How to lose body fat

Maintaining a healthy weight has always been a priority in my life. Since I was ten years old, I was told I needed to lose a few kilos to help with my scoliosis. Although I only needed to lose 6 kilos, which took me around 3 months, the process involved in losing this weight taught me a lot. The most important thing I learnt is that eating healthy can help you feel great, way before it makes you look great.

 

Sticking to a healthy meal plan and exercising is not easy, especially when you are used to eating whatever you feel like and live a sedentary life. However, once you start feeling better and seeing the first results you are encouraged to stick to a healthier lifestyle. But what about when you stop seeing results, and you reach the so called weight loss plateau? I am sure you have heard that alternating the amount of calories you take each day and switching to different workouts might help fighting this plateau.

 

While the above is true, whether you are able to keep losing weight and most importantly whether
you actually succeed in burning the extra fat which your body is holding onto depends on what you eat. Not everything that seems healthy is actually good for you, and will help you in your fat loss journey. Calorie counting is not enough to lose fat. It is necessary to eat the right types of food, that is those foods which will not prevent your body from burning fat. This is something I discovered only recently and I hope that it can help me and all of you who would like to burn the fat which we tend to carry only in specific parts of the body - think the hips, thighs, love handles, buttocks, abdomen.

 

Take me for example. I am a petite woman who has a small upper body with narrow shoulders, a tiny waist, but a large lower body when compared to the upper part of my frame. I carry all my fat in my lower body and while I am able to tone and slim my upper body, the lower body still remains larger. Why is this so? Until few weeks ago I would answer my question by thinking....it's in my genes and there is not much I can do. While this might be in part true, there is however something we can do to help our fatty cells release the fat and allow ourselves to use it as energy. We need to eat the right foods, foods that enable the process necessary to burn the extra fat, and we must limit those foods which inhibit fat burning. These foods are mainly carbohydrates, which cause an increased production of insulin which affects negatively the fat burning process. By eating fewer carbs we can lower the insulin level in our blood which enhances our body's ability to burn a larger percentage of body fat.

 

Carbs are not the only food to avoid. While a high protein diet is suggested to enhance fat burning, we obviously need to stick to healthy proteins and limit certain proteins like milk that can cause a high insulin response in our body. Other healthy foods to avoid in order to enable fat burning include bananas, grapes, honeydew, legumes, honey and root vegetables like potatoes, turnips and carrots.

 

If like me you too are amazed by this theory, I suggest you to read the following papers and article, and watch the video Why we get fat in which Gary Taubes explains this theory:

An insulin index of food

Food insulin index

Foods that lower blood sugar
Why we get fat
I am looking forward to get my hands on the book. 

If you would like to know whether reducing carbs can help you lose fat stay tuned as I will be sharing my low carbs high protein meal plan trial soon.

STAY FAB