Official Red Fitness

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, it’s good to know about some fat burning foods. Diet is the number one controller of how much fat your body stores or burns, although there are other factors including exercise, how well you handle stress (especially if you’re a female), and even mental activity. All of those things are important, and there’s even a small amount attributable to genetics, but without eating the right foods–and avoiding the wrong foods–you’re still going to be overweight, at least eventually.

Let’s look at some foods that are known fat burners, especially some that have gotten a bad rap for purely mythological (that is, false) reasons. In fact, let’s look at some things that people don’t eat directly, but cook with, that are real fat burners that most people don’t think of as such.

1) Coconut oil. Now, because coconut oil contains fats, people today love to assume that it must be unhealthy to eat (cook with), at least on a regular basis. The opposite is true. There are only certain kinds of saturated fats that are unhealthy for you and are found in cooking oils. Partially hydrogenated oils (which are lab creations) are such kinds of bad fats. So are vegetable oils (which is why french-fries get hated on all the time; if you make home-made french-fries and use olive oil or seed oil they are not bad for you at all well, unless you are already overweight). Coconut oil’s saturated fat is unique in that it’s a medium-chain fatty acid (MCFA). Your body metabolizes MCFAs easily compared even with other healthy fats, and their chemical nutrients are then sent straight to your liver and immediately transformed into energy. Higher energy levels mean higher metabolic levels and more ability to do physical exercise which also burns off more fat. Coconut oil is also rich in lauric acid, which is well known for helping the body ward off fungal growth, bacterial infection, and viral infection.

2) Butter. This means real butter. Margarine is evil. Margarine is unhealthy with its lab-created fats and But margarine was created in the wake of the myths about cholesterol and all saturated fats being bad for you and causing weight gain and heart disease. Butter is high in cholesterol–but it’s the good cholesterol that your heart lives on! Since butter feeds your heart, this gives you more energy and helps raise your metabolism and thus allows you to burn off more calories and more fat faster.

3) Olive oil. Olive oil provides a very healthy fat that is only found in select foods called Omega 9. Omega 9 is also found in sesame oil, but in lesser quantities. Omega 9 is proven to: lower bad cholesterol levels; help more efficiently metabolize good cholesterol (like butter); enhance the immune system; reduce insulin resistance (which allows faster and more efficient metabolism of glucose, thus preventing diabetes and helping reduce weight); and reduce the risk of atherosclerosis.

When you cook or bake, use the above substances instead of margarine or vegetable oils or corn oils or that Crisco stuff. And you can have french-fries just as long as you make them yourself, just to be sure!

Your health and whether or not you are overweight depend heavily upon how you eat. In fact, your diet is even more important to your weight maintenance than exercise. But what foods should you be eating to help you stay slender while also not compromising your health by causing you to under-eat and becoming weak? There are some healthy foods you can eat to get your weight under control and keep it that way and they taste great!

1) Apples. Apples are abundant with pectin, which lowers the bad cholesterol levels in your blood and keeps your glucose levels balanced. Apples really are one of the superfoods of the world. Another reason apples help you lose weight and maintain healthy weight is that they provide you with plenty of dietary fiber that cleans you out. And still another reason is that eating them instead of candy satisfies your craving for something sweet without filling you with empty calories from refined sugars.

2) Black beans. Beans are good, but black beans are the super-bean for losing weight. They are loaded with fiber like apples are. They are also so high in protein that they count as a meat as well as a bean! When you get plenty of protein in your diet you feel energized and satisfied without needing to resort to eating empty sugars or fatty foods to feel satiated. Furthermore, high protein foods fuel your exercise program and feed your muscles–two more ways of burning away unwanted fat pounds.

3) Grass fed beef. Yes, beef is a food that helps you lose weight–as long as it’s not loaded up with toxins and corn by-products. Grass fed beef is a complete protein, meaning you get all of the essential amino acids that you need when you eat it. Grass fed beef also contains high amounts of creatine, which is the best muscle-building chemical to be found. Again, all this protein gives you energy, builds muscle (which burns off calories way faster than fat tissue does), and leaves you feeling satisfied without needing to resort to eating sugars and saturated fats.

4) Salmon. Salmon is super-rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. A great deal of the problem of excess weight today in the US has to do not with too much fat per se, but with a terrible imbalance of the types of fats in the typical person’s diet. Omega-3 fatty acids should account for about one-third of a person’s fat intake. Instead, it’s usually more like 1/10th ! Eating salmon just twice per week can increase your energy levels and, yes, enhance your mental clarity.

5) Sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes help reduce inflammation in the body. Besides being the root cause of all cancer, inflammation also causes you to put on weight as the body creates fat stores around the inflamed tissues to try to protect them.

You have probably heard of other amazing weight-reduction and weight-control foods. Add the five listed here to that list.