Your Shortcut to Better Health

This is just a simple pre-workout drink that I’ve been experimenting with that definitely increases my fat burning after cardio workouts. When I exercises on an empty stomach in the mornings I can really tell how much fat I have burned, just by looking at my belly an hour afterwards, or using my trusty skin calipers. I find electronic body fat percentage meters to not really be accurate and if I drink a lot of water during my workouts the results vary by a lot, because electrolyte balance affects how they work.
By observation, I have found that this drink increases my fat burning about 3 times. This is based on skin caliper tests after long workouts on an empty stomach, the “warm” feeling after a workout lasting longer, and just plain old weighing myself on a scale. This drink was not my discovery, I found it in a very interesting weight-loss program, designed to achieve maximum weight loss by using simple tweaks and rituals like that, and as every reader of this blog knows, those kinds of things just make my ears perk up.
I have a few more interesting ideas like this one to test, so stay tuned 🙂

The drink

The drink is really simple, it’s strong green tea mixed with two tablespoons of vinegar. In fact, I wish it were more complex and weird so that people would go “Wow, what a unique recipe, this must really work”, but sorry, that’s really it. Simple, but in my experience, effective. Yes, it’s not the best tasting drink on the planet, but it works and anyone can try it, provided they already have those two ingredients lying around their house.

Why vinegar and not lemon juice? Although lemon juice is a classic additive to green tea, which unlike the vinegar makes it taste better and not worse, there are certain properties that make vinegar the additive of choice here. Some people claim it’s the acetic acid, others that it’s the malic acid, which has been shown to shift energy metabolism from carbohydrates to stored body fats in studies and therefore reduce total food intake(1). In the end, we don’t really know why it works, it just does.

How does it work?

We know very well why green tea and vinegar both work separately for weight loss. They both make your body burn more fat and less carbohydrates. Normally, to start burning body fat, you would need to deplete your carbohydrate stores somewhat first, by burning about 600 calories. This is not a trivial amount, and not a lot of people who want to lose weight have the endurance to exercise that long. However, this simple drink enables you to immediately start ‘tapping’ into the fat stores. Supposedly, it’s the combination of green tea’s fat burning effect, combined with vinegar’s ability to slightly reduce the metabolism of glucose and enable you to start burning stored fat, before the carbohydrate stores in your blood and liver are depleted.

• Vinegar reduces carbohydrate metabolism and speeds up fat metabolism (2)
• Vinegar stops fat from being accumulated in the liver, enabling it to be burned off more readily(3)
• Green tea has been shown to prevent fat accumulation and speed up fat metabolism(5)
• Green tea increases fat metabolism by 3-8% when taken alone(4)

Green tea is often used as a fat-loss aid and so is vinegar, but I didn’t find any studies testing the effects of those when taken immediately before a workout.

Just try it

It’s a simple trick that anyone can try, so try it and make sure to report back your results 🙂 I’ll soon be making more tests and posting fat-burning results with and without the drink.
 
Posted by Angelina on February, 20th, 2017

We have all seen plenty of articles on various magazines and websites about foods that we should avoid at all cost if we are trying to lose weight. Supposedly, just excluding certain foods from our diets can have a big impact and can make us lose weight. But does that work in practice? Well, it depends. It’s the food that you eat that count – not the ones you are not eating. In other words, when you exclude a certain food from your menu, are you adding another one in it’s place to make up for the lost calories?

As you will see in a minute, you can replace all the foods in your diet with different ones, and despite your daily caloric intake being the same, the difference in your body composition can be drastic.
We can go deep on this and make our diets very complicated, including things like MCT oil (which promotes weight loss) and kale shakes. But what if we can keep our diets very simple and consisting of common products we can buy everywhere and still be able to lose a ton of weight? Well, that is just what I tried to do in the last 11 weeks – and you are about to learn all about it.

My experience with a simple diet – replacing my usual foods with different ones, while keeping the calories the same

But wait, why would I want to keep my calories the same? Shouldn’t I reduce them for even faster weight loss? Well, remember that this is an experiment to determine if losing weight is possible just by changing the source of my calories. I also did a few fat-burning tricks, like the beta switch advises.
My start: 143 lbs.
I know, that’s not a lot of weight.. However, the timing was perfect: I had just spend a few weeks on vacation and had gained about 4 pounds of fat, which is not a little. Looking at myself in the mirror, in my underwear the extra fat was very noticeable. Now, let’s see if I can get rid of it just by changing my diet. To make things even more interesting, I will NOT be dong my usual cardio every morning. So, if I manage to lose the weight, the results must most definitely be from the different foods I am eating and nothing else!

