Foods of the Best Fat Burning Diets
62Foods for Fat Burning Diets
Choosing Fat Burning Diets - Foods to Eat, Foods to Avoid
All good fat burning diets must address three components: what, how much, and when to eat.
Each of these is a separate topic, so for now this article will focus the first of these, the foods themselves.
Fat burning foods are simply those that provide calories with nutrients and that do not cause a lot of inflammation. Although some choices are obvious (whole fruit vs. Fruit Loops, for example), the key to selecting the best foods is to get as much content of vitamins, mineral, antioxidants, fiber, etc., as you can.
Empty calories from sugar and other nutrient-free carbohydrates also cause inflammation. This comes partly from the insulin surge after a blood sugar spike. Insulin is an inflammatory protein that causes damage when you have too much of it hanging around in your bloodstream.
Nutrient Density and Foods for Fat Burning Diets
Nutrient density is the key factor for picking a fat burning food. In general, high nutrient density includes many fresh foods and some frozen ones. (Yes, frozen ones! I'll explain in a moment.) Nutritionists mostly agree that the highest nutrient density comes from several categories of foods: vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, poultry (including eggs), herbs and spices, and seeds and nuts. The best of these include:
- VEGETABLES: Arugula, Bell peppers, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Leeks, Onions, Romaine lettuce, Scallions, Shiitake mushrooms, Spinach, Tomatoes, Sweet potatoes (NOT yams!)
- FRUIT: Apples, Blueberries, Cherries, Grapefruit, Oranges, Pomegranates
- FISH: Flounder, Salmon (esp. wild caught), Sole, Tilapia
- MEAT AND POULTRY: Beef, Lamb, Pork, Chicken, Turkey, Wild game
- HERBS AND SPICES: Basil, Black pepper, Cardamom, Chives, Cilantro, Cinnamon, Cloves, Garlic, Ginger, Parsley, Turmeric
- NUTS AND SEEDS: (raw, unsalted) Almonds, Flaxseeds, Sesame seeds, Walnuts
- OTHER: Eggs (esp. the whites)
What great-tasting and healthful foods!
Frozen Foods
Fruits and vegetables are often picked when they are unripe, then stored in a cold box until it is time to put them out for sale. Then they are fumigated with ethylene gas to make them look like they are ripe. This process does nothing to make them taste better or to make them offer any more nutritional value than they had when they were naturally unripe
On the other hand, fruits and veggies are left on the tree, bush, or vine longer if they are to be picked for freezing. They have to be ripe at that time because they are going to be frozen right away. They therefore have a natural level of nutrition. Get only fresh-frozen, unadulterated foods for the best benefits to your health and fat reduction program (meaning no sweeteners, MSG, or other additives)
Not Good Foods
You might have noticed that the all-time favorite sources of carbohydrates in western culture are missing from this list: potatoes and rice. The reason is that we eat a lot of starchy carbs from both of these sources. The calories do not come along with enough vitamins and minerals to make them worthwhile. Whole grains, on the other hand, still have the germ, fiber, and all the other nutrition that makes them worthwhile.
Really Bad Foods
You have to eat all three food groups - carbohydrate, protein, and fat - to be trim and healthy. Fats, however, have acquired an evil reputation. The nutrient dense foods for burning fat, listed above, include fats in fish, nuts, and seeds that you have to have in your diet. Fats from these sources will even enhance fat burning diets. The trick is to eat the right fats and avoid the harmful ones. The biggest culprits, the ones that cause inflammation, are the saturated fats from animal products and the trans fats from chemical processing.
Trans Fats: Evil Non-Food
Trans fats have become the whipping boy of the health food industry, for good reason. You probably know by now that trans fats are made by a synthetic chemical transformation. These are highly inflammatory. They ruin your cholesterol balance, disrupt the function of blood vessels, and promote obesity and insulin resistance. Is that enough for you? Avoid them at all costs.
French fries, potato chips, crackers, baked goods, and all kinds of processed foods are loaded with saturated fats, trans fats, or both. These are triple-whammy early death foods because you get: 1) lots of bad fats, 2) lots of inflammatory carbohydrates, and 3) very low nutrient density. Evil, I tell you! None of these foods will be part of good fat burning diets.
Your Eating Plan
One of the most important keys to the success of fat burning diets is consuming only valuable, nutrient-dense fat burning foods. You don't have to get crazy and start feeling as though you are depriving yourself of good food. Fat burning diets should be appealing, tasty, and offer lots of foods that you can look forward to without missing the ones that you must avoid. Enjoy!
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Comments
Hello, Aya:
I wish many more people were as astute as you are. Regarding the meaning of nutrient density, what I mean is the relative amount of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc., that are available in a food. It is a scale, starting on the low end with foods such as white breads and extending to the high end with leafy greens such as kale. Calories really are not part of the equation except when they are empty (processed carbs). Nutrient density also includes some your favorite foods such as fish with omega-3 oils. I suppose if you could equate nutrient density with anything else, the closest terms would be whole or unprocessed. Now isn't that fun? Thanks for your great comment.
Dr. D, thanks for your response. I understand the distinction between whole and unprocessed foods, but there are some foods that are naturally very starchy, like white potatoes. Eating a baked potato isn't all that different from eating white bread, for purposes of insulin resistance, is it?
"Vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc..." is only partially helpful, since I can only imagine what the etc. would be. Does fiber fall into that list, too? How about water?
If you keep calories completely out of the list of desirable attributes in a food, isn't there some danger that people will just take vitamin and mineral supplements and end up starving to death?
The high-starch foods vary around how complex they are. White potatoes drive blood sugar up faster than sweet potatoes do, because of the ease of digestion. A more recent concept than Glycemic Index accounts for blood sugar impact AND caloric intake. It is called Glycemic Load. It classifies carrots as low, even though they contain lots of pure sugar, because we don't typically eat a lot of them. The Glycemic Load of potatoes is high because of the easy to digest starch AND because of our tendency to consume a high amount of calories from them.
Fiber and water are definitely important components of nutrient density, so fresh foods will always be important. I shudder to think of a world where we only have processed foods or supplements, regardless of how nutrient-enriched they are. It reminds me of an old movie about a future when processed "soylent green" was the only food because of overpopulation. (Charlton Heston starred in it.) No matter how much scientists think they can create a worthwhile processed food, important minor ingredients will always be missing. Take a look at any baby formula sometime to see what I mean.
Dr. D, yes, I agree that when we eat relatively small amounts of foods high in sugar then it does little harm, as in the case of your carrot example. But if we tell people "Go ahead and eat carrots because they are nutrient dense", then it may defeat the whole purpose of labeling them that way. We should not label foods nutrient dense because we typically don't eat much of them. The label should be valid regardless of what percentage of our diet they constitute.
As I recall, Soylent Green was made of people. Cannibalism is a whole different issue from simply overindulging in processed foods! ;->
Can you explain the scientific evidence behind the Glycemic Load? What is the ingredient in sweet potatoes that make them drive blood sugar up more slowly?
Aya Katz says:
12 months ago
Dr. D, this is a well put together hub, and I agree with many of the things you have to say. However, could you elaborate on what you mean by "nutrient dense foods"? What exactly qualifies as a "nutrient" to allow a food to be labeled "nutrient dense"?
For instance, it is easy to see which foods are "calorie dense". Since fat has more calories per gram than carbs or proteins, then foods high in fat, like meat, fish and nuts, are the most calorie dense.
But vegetables are the very opposite of "calorie dense". They contain very few calories per gram. For one thing, they are rich in water and fiber. (Do water and fiber count as "nutrients" for your purposes?) For another thing, the calories they do contain are carbs, so you get fewer calories per gram in the case of vegetables than in the case of meat or nuts.
I recommend getting most of your calories from fats (found in meat, fish and nuts), but including a reasonable volume of vegetables and fruit, for their water, fiber and vitamins. The fats are "calorie dense." The vegetables are low in calories per serving.
Is there some other term besides "nutrient dense" that might describe the distinction you are trying to make between desirable and undesirable foods?