Slim for Life (29 page)
Authors: Jillian Michaels
Give your taste buds time to adapt to healthier foods. When I introduce
Biggest Loser
contestants to my favorite foods as part of their regular meal plan, they often make gag-faces or stare at me incredulously. Their taste buds have to adapt to the new food and detox from all the fattening junk food that has addicted them to crap. These foods have the same type of pull as cigarettes. To a smoker, cigarettes are heaven; to a nonsmoker, they taste like a cotton ball dragged through the gutter. A nonsmoker smokes one cigarette and is left with a headache and nausea. Same when it comes to addictive foods—getting off them can be hard. But once you’re off, they taste gross to you—too sweet or too salty—and reintroducing them can make you feel sick.
If the switch from ultra-fattening foods to ultra-slimming foods is too much of a jolt to your system and psyche, try to baby-step your way through it. Here are two examples of what I mean:
1. First switch from fried chicken to barbecue chicken. (You’ve cut most of the fat calories but still have some sugar and salt in the sauce.) Then graduate to chicken parmesan, with no more than 4 teaspoons of cheese. (Now you’ve eliminated the sugar.) Last, try herb-crusted, baked, or grilled chicken. You’ve now added all the health benefits of the herbs, and you’ve cut out the sugar, the salt, and about 300 calories since that fried chicken.
2. Go from an iceberg wedge salad covered in blue cheese or ranch dressing and croutons to a romaine salad with one tablespoon of creamy dressing and no croutons. Romaine has far more metabolism-boosting nutrients, and you’ll cut at least 100 calories
by decreasing the dressing amount. Then switch over to
spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette on the side. Now you’re getting heart-healthy fat from the olive oil, and by putting the dressing on the side, you’ll save at least another 100 calories.
COMBINING FOODS FOR MAXIMUM FAT BURN • • 2 POINTS
Want to get the most out of your food? Well, this is the right section to come to, as it’s all about how to combine certain foods together to amp up your fat-burning potential. I don’t want you to confuse this concept with the ideas from that 1980s book
Fit for Life,
which espoused a bunch of nonsense about not consuming starches and proteins together because they require different digestive env
ironments (acid vs. alkaline). According to believers, eating these foods at the same time stresses the digestive system, causing the carbs (starches) to ferment and the proteins to basically rot. Utter bull. However, there are certain key foods that, when combined together, offer optimal nutrient absorption, ultimately helping you to burn more fat. Here are the five key food combos for better fat utilization:
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Spinach and citrus.
Vitamin C (found in citrus) helps the body absorb nonheme, or plant-based, iron (found in spinach). This is really important for women (as our monthly visitor can occasionally make us borderline anemic) and for vegetarians. Steam up some spinach, then sauté it very quickly with a tiny bit of olive oil and lemon juice. Or throw some mandarin orange slices in with your next spinach salad. Iron is vital to maintaining exercise stamina, as it plays a critical role in oxygen transport and fuel utilization. Remember, the harder you train, the more calories you’ll burn.
•
Vegetables and healthy fat.
Prepare vegetables with a tiny bit of healthy fat, like olive oil, for maximum absorption of protective
phytochemicals. Many nutrients are fat-soluble and therefore are better absorbed by the body when consumed with healthy fats.
Hormones are predominantly synthesized from the building blocks of vitamins and minerals, so better absorption will support everything from proper thyroid function to estrogen and testosterone balance. All three play a major role in how your body burns and stores fat.
•
Vitamin D and calcium.
Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium, so be sure to buy dairy products fortified with it. Many brands of coconut milk also have vitamin D added to them. If the process of fortification worries you, you can eat a calcium-rich food, then catch a bit of sun. Current research points to vitamin D as crucial for heart health and as a potential defense against hypertension, cancer, and several autoimmune diseases. Research also suggests that diets rich in calcium can help reduce body fat. Instead of going crazy pounding glasses of milk and cubes of cheese, utilize this trick to optimize your calcium intake without adding the extra calories.
•
Red wine or grapes, and fish or nuts.