Okay, here is a quick explanation of the changes I made:
Breakfast: From Cereal + Milk to Milk + Almonds and Fruit
Lunch: From a Sandwich to..again..Nuts (I switched them around)
Dinner: From Rice + Meat to More meat and some vegetables.
Do you notice anything specific about the changes I am making? If you are used to reading nutrition labels on products or have been interested in calories/nutrition for some time it should be quite obvious – the diets has shifted to a more Atkins, low-carb style and includes more protein, especially for breakfast.
What is the reason behind increasing protein and lowering the carbs? Well, there are a few reasons – a high-carb diet is not very natural for your body and carbohydrates are most readily converted to subcutaneous and belly fat – eating a lot of fruit during the autumn will build up a nice layer of fat over your tummy and get you ready for the long winter, when food will be scarce. Unfortunately, today that logic doesn’t apply – there are supermarkets on every street and even during the winter people keep consuming delicious sweets. In fact, consumption of sweets increases during the winter, probably because of the slight depression that comes with the cold and dark weather.
The body also cannot store much glucose and is forced to put the excess sugar somewhere – usually storing it as fat.
Anyway, I won’t bore you with fat metabolism or try to convince you to go low-carb – I am just sharing the reasoning behind my diet.
What were the results I got? I am glad you asked! After the 8 weeks I had dropped back to 134 pounds, which is about a pound lower than I normally weight – my BF% was the lowest I had ever been. Coincidentally, this is also the longest time that I have stuck to a lower-carb diet for so long and avoided most of my regular high-carb foods and meals.
All of this seems great, but why did I get such results, when most people fail to lose weight on much more complex diets? Can substituting a few weight-loss foods for your current ones be enough to make you lose weight?

Well, first I have done this before, so I was comfortable with the cravings for carbs and I expected them to occur. The average person trying to lose weight fast is getting discouraged as soon as they get a craving. Also, I knew I had no choice – If I continued to eat as I did during the vacation, I knew where that would lead. As you can see, the differences are mainly psychological. This plays a huge role in weight loss.
Now let’s look at some other examples of people who lost weight and improved their health, just by replacing foods in their current diet, without actually lowering their caloric intake! Including those weight loss foods in your diet has a much more dramatic effect than simply eating less or exercising more!
First, take Sally. She was 37 years old and since she turned thirty she had been experiencing all sorts of digestive issues, combined with anxiety, depression and mild osteoporosis. Just after 3 weeks on a gluten-free and low-carb diet, based around meat, nuts and vegetables, the difference is night and day. She started losing weight extremely fast, felt better and had heaps more energy!
Now, if it’s so simple, why doesn’t everyone do that? Well, try convincing a friend of yours that she/he should give up wheat, because the gluten it contains causes digestive issues. You will be immediately brushed off and classified as a “nut”. It may sound strange, but most people don’t have the slightest interest in improving the way they eat. I for one could never understand this, but it’s a fact.
If you do want to make some changes however, here is a nice sample diet you can follow (scroll to the end of the article). As you can see, it’s high in protein and low in crabs. It also completely eliminates grains, which you don’t have to do immediately, although I would suggest it.
Now, let’s look at the top foods you should absolutely and immediately replace and why:

• Wheat – do your own research here, the idea that wheat causes digestive issues is not new, nor is it just based on ”anectodal” evidence – look up celiac disease and gluten intolerance, they are real, medical terms.
• Cheap, processed food – foods that come in shiny packages are made to taste good, not feed you. That’s why shortly after you eat them, you are hungry again. Your body feels the calories coming in, but it can’t get any nutrients from them, which makes you constantly hungry. That, and the insulin roller coster you are putting your body into every time you eat them.

Do that, and you will be well on your way to getting rid of all the unnecessary belly fat.
Dealing with cravings
But, what if I get hungry? Well, you just have to accept and expect it – if you are changing your diet from a carb-heavy to a low-carb one it is to be expected that it won’t me smooth sailing. Getting hungry, getting headaches and other similar problems are to be expected – just stick to your new diet and trust that those issues will be gone in only a couple of days and the end result will be well worth it!

High-carb foods being recommended as weight loss foods by some people
A diet high in fruits and vegetables, and even a diet based solely on bananas has been recommended by some people as a weight-loss method. The evidence for that is insufficient and even if some people succeed in losing weight on such a diet, it’s probably not because of the diet, but because of the severe caloric restriction, combined with a lot of exercise. Low-calorie diets have been shown to have all kinds of adverse effects and there are several studies on this. One study found a large percentage of participant to develop depression, almost non-existent sex drive and lethargy.
If you think about it, there is no way we could be on a high-carb diet long term in the caveman days – fruits get eaten and take a long time to grow back. Animal protein and fat was always the major source of calories.
About exercise
I would recommend combining those weight loss foods with some form of exercise, not particularly for the sake of burning calories, but rather for well-being and feeling good. The benefits of exercise are many and it is not something you should skip on. I would recommend not eating a few hours after exercise – many people also report that they don’t have any appetite immediately after exercising. But yet, they stuff themselves because they read somewhere that eating protein immediately after exercise prevents muscle loss.
Well, I’d say that you should listen to your body. Also, the period after exercise is when you burn the most subcutaneous fat – eating a high-carb meal during that time will quickly undo this. Some protein is okay, but eat it only if you are hungry.
Hydration
Hydration is important. This is not discussed on many health boards, but water is not enough to stay hydrated. The other missing ingredient is salt – your body cannot retain any water without a certain amount of salt ingested simultaneously. Aim for about 2 grams of salt daily and you should be fine. Up that amount if you are doing a lot of cardio workouts.
Well, that about sums it up – the basic idea is to replace high-carb and grain-based foods with natural, whole foods that are high in protein and low in carbs, which limits the choices down to meat, nuts and a few other things.

