I’m a huge advocate of gradually incorporating healthful habits into your life, rather than jumping head first into a crash/restrictive diet. Time and time again I see crash/restrictive diets that lead people to lose weight fast and then gain it back trifold before they know it.
When you gradually incorporate healthful things into your day you’ll develop life long habits before you know it. The same way they say wealth attracts more wealth, health attracts more health. As you slowly incorporate more healthy habits into your life, you are then naturally attracted to seeking more ways to improve your health.
If your diet makes you feel completely deprived of things you love, then it’s probably not the right diet for you. It’s okay- it’s trial and error until you find a way of eating that fits well with your lifestyle and leaves you feeling full and fulfilled 😉
The thing that matters, is that you care enough to TRY something that will improve your life. You cared enough to click on this post and check out if there’s anything that will work for you.
I know that I can always use a little metabolism boost after the weekend 🤭. Here are some of my favorites.
7 Metabolism boosting foods that are easy to incorporate into your diet:
1. Grapefruit
Grapefruit contains naringenin, an antioxidant that assists your body in keeping your blood sugar in check and speeding up fat burn.
It’s recommended to consume grapefruit in the morning or early afternoon.
Additional benefits: Vitamin C, Mood Booster, Potassium, Vitamin A
- Vitamin C: boosts your immune system, prevents heart and eye disease, controls symptoms of asthma, and it assists your body in creating collagen; meaning vitamin c is great to reduce skin sagging and wrinkling, as well as healing wounds and scar tissue.
- PLUS, grapefruit improves your mood. If you feel down, grab a grapefruit, orange or pineapple. An easy way to remember mood boosting foods is that they’re generally sun colored!
- Potassium: helps relieve blood pressure, prevents and relieves heart and kidney disorders, alleviates stress and anxiety, helps enhance muscle strength, water balance, and electrolyte functions (to name a few)
- Vitamin A: good for your skin, bone health, reproduction system, and eyes, as well as helping your heart, lungs and kidneys function efficiently
2. Coffee
Coffee contains caffeine and caffeine naturally stimulates our nervous system, which then tells our fat cells to break down fat. Coffee can also assist in increasing our resting metabolic rate, making it easier for us to lose weight. These effects are more prominent in individuals with less body fat.
Things to be conscious of
- With regular coffee intake, the effects of coffee are less pronounced. If you find coffee less effective, try taking a day or two off from drinking it. I know it can be hard, but its worth it to get coffee working for you again.
- What are you putting in your coffee? If you find yourself loading your coffee with sugar and milk, these ingredients will hinder the positive health effects of coffee.
I slowly got myself used to drinking black coffee by gradually eliminating the amount of ingredients I put in it. When I really want a treat, I put cinnamon and coconut oil in my coffee. When you get past the texture of coconut oil being a bit different than milk in your coffee, you’ll come to find that it’s actually a delicious combination. PLUS you’ll have 3 top metabolism boosting foods in one of the first things that you put in your body in the morning!
Additional benefits of black coffee: increases fiber intake, liver protecting benefits, mood booster, antioxidants. Vitamin B2, Vitamin B4, Magnesium, Potassium.
- Potassium helps relieve blood pressure, prevents and relieves heart and kidney disorders, alleviates stress and anxiety, helps enhance muscle strength, water balance, and electrolyte functions (to name a few)
- Vitamin B2: Helps convert nutrients from food to energy. Helps aid in fatigue, digestive problems, cracks and sores around mouth, aids in cutting frequency of migraines
- Vitamin B4: Speeds up the process of producing energy in our body. Aids in liver health, necessary for normal fat metabolism, aids in soothing anxiety, improves poor memory, necessary for brain function
- Magnesium: crucial to nutrient metabolism, bone function, energy production, supports healthy immune system, promotes normal blood sugar, eases muscle cramps and spasms, prevents acid reflux, prevents anxiety
3. Cinnamon
Cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar to assist in not allowing excess fat to build up, it increases metabolism of sugar and carbohydrates, it aids in reducing fat in the abdominal area, boosts energy, and curbs sweet tooth cravings
I add it to my coffee, smoothy or oatmeal as frequently as possible to get my regular intake of cinnamon.