A few ounces of red wine or a handful of grapes can enhance the absorption of the omega-3 fats in fish and nuts. Omega-3 has long been lauded for benefiting heart health and brainpower, and now we know it plays a role in weight loss. Fish oil contains docosahexaenoic acid (
DHA) and eicosapentaenoic (
EPA) fatty acids. Researchers in Australia report that those who take omega-3 fish oil and exercise moderately burn more fat and lose more weight than those who exercise but don’t take the fish oil. The theory is that fish oil improves blood flow to muscles, which increases the benefits of exercise. In that study, those who took the fish oil exercised for 45 minutes three times a week. In addition,
EFAs (essential fatty acids) produce hormones called
eicosanoids that regulate digestion and
insulin production. Insulin promotes fat storage. When people regularly consume
omega-3 fish oil,
insulin levels drop 50 percent lower, allowing individuals to use a higher percentage of fat for energy. (More on fish oil in a few moments.)
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Protein and starchy or sugary carbs.
When you consume food, it goes through a complex process of digestion and absorption. The body breaks down high-
glycemic-index carbs (sugar and starch) quickly, causing
blood sugar to spike. As blood sugar levels rise, insulin enters the bloodstream to deliver sugar molecules to their appropriate cell destinations. The problem is that when the cells don’t use the sugar immediately for fuel, they store it as fat. So stabilizing insulin and blood sugar levels is another key to weight management. When
carbohydrates are consumed along with protein, the digestive process slows down. The carbohydrate sugars take a longer time to be absorbed into the bloodstream, leveling the rise in blood sugar rather than giving you a sugar spike, thus helping to control hunger and decrease the promotion of fat storage. So if you’re having oatmeal for breakfast, throw in a couple of scrambled egg whites on the side. If you’re eating baked chips and salsa as a snack, roll up a couple of turkey slices to have with them.
Trickery
While it’s become unpopular to suggest that certain
supplements aid in weight loss, the reality is, some do. Let’s distinguish right off the difference between
pharmaceuticals and supplements. A supplement is a naturally occurring thing within our foods, like caffeine, omega-3s, chromium picolinate, or quercetin. A pharmaceutical, on the other hand, may have originated from a plant or
animal but has been isolated and synthesized to the point of being unrecognizable, subsequently becoming a new chemical that can be patented.
I never want you to take pharmaceutical
drugs like Phentermine, Alli, or Qysimia for two reasons. First, taking these pills is no way to approach lasting weight loss. You need to learn how to eat well and move more efficiently to attain and maintain your slim. Second, they’re dangerous and have scary side effects: headaches, back pain, abdominal pain, palpitations, constipation, nausea, thirst, joint problems, insomnia, dizziness, anxiety, depression, rash, acne, primary pulmonary hypertension, regurgitant cardiac valvular disease, elevated blood pressure, restlessness, diarrhea, impotence—and so on. Not cool. These drugs should be avoided whenever possible.
But if you’re eating a healthy, sound diet, working out hard, and just want a little extra edge, research suggests there are safe and natural ways to get it. That’s what the following is about: supplementing safely to boost your metabolic function and exercise endurance.
GET BUZZED—DRINK
CAFFEINE • • • 3 POINTS
I have to give you this one with the caveat of talking to your doctor before imbibing. Anyone who experiences anxiety or has high blood pressure or any other health-related condition that’s negatively affected by caffeine shouldn’t drink beverages with it. That aside, if you don’t suffer from any such issue, caffeine, when taken in the right form and the right dosage, has a ton of health benefits, from helping to fight pancreatic cancer and type 2 diabetes to fending off
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia. A number of studies have shown that drinking coffee daily may even contribute to longevity! Remember: coffee is “calorie free,” until you start adding the chocolate, cream, mocha, and sugar.
But with regard to our slim agenda, the most important benefit of caffeine is that it helps us burn fat. According to the Mayo Clinic, it provides short-term appetite suppression and stimulates the nervous system, resulting in a mild calorie burn. But this calorie use isn’t where its true fat-burning potential lies. For caffeine to be most effective in the slimming department, you have to combine it with exercise. It dramatically enhances fitness performance because it lowers our perception of the intensity or difficulty of our efforts. Thus we are able to exercise at a higher intensity for longer, without actually feeling like we are working harder. And of course, the harder we work in the gym, the more calories we can burn during the workout and even hours after it’s over—particularly when we are resistance training. Plus, caffeine spares muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrates) and promotes the use of fat stores as energy.