A low-carb diet is any diet on which you consume less than 100 grams of carbohydrates. The source of those carbohydrates is not important and if you were to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, you would still be on a high-carb diet that can prevent you from losing weight. A lot of people don’t realize that fruit contains actual sugar – it’s mixed with vitamins, minerals and other good stuff, but if you consume too much of it, you will still hinder your progress when it comes to losing weight/eliminating insulin resistance.
What is considered a low-carb vs. what is considered a ketogenic diet?
Ketogenic diets are diets that include less than 50 grams of crabs per day and they also limit the amount of protein you consume with each meal. High protein meals put a lot of excess protein in your body, forcing it to turn some of it into carbohydrates by a process, known as Gluconeogenesis – this is the equivalent of eating a lot of carbs. Ketogenic diets force your body to rely solely on fats for energy production. This has both advantages and disadvantages – a lot of people take a very long time to get used to such a diet and the cravings and headaches are too bad, making them give up eventually. A ketogenic diet is not for everyone and there is not reason to do it – simply follow a reasonable, low-carb diet. And here is the seret:
Make all your carbs come from vegetables – this is key. If your carbs come from grains you are doing a strange mix of a Mediterranean diet and a paleo diet, which is not good! A high-fat diet, combined with a high vegetable intake is how people ate for eons. Although including a small amount of grains, like rice can still be considered low-carb, there is no reason to do it – you require only about 100 grams of carbohydrates. This is contained in a few pounds of vegetables and fruits or in only 2-3 bananas.
The more difficult question is this – what are the best high-fat foods to eat on a low-carb diet? Is a diet high in meat considered low-carb? Absolutely. However, it is very important to cook the meat properly and not at a high temperature. Fried meat is a big no-no. Finding a source of grass-fed meat is very important, although it can get a bit expensive.
A diet high in plant fats, like vegetable oils still counts as a low-carb, but it may not be so good for you – people have never eaten such a diet. The fats we ate before modern times were all animal fats. Having a large amount of your calories come from nuts is simply not natural. Eating whole nuts on the other hand is totally okay.
What about protein?
It’s difficult to limit your protein intake and still be on a high-fat diet. This is probably the only downside of paleo diets – you are forced to consume more than 100g of protein daily just to keep your caloric intake high enough. There are little tricks that can help this, like adding coconut oil or olive oil to your meals, but it is still difficult to have a protein intake of 50-60g which would be optimal.
Don’t forget the salt
A low-carb diet usually means that you prepare all meals by yourself. Too many people forget to add salt to their meals and this, combined with a high water intake can easily lead to hyponatermia. You don’t need a lot of salt, but you do need some – aim for 2-3 grams a day. Eliminating salt will often make you lose weight fast, but don’t delude yourself – this is purely water weight, which means you are now dehydrated. Salt is needed by your body to retain water and keep normal blood osmolality.
Is it still considered a low-carb diet if you don’t do it every day? It depends! Having a cheat day once a week is good for beginners, but don’t overdo it – having cheat days more than once per week will make it possible to consume so many calories during those 2 or 3 days that you basically undo all your progress. Start with once a week and then try to go for once a month.
There are many different names for low-carb diets, but most of them are the same thing – there is very little to innovate here and the purpose of such a diet, when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, is to go back to the way we ate during the first 99% of human evolution. This means eating meat, nuts, vegetables and this is pretty much it! Don’t eat anything that comes off a packet or contains an unusual combination of ingredients. For example ice cream – it combines sugar, milk, wheat and a few types of artificial fat. There is no way you could eat that combination of ingredients 3000 years ago. So stick to basic food that we are used to digesting
Angelina
 
 

Let’s first clarify something – the type of cholesterol you want to lower is your oxidized cholesterol, also known as LDL cholesterol. This is a type of cholesterol, formed when ‘normal’ cholesterol gets oxidized by reactive oxygen species, that come from pollution, bad diet, stress and so on. Here are two simple diet tweaks that will quickly normalize your cholesterol, without you having to take any prescription medication, be it Statins or any other cholesterol-lowering drug.
An apple a day
Sounds too simplistic and unscientific to have any measurable impact on your cholesterol levels, right? Wrong! Apples lower cholesterol (study) and by a whopping 40% in just two months. And that is by eating just half an apple each day. But how does this work? It’s simple – remember how the bad cholesterol forms? Oxidative stress damages normal cholesterol and in turn, the bad one forms. Apples are amongst the foods highest in anti-oxidants – despite being low in vitamin C. If you don’t want to use medication to lower your cholesterol, apples are your first best bet – immediately go to the farmer’s market or your local supermarket and purchase a big bag of them. Remember to eat them consistently – eating them every day will be much more beneficial than eating a ton of them one day and then not eating any for a week.
Reduce processed food
Processed food is a major source of trans-fats. In fact, it’s the only sources – trans fats aren’t found in any natural products, because they are man-created. Shortenings and bakery goods are the prime culprits here – avoid them at all costs. Focus on eating whole foods and you will lower your cholesterol in no time, without having to resort to dangerous drugs.
Medication is the worst option when it comes to lowering cholesterol. It doesn’t fix the underlying issue and simply removes cholesterol from your blood by the brute-force method. This is bad, because cholesterol is there for a reason – to repair broken blood vessels and damaged arteries, which are the result of a diet high in oxidants. Unfortunately, this process of repairing the damaged vessels puts so much cholesterol in your blood that the tiny arteries in your heart can get easily clogged, resulting in a heart attack.
The only way to fix this is to reduce the oxidative stress on your body, which comes either from eliminating bad food, or introducing more foods, rich in antioxidants, that fight the free radicals.
Angelina
 
