Top 10 Fat Burning Foods For FAST Weight Loss

Hello Health Champions, today we're going to talk  about the top 10 foods that can help you burn fat and lose weight as fast as possible. So, does  that mean that we're going to talk about some magic substance in food that can crank up your  thermostat and help you increase metabolism and burn fat and calories like crazy? Or  is it about eating low-calorie foods that will help you create a calorie deficit  and burn fat that way?

Well, it's neither, and it's a little bit of both, and I'm going  to try to help put that in perspective for you. So, what about calories? Is it about counting  calories and eating low-calorie foods?

No, not really. But calories are a measurement of energy  and how the body converts food to energy. It's a quantity measurement.

So, at some level, we have  to use more energy than we put in; we have to burn more energy than we put in. But it's not enough  just to look at that because reducing calories creates hunger and deprivation, and we can't  sustain that. So these foods also have to make you full.

But not only that, after you eat, they also  have to keep you full for a good while because if you get full but then you're hungry an hour or two  later, that still doesn't fix the problem for us. And we also have to come up with something  that's sustainable—a diet or a set of foods that we can keep eating for the  rest of our lives. Because otherwise, we've just created a temporary solution.

So rather  than talking about calories or low-calorie foods, we're going to talk about quality of  food—the type of food that gets the job done, that satisfies the requirements of the body.  And also, this food has to promote and maintain hormonal health. And what we're talking about  primarily there is insulin because weight gain and fat storage are created by insulin. 

Stubborn weight and long-term weight gain are caused by insulin resistance,  which is chronically high levels of insulin. When it comes to insulin resistance, there are  two variables or two sides of that picture, and on the surface, they may look like the same  thing, but I'm going to clarify that. So, on the one hand, we have to make sure that we don't  increase insulin resistance, and on the other hand, we have to increase insulin sensitivity. 

So it seems like that's kind of the same thing, but it's not. Because not increasing insulin  resistance means that we're avoiding doing all the things that create insulin resistance.  Whereas when we increase insulin sensitivity, those are little tricks and little types of foods  and chemicals and chemical messengers that can actually make the cell behave  more insulin sensitively.

So, on avoiding insulin resistance, what we have  to do is we have to stop eating all the foods that create insulin resistance, like sugar,  white flour, seed oils, processed foods, and anything that causes overeating. And when we're  talking about increasing insulin sensitivity, I'm going to go through that in some more  detail here. If we can reduce inflammation, if we can eat foods or compounds that  reduce inflammation, then the insulin receptors become more sensitive.

Similarly,  if we can reduce reactive oxygen species or oxidative stress or free radicals, then we  also increase receptor sensitivity because both inflammation and oxidative stress blunt that  response. They make the receptor less responsive. And then we need magnesium—it's a critical  component for activating that insulin receptor.

Also, we need chromium to activate that insulin  receptor. Then a huge factor is biome health, your microbiome composition—the balance between  the pathogenic and the beneficial. If you have an imbalance and a dominance of certain bacteria,  that can affect the insulin signaling in the body, so you actually become insulin-resistant  based on the balance of your bacteria.

I've talked before about apple cider vinegar  as something that actually increases insulin sensitivity as well. And then, by eating the  right types of Omega-3s—and of course enough Omega-3s—we improve the quality of our membranes.  If we incorporate more of the EPA and the DHA into the cell membrane, that membrane becomes more  fluid, more flexible.

That improves signaling, and it increases that insulin receptor  sensitivity as well—it helps it work better. And while all of this stuff is super important,  it's not as important as avoiding the sugar, the processed foods, the fast foods, the junk,  and the chemicals and toxins. Because it would be like having a carpenter come over to your  house while a bulldozer is trying to tear it down at the same time.

The carpenter is not going  to be able to offset what the bulldozer is doing. So the first type of food is meats, and here  we're including fish—fatty fish like salmon and sardines, which have protein, Omega-3, and a fair  amount of vitamin D. We have grass-fed beef, which we could argue is maybe the most satisfying food  that there is.

If we just had to pick one single food to live on for three months, I would say that  grass-fed beef would be the one to do it. Besides having a lot of nutrients and a lot of good  quality protein, it also has about 100% of your recommended daily allowance of zinc in a normal  to large steak—like an 8-ounce or 250-gram steak. And then we have poultry like chicken,  turkey, and duck.

Just like fish and beef, it is very satisfying. It's very filling.  It has some good fats.

