Do you know why Rati Beauty is against highly-processed and refined foods in their weight loss programs? It’s because highly-processed food come packed with a lot of calories which get processed easily inside the body and quickly get stored as fat cells. It may appear to us that our body processes all types of food in the same way, whereas in reality, even though macronutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins go through the same digestion process – the way they are utilized, stored, and affect weight loss/gain is different from each other. Refined carbs have largely empty calories that get converted into sugar rather quickly, and an excess of such calories, then gets stored into fat cells. As we have mentioned before, all calories are not created equal, in fact, some of them help the body to burn fat, through a process called thermogenesis. You can certainly boost weight loss by including thermogenic and metabolism-boosting foods; however, in the end, what matters is a healthy diet and exercise, without which it is not possible at all to drop weight or get healthy in general.
What is Thermogenesis?
Every morsel of food raises heat in the body in order for digestion to take place, but certain foods raise more temperature compared to others. Thermogenic foods increase energy expenditure in the body through the process of thermogenesis where the body actually burns more calories to breakdown such food, converting these calories to heat form. The thermic effect of food is the amount of energy required to actually digest and process food. Thermogenic food raise your body temperature and more calories get burnt to digest and process them.
14 Best Thermogenic Foods to Lose Weight:
1. Black pepper – Contains capsaicin which leads to thermogenesis. It also contains piperine which new fat cells from forming. 2. Celery: It’s a great food to include in weight loss because it is low in calories, rich in water, and has fiber – all of which are good news for weight loss.
3. Turmeric: This popular Indian spice, essential to Indian cooking, induces thermogenesis to boost metabolism. Drinking turmeric tea is a good way to fuel up thermogenesis.
4. Garlic: Certain compounds in garlic boost thermogenesis by increasing norepinephrine secretion. Norepinephrine increases heart rate and blood pumping from the heart, and helps with weight loss.
5. Coconut oil – Medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil helps to burn fat and also to inhibit fat deposition by way of increased thermogenesis and calorie burning.
6. Green Tea: The good thing about green tea is that it is low in calories, contain caffeine (which boosts metabolism) and also catechins which have a thermogenic effect.
7. Cinnamon: It has certain metabolic regulatory proteins which boost theromgenesis.
8. Apple cider vinegar: The presence of acetic acid in ACV can not only decrease appetite and help manage blood sugar levels, it can also induce the process of thermogenesis.
9. Green chillies: Rich in capsaicin, helps to convert energy into heat.
10. Coffee: Avid coffee drinkers rejoice because the caffeine content in coffee can help you lose weight, but do not go beyond two to three cups per day.
11. Kidney beans: Rich in protein and fiber, this type of beans lead to increased energy expenditure.
12. Cayenne pepper: It has a thermogenic compound that decreases appetite, increases metabolism and increase thermogenic activity.
13. Capsaicin: Capsaicin targets brown fat and turns up the metabolism by activating brown fat. Cayenne pepper is a variety of pepper that has a good amount of capsaicin. Cayenne pepper is also known as red pepper, paprika, chilli pepper, and also found in tabasco. Cayenne pepper is usually available in dry or powder form. Apart from capsaicin, it also has a good amount of vitamin C, vitamin A and potassium.
14. Jalapenos: The capsaicin is the active chemical in jalapenos that induces thermogenesis in the body.
15. Ginger: Widely used in Indian cuisine, ginger induces thermogenesis as well as satiety in humans.
How To Enhance the Effect of Thermogenic Foods to Lose Weight:
Thermogenesis is one such process which acts as a weight loss aid. It’s a process by which your body cells burn increased number of calories to utilize the foods you have just eaten. Our body needs energy to run all its functions smoothly and to maintain an optimum temperature, which is 98.6 Fahrenheit irrespective of the weather outside (extreme cold or hot weather does not matter). To digest food, our body needs energy and this energy comes in the form of calories. Whenever we consume food, our body uses energy to digest that food. Certain food items require more energy to get digested (beans, lentils, dal, paneer are some examples), which means that they consume a lot more calories to be metabolised and digested. Eating thermogenic food, which increase the temperature of your body, can help burn more calories, and you would be cracking a good vertical to burn fat.
1. Eat a High-Protein Diet: It’s easy for the body to process carbs and fat whereas protein consume more calories to get digested and processed. In simple terms, you would be burning more calories to digest protein-rich food and if you are taking thermogenic foods, a high-protein diet will enhance the whole fat-burning process.
2. Include Strength Training in your Workout: It’s a fact that more muscles you have, the greater is the fat burning rate. To boost the effect of thermogenic foods, build lean muscle by including strength training exercises and weight lifting.
3. Include healthy fat in your diet: Nuts, olive oil, avocado, coconut oil, ghee, fish oil have healthy fats in them that boost the fat-burning process that thermogenesis may induce. Omega-3 fatty acids especially helps to lower the glycemic load of a meal indicating that insulin spike will not be as sharp or as high because omega-3 fatty helps to lower it.
4. Eliminate refined carbs: As we have mentioned earlier, refined carbs get digested and processed quickly and raise blood sugar levels sharply. When energy is available in the form of empty calories from refined carbs, the body would hardly make an effort to reach the “fat burning” stage. Eliminate refined carbs completely from your diet to see weight loss happen.
6. Eat iron-rich and Iodine-rich Food to Improve Metabolism: A deficiency of both iodine and iron will hamper the functioning of thyroid gland. This gland is responsible for regulating and keeping metabolism high. A lack of iodine and iron will make the metabolism sluggish.
7. Sleep well: Nothing can come as close to helping the fat-burning process as much as a good night’s sleep. Sound sleep is of primary importance to lose weight. Even if you are eating healthy and exercising every single day, your body would not drop any significant weight if you do not get at least 7 hours of sleep at night. Sleeping for only 4 or 5 hours will throw fat-burning hormones into tizzy, increase the production of ghrelin (hunger hormone) and lowers the levels of leptin (fullness hormone). Also, people who sleep for 8 hours lose more fat without losing “precious” muscle. Having a sound sleep also boosts metabolism and lowers the production of stress hormone. So, sleep your way to boost thermogenesis and lose weight in the process.
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