9 More Reasons to Use DAILY Coconut Oil

Posted on January 6, 2015 by admin

I’ve run across some VERY interesting studies recently on the relationship between coconut oil (or any type of coconut fat, includingcoconut milk and cream) and how it can affect your body fat…

The findings may surprise you!

A 2009 study published in the Journal Lipids consisted of testing the effects of either 2 tablespoons of coconut oil or 2 tablespoons of soybean on a group of 40 women over the span of 28 days.

Results showed that the group that ate the coconut oil had a decrease in abdominal fat, while the soybean oil group actually showed a slight increase in belly fat. Additionally, the group that ate the coconut oil showed increased HDL ‘good’ cholesterol levels, while the soybean oil group had decreased HDL cholesterol and increased LDL ‘ bad’ cholesterol.

The Journal of Nutrition published a study where researchers investigated all studies relative to medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs) that are abundant in coconut fat and weight management. The studies showed that diets rich in fats such as those found in coconut oilprompted a boost in metabolism, increase in energy, decrease in food consumption, reduced body weight and lower body fat mass. The study authors highly recommend using oils that contain MCFAs, such ascoconut oil, as a tool to drop extra abdominal fat, manage a healthy weight, and even as a way to treat obesity.

Yet another study that assessed body weight and fat storage relative to three different types of diets including a low-fat diet, high-fat diet with long chain fatty acids (LCFAs) and a high fat diet with MCFAs. In order to bring about weight gain, caloric intakes were adjusted for the diets. At the end of the research period (which lasted 44 days), the low-fat diet group stored an average of 0.47 grams of fat per day, the LCFA group stored 0.48 grams of fat per day, and the MCFA group only stored a mere 0.19 grams per day (despite purposely increasing calories). Those in the MCFA group (coconut fat) had a 60 percent reduction in body fat stored compared to the other diets.

Another added bonus of consuming organic coconut oil (and coconutcream or milk) is that it tends to make us feel fuller for longer. Studies indicate that MCFAs help increase feelings of fullness and lead to a reduction in calorie intake when compared to the same amount of calories from other fats. When MCFAs are metabolized, ketone bodies are created in the liver – these have been shown to have a strong appetite reducing effect helping you to lose fat faster.

If you thought from reading about how using coconut oil daily for helping to reduce abdominal fat is pretty incredible, you’re going to be blown away by the powerful health benefits of coconut oil on the page below…

>> 9 MORE reasons to use DAILY coconut oil (including benefits to thyroid, brain, skin, oral health, heart health, detoxing, cancer, and more)

To Your Optimal Health,

Your Optimal Life

Original Source: The Alternative Daily

Top 10 Ways to Reduce Sugar Intake

Posted on October 30, 2014 by admin

Ever tried to cut back- or even eliminate- sugar? It’s not so easy.

Nature gave us a sweet tooth for a reason- and it wasn’t just to frustrate our diet efforts!

We humans – unlike other animals- don’t make our own vitamin C. Vitamin C is most abundant in fruits. So nature gave us taste buds that would make these relatively sweet tasting foods desirable.

Unfortunately the whole system has become deregulated since just about everything you buy now has sugar in it, and there’s a huge disconnect between the purpose of our original wiring- to make sure we got enough vitamin C- and the way that wiring is used today (to make sure we get enough Krispy Kreme donuts!)

Giving up- or cutting back- on sugar is no picnic. But the rewards are tremendous. Eliminating (or even reducing) sugar can benefit your health in more ways than you can imagine.

Here’s a list of my Top Ten Ways to Start Reducing Sugar……..