It has some good quality protein. But with poultry, we really  need to make sure that it's pasture-raised. While it's relatively easy to find grass-fed  beef and wild-caught salmon and sardines, it's more difficult to find good-quality  poultry because so much of it is mass-produced.

If the birds didn't have a healthy life—living  outside, eating worms and grass, picking things, and having sunshine like they're supposed  to—then the meat is not all that healthy either. One thing that you might hear a lot about—I'm  going to talk more about it later—is that all of these foods have approximately 20%, like 18  to 25%, protein in them. It's a very protein-rich food.

Protein is what's called thermogenic. It  means that it's very difficult; it uses a lot of resources and energy from the body to break it  down. So if you eat 100 calories of protein, then you're actually using 20 to 30% of those calories  to process the protein and get energy out of it.

Number two is nuts and seeds, and here we have  things like pecans and macadamia. We have walnuts and almonds, and all of these are great. I would  just warn a little bit about almonds because they have some chemicals in them that people tend to  develop sensitivities to if they eat too much.

So, having a few almonds here and there is usually not  a problem, but if you go low carb and you start substituting almonds for a lot of starchy flours,  then you may get too much almond. Anything that you eat a lot of, you tend to become sensitive to,  and with almonds, I see a lot of that happening. On the seeds, we have flax, chia, hemp, and  pumpkin as some examples that are some of my favorites.

All of these foods have a lot  of protein, a lot of fat, a lot of fiber, and especially with the seeds, they have soluble  fiber, especially the flax and the chia. What that does is if you grind it, chew it, or dissolve  it in water, it absorbs a lot of water, so it becomes very bulky and very filling.  Then they contain Omega-3 fatty acids.

They don't contain EPA and DHA like fish oil does, but  they contain an Omega-3 called alpha-linolenic acid that can be converted in some percentage into  the same fatty acids that we have in fish oil. It’s walnuts, flax, chia, and hemp primarily  that have any significant amount of this Omega-3. Omega-3 is a substance that will control  inflammation.

So, if you're deficient in Omega-3s, you're going to be high in inflammation. If you  have enough, then your inflammation is going to go down, and that actually helps the insulin  receptors become a little more sensitive. Then nuts and seeds are also very rich  in minerals such as magnesium, zinc, manganese, and copper, and some of these  are very important for energy metabolism.

Number three is non-starchy vegetables, and  here we have things like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. You have asparagus, Brussels  sprouts, bell pepper, and onion, and the list goes on forever. I've done other videos on  those.

Then with even less carbohydrate, typically we have the leafy greens  like lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale, and Swiss chard. Some people can have trouble  reacting to some of these foods. For example, some of the non-starchy vegetables can have  lectins if they're in the nightshade group, and some of the leafy greens like spinach will  have oxalates, and there is a potential for some digestive upset in some people.

So, try  to figure out which ones work best for you. These foods give us a lot of bulk, a lot of  fiber, and a lot of nutrient density without providing a lot of energy. They also contain a  lot of minerals.

So, we have copper, magnesium, manganese, iron, potassium, phosphorus, and  vitamin C, which, of course, is not a mineral but a vitamin. By eating a combination—a wide  variety of these—several times every week, you're pretty much covering yourself on  these minerals. But I also said that while they are nutrient-dense, they don't provide  a lot of energy—not a lot of calories.

So, eating these by themselves is going to make it  difficult to be satisfied or satiated. You want to combine them with some type of protein,  some more dense food. You can also sprinkle on some healthy fats.

If you don't have any  type of meat, for example, they can still be pretty satisfying if you just add some healthy  fat. Just realize you're not getting a lot of protein from these, which is okay if you eat  the protein during the week at another time. Number four is berries, and  here are some of my favorites: blackberries and raspberries.

Blackberries have  four grams of net carbs per 100 grams of berries, so it's 4% net carbs. They taste rather sweet, but  they also have a lot of fiber to offset that. So, we can get a lot of flavor and a sweet treat  without adding a lot of sugar.

Even for diabetics and people who really need to watch it, these are  excellent choices. Then we have strawberries at six grams of net carbs and blueberries at  eight. These are not the lowest, but I put them on top because they are the most common—you  can find them just about anywhere at any time.

Then we have things like mulberries at  six grams, cloudberries, and gooseberries, which are both very popular in Sweden. Then  we have elderberries at six grams. Also very popular in Sweden are lingonberries  and currants.