 

Low-carb diets have long been known as a great way to lose weight, because of their ability to improve insulin resistance and reduce the intake of fattening fructose. But which low-carb foods are best for weight loss? Do you automatically lose weight when you are on a low-carb diet, regardless of what specifically you eat? The answer is both yest and no.
The Atkins diet is a popular diet that makes you lose weight fast. On it, you only look at macro-nutrients – you eat anything that is high-protein and low-carb, with little regard to the quality of the actual food. People often get great results on this diet, but they find that it is not sustainable and the common rubber band effect often occurs. We don’t know why exactly that is.
On the other hand, eating foods that are high in quality and still low in carbs seems to produce results that stick for much longer. A proper low-carb diet consists of meat, eggs and whole foods, including vegetables. Technically speaking, you can follow a low-carb diet and still eat garbage.
Calories
The total amount of calories is also important. If you eat a ton of high-calorie nuts, you may still have trouble losing weight, despite your intake of carbs being low. The magic happens when you are at a slight caloric deficit and keep your carbs low at the same time. Combining that with intermittent fasting works even better.
What is the best low-carb food for weight loss?
If I had to pick one, I’d have to say meat. Remember however, that the way you cook meat is very important. Properly cooked, meat is one of the best low-carb foods for losing weight. But if you eat a ton of meat that is fried, you are putting a lot of oxidative stress on your arteries, which will eventually backfire. Meat cooked at lower temperatures(<100 C or 212 F) is still fine. Combining the meat with vegetables makes it more digestible and the antioxidants from the vegetables combat any free radicals that may still form during cooking.
The best weight-loss results are achieved with a cheat-day once a week or once every two weeks. Many experts on nutrition have talked about this – if your diet is extremely low in carbs and you stick to it for a long time, your body down-regulates insulin, which makes you plateau. A cheat day is a counter-intuitive way of boosting your weight-loss results and satisfying any sugar cravings you may experience.
Remember that fruit and vegetables are not low-carb foods. In fact, they are high-carb and very low in fat and protein. However, eating them in moderation will ultimately help you lose more weight.
Low-carb breakfast
Many people have reported good results with the egg white and spinach breakfast – you basically mix some egg whites with spinach and that is all you have for breakfast. After several hours you can continue eating normally, but still low-carb. This shoots your metabolism through the roof and gives you stable energy throughout the day.
Other good options for breakfast include nut smoothies and yogurt smoothies – just remember to not go overboard with the fruit, especially if you like bananas. Bananas are very high in sucrose, which is basically table sugar. Although they are very nutritious, eating too many of them will not help you lose weight and will hinder your progress.
Angelina
 

In recent years, there has been a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to cholesterol and it’s two “types” – LDL and HDL. In reality, there is only one type of cholesterol – the chemical compound (10R,13R)-10,13-dimethyl-17-(6-methylheptan-2-yl)-2,3,4,7,8,9,11,12,14,15,16,17-dodecahydro-1H-cyclopenta[a]phenanthren-3-ol, Cholesterin, Cholesteryl alcohol.
What doctors refer to as LDL, or ‘bad’ cholesterol is actually the cholesterol that becomes damaged due to oxidative stress. Oxidative stress also damages the lining of your arteries, which is what makes your body release cholesterol in the first place. Apart from being the precursor to many hormones, the main job of cholesterol in the human body is to repair the lining of blood vessels, when they ‘break’. In other words, high LDL cholesterol in your blood indicates that your blood vessels have been damaged by oxidative stress. And what do we do when our cholesterol is high? We lower it with brute force – medication. This leaves your blood vessels damaged, yet preventing cholesterol from accumulating and clogging your arteries.
This does work, but it’s clearly not optimal. Instead, what you may do is reverse the oxidative stress, increase your antioxidant intake and fix your diet. As a result, everything in your body returns to normal and the underlying issue is fixed! But what are the sources of this oxidative stress? Here are a few:

• Trans fats
• Pollution, cigarette smoke, alcohol
• UV rays from the sun (although these are needed in a small amount to make Vitamin D)
• Fried meat