The key to constructive caffeine consumption is to consume no more than 400 milligrams a day, preferably divided in 2 separate “doses” of 200 milligrams a pop. (In total, that’s equivalent to two strong cups of coffee.) Have one when you first wake up, then another, roughly 45 minutes before you exercise, unless it’s past three p.m. (Disregard this if you’re one of those rare individuals who can drink coffee regardless of the time of day and still sleep at night—notice I used the word
rare.
) Be sure not to consume more than 400 milligrams because too much caffeine can have the opposite of our desired effect. It can tax adrenal glands, stress us out, release the belly fat hormone cortisol, and disrupt sleep patterns. Bad, bad, bad.
Coffee is an okay source of caffeine, but not ideal. Coffee can raise “bad” cholesterol levels and dehydrate you, and if it’s not
organic, it can have high levels of pesticides. I suggest a natural caffeine supplement like EBoost. I fell in love with this product so much, I actually invested in the company. Here’s why: it contains around 160 milligrams of caffeine from green tea, but produces none of the harmful side effects of coffee. Plus, it has
electrolytes to help fend off
dehydration as well as antioxidants and immunity boosters for overall health. You get lots of bang for your buck.
SLIM MYTH:
Chocolate milk is a great workout recovery drink.
FAST FACT:
Chocolate milk makes you fat and has hardly any nutritional benefits. It’s loaded with sugar, hormones, and antibiotics. Even if you get it organic, it still has tons of sugar and calories. A study supports the claim that chocolate milk has “just the right amount of protein and carbs” to fuel your recovery. Absurd. Guess who funded that study? The National Dairy Council and the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board. So I question its validity. Again, when something sounds too good to be true—it’s BS. There are much healthier, cleaner sources of both protein and carbs with less sugar and calories. Try a
whey protein shake instead, with some fresh fruit.
Recent research suggests that 3 or 4 daily servings of low-fat
dairy products can boost your body’s fat-burning potential. Numerous studies have shown that organic dairy-rich diets (based on milk protein, aka whey) may help weight loss, improving the body’s ability to burn fat, and it may do so better than
calcium supplementation. But two studies from the University of Tennessee, published in 2011, suggest that eating calcium-rich products causes a rise in body heat, causing fat to burn more easily. In another analysis, researchers found that dieting women who received 1,000 milligrams of calcium supplements each day lost, on average, more weight and more body fat than women taking a placebo. Although the differences in the amount of weight and fat lost by the two groups were not huge, the data suggests a correlation between calcium intake and fat metabolism. Researchers say this is because
calcium stored in fat cells plays an important role in fat storage and breakdown.
If you’re using calcium supplements, it’s important to choose those with added
vitamin D, zinc, and magnesium, which help the body to better absorb the calcium. If you want to get your calcium from food, here are a few calcium-rich ones to choose from: organic low-fat Greek yogurt, organic cheese, organic milk, and dark leafy greens (especially for the vegans in the house).
Vitamin D is the latest fat-burning-supplement breakthrough with real scientific credibility. A ton of research published to date suggests that vitamin D deficiency contributes to obesity and, conversely, that getting adequate vitamin D helps fend it off. When you have enough vitamin D in your bloodstream, fat cells slow their efforts to make and store fat. But when vitamin D levels are low, levels of parathyroid hormone (
PTH) and
calcitrol rise, and high levels of these two
hormones throw your body into fat-storage mode. In fact, a Norwegian study found that elevated PTH levels increased a man’s risk of becoming overweight by 40 percent.
Vitamin D has also been shown to work with calcium to reduce the production of
cortisol, that pesky stress hormone that causes you to store belly fat. When you have adequate vitamin D levels, your body releases more
leptin, the hormone that conveys a “We’re full, stop eating” message to your brain. An Australian study showed that people who ate a breakfast high in D and calcium blunted their appetites for the next 24 hours. Last, vitamin D deficiency is linked to insulin resistance, which leads to hunger and overeating.