There are black currants, red currants, and white currants, and  all of these are quite low in sugar. What you're getting from berries is a good amount  of fiber and a tremendous amount of antioxidants. Virtually all of them are very rich in vitamin  C.

All of these have less than 8% net carbs, with blueberries being the highest and some being  even a lot lower than that. Most of them have between 5% and 7% fiber. Pretty much strawberries  are a lot lower than that.

But if you compare this to fruit like apples, bananas, or peaches, what  you find is that you're getting a lot of the same flavor sensations from berries that you do with  fruit. They're giving you a sweet treat, but they have about half as much sugar on average and twice  as much fiber. Another benefit is that they’re one of life's little pleasures that you can allow  yourself, even on just about any strict diet.

Number five is eggs, and what  you're getting here is maybe the most perfect food there is. From the  animal world, we get protein, healthy fats, a lot of monounsaturated fatty acids, and  a lot of essential fatty acids—EPA and DHA. It's one of the few things besides  fish that actually has significant EPA and DHA.

We're getting a lot of micronutrients  like choline, B2, B6, B12, and folate (also known as B9). They're also very rich in some  minerals like iron, phosphate, and selenium. Like I said, they're very  rich in essential fatty acids, but it is critical that we get the quality  eggs.

Let me show you a little comparison here per egg between pasture-raised eggs and  cheap mass-produced so-called conventional eggs. Also, please note the difference between  "pasture-raised," as in raised on a pasture, and "pasteurized," which means  they've just been flash heated. If we look at vitamin D, we find that  it's about 200 IUs in a pastured egg, whereas there's only about 40 IUs in  a mass-produced cheap egg—so about a five-time difference there.

With Omega-3s,  there's about 150 milligrams in pastured eggs and, again, about a fifth  or 30 milligrams in a cheap egg. I also talk quite a bit about the Omega-3  to Omega-6 ratio. When we have a diet where, overall, we're eating way too much  Omega-6, that's a pro-inflammatory ratio.

A lot of people eat about 20 times  as much Omega-6 as they do Omega-3s, which means they are in a pro-inflammatory  state. If we eat a pastured egg, now we get a ratio of 1:2 to 1:4, which is in the  ideal range. Whereas if we get a cheap egg, they're going to be like any other mass-produced  food, and we’re going to get 1:12 or 1:20.

So, even though eggs are fantastic in general,  a cheap egg is going to kind of put us in the average of other pro-inflammatory foods,  whereas the pasture-raised egg is going to be right up there with grass-fed beef and  grass-fed butter and have that ideal ratio. Six is avocado, and here, if we could  pick one thing I believe would be the most perfect food from the plant world, then  I would say it's avocado. Unlike most plants, it provides us with fat and fiber, so it's very  filling.

At the same time, it's very low carb, which is great if you're on a low-carb diet. Then,  it's very low in protein, which you could see as a plus or a minus. Sometimes you want to be on  a low-protein diet, and then you know that this fits that criteria.

If you want some protein,  now you realize you have to get it elsewhere. But the avocado is packed with nutrients. When  we look at minerals, we get tons of potassium, magnesium, manganese, copper, and  zinc.

When it comes to vitamins, we're getting a lot of vitamin K, E,  C, and B9, or folate. Furthermore, it has a lot of antioxidants, and two in  particular that are kind of hard to come by: lutein and zeaxanthin, which are  super important for eye health. Number seven is healthy fats, and here we're  talking about added separate fats that you can cook in or add to food, like vegetables, if you  want them to be a little more filling.

We have things like organic extra virgin olive oil.  The reason I emphasize organic here is that when we get a concentrated source of fat, we could  also be getting a concentrated source of toxins, hormones, and pesticides because all  those things are fat-soluble. So, when we concentrate the fat into an  oil, we also concentrate the toxins, and that's why it's so important that  any fat you get should be organic.

So all of these are good to cook in:  olive oil, coconut oil, and butter. Now, coconut oil would be the best for high-temperature  cooking, whereas extra virgin olive oil and butter are fine on low and medium temperatures, or  if you cook something where the pan is sort of full of food—like if you're doing a stir  fry or you're cooking mushrooms, bell peppers, or onions—where the food fills out the  pan, then the fat never gets super hot. Some other good sources of fat are lard, tallow,  and duck fat.

A lot of people cringe at this because they've heard all their lives how bad lard  and tallow are—like the ultimate bad fats we've been told about. But that's not true; it still  just depends on the quality of the source. So, if we have healthy animals—organic  and pasture-raised animals—then the fat that we get from them  is also going to be healthy.