Additional benefits: lower blood sugar, reduce risk of heart disease, anti-inflammatory, loaded with antioxidants, high in manganese
- Anti-inflammatories: Most diseases today are due to inflammation. Anti-inflammatories can aid in relieving arthritis, digestive disorders and high blood pressure. Prevents auto-immune disorders (I will be putting out a post on anti-inflammatory foods in two weeks- that’s how important it is)
- Antioxidants: Prevent diseases such as cancer. Beneficial to: eye health, prostate health, heart health. Fights premature aging of the skin. Helps mood disorders, immune system problems, and memory problems
- Manganese: promotes sex health, helps body form connective tissues, aids in calcium absorption, necessary for normal brain function.
4. Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is high in good fatty acids that increase your metabolism. Consuming coconut oil increases energy expenditure/fat burning. It also aids in curbing your appetite.
Add a teaspoon to your smoothy, morning coffee, oatmeal, or use it as butter on bread and sprinkle chia seeds on top.
Additional benefits: Promotes nutrient absorption, prevents high cholesterol, assists in healing damaged tissues, eliminates mental fatigue. Has Iron, Vitamin K and Vitamin E.
- Iron: prevents anemia, essential protein component of metabolism, prevents chronic disease
- Vitamin K: Reduces risk of cancer, aids in bone health, improves heart health, prevents blood clotting
- Vitamin E: essential for skin and hair health, improves digestion, helps PMS symptoms
5. Hot Peppers (Cayenne, Red/Green Pepper, Jalapeños )
Hot Peppers can increase resting metabolism up to 8%. They also increase feelings of being full and satisfied. Capsaicin is what gives hot peppers their heat, and is associated with slimming effects as well as acting as a blood thinner, therefor preventing blood clots.
Additional benefits: Hot peppers are pack full of nutrients. I’ll explain a few below that haven’t yet been spoken to. Hot Peppers have Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper, and are a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Potassium and Manganese.
- Vitamin B1 (Thiamin): helps convert food to energy, strengthens immune system and body’s ability to withstand stressful situations. Needed for healthy skin, nails, hair, liver and eyes.
- Vitamin B3 (Niacin): helps convert food to energy, combats depression (Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D. uses high doses of niacin to combat depression and anxiety. Andrew Saul talks about it in the video and article here), lowers risk of cardiovascular disease, essential for digestive function, improves skin health
- Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin): helps convert food to energy, helps prevent headaches, supports eye health, protects healthy hair and skin
- Vitamin B6: Protects eye health, helps maintain healthy blood cells, helps relieve symptoms of PMS, supports brain function
6. Lemon/Cayenne Water
Add some honey for taste and anti-viral affects.
We went through the metabolism boosting powers of Cayenne (or hot peppers above) This is an easy to incorporate and powerful drink to add to your daily or not-so-daily routine.
Lemon: Lemon slightly increases your metabolism in and of itself, but the important factor is that lemon is full of nourishing nutrients including Vitamin C, B6, A, and E. It includes Folate, Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Pantothenic Acid, Copper, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Zinc, Phosphorus, and Protein. Lemons are an anti-inflammatory, they’re good for your skin, digestion, immune system, they’re antioxidant full, and they also provide DNA cell protection.
Water: The importance of drinking water is self-descriptive giving the fact that we would die without it. Even mild dehydration will slow your metabolism. Want to to know something crazy? If you feel thirsty, you’re ALREADY dehydrated. The point of this article is to provide metabolism boosting advice, and it would be remiss of me to not include water.
When people come to me with weight loss inquiries, the first thing I ask is “how much water do you drink?” Surprisingly, people tend to not drink nearly enough. A good rule of thumb is 3 liters of water a day. Try drinking a liter upon waking in the morning, you’d be amazed at the improvement of your digestion and your new ability to reach weight loss goals.
Add lemon, cayenne and honey AAAAAND you have yourself a fantastic detoxing and metabolism boosting drink.
7. Green Tea
Green Tea contains catechins, which aid in burning an additional 70-100 calories per day for Green Tea consumers.
Green tea is extremely unique in the fact that it contains caffeine as well as providing calming effects. Caffeine and L-theanine are a potent combination toward improving brain function.
Additional benefits: Anti-inflammatory, Anti-carcinogenic, Catechins, L-theanine
- Anti-carcinogenic: prevents cancer
- Catechins: Boost metabolism, prevent cell damage, inhibits viruses and kills bacteria, particularly kills harmful bacteria in your mouth.
- EGCG: known to treat various diseases (related to heart health, inflammatory, bacterial infections, diabetes, breast cancer)
- L-theanine: calming, anti-anxiety effects
Feel free to reach out with any questions 🙂
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