If you have a lot of oxidative stress but not enough antioxidants, you have problems. Antioxidants come mainly from plant sources – nuts and vegetables. This is why the popular fruit-juice fast works – you start ingesting only fruit juices and nothing else. This fixes many, many health conditions and has been shown to reverse heart disease and cancer. In addition to antioxidants, you are also replenishing your magnesium, vitamins and virtually fixing every nutritional deficiency you may have. But this is not necessary – you can simply exclude trans fats, deeply fried meat from your diet and start eating more fruits and vegetables – just this will make a big difference, which can be easily measured the next time you get your cholesterol checked.
So, yes – LDL cholesterol levels are an important indicator of your health, but trying to lower them by lowering dietary fat may backfire, or it may work – depending on what you replace those calories with. If you replace them with fruits and vegetables, the antioxidant see-saw tilts in your favor.
Dietary cholesterol also doesn’t seem to matter, and there are many examples of people eating a very high-fat and even high-egg diet, who have normal cholesterol. Avoid trans fat and the oxidants that forum during high-temperature cooking of meat and you will be fine!
Also, we are just beginning to understand the role of cholesterol levels in increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease – new evidence suggests that the size and shape of LDL particles is much more important than the total LDL cholesterol levels in the blood. The best thing you can do is stick to a healthy diet, rich in antioxidants, to ensure that your arteries can freely dilate and their wall doesn’t get damaged by free radicals.

1. The Colorful Detox Drink

Ingredients:

• 1 Bell Pepper
• 3 Carrots
• 1 Medium Cucumber
• Half a Lemon
• 1 Apple

Simply juice all of the ingredients and drink fast, before the antioxidants get destroyed! This detox drink contains large amounts of vitamin c, vitamin a, a nice amount of minerals, vital for a healthy skin & powerful fat and toxin-flushing antioxidants, contained in the apple and lemon. It does taste a bit strange, but is definitely not unpleasant. Drinking a glass or two a day is extremely effective for cleansing your liver, improving your skin complexion and generally improving your health & energy levels.

2. The Green Tea Citrus Drink

Another juice that has amazing detox power!
Ingredients:

• Half a cup of green tea, cooled down
• The Juice of Half a Lemon
• 1 Banana Blended In

This is a bit more difficult to prepare, as it requires juicing, blending AND tea brewing! But it’s worth it – the EGCG in green tea acts together with the lemon juice to rapidly detoxify your body. EGCG is absorbed much, much better in an acidic environment and when combined with minerals (the potassium from the banana). Another huge benefits is that the juice tastes very nice – you can almost get addicted to it.

3. The Golden Liver-Flushing Drink

Ingredients:

• Half a teaspoon of turmeric
• A bit of ginger
• The Juice of half a lemon
• Half a cup of water

This juice not only flushes toxins from your liver, but it also prevents gallstones and cleans your bowels. It also settles down your stomach after a big meal. Turmeric is a very effective liver-detoxifying agent and is used as a hangover remedy in some countries. Again, combining it with lemon juice makes it even more effective. Unfortunately, this drink doesn’t taste that well. You can definitely improve it’s taste by adding a banana, but don’t add too much, as the sugar from the banana will slow down the cleansing action of the turmeric.

The King of Detox Drinks: The Red Tea

If you’re looking for a drink that will detox your liver and body quickly and without any side effects, consider the red tea recipe (link). This particular detox drink is very interesting, not only because it’s in the form of tea, but because it works by the synergistic effect of it’s ingredients, which by themselves won’t do much, except provide some antioxidants and vitamins. You can get pretty amazing results it, considering how easy it is to prepare. Now let’s explain how just adding a detox drink to your day can help you lose weight! After all, shouldn’t weight loss be much harder?

How Can a Simple & Easy Liver Detox Lead to Weight Loss?!

The red tea recipe linked above is often recommended not only for the well-being that comes from detoxing your liver, but also for weight loss. But how can a liver detox lead to weight loss? It’s simple – the toxins that get stored by the liver and body are almost exclusively the fat-soluble ones, and we have plenty of those in our diets or the air we breathe. The fat, containing these toxins get deposited on cell walls, mainly in the liver, interfering with hormone signaling. The fat literally acts as a barrier between insulin and the insulin receptors that every single cell in the body has. The same happens with leptin and every other metabolic signaling hormone. Since cells have many different hormonal receptors, all of them get blocked by the toxic fat, and hormonal signaling can no longer work. Because of this, the body keeps storing fat and even if we exercise, fast, eat less or try to “burn calories”, the signal to “start burning fat” simply doesn’t get to the fat-covered cells of the liver. It reaches subcutaneous fat-cells, because those are designed exactly for the purpose of energy storage. Therefore, as much as we try to starve ourselves, we never really burn off any visceral(belly) fat or the toxic liver fat that interferes with countless processes, necessary for optimal functioning. Detox the liver and all of this starts working again like magic, and the body starts getting rid of that fat. We need a lot of anti-oxidant molecules to break the chains of the toxic fat buildup, but the right combination of phytonutrients does the trick!
Since cancer and many other diseases also happen because of poor signaling between cells (in cancer, the cells “think” there’s not enough of them and start dividing uncontrollably, which is caused by signaling blockages – you can read about this in the wikipedia page about cancer), detoxing the liver is a starting point for preventing many chronic diseases as well. Insulin resistance, leading to diabetes is the same thing – fat blocks the insulin receptors and the pancreas has to secrete more and more of it, eventually burning itself out. When this happens, you become a type 1 diabetic and have to rely on an external source of insulin, i.e injections. Since the fat gets deposited to store the toxins that cannot be eliminated without a proper anti-oxidant molecule, a proper detox gets rid of it and signaling can work again!
As we all learned, visceral (belly) fat is almost impossible to get rid of through exercise and caloric restriction, as it is not stored by your body for energy, but rather as a result of toxic buildup in the gut and liver. Your liver is your main ‘metabolic organ’ – it metabolizes glucose and virtually all food that is absorbed by your stomach goes first through the hepatic vein and then into the liver.  This is why you can read a lot of stories from people that completely changed their life and lost 50+ pounds quickly after going on a long juice fast. Fortunately, getting those same results doesn’t require a long juice fast commitment, if you use a recipe, designed to quickly detox your liver and “unclog” it’s cells from the toxic buildup.