One more thing that I think is okay is avocado  oil. A lot of people ask about that. But also realize that if you press an avocado like  you would press extra virgin olive oil, that avocado oil is going to be very dark green,  and it's going to be cloudy.

That’s what a truly cold-pressed, unfiltered oil looks like, and  it's super healthy. But most of the avocado oil that you buy is not going to look like that.  It's going to be very light, very pale green, and it's going to be clear because it's  filtered.

This means that it’s gone through some degree of processing. It's not at the same  level of healthiness as extra virgin olive oil, but it is light-years ahead of any seed  oil or other commercially available oils. Healthy fats are very filling.

They promote  satiety. They also have a tendency to decrease inflammation. One of my favorite benefits  is that they make vegetables much tastier.

Number eight is fermented foods, and one  of the most popular things to ferment is dairy products. We have things  like yogurt, kefir, and buttermilk, and we also want to count in sour cream  and crème fraîche. Just keep in mind that if you heat them, then they lose their  good bacterial properties.

So, sour cream, if you cook with it, or crème fraîche, if you make  it into a sauce, will kill off those bacteria. Another good source of fermented foods are things  like sauerkraut and kimchi, which are fermented cabbage. Kimchi is a Korean specialty they call a  delicacy.

I have tried it. I bought it because I heard it was good, and I really worked at it,  but I just can't make myself really enjoy it. But I'm sure if I gave it enough time, it might  grow on me, as they say.

Then there is natto, which is fermented soybeans. Besides those, there  are lots of vegetables that you can ferment, and there are lots of recipes online, so just go have  a look and experiment and see what works best. The benefits you get from these fermented  foods, besides getting the vegetables and the nutrients in the things they're made  from, is that you get probiotics.

You get bacteria that act as seeds for your digestive  tract. Whenever you send down good bacteria, they're going to compete with the  bad bacteria, with the pathogens, because there's only so many resources—only so  much food—for them down there. So, if you send down some good guys, they're going to consume  some of that food and become more plentiful, and then there is less available for the  pathogens.

They outcompete them to some degree. As a result, you can improve the  overall balance in your gut flora, and you can reduce inflammation and irritation  because a lot of these pathogens are what’s causing inflammation, irritation, and toxic  byproducts. If you can reduce inflammation and improve signaling between these bacteria,  you can also improve insulin sensitivity.

I just want to emphasize this one more  time: where should your priority be? Because it's so critical. Should it  be to not increase insulin resistance, which means to not eat the sugar and the processed  foods?

Or should it be to try to find these little magic bullets that can help you improve insulin  sensitivity? I would say that if this is like 100% of your effort and your focus is on the  priority, then 80% of it should be in avoiding, making sure that you have already  cut out the sugar, starch, seed oils, and processed foods. Because otherwise, there's  nothing you can do that's going to override that damage.

Then you add in these other 20% that  can really tweak and fine-tune the picture. Number nine is thermogenic foods, and that  means something that creates heat. If you eat something and the body has to process it, or  this thing does something to stimulate or initiate a process where you create heat, then you're  burning extra energy—you’re using extra energy.

So, if you like hot peppers, the heat  compound—the thing that makes peppers hot—is called capsaicin. If you eat something like  10 to 12 milligrams of this hot compound per day, you're going to increase your heat generation,  burning an extra 50 calories per day. These peppers don't necessarily have many  calories at all, maybe just a couple, but eating them triggers certain things  in the body that generate heat.

Ginger will work similarly. If you eat about  two to four grams of ginger per day, you will burn an extra 45 calories. You  will generate an extra amount of heat.

Then green tea and coffee will do the same  thing. If you have about three to five cups of green tea or coffee, you can, with  tea, increase heat expenditure by about 60 to 80 calories. With coffee, it could  be 80 to 150 calories.

Now, with those, I would be very cautious and point out  that the reason they have that effect is that they are stimulants. So, they will  also stress your body, and I think that would be a little on the high end of how much  caffeine you want to give your body per day. And then we have MCT oil, medium-chain  triglycerides.

The medium chains are shorter than regular fatty acids, and we get these  from coconut oil. Coconut oil has a wider mix, but a portion of coconut oil is MCT oil. So,  if you get coconut oil, you will get some MCTs, but with MCT oil, you'll get more of the  shorter versions.