Don’t add it to foods. This is the easiest and most basic way to immediately reduce the amount of sugar you’re eating. Biggest targets: cereal, coffee and tea.
Don’t be fooled by “healthy sugar” disguises. Brown sugar, turbinado sugar, raw sugar … it’s all pretty much the same thing as far as your body is concerned.
Make a real effort to reduce or eliminate processed carbohydrates. Most processed carbs — breads, bagels, most pastas and snacks — are loaded with flour and other ingredients that convert to sugar in the body almost as fast as pure glucose. That sugar gets stored as triglycerides, which is a fancy way of saying fat.
Watch out for “fat-free” snacks. One of the biggest myths is that if a food is fat-free it doesn’t make you fat. Fat-free doesn’t mean calorie-free, and most fat-free snacks are loaded with sugar.
Shop for color. The more your grocery basket looks like a cornucopia of color, the better. It usually means you’re getting more fresh vegetables and low-glycemic fruits such as berries and cherries.
Become a food detective. This tip is from the wonderful author and nutritionist Anne Louise Gittleman, who adds, “To reduce sugar, you have to know where it is first.” Start reading labels.
Beware of artificial sweeteners. Unfortunately, they can increase cravings for sugar and carbohydrates. They can also deplete the body’s stores of chromium, a nutrient crucial for blood-sugar metabolism.
Do the math. Look at the label where it says “total sugars” and divide the number of grams by four. That’s the number of teaspoons of sugar you are ingesting. This exercise alone should scare the pants off you.
Limit fruit. (Notice I didn’t say “eliminate.”) Fruit has sugar, but it also has fiber and good nutrients. Just don’t overdo it. For weight-loss purposes, keep it to two servings a day and try to make most of them low-glycemic (grapefruit, apples, berries)
Eliminate fruit juice. It’s a pure sugar hit with none of the fiber and less of the nutrients that are found in the fruit itself.

Original Source

Artificial Sweeteners May Boost Blood Sugar? New Study.

Posted on September 24, 2014 by admin

People might consume artificial sweeteners because they think it will help them curb real-sugar consumption and prevent weight gain, but the chemicals may actually have an opposite effect. A new study has found that zero-calorie sweeteners may alter metabolism and increase blood-sugar levels, at least in mice and some people.

The negative effects of artificial sweeteners on metabolism seen in the study may have to do with how the sweeteners interact with the bacteria living the gut, the researchers said.

The results don’t mean that eating sugar is healthier than consuming artificial sweeteners, study co-author Dr. Eran Elinav, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said at a news conference Tuesday (Sept. 16). However, the study does suggest that artificial sweeteners may be harmful, at least in some people, Elinav said.

Sugar has been around for a loooong time, but it wasn’t until the Europeans brought it to the New World that it became commonplace, and eventually fueled our growing society.

In experiments, the scientists added an artificial sweetener — either saccharin, sucralose or aspartame — to mice’s drinking water, and found the animals ended up having higher blood-sugar levels than the mice that drank sugar water, or just water. Saccharin is sold under the brand name Sweet’n Low, sucralose has the brand name Splenda and aspartame is found in NutraSweet, Equal and Spoonful brands.

The researchers also found that artificial sweeteners seemed to change the function of the gut bacteria in the rodents. When the researchers used antibiotics to suppress the bacteria, the differences in blood-sugar levels between groups of mice on different diets disappeared, according to the study, published today (Sept. 17) in the journal Nature.

Next, the researchers studied about 400 people, and found that the gut bacteria in people who consumed an artificial sweetener were different from the gut bacteria in the people who ate sugar. Participants who used artificial sweeteners also had higher blood-sugar levels than participants who used sugar. [5 Ways Gut Bacteria Affect Your Health]

“Artificial sweeteners were extensively introduced into our diets with the intention of reducing caloric intake and normalizing blood glucose levels without compromising the human ‘sweet tooth,'” the researchers wrote in their study. “Our findings suggest that [artificial sweeteners] may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic that they themselves were intended to fight.”

Sugar May Boost Risk of Heart Disease, Death

Your personal gut bacteria

There are trillions of bacteria living in human guts. Collectively called the microbiome, these bacteria are crucial for the normal functioning of the intestines, and their composition could potentially influence diverse functions of the body. For example, previous studies have tied the balance of bacterial species in the gut to people’s risk of conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

But people can have different compositions of bacterial species, and that could potentially contribute to how they respond to different foods, the researchers said.

In the study, the researchers also carried out another experiment. They added saccharin to diets of seven people who didn’t normally consume sweeteners. After only four days, four of these participants showed increased levels of sugar in their blood and changes in the composition of their gut bacteria.