Written by Angelina on June 25th, 2019

Many people don’t realize that their skin is affected by the way they eat. The skin is actually your largest organ and it’s cells are connected together by collagen – a substance that your body produces by using amino acids, many different vitamins and minerals and vitamin c. Collagen is also vital for connecting internal organs and muscles together, which is why if your body can’t make enough, it will choose to first repair those tissues and then if there’s any left – the skin. Chronic deficiencies in certain vitamins can be the root cause of cellulite and although you won’t fully reverse it by fixing the deficiencies, this can definitely reduce it. Let’s learn which common vitamin and mineral deficiencies can make cellulite worse and how you can fix them.
Deficiency: Vitamin C
This should be obvious – severe vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, which is a disease that causes your skin to break apart and bleed. Almost no one is that deficient, but according to many doctors the current RDI of Vitamin C (60mg/day) is very low and is just borderline enough to prevent scurvy or more obvious symptoms of deficiency. However, people during the paleolithic era consumed about 300 to 700 mg daily, which is ten times more. This is why we lost our ability to synthesize vitamin C. Dogs, Ducks and almost all other animals produce 10 000 mg or more Vitamin C per day in their liver.
Fix: Bell Peppers, Broccoli & Spinach
Red Bell peppers contain more than 100mg of Vitamin C per 100g. Broccoli & Spinach contain about half of that per 100g. Supplementing can also help, but is not necessary at all.
Deficiency: Magnesium
Magnesium is a mineral and not a vitamin, but it’s still a micro-nutrient that your body uses for more than 300 body functions. Deficiency of Magnesium leads to nerve problems, low energy levels, depression and most importantly – heart disease. It can also affect the elasticity of the skin as magnesium is also used during the collagen-synthesis process. Almost no one gets enough magnesium, as it’s traditional source is water from ponds, lakes and mineral water. Today, we have more than 5 times less magnesium in our water. In addition to that, magnesium in soil is rapidly consumed by plants, which means that with each crop, the magnesium content of the plant will be less and less, even though we use fertilizers.
Fix: Greens, Nuts & Mineral Water
It’s hard to source mineral water that’s high in magnesium (50-100mg/Liter), but if you can definitely do it. Greens are another good source of magnesium, although not as good as they used to be, due to soil depletion. Nuts are still high in magnesium, as they come from trees, whose root system is very deep and not affected by soil depletion of Magnesium. This is one of the main reasons why consuming just an ounce of nuts daily can cut your risk of heart disease almost in half. Unfortunately, there aren’t any studies done on cellulite directly, as it is not as medically important as other disease, but we know for sure that magnesium deficiency can affect the elasticity of your skin.
Deficiency: Antioxidants
Antioxidants protect your skin from free-radical damage, which comes either from outside sources (the sun, toxins in the environment, etc.) or your own body – your natural metabolism creates certain by-products that cause damage to your cells if not scavenged by antioxidants. Historically, humans have consumed a lot of antioxidants in their diet in the form of plants, which is how our bodies cope with toxins. Today, not only do we consume less natural antioxidants, but we also consume much more food that creates toxic by-products, trans-fat being the main enemy.
Fix: Eat a lot of Plants

Many people are starting to realize that vegetarian diets are not necessarily healthier just because the exclusion of meat, but because once you exclude meat you have to eat a ton of vegetables and plants to consume the same amount of protein. As a result, you boost your antioxidant intake 10-fold or more.