If you get 15 to 30 grams—1 to 2 tablespoons per day—you can burn an extra  100 to 200 calories. The reason is that these short-chain fatty acids are not absorbed like  regular fats; they’re absorbed much, much faster, bypassing the body's lymphatic system. In doing  so, we burn through them very quickly, unlike fat.

They give us quick energy, but they also  tend to upregulate your metabolism a little bit. Then we have apple cider vinegar, which can  improve a lot of different things. If you have 1 to 2 tablespoons per day, you can increase  your expenditure by 50 to 100 calories per day.

I said I would get back to protein,  which I mentioned initially, because if you eat 100 grams of protein,  the thermogenic effect of that is about 100 calories. But I wouldn’t go overboard  on protein for that reason. I think you should get enough for what you need, but I  don’t think you should try to increase it because that can unbalance other things,  such as your microbiome.

For one thing, we need to eat enough—moderate protein—but  too much is not necessarily a good idea. The reason we get a thermogenic, or heat,  effect from protein is that it’s so much harder to break down. As much as 25 to 30%  of the caloric value of protein is used up just processing it.

For carbs, it’s much less,  and for fat, it’s almost zero. What that means, though, is that the protein we eat isn’t  really increasing the expenditure like these other things we talked about. It’s  just that we get less energy out of it.

I think you can have all these things  in moderation if you enjoy them, but the ones I would focus on would be the  capsaicin, the ginger, the MCT oil, and the apple cider vinegar because they actually  create an increase of something. The others, like protein, as I said, are just hard  to break down relatively speaking. The coffee and green tea are stimulants, which  is something that you don’t want to overdo.

Then I wanted to include one more category called  functional foods. These are foods that have some other property that didn’t really fit in with  the others. Here we have bone broth.

Bone broth is actually very, very high in protein. It’s  high in collagen. It’s not like beef broth, which is maybe 2% protein; bone broth can  have 8 or 10% protein.

Collagen is good for both gut health and has a healing property.  It supports the healing of the gut lining, and it is also great for satiety—very filling. I want to mention apple cider vinegar again  because, as we said before, it can improve insulin sensitivity by various mechanisms. 

It can also slow down carb absorption. So, the carbs you eat, if you’re very sensitive to  carbs and they tend to spike your blood sugar, then having some apple cider vinegar  would smooth out that blood sugar spike. It is also very acidic, so it contributes  to stomach acid and signaling, improving protein digestion.

By improving the first step of  digestion in the stomach, you improve everything down below. Your entire digestive tract can  actually benefit, including your microflora. Apple cider vinegar can help improve insulin  sensitivity on many different levels.

Let’s talk about another treat. In addition to  berries, dark chocolate is another nice treat, but it needs to be 85% or more. The other 15% is  sugar.

If you use something like 50% cocoa, that means 50% sugar, and that sugar is  going to offset all the positive benefits of that chocolate. A lot of people think that 85%  chocolate is way, way too dark—it’s so bitter. But the only reason you think that is that you have a  sweet tooth; your taste buds are adapted to sweet tastes.

If you manage to get sugar out of your  life—and I’ve done several videos on that—your taste buds will quickly adapt, and you’ll  actually start enjoying 85% or higher chocolates. What we get from dark chocolate is a lot of fiber.  We get something called flavanols and polyphenols, and between these compounds, we  get a stimulation of nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator.

This improves  circulation, supports all these tissues, helps in burning fat, and benefits all the organs  that participate in metabolism. Furthermore, they improve receptor function and receptor  sensitivity, so the insulin receptors work better. These compounds also help to  reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.

All three of these—the fiber, flavanols, and  polyphenols—are prebiotics. That means they are food for the bacteria. Fiber is a more general  food, but the other two are more specific.

Some beneficial bacteria can be a little hard to  please; they’re very picky eaters. But flavanols and polyphenols can be food for some of these  species that are difficult to please, helping raise the quantity of the beneficial bacteria  that we want but are a little harder to improve. These two phytochemicals have also been shown  to improve mitochondrial function.

Mitochondria, of course, are the little things inside  cells that make all the energy we use. If you’re going to burn through fat,  that means you’re going to use up that energy. All that fat goes through  your cells, through the mitochondria, to turn into energy.

With healthier  mitochondria, that’s going to work better. I know that was a lot of information. If you’d  like a summary or the slides to follow along, I’ll put a link down below where you can click  and get your own copy of these slides.

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