The gut bacteria composition of these participants differed from that of the other three participants, even before they consumed saccharin, the researchers found. This finding suggests that people may respond differently to artificial sweeteners depending on their gut-bacteria compositions, the researchers said.

“What was super striking and interesting to us was the fact that [people’s] susceptibility to [the effects] of sweeteners could be predicted ahead of time, even before the individuals consumed the sweeteners,” said study co-author Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

It’s not clear how, exactly, changes in the bacterial species in the gut could contribute to increased blood-sugar levels, but scientists have some ideas. For example, it could be that the consumption of artificial sweeteners causes people to have more bacterial species that extract fat from the diet, which would contribute to obesity, said Taylor Feehley and Cathryn Nagler, researchers at the University of Chicago who wrote about the new study in the same journal.

Should you ditch the diet soda?

Previous studies have looked at whether people who replace sugar with artificial sweeteners have a lower risk of developing the health problems linked with consuming too much sugar, such as obesity and diabetes.

But although some studies found artificial sweeteners to be beneficial, others yielded mixed results, the researchers said. Some studies even found links between consuming sweeteners and a higher risk of obesity and high blood sugar, but those studies were observational (and didn’t have randomized control groups), and it remains unclear whether artificial sweeteners may cause metabolism changes, or if people who are obese to begin with consume more of the sweeteners, Elinav said.

The new study is not conclusive, either. The results need to be confirmed in future research before recommendations about consuming artificial sweeteners can be made, the researchers said. Still, the findings should provoke discussion among the scientific, medical and public communities.

“By no means do we believe that based on the result of this study are we prepared to make recommendations as to the use and dosage of artificial sweeteners,” Segal said. “We simply point to the immense body of experiments that we carried out both in humans and in mice. In none of these experiments have we seen any beneficial effects for the use of sweeteners.”

Source: Original article: Discovery

Do you still eat artificial sweeteners? Why? Comment below.

How to Lose Weight While Staying Healthy – The Ultimate Eating Plan

Posted on September 22, 2014 by admin

Here are three videos discussing “what you should eat” and general healthy practices by some top experts:

This video talks about why “sugar” is bad for you. Highly recommended if you want to understand the mechanism.

WARNING: Please consult your doctor before any drastic changes to your diet or exercise plan. Also, let your doctor manage any weight gaining problems (hypothyroidism, weight-gaining medications [steroids, antidepressants, etc.], etc.) BEFORE you start this plan.

It appears that a lot of people want to lose weight, but don’t care much for exercise. Although I recommend strength training and cardio as a part of any weight loss plan, these natural supplements can help you lose weight faster with minimal exercise. The key is great self-control in what you eat. I have done this and it works. After researching many theories, listening to many experts, reviewing various diets, and my own experience, I find a clean diet and moderate exercise (with a focus on diet) works best.

Here is what you should AVOID:

1. Basically any white carbohydrate: pasta, potatoes, milk, rice, batter (fried foods), etc.

2. Sugar beverages: soda, juice, sweet tea, gatorade, vitamin H2O (key is to avoid fructose + anything artificial)

Sugar snacks: candy, pastries, desserts, ice cream

3. Oils keep to a minimum (safe ones are olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil)

4. No fast food or eating out as much as possible (not only does it make you gain weight, a lot of chemicals and artificial ingredients are used to cut costs and increase profits). Also, even when you do go out YOU decide what you eat. For example, some people avoid buffets because of all the unhealthy food. No one forces you to eat all of it. Every buffet has a salad bar and healthy selections. I have gone to buffets plenty of times and have eaten as healthy as I can. If you can’t resist the temptation, avoid the situation.

Here is what you should EAT:

1. Meat: chicken, fish (avoid red meat if possible). Hormone free chicken and wild caught fish.

2. Vegetables, mostly green – kale, broccoli, spinach, carrots, peas; some different color vegetables have much more nutritional value (blue corn, purple potatoes, red bell peppers, etc.)

Fruits – if you need sugar, lower sugar fruits are good options (raspberries, blackberries, etc.). Of course, you will get results much faster if you avoid the sugar.

3. Plenty of water; tea (especially green tea as it increases metabolism), coffee is ok with no added sugar and some milk alternative (almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk, etc.). If you really need a different taste, I recommend squeezing some lemon juice into your water.

4. Beans – black, red, pinto

5. Nuts – walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pecans

You should follow this diet Monday-Friday and Sunday. Take a break on Saturday and eat what you want within reason, but still try to avoid refined, processed, or artificial ingredients.

Remember, you can’t chose your genetics, but YOU can choose what goes in your mouth! Plus, studies have show that changing your diet can “turn off” some of the genes that express some chronic diseases.

Now, go lose some weight without even exercising. Exercise (cardio and strength training) to maximize results.

Comments? Anything else you do to lose weight?

Post your results below if you try this. You can see results as quickly as 1-2 weeks.

Please SHARE this with anyone your care about. We can make a real change in people’s lives.

2. 3 Veggies that FIGHT Abdominal Fat

What Foods Burn Fat the Fastest?

Posted on December 11, 2010 by admin

To truly determine what foods burn fat the fastest we need to understand the thermogenesis of food. A thermogenic food is one which is classified as a food which causes the body to use energy to digest. So in reality all foods have some type of thermogenic quality about them. Obviously some more than others and it is these that we want to look at to see what foods burn fat the fastest. To really burn fat and lose weight fast. Take leptitox pills. You might ask does leptitox work? Yes it is very effective, non-gmo, no sugar, and it is affordable.

One of the best choices for what foods burn fat is to start drinking green tea. Green tea has a compound called epigallo-catechin gallate (EGCG) which boosts your metabolism over a twenty four hour period. To get any effect from the fat burning qualities of green tea you would need to drink at least for four cups of strong green tea per day.

Other foods that fall into to what foods burn fat category are hot peppers, cider vinegar, hot mustard, spicy chilies, salmon, turkey and broccoli. Very lean red meats are great fat burning choices along with venison, bison, buffalo, all shell fish and egg whites.

What you need to remember about all of these foods is that yes they do help to burn fat, but the amount of fat they burn is fairly small. They are not going to burn pounds of fat off of your body daily. What they will do is help to raise your metabolism so you can burn fat more effectively.

Eating these fat burning foods will enhance your weight loss efforts, they should be combined when used as a diet plan.

Lemons are another food on the what foods burn fat the fastest list. Lemons allow your body to break down fat cells and toxins in your body. This is why it is recommended that you add lemon to a glass of water each morning. Grapefruits work in the same way. Some doctors recommended drinking a small glass of grapefruit juice before going to bed at night. One lady that did only this one thing lost 10 pounds in three weeks.

The whole trick of knowing what foods burn fat the fastest is in knowing how to put a meal together correctly. When you eat various fat burning foods together, you can get your body working to burn fat at a fast rate.

When putting your meal together choose a good green vegetable, such as asparagus, broccoli or spinach. Then use a very lean protein, chicken or turkey breast would work well.
Now you need to add in some type of carb, rice, sweet potatoes or whole wheat pasta. If you attempt to combine your foods in this manner you will become a fat burning machine.

So you want to remember that no one food is going to completely get rid of your fat. By eating well known fat burning foods together you can easily create some great fat burning meals and menus of your own. Try to include one of these meal choices each day for optimal fat burning results.

Discover More Fat Burning Foods Here

The 3 Best Ab Exercises that aren’t called Ab Exercises

Does Diet Soda Make You Fat?

Good Carbs vs Bad Carbs and all of the Carb BS in Between

Do You Really Need Cardio Exercise?

How to Make Healthy Choices at the Grocery Store

Is Saturated Fat Evil, or not so Bad After All?

The Extreme Health Dangers of Excess Abdominal Fat

Top Secrets for Fat Loss and Six Pack Abs

The Truth about Glycemic Index, Potatoes, and “White Foods”

Effective Fat Loss Office Workouts for Time Crunched People

Make Healthier Choices When Fast Food is the Only Option