!

It also helps that many of these nuts have other health benefits.  The amount of badly needed minerals and tiny amounts of rare minerals your body needs but normally does not get are significant.  Because these foods can be eaten with no boost to inflammation unlike grain oils including canola that DO have lots of omega 6 oils to boost inflammation, they prevent people from eating as many of those or ideally ANY of those.

They satisfy hunger so well because they have their monosaturated oil and protein and fiber all at the same time.  And, with no to very tiny amounts of sugars, they have a glycemic index of ZERO and create no blood sugar surge or rebound hunger.

And, because they are so filling and taste so good, they help people to eat less sugars and high glycemic grains too!

Extra virgin olive oil is in this category too.  In addition to its high monosaturated fat content, extra virgin olive oil contains olive leaf extract and similar micronutrients.

Lastly, for those not allergic, avocados, avocado paste, and guacamole with only health OK other foods, are also in this category.

And, where nuts are almost a perfect mineral provider, avocadoes are an almost perfect vitamin provider! 

*Protein foods from animal sources that only eat unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so.

These foods have no pro-inflammatory high omega 6 content from being fed grains.  They have no antibiotics every day to overcome the illnesses animals fed such grains get.  They have no bioconcentrated herbicides and pesticides that the grains are sprayed with in their fat.

And, animals fed only unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so have saturated fat that is actually good for you to eat but less of it. Because they move normally instead of being penned up, they are less fat AND less stressed.

And, wild caught fish that only eat unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so have the omega 3 oils that REDUCE inflammation.  (Smaller kinds of salmon and mackerel and smaller fish like herring and sardines are low in mercury too.)

One piece of research found that a very low calorie diet with low protein resulted in severe hunger, depression, and low energy but a diet with the same very low calories but high in protein did not.

*Organic, nonstarchy vegetables of several kinds. 

Some parts of hunger are due to having an empty stomach. And super low carb diets while effective for fat loss have such low carbs that some people get low mood and reduced metabolism from eating them.   (As we just covered, this is less true for high protein, very low carb diets.)

Organic, nonstarchy vegetables of several kinds at least partly solve both problems.  There are so many kinds worth eating for their huge health benefits in fact, and they are so high in fiber and low in calories that you can almost be full all the time without taking in too many calories.

Organic, cruciferous vegetables of all kinds fit here.  They are enormously heart protective and nutritious.  And between their hundreds of carotenes hidden by their dark green color and natural vitamin C and several kinds of micronutrients that prevent cancer AND that prevent cancers from spreading, people who eat them have far less cancers and even less cancers that spread and cause pain and death!

Organic onions, leeks, green onions, red onions, and both deodorized garlic supplements and crushed raw garlic fit here.  Well used by a skilled cook, they can add enormously to flavor.  And, they are both enormously heart protective and as cancer preventive as cruciferous vegetables.

Other organic greens fit here.  Romaine lettuce has more nutrients and flavor than organic iceberg lettuce; but even organic iceberg lettuce will fill you up and provide your minimum intake of carbs without cutting the low carb fat loss effect.

Raw organic, tomatoes fit here.  Botanically they are a fruit.  But they are eaten as a vegetable and have almost no fructose.

Also, cooked and mashed or blended cooked tomatoes and all these other high carotene vegetables  provide the most bioavailable carotenes to you when you eat them with avocados or nuts or extra virgin olive oil.  For blended, cooked tomatoes this works better with thorough cooking.  For the others, their anti-cancer nutrients are best boosted by adding these oils to raw or lightly steamed nonstarchy vegetables.

Onions have more flavor and a different flavor when cooked over low heat than they do raw; but cooking them on low heat for a short time preserves more nutrients.

In part 5 next week we will cover:

d) Ensure that the bacteria in your gut aren’t making sure you gain and store fat.