Foods to Avoid

Avoid carbonated beverages – no one understand the exact mechanism behind this, but it does seem to make cellulite worse and cultures with low carbonated beverage intake have almost no cellulite. Of course, this is also related to other factors – if you don’t drink any carbonated beverages, you are probably also not eating junk food. Fast food contains a lot of chemicals that are not natural for your body and created by cooking fat at high temperatures. Your skin gets easily damaged by those free radicals, especially in the absence of dietary antioxidants. Increasing your antioxidant intake and reducing fast food intake can have a massive effect on your cellulite, although it will not completely eliminate it.
A big factor in cellulite is blood flow. This is a complex problem and good blood circulation depends on a good diet – studies have shown that nuts are very effective in reversing blood-flow problems caused by constricted arteries. This is what special massaging tools for cellulite aim to do – by massaging your skin they supposedly improve your blood flow, which nourishes your skin and gets rid of cellulite. Unfortunately, this almost never works, as the effect is very temporary. Improving your diet can have a much more pronounced effect on the blood flow to your skin. Stress is another co-factor that causes your blood vessels to constrict.
As you can see, many factors influence cellulite. Generally, a healthy diet can greatly reduce it through it’s anti-oxidative effect on the skin. Collagen synthesis happens much more easily if you are healthy, which also repairs the bumps.

Completely Eliminating Cellulite

There are several methods you can use to successfully reverse the connective tissue structure changes that lead to cellulite and completely get rid of it. One such way is explained in this e-book.

Written by Angelina on March 28 2016

There are countless anti-cellulite products on the market. Needles to say almost none of them produce any visible results. Weird massages and vibrators are all powerless against your cellulite, when your body is ‘creating’ it. Many women think of cellulite as just something that happens, or as a result of weight gain. Both of those are incorrect. Often, losing a lot of weight makes cellulite worse for many months, because the skin loses even more elasticity. Fortunately, there are a few foods that can help. Many women find that they get rid of their cellulite ‘by accident’ after accidentally changing their diet. Many others find that no matter how much weight they lose, the cellulite still sticks around or actually becomes worse.

Can a Diet Tweak Eliminate Your Cellulite?

As you age, the way your body synthesizes collagen goes through several changes, which ultimately lead to the common cellulite. Various vitamin deficiencies can also contribute greatly to cellulite formation and fixing those can reduce your cellulite. Vitamin C is a major factor in collagen synthesis and a deficiency is known as scurvy. Although scurvy is extremely rare, it affects mainly the skin and causes it to ‘fall apart’. Low-level deficiency can also make your cellulite worse, as insufficient collagen makes your skin lose it’s elasticity. The way successful cellulite-eradication programs, like Joey’s program, work is by completely reversing age-related collagen hardening, after which your body automatically and easily gets rid of the cellulite on its own. In this article, we won’t be going into that much detail, but will instead show you which foods improve the complexion of your skin and lead to a reduction in cellulite. So, let’s get right into it!
Broccoli
Broccoli contains a chemical, called alpha-lipoic acid, or ALA. It naturally binds to collagen, keeping it elastic and soft. Collagen hardening is how cellulite starts. Broccoli is also high in Vitamin C, which helps your body synthesize collagen. Insufficient levels of Vitamin C limit your body’s ability to synthesize collagen and it uses the collagen it can produce to repair your most important connective tissues, not leaving enough for the skin. It has been shown that Vitamin C from supplements is not absorbed very well, as it requires certain flavanoids in order to be metabolized properly. Getting Vitamin C from raw foods, like Broccoli makes it easily available for your body to use.
Cucumber Juice
Cucumber juice is very detoxifying and we all know toxins are a major cause of cellulite. They disrupt thousands of body functions, leading to a slower protein synthesis. In turn, this prevents your body from repairing your skin fast enough, causing to the wrinkles. I recommend drinking a few glasses of cucumber juice, which you can easily make with a juicer or blender (strain the liquid after). A side effect of cucumber juice is frequent urination, so I wouldn’t advice you to drink a lot of it if you are not at home or don’t have easy access to a bathroom. Cucumber juice can replace many drinks that you consume, including even water. In addition to helping your body get rid of cellulite, it detoxifies your liver, enabling your body to get rid of visceral (belly) fat.
Omega-3 Fats from Fish
Omega-3 fats, contained in salmon reduce the chronic inflammation in your body, which often causes problems with collagen synthesis. Don’t go overboard with it however – aim for a serving or two each week. The full-range protein found in fish also floods your body with an abundance of amino-acids, which helps your body repair your skin. Remember that your body has priorities – if you don’t consume enough nutrients, it’s not going to use the little that you do consume to repair your skin. Instead, it will focus on more vital organs and functions in the body, leaving your skin under-nourished.
 
Water & Tea

Drinking water should be obvious – but many people really don’t drink enough. As a result, toxins build up in your body and disrupt many functions, causing you to feel sluggish, sleepy, gain fat and cellulite. The results from drinking more water come very slowly, as most of the toxins that build up are fat-soluble and not water-soluble. Your body needs to convert fat-soluble toxins to water-soluble by products, which is a very slow process. However, not drinking enough water can completely shut it down. Green tea is a nice alternative and it speeds up the clearance of toxins a lot, because of it’s ECGC and caffeine content. Antioxidants in the tea also protect your skin from UV and other free radical damage, which gives your body time to get rid of the cellulite.

Written by Angelina on March 27, 2014

The hormone I’m talking about is leptin. If leptin levels are high, your body readily gets rid of stored belly fat, as it is no longer in starvation mode. Unfortunately, most popular diets do the exact opposite – they trick your body into believing it’s starving, which kills leptin levels. As a result, your metabolism slows down, making you gain fat much easier once you start eating more again. This is exactly what causes the common and frustrating rubber-band effect – you start dieting, lose a bit of weight, hit a plateau and then gain all the weight back, plus some more. Fortunately, a little trick that boosts leptin levels can easily avoid this problem and enable your body to effortlessly get rid of stored body and belly fat.

How ‘Starvation Mode’ Works

When you rapidly decrease your calories, exercise too much or keep your protein intake low (many people trying to lose weight do all three) your body thinks it’s starving. Its reaction is to slow down your metabolism, by halting leptin production. This takes some time to kick in, which is why you can see some weight loss in the first week or two, although a lot of it is water and muscle mass. Losing muscle mass is also a natural consequence of eating less protein. The less lean muscle mass you have, the slower your metabolism and the harder it is for your liver to burn calories. Not only that, but now your leptin levels are low. This also makes you hungry. You hit a plateau and stop losing weight. Sooner or later you start eating more again (sometimes, without even realizing it, as your body can trick you) and beacause now your metabolism is slower, your body puts on much more weight in order to prevent you from dying the next time you starve.
Your body is used to how things were thousands of years ago – eating less then meant that you didn’t have access to food. If your body did not shut down your metabolism and kept burning fat you would starve to death. Your body is very smart, but it doesn’t know you are trying to lose weight. It thinks you are starving.
Then how it is that so many people lose a ton of weight? They are (usually unknowingly) doing things that boost leptin levels and prevent their body from going into starvation mode. The result of such a diet is a fast elimination of body fat, with little regard to how much you go to the gym. As we have said before, exercise is not a very efficient way to burn fat anyway – you burn much more calories through your metabolism, regardless of whether you exercise or watch TV. However, if your metabolism has shut down, this won’t happen.

Which foods boost leptin?

 
High-protein foods
This is the easiest way to keep your metabolism burning, even if you decrease your calories. Meat, eggs and dairy are good sources of protein. Plant sources include beans and nuts.  Having a high-protein breakfast is the easiest way to keep your metabolism burning and prevent your body from thinking it’s starving. Aim for 20 to 30 grams of protein in your breakfast. You can find many recipes for shakes that are high in protein. The meat and nuts breakfast is very popular among athletes and although a bit extreme, it works extremely well if you have the time to prepare it every morning.
Fish
Fish is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to boost metabolism in addition to having many more health benefits. Any type of fish will do, but salmon is my favorite. Don’t go overboard with the fish however, as depending on the source it can contain some mercury. Fish is also a good source of protein, which is one more reason why it works so well for boosting your metabolism.
Avoid fructose
Avoiding foods that shut down your metabolism is just as important. Fructose is a major factor in weight gain. A diet high in fruit tells your body to store more fat and fructose naturally metabolises to fat before it can be used for energy. Historically, people ate a lot of fruit during the summer and autumn, which their body stored as fat for the winter. A moderate amount of fruit is not bad, but try to replace most of your fruit intake with vegetables. Needles to mention, also avoid drinks that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
Foods high in zinc
Zinc is found in nuts, meat and especially in seafood and fish. Deficiency in zinc can cause low leptin levels. Increasing your protein intake automatically fixes zinc deficiencies, as zinc is a always contained in high-protein foods, including plant sources like nuts and legumes.

How to Boost Leptin Effectively to Start Burning Fat?

All good diet programs, including the hot 2-week diet will increase leptin a lot and keep it high, by avoiding habituation to the higher leptin levels and by eliminating foods from your diet that will decrease leptin levels, one of many being sugar. If you don’t have the motivation to stick to a diet strategy, you can still loose a bit of weight initially by manipulating leptin with some simple tricks, including the following:

• Cycling diet: Eat 2 days of high-fat, high-protein and low carb, followed by two high-carb, low-fat days. This is a classic diet strategy, and although it does hit a plateau sooner or later, it will keep you losing weight for at least a month
• Avoiding all fructose and sweet drinks. Just eliminating the leptin-killing fructose will naturally allow your body to boost leptin levels. Anything sweet will also decrease leptin, because the sweetness sends a signal to your brain. So artificial sweeteners are also out.
• Meat-heavy dinner – this is self-explanatory. Make your dinner a big steak. This will boost leptin levels while you sleep

Leptin is Much More Important for Women

Although men can successfully lose some weight on a starvation diet, women’s bodies respond a bit different to the leptin signal and make this much more difficult. That’s why a good and proven diet plan is vital for losing weight if you are a woman. The flip side of this is that women’s fat-burning potential is even higher than men’s and we can burn fat almost four times faster than men. Unfortunately, this fat-burning potential is rarely being utilized by traditional diets. Protein intake is also much more important for women. This may seem paradoxical, as men have more muscle, but in reality, women go into starvation mode much easier than men and this happens very quickly as soon as you restrict your protein intake. Try to keep your protein intake high and you shouldn’t have any problems with this!

Written by Angelina on March 26